A BROKEN MEME

Conservatives try to scare the rubes by almost endlessly repeating "America is broke" and many of the rubes have swallowed this lie.  Here's a little push back from Bloomberg News:

Bond Market Shows Why Boehner Saying We’re Broke Is Only Figure of Speech
By David J. Lynch - Mar 6, 2011 8:00 PM MT
Bloomberg News

House Speaker John Boehner routinely offers this diagnosis of the U.S.’s fiscal condition: “We’re broke; Broke going on bankrupt,” he said in a Feb. 28 speech in Nashville.

Boehner’s assessment dominates a debate over the federal budget that could lead to a government shutdown. It is a widely shared view with just one flaw: It’s wrong.

“The U.S. government is not broke,” said Marc Chandler, global head of currency strategy for Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. in New York. “There’s no evidence that the market is treating the U.S. government like it’s broke.”

The U.S. today is able to borrow at historically low interest rates, paying 0.68 percent on a two-year note that it had to offer at 5.1 percent before the financial crisis began in 2007.

Financial markets dispute the political world’s conclusion. The cost of insuring for five years a notional $10 million in U.S. government debt is $45,830, less than half the cost in February 2009, at the height of the financial crisis, according to data provider CMA data. That makes U.S. government debt the fifth safest of 156 countries rated and less likely to suffer default than any major economy, including every member of the G20.

CMA prices for credit insurance show that global investors consider it more likely that France, Japan, China, the United Kingdom, Australia or Germany will default than the U.S.