War Bonds part II: They exist, but not really
Manuel Lora of The Swamp Land Exile replied to yesterday’s post about war bonds with a single link:
http://www.treasurydirect.gov/indiv/research/indepth/ebonds/res_e_bonds_eepatriotbond.htm
This links to the Treasury Department’s “Patriot Bonds” issues after 9/11/2001. These “EE” bonds are the new war bonds, but there’s one catch: the money seems to be used strictly for the general funding of the Federal government, not for war spending.
What’s the point of having a war bond if it doesn’t pay for wars? Why should Congress even care about this bond if they already inflate (destroy value of) the currency to finance their madness?
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5 Responses to “War Bonds part II: They exist, but not really”
Manuel Lora Says:
September 21st, 2007 at 9:00 am
Thanks for the followup. I posted your link to a mailing list and someone else gave me the link, so I didn’t find it
But anyway, is it well documented that in previous wars, the bonds were used exclusively (or mostly) for war?
Jason Ditz Says:
September 21st, 2007 at 9:13 am
The “War Bonds” during WW2 went into the general fund as well. For that matter, so did the “Civilians Bonds” marketed to pacifists during WW2…
The savings bonds for individuals are a pretty miniscule source of funding anyhow… in fact during WW2 the whole point of the War Bonds program wasn’t to raise money for the war, it was to reduce the amount of cash the average person had so they wouldn’t be tempted to create black markets and undermine their rationing programs.
adam.dada Says:
September 21st, 2007 at 9:22 am
Jason:
Intriguing, and I never realized that. I guess it is no surprise that wars have always led to massive inflation that eventually led to malinvestment and messy economies.
I’m disturbed by this information, and will dig deeper to look into it. The “Buy War Bonds” posters were great examples of older design and marketing campaigns, and it is sad that the people who thought they were “supporting the troops” were in fact supporting market imbalances.
jdavidb Says:
September 25th, 2007 at 8:50 am
Now that comments are opened on Unanimocracy, can you provide the location of a comments feed, so we can follow the ensuing discussions?
jdavidb Says:
September 26th, 2007 at 7:06 pm
Ah. Of course, it’s not run through Feedburner for you, and I’ll have to get a separate feed for every GUN blog.
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