Super-Committee Failure: Good or Bad?

When the congressional deficit super-committee failed in its task of coming up with a bipartisan plan to close the federal government's deficit, some of the reactions were far more interesting than the failure itself.

For example, a down stock market that day was attributed to the committee's inability to reach a deal. Really? Did most market players actually expect this group to arrive at an agreement? That's tough to accept. After all, from the start, it was hard to imagine how this group would close the huge chasm between Republicans opposed to tax increases, and Democrats opposed to any serious efforts to reduce, or at least restrain, federal spending.

Failure was almost inevitable, especially with a major election less than a year away.

But some of the negative responses to the super-committee's failure seem to rest on the idea that no deal was necessarily bad for the economy. This view, however, must assume that the act of closing a budget deficit is what matters, and how it is done does not really matter to the economy...

Read the rest of this SBE Council Cybercolumn by chief economist Ray Keating here.