The perception and reality of deficit spending.

Perception can diverge from reality for a considerable length of time.  Here are two comments that reflect this:

Mayor Bloomberg on the radio:  "“We are spending money we don’t have,” Mr. Bloomberg explained. “It’s not like your household. In your household, people are saying, ‘Oh, you can’t spend money you don’t have.’ That is true for your household because nobody is going to lend you an infinite amount of money. When it comes to the United States federal government, people do seem willing to lend us an infinite amount of money.… Our debt is so big and so many people own it that it’s preposterous to think that they would stop selling us more. It’s the old story: If you owe the bank $50,000, you got a problem. If you owe the bank $50 million, they got a problem. And that’s a problem for the lenders. They can’t stop lending us more money.” (Observer.com)

Warren Buffet on CNBC:  "If the Fed bought $3.5 trillion of Federal debt a year then we would have no deficit and would not have to pay any taxes at all." 

Buffet was being ironic but Bloomberg was not, or was it the other way around?