10/03 Dumbing Deficits Down By PAUL KRUGMAN

March 10, 2011
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Like anyone who writes regularly about what passes for economic and fiscal debate in American politics, I’ve developed a strong tolerance for nonsense. After all, if I got upset every time powerful people were illogical and/or dishonest, I’d spend every waking hour in a state of raging despair.

Yet there are still moments when I find myself saying, “They can’t really be that stupid,” or maybe, “They can’t really think the rest of us are that stupid.” And I had one of those moments reading about a recent conference on national health policy, which featured a bipartisan dialogue among Congressional staffers.

According to a column in Kaiser Health News, Republican staffers jeered at any and all proposals to use Medicare and Medicaid funds better. Spending money on prevention was no more than a “slush fund.” Research on innovation was “an oxymoron.” And there was no reason to pay for “so-called effectiveness research.”

To put this in context, you have to realize two things about the fiscal state of America. First, the nation is not, in fact, “broke.” The federal government is having no trouble raising money, and the price of that money — the interest rate on federal borrowing — is very low by historical standards. So there’s no need to scramble to slash spending now now now; we can and should be willing to spend now if it will produce savings in the long run.

Second, while the government does have a long-run fiscal problem, that problem is overwhelmingly driven by rising health care costs. The Congressional Budget Office expects Social Security outlays as a percentage of G.D.P. to rise 30 percent over the next quarter-century, as the population ages, but it expects a near doubling of the share of G.D.P. spent on Medicare and Medicaid.

So if you’re serious about deficits, you shouldn’t be pinching pennies now; you should be looking for ways to rein in health spending over the long term. And that means taking exactly the steps that had those G.O.P. staffers sneering.

Think of it this way: Congress could, with a stroke of a pen, cut Social Security benefits in half. But it couldn’t do the same with health spending: Medicare can’t suddenly start paying to replace only half a heart valve or mandate that bypass operations stop halfway through.

Limiting health costs, therefore, requires a smarter approach. We need to work harder on prevention, which can be much cheaper than a cure. We need to find innovative ways of managing health care. And, above all, we need to know what works and what doesn’t so that Medicare and Medicaid can say no to expensive procedures with little or no medical benefit. “So-called comparative effectiveness research” is central to any rational attempt to deal with America’s fiscal problems.

But today’s Republicans just aren’t into rationality. They claim to care deeply about deficits — but they’ve spent the past two years putting cynical, demagogic attacks on any attempt to actually deal with long-run deficits at the heart of their campaign strategy.

Here’s a recent example. In his new book, Mike Huckabee — the current leader in polls asking Republicans whom they want to nominate in 2012 — attacks the Obama stimulus because it included funds for, yes, comparative effectiveness research: “The stimulus didn’t just waste your money; it planted the seeds from which the poisonous tree of death panels will grow.” Will others in the G.O.P. stand up and say that Mr. Huckabee is wrong, that Medicare needs to know which medical procedures actually work? Don’t hold your breath.

Of course, Republicans aren’t the only cynics. As the national debate over fiscal policy descends ever deeper into penny-pinching, future-killing absurdity, one voice is curiously muted — that of President Obama.

The president and his aides know that the G.O.P. approach to the budget is wrongheaded and destructive. But they’ve stopped making the case for an alternative approach; instead, they’ve positioned themselves as know-nothings lite, accepting the notion that spending must be slashed immediately — just not as much as Republicans want.

Mr. Obama’s political advisers clearly believe that this strategy of protective camouflage offers the president his best chance at re-election — and they may be right. But that doesn’t change the fact that the White House is aiding and abetting the dumbing down of our deficit debate.

And this dumbing down bodes ill for the nation’s future. Health care is only one of the large and difficult problems America needs to deal with, ranging from infrastructure to climate change, all of which demand that we engage in a lot of hard thinking. Yet what we have instead is a political culture in which one side sneers at knowledge and exalts ignorance, while the other side hunkers down and pretends to halfway agree.

11/03 東証・大証統合 日本市場の復活へ実現を急げ

（3月11日付・読売社説）
　日本の２大証券取引所が、重い腰を上げた。

　東京、大阪の両証券取引所が、経営統合に向けて近く協議に入ることになった。

　世界の証券市場は、中国などの新興マーケットが急成長する一方、欧米では国境を越えた取引所の再編が加速している。このままでは、日本の存在感は低下するばかりだ。

　統合は巻き返しへの第一歩となる。東証と大証は早期に合意し、アジアの主要マーケットとして生き残る戦略を進めるべきだ。

　東証は現物株の取引で国内の９割を占め、上場株の時価総額は世界３位の規模である。片や大証は株価指数先物などデリバティブ（金融派生商品）の国内取引で５割の占有率を持っている。

　統合が実現すれば、それぞれ得意の部門を生かしたバランスのよい市場が誕生する。投資家の利便性が向上し、市場の国際競争力が高まると期待されよう。

　統合後は、両取引所を現物取引とデリバティブといった、機能別に再編する案が有力という。

　経営の効率化も重要だ。取引の電子化で、大量の注文を高速処理する売買システムの性能が市場の魅力を左右する時代になった。

　双方のシステムを一本化することで、設備投資の負担が軽減されて、積極的な増強や高度化が可能となるだろう。

　これまでも東証と大証の統合は必要性が指摘されてきたが、なかなか具体的な動きにつながらなかった。どちらも独立性の維持にこだわったためだ。

　だが、手をこまぬいているうちに、東証の売買規模は中国の上海証券取引所に抜かれて２年連続で世界４位に甘んじ、深セン証券取引所にも肉薄されている。

　東京市場の平均株価は、前日の米国の株価に連動しがちだが、最近は当日の上海株の値動きに引きずられることも多くなった。

　アジアでの影響力が先細りになりかねないという危機感が、統合推進のバネになったのだろう。

　２月中旬に発表されたニューヨークとドイツの証券取引所の合併にも背中を押されたようだ。

　東証と大証のトップは月内にも会談するという。東証と大証のどちらのシステムを使うかなど、主導権をめぐる調整は難しいかもしれないが、互いが利害を主張しあう内向きの論議に終始したのでは意味がない。

　日本の証券市場をいかにして再生させるか。大局的な見地で、話をまとめてほしい。

（2011年3月11日01時01分 読売新聞）