Deficits Are Not Our Biggest Problem...

Matthew Yglesias sounds puzzled:

Matthew Yglesias | TPMCafe: Deficits Don't Matter: Not to the public, at least. Back in 1993, 17 percent of poll respondents said the deficit was the biggest problem facing the country, today that's way down to two percent. I'll leave it to my betters to hash out the extent to which deficits do, in fact, matter economically even if they don't matter politically.

But why? As long as foreign central banks keep buying what the U.S. Treasury keeps issuing, the deficit has no *immediate* catastrophic effects on America. The people who say that the deficit is not the biggest problem facing the country right now are correct: the biggest problem is what the clown show that is the Bush administration has done to the national security situation. The--few--people who say that the deficit is, currently, our biggest problem seem not to be well-anchored in reality.