Erskine Bowles: U.S. Severely Exposed If (When?)
Interest Rates Rise
Posted: 2/3/2014 4:59:27 EST
The United States spends about
$230,000,000,000 a year in finance payments to creditors—a level that could
more than double if interest rates returned to more normal levels, anti-debt
crusader Erskine Bowles warned on
CNBC.
To put $230 billion a year in
perspective, Bowles said on "Squawk Box," it's more than the U.S.
spends at the departments of Commerce, Education, Energy, Homeland Security,
Interior, Justice, State and the court system combined.
"If interest rates were to
return to a median level they were in the 1990s, we'd be spending not $230
billion a year but $650 billion a year," the former co-chair of the
president's debt commission said.
"When you think about it,
that's $650 billion that will be spent, principally in those countries we're
borrowing money from, to educate their kids, to improve their infrastructure,
to do the high value-added research on their college campuses, so the next new
thing is created over there," Bowles said. "That's crazy."
He also said, "You're not
going to have great [economic] growth until we reform our tax code to make us
more globally competitive."
Bowles was President Bill
Clinton's chief of staff from 1997 to 1998. In 2010, he was Democratic co-chair
of President Barack Obama's National
Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform with Republican former Sen. Alan K. Simpson. Last week, he was
named lead director of Morgan Stanley.
Erskine Bowles
Erskine B. Bowles
is a co-chair for the National
Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, a director the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget,
a director at the Morgan Stanley, a trustee
at the Urban Institute (think tank),
and married to Crandall C. Bowles.
Note: Alan K. Simpson is
a co-chair for the National Commission
on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, a director the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, and was a member of the
Iraq Study Group.
National
Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform is a paid for staff by the Economic Policy Institute.
Committee
for a Responsible Federal Budget is a paid for staff by the National Commission on Fiscal
Responsibility and Reform, and was housed at the New America Foundation.
Foundation
to Promote Open Society was a funder for the Urban Institute (think tank), the Economic Policy Institute, the New
America Foundation, and the Brookings
Institution (think tank).
George
Soros was the chairman for the Foundation
to Promote Open Society.
Crandall C. Bowles
is a trustee at the Brookings
Institution (think tank), a director at JPMorgan Chase & Co., and married to Erskine B. Bowles.
Vernon E. Jordan Jr. is an honorary
trustee at the Brookings Institution (think tank), a life trustee at the Urban Institute (think tank), Valerie B. Jarrett’s great uncle, a
director at the American Friends of Bilderberg (think tank), a senior counsel
for Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer &
Feld, LLP, was a member of the Iraq
Study Group, and a 2008 Bilderberg conference participant (think
tank).
Robert S. Strauss
is a partner at Akin, Gump, Strauss,
Hauer & Feld, LLP, and a senior
adviser for the Committee for a
Responsible Federal Budget.
Erskine B. Bowles
is a director the Committee for a
Responsible Federal Budget, a co-chair for the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, a director
at the Morgan Stanley, a trustee at
the Urban Institute (think tank),
and married to Crandall C. Bowles.
Crandall C. Bowles
is married to Erskine B. Bowles, a
director at JPMorgan Chase & Co.,
and a trustee at the Brookings
Institution (think tank).
Lee
H. Hamilton is an honorary trustee at the Brookings Institution (think tank), and was a co-chair for the Iraq Study Group.
Alan
K. Simpson was a member of the Iraq
Study Group, is a co-chair for the National
Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, and a director the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
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