THE DEFICIT: A $300 billion rounding error? But wait, it gets worse: “And, in the best tradition of B.S. D.C. accounting methods, the $1.3 [trillion] figure doesn’t include the nearly $800 billion in stimulus spending or the $275 billion to forestall mortgage defaults or war costs for FY2009 or whatever TARP 2 costs, so the actual deficit figure (assuming revenue projections are good, which they likely aren’t) is somewhere in the neighborhood of $2.5 [trillion] at a bare minimum. At $1.3 [trillion], the deficit would be 9.2 percent of GDP, a figure not seen since World War II. Under Ronald Reagan, whose deficits scared the bejeezus out of most people, the biggest deficit amounted to 6.4 percent of GDP.”

UPDATE: Link fixed; original post seems to have been deleted b/c of billion/trillion confusion and reposted.