Why NOT Balance the Budget?

On 10/30, in an open thread at AB, I posted a summary of my experience (up to that time) in commenting at Confounded Interest, a blog by GMU Prof Anthony Sandler.  The CI post in question has since been taken down.

This generated an interesting discussion (that I unfortunately lost track of) with some links to good information that I don't want to lose.  Keeping a link to that post is one of the reasons for this post.

Another is to show some interesting data that mcwop provided:

1817-1821: U. S. Federal Debt reduced 29%. Depression began 1819.

1823-1836: U. S. Federal Debt reduced 99%. Depression began 1837.

1852-1857: U. S. Federal Debt reduced 59%. Depression began 1857.

1867-1873: U. S. Federal Debt reduced 27%. Depression began 1873.

1880-1893: U. S. Federal Debt reduced 57%. Depression began 1893.

1920-1930: U. S. Federal Debt reduced 36%. Depression began 1929.

1998-2001: U. S. Federal Debt reduced 9%. Recession began 2001

2004-2007: U. S. Deficit Reduced 61% (from $413B to $160B) Great Recession began 2008

I had read somewhere (attribution lost) that balancing the budget was the route to recession, with IIRC a six for six record.  The above list show 8 such examples.

Food for thought.