St. Augustine's arithmetic

Give you a number ... suppose we talk about a trillion dollars more or less in spending in the next year or two. Um, a trillion dollars, the US government can currently borrow if it issues inflation indexed-bonds it can currently borrow at an interest rate of about 1.7%. So 1 trillion dollars of spending is going to add to future interest costs only 17 billion dollars a year. With a 2.5 trillion dollar federal revenue base it's not going to make a significant difference but it could make all the difference in the world to the state of the economy in the near term. So the arithmetic says that yes - well the arithmetic is basically St. Augustine's arithmetic that says - oh Lord make me chaste and continent but not yet - yes, let's have serious fiscal adjustment but not until the economy has recovered.
--Paul Krugman from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-pndXGafUg