целей. 3. Изменения в национальном доходе можно измерять в постоянных либо в текущих ценах. 4. В целях исследования экономического роста желательно применять постоянные цены. 5. В расчетах экономического роста для определения изменений материального благосостояния необходимо учитывать два дополнительных требования. 6. Самые высокие темпы экономического роста на душу населения в странах Юго-Восточной Азии. 7. Рост производства не должен быть временным. 8. В данных о производстве продукции в различных странах ученые обнаружили циклы роста (часто называемые «долговременными колебаниями») меняющейся продолжительности, некоторые 10 лет, другие 60 лет, а некоторые даже 100 лет. 9. Колебание – это изменение темпов роста. 10. В фазе спада темпы роста чрезвычайно низкие или отрицательные. 11. В каждом из долговременных колебаний ученые обнаружили период подъема. 12. Следует подчеркнуть, что долговременные колебания имели место не в общем объеме производства (который рос без существенных перерывов), а скорее в темпах роста этого общего объема производства.
Text 4. National debt
The national debt of the United States is the total of all the obligations of the Treasury to pay money to the federal government’s creditors. It consists of bonds, notes, and bills issued to the creditors when they lend money to the government. When the national debt was created in its current form in 1791, it stood at $75 million, or about $18 per capita in dollars of 1791 purchasing power and $197 per capita in dollars of 1982–1984 purchasing power (see accompanying table). Nearly two centuries later in 1988, the debt stood at $2,600.8 billion, or $10,572 per capita in 1988 dollars and $8,937 in 1982–1984 dollars.
Such data, however, are not very informative. When a borrower applies for a loan, a lender usually appraises the borrower’s income because that typically is the source of interest payments and repayments of principal. By analogy, in judging whether a national debt is large or small, one ought to compare it to the income (or product) of the national economy because that income, through taxation or further borrowing, is the ultimate source of interest and principal payments on the national debt. The accompanying figure presents the ratio of the national debt to the gross national product (gnp) of the United States from 1791 to 1988. It is apparent that the national debt has varied widely in comparison to the gnp over two centuries. Since we know that the gnp, the annual dollar value of all the goods and services produced by the American economy, has grown at relatively steady rates over long periods of time, most of the major fluctuations in the debt/gnp ratio have been caused by fluctuations in the national debt. Indeed, the history of the debt – its origins and its expansions and contractions over two centuries – reflects many of the key episodes of the American experience.
The national debt was born in the War of Independence. Within a week of the Battle of Bunker Hill in 1775, the Continental Congress, following colonial precedents, authorized an issue of $2 million of bills of credit called Continentals to finance the war. By the end of 1779, $241.6 million of Continentals had been authorized. U.S. loan certificates, foreign loans, state-issued bills of credit, and other evidences of public debt completed the stock of borrowing for the Revolution. The worst inflation in U.S. history resulted from the overissue of Continentals, and the bills became nearly valueless by 1780. The other evidences of revolutionary debt also depreciated greatly in value. After the war, starting in 1782, Congress authorized commissioners to travel around the country to examine claims against Congress and the Continental army and revalue them in terms of hard money. The revalued debt amounted to some $27 million.
Under the Articles of Confederation, Congress had no independent power to raise revenue. At the same time, the states, with debts of their own, were reluctant to respond to Congress’s requisitions for revenue. As a result, interest payments in the 1780s were met by issuing certificates of interest indebtedness. The Constitution of 1787 solved the revenue problem by giving the new federal government the power to tax, but by the beginning of 1790 the indebtedness of the United States, including arrears of interest, had increased to $13.2 million of foreign debt and $40.7 million of domestic debt, while state governments had outstanding debts of $18.3 million. In 1789, as the new government under the Constitution was being organized, the market priced the existing evidences of debt at only fifteen to thirty cents on the dollar because of uncertainties about if, how, and when they would be repaid. The new nation had a poor credit rating.
In January 1790, Alexander Hamilton, installed as the first secretary of the treasury, submitted his Report on the Public Credit to Congress. He called for funding nearly all the government’s obligations, including the state debts, into long-term federal securities payable in specie – that is, hard money. After considerable debate Hamilton’s proposals were adopted in August 1790. The foreign debt was fully funded, as was most of the domestic debt, although interest payments were deferred on part of the latter and another portion carried interest rates below the market rate. Only the depreciated Continental bills, nearly valueless, were funded at less than face value; one hundred dollars of Continentals were accepted as payment for one dollar of the new bonds. The most controversial part of Hamilton’s plan, because some states had paid off the bulk of their debts while others had not, was the assumption of remaining state debts by the federal government. (To gain the support of Thomas Jefferson and his followers for the plan, Hamilton and the Federalists agreed to a compromise that located the future capital of the nation on the banks of the Potomac.)
Hamilton’s refunding plan was generous to the government’s creditors, who replaced securities selling for as little as fifteen cents on the dollar in 1789 with new federal bonds that soon rose toward par. How was such generosity justified? Hamilton argued in his report that his plan would restore faith in the government and public credit, attract foreign capital to the United States, and increase the effective stock of money, thereby stimulating the economy. Subsequent experience proved him correct. The U.S. government was nearly bankrupt in the 1780s; in 1803 it had no trouble borrowing $11.25 million on short notice, mostly from foreign subscribers, to finance the Louisiana Purchase, which doubled the size of the nation. By that time nearly 60 percent of the national debt had been purchased by foreigners, who in effect lent money to Americans in return for the government’s promises to repay them in the future. Within the United States, debt owners could sell their federal securities for money or use them as collateral for bank loans. In retrospect, Hamilton’s plan was a political and economic masterstroke for the new Republic. As Daniel Webster would later say, Hamilton «touched the dead corpse of the public credit, and it sprung upon its feet.»
The subsequent history of the debt can be traced through the accompanying table and the figures’ portrayal of the expansion and contraction of the debt/gnp ratio. A national debt of $75 million in 1791, when Hamilton’s funding plan was implemented, may seem small to the modern observer. But it represented about 40 percent of the gnp