On the election

A lot of candidates who ran on 'deficit reduction' and 'smaller government' have been elected...Wouldn't it be refreshing to hear a self-described fiscal conservative outline a concrete proposal that would have a significant impact on the deficit?  They can't, because they are just mouthing the words.  [CKM]

...we have some politicians willing to make a fuss about tinkering around the cosmetic edges of our persistent deficits, but no one is ready to address our core issue: the U.S. financial system blew itself up, leading debt relative to gross domestic product to soar by 40 percentage points, and now is poised to do the exact same thing (or worse) again.  [Simon Johnson]

Bill:  There is all the talking about the US debt and out of control government spending which let to the debt.  At a very simple level, large government did not lead to the US public debt.  Johnson described it.  The Private Sector, especially the Shadow Banking System, created the debt, which, when it blew up, was taken over by the government.  Why?  Because Obama is a Nazi/Socialist/Muslim of course.

Actually, the debt was assumed by the government because otherwise western civilization would have come to a dramatic halt.  Companies would have had no money to operate on.  Gas Stations would close - no gas would be delivered.  No food would be delivered.  ATM's would close.  Money might actually have been worthless, since the only way to get anything would very quickly be by barter.  

Although people's money in money-center banks is supposedly backed by the FDIC, there has never been an FDIC takeover of a money center bank, let alone a takeover of all of them.  How would this work?  It would be seen by all the folks who are not up on this stuff as, yes, Obama a Nazi, taking over the country.  Revolution?  And it wouldn't work anyway - there's no mechanism to do it.

In my view, because of extreme deregulation (among many many other issues), the banks crashed and the government had no choice but to "bail out" the banks, and that's where the huge debt came from.  So, there's no runaway government spending - what has run away is private, "free-market" extremism.  

Obama, Geithner, Summers, et. al. chose to act like it was business as usual. They avoided telling the populace about what had happened. They did not sell the plan. So - the great United States will increasingly "run" by crazy's like Rand Paul, and, of course, Moose Woman.

You think it's bad now?