Riskless Securities for the Welfare State

Economic historian Harold Vatter defending the mixed economy and the Welfare State in a 1979 article (“Perspective on the Forty-Sixth Anniversary of the U.S. Mixed Economy”, Explorations in Economic History 16, p. 319): “The much-maligned public deficits provided business (and households) with a vast new influx of riskless securities for their asset portfolios. Banks hardly ever failed . . .”