"[President Obama said] ‘that if we keep on adding to the debt, even in the midst of this recovery, that at some point, people could lose confidence in the U.S. economy in a way that could actually lead to a double-dip recession.'  What? Huh? ...A better model, I'd argue, is Japan in the 1990s, which ran persistent large budget deficits, but also had a persistently depressed economy - and saw long-term interest rates fall almost steadily. There's a good chance that officials are being terrorized by a phantom menace - a threat that exists only in their minds."  Paul Krugman.