The Convergence Criteria: Budgetary Conditions

Abstract

Government borrowing has traditionally been viewed as a sign of weakness in an economy, a necessary policy that has the object of stimulating economic activity and employment by injecting increased purchasing power into a depressed economic system. If a country is running a budget deficit, this means that government expenditure for that economy is larger than government receipts.

So the poor debtor, seeing naught around him, Yet feels the limits pitiless that bound him; Grieves at his debt and studies to evade it, and finds at last he might as well have paid it.

Ambrose Bierce, The Cynic’s Word Book, 1906