In an opinion piece from earlier this week, I attempted to critique a recent report (“Rising Interest Rates Threaten Washington’s Solvency”) written by economist Brian Riedl. Instead, the presumed critique revealed in the worst way some of my childish, petty, rude, and supercilious qualities.
While Riedl was understandably bothered, he handled my immaturity gracefully. Riedl correctly felt my attempted rebuttal was condescending, after which he was of the opinion that my analysis hadn’t addressed what he’d written. In my case, I’d rejected the idea that a creation of the federal government (the Federal Reserve) in any way had or has the power to set the interest rates paid on debt by the federal government that created it. In rejecting this view, I concluded that Riedl had concluded the exact opposite. From there, I dismissed the idea that the Fed’s rate fiddling could somehow render its creator (the federal government) insolvent as the headline in Riedl’s report for The Peter G. Peterson Institute indicated.
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