Charlie Rose

doodah  07/11/2011 11:45 PM Report

IMO, Michelle Bachman wants to encourage a government default to hasten the onslaught of Armageddon upon the heathens, she's a religious fanatic, and she thinks she's on a mission from God and she's psychotic and way too Hot and Sexy to be President. She would probably push the button. Given the opportunity.

She has to be a Nut. Who the hell would adopt 22 23 kids? That's nuttier than Hell. Especially since she's too engrossed in her own career to take care of them. imo

JohnGelles  07/11/2011 10:39 PM Report

[corrected message -- a dozen or more errors]

"Eat your peas."

The President asked Congress to eat its peas. He meant Congress should reduce tax exemptions and deductions in order to raise money for government TO pay bills and reduce the national debt.

Implied in his plea to "eat your peas", is the notion that if we had no deficit or debt, we would have more jobs and money to spend on keeping America strong, great and exemplary to other nations on Earth.

Do you believe such debt-free condition would bring such results?

Bill Clinton had us headed toward a zero national debt a dozen years ago. At the TIME the same idiots we have now worried we would have financial woes for lack of government bonds and the national debt they established.

The President excused all ordinary citizens with no time to study how the Treasury sells bonds. He accepted the fact that HE has no time to study how we financed WW II without shoppers abroad to buy our exports or nations abroad to lend us money.

The President is a disaster at the moment. If he guides our ship of state (WITHOUT CAPSIZING IT) over the next few years, BECAUSE HE manages to learn how ignorant all his advisers are, it will be a miracle.

I voted for a lucky fool. His luck is running out. And so is mine. Is there any voice around to day, forecasting our economic future, that compares with Stuart Chase in "The Proper Study of Mankind". Chase passed on the information that nations can afford all that they can produce.

Until our nation believes that fact, we will produce far lees than we need -- and we will need far more than we have and far more than we can afford without a brain transplant.

JohnGelles  07/11/2011 10:27 PM Report

"Eat your peas."

The President asked Congress to eat its peas. He meant Congress should reduce tax exemptions and deductions in order to raise money for government pay bills and reduce the national debt.

Implied in his plea to "eat your peas", is the notion that if we had no deficit or debt, we would have more jobs and money to spend on keeping America strong, great and exemplary to other nations on Earth.

Do you believe such debt-free condition would bring such results?

Bill Clinton had us headed toward a zero national debt a dozen years ago. At theme the same idiots we have now worried we would have financial woes for lack of government bonds and the national debt they established.

The President excused all ordinary citizens with no time to study how the Treasury sells bonds. He accepted the fact that HE has no time to study how we financed WW II without shoppers abroad to buy our exports or nations abroad to lend us money.

The President is a disaster at the moment. If he guides our ship of state over the next few years and manages to learn how ignorant all his advisers are it will be a miracle.

I voted for a lucky fool. His luck is running out. And so is mine. Is there any voice around to day, forecasting our economic future, that compares with Stuart Chase in "The Proper Study of Mankind". He passed on the information that nations can afford all that they can produce. Until our nation believes that fact, we will produce far lees than we need and we will need far more than we have and far more than we can afford without a brain transplant.

robdverity  07/11/2011 06:55 PM Report

O is finally showing some back-bone. If he sticks to it he'll win me back. Four trillion with entitlement reform is worth stiffening for. More Republican than Republicans.

Default will cost Rs more than Ds, imo.

tabs  07/11/2011 03:50 PM Report

RE Presidential News Conference 7/11/11

This morning BO said several notable things and presented a more emotional demeanor to the set piece portion of the news conference. The first notable thing was that to move the Debt Limit negotiations along and do what was right for the nation, he was going to "have to take heat from his own party." and that John Boehner was an honorable and noble Roman. Further he went on and said that "some have suggested that he is for bigger government as some sort of grand ideological scheme of his. That what he is really for is increasing revenues so that education and infrastructure could be funded." He then began to dissemble during the Q&A portion of the conference in which he contradicted his earlier stance about bigger government, revealing that he is for at the very least an activist government .

With regard to specific comments made by the President.

1. BO stated that 69% of American don't know how US Treasury Auctions work. That Americans are too consumed with their daily lives to know, and that is what we pay him for. In other words Mr President you are in office to take care of us? Mr President one would think that Americans should be educated about and pay attention to the function of their own government if for no other reason than to avoid being taken advantage of by charlatans. Further one would bet that the 31% of Americans that know how US Treasury auctions work are members of the Tea Party.

2. BO went on at some length about how America needs to increase revenues to fund infrastructure, schools and to help the poor in general get college grants and scholarships so that American can provide equal opportunity and remain strong. Mr President one can think of almost 15 trillion reasons why those noble sentiments of yours are realistically not fundable. That money that could have been spent on those noble enterprises has already been spent, choices were made. There are limits to everything including America Mr President One does not put a new coat of paint on a ship (invest for the future) when it is sinking. The important thing is to save the ship from sinking first and to add more debt only makes the survival of the ship to be in further doubt.

Finally Mr President while there seems to be some change in your emotional demeanor which was caused by the frustration of the Debt Limit negotiations pushing you off your intellectual perch. When one digs down into your dissembling dialog with the WH Reporters one sees that you are still a prisoner of your own ideology.

doodah  07/11/2011 06:32 AM Report

... in which case, there's a 'Tidy Sum' hidden away just for you.

doodah  07/11/2011 06:30 AM Report

...and the modern CEO, '100 for me none for you' (unless your name is 'Paul Ryan')

doodah  07/11/2011 06:23 AM Report

"...the golden rule".?. what's that? Two for me, one for you.?. Unless of course, you're in the 'Financier' business (Banker, for lack of better term). Then "the golden rule" is, '10 for me, one for you' (not exactly the three musketeers; are they?).

or Americans for that matter

JohnGelles  07/10/2011 04:36 PM Report

[copy of posting 58 (approx) of comments on June 21 show referenced here recently.]

.

I have to agree with Doodah that we the ordinary people are being savaged by the system, by the press and academics who are our critics of the system, by the government and its elected authorities who have failed since the housing bubble burst to be fair to workers, the middle class and those below middle class wealth and income who are often wage slaves and even victims of this nation's policies and politics.

The President's Chief of Staff, Dailey of Chicago, just now on Sunday, July 10 ABC Sunday News with Christine Amampur, used the frequently offered metaphor of SHARING THE PAIN of this jobless recession by "raising taxes on the wealthy" and "avoiding future deficits by avoiding necessary benefits for those who will need them then and need more now.

Well Dailey is one more part of the problem identified by Doodah and many of the rest of us. THERE WOULD BE NO PAIN if by using common sense we added jobs for all who need them, economic output to pay the real costs of all such jobs, and the systemic improvements to fiscal, monetary, tax and saving incentives policies that economic democracy demands.

IMO there would be no taxes on wealth or income itself. It would be presumed that the very rich used such wealth and income to finance ordinary essential business and not-for profit business and charity. They (the very rich and stinking rich) would pay no taxes EXCEPT anti-inflation taxes paid by everyone to reduce waste and increase necessary production to end poverty and pollution and prevent any further spread of tyranny.

We would need to close down all income and wealth tax operations and open up ways and means of financing the above productivity systems to be provided by government bureaus and contractors with as little waste and corruption as possible. Mostly such financing would pump debt-free money into the system of decentralized free enterprise the way we did to build America in the first place: in WWII the Truman Investigating Committee in the Senate tried to correct some of the worst corruption that had taken root despite many defenses against it. We would have similar problems today and tomorrow. But such corruption can be minimized. We have it today with corrupt crony casino capitalism pretending to be free enterprise. We will always have some of it. That does not excuse the wage-slave nature of too many American industries today.

[to be continued I hope by me and others -- and copied to

http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/11770#comment_81368

until we create a proper home for all these issues (or otherwise carry on -- on a fitting page that focuses on curing the present jobless recovery and assuming a leadership role to democratize business, labor and government as Abe Lincoln wanted and all those Union soldiers died for.

The Confederate soldiers died for a similar system of economic security -- but it was based on slavery for colored people and Lincoln's dream was of decent jobs and decent pay for colored, white and good people of every race and nation who obeyed the golden rule and had a little common sense.

doodah  07/10/2011 08:39 AM Report

Thanks for the gracious segway, John. I'll take it from here.

Fans and Followers who want to Tweek me, I have just commented - http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/11742

JohnGelles  07/10/2011 07:09 AM Report

It is now July 10 at 4 am Pacific Time. This page is Al Hunt's July 7 page on DEBT and Congress -- but I'm again intruding for the July 8 re-broadcast of the 4 NYT pundits on America's future -- which already has 50 comments on the following page --

http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/11742

The 4 NYT pundits left us issues -- and there may be no new page for July 8th to consider them.

Unfortunately it's already too late (before dawn on the 10th) to say more than that we do need to continue commenting on that amazing show of 21 June.

JohnGelles  07/09/2011 05:17 PM Report

I watched a repeat of the NYT columnist show with Brooks, Friedman, Cohen and Leonhardt, (if memory serves). The show was recorded last month and had meat enough for a year of comment.

But it only touched on taxes and borrowing to pay for the investments we need. It admits a different source is GROWTH but never that one can buy a lot of GROWTH with greenback (even counterfeit) money -- that is you can buy GROWTH with any money that passes as such, UNTIL inflation steps in to stop GROWTH -- which is really when the money that fails because there's too much of it must be replaced by money that promises to conform to a stricter standard of value in relation to the price of necessities.

The four columnists were good. But the show did not promise to diagram the logic of each prediction, prescription or claimed cause and effect historical pattern. Without such diagrams, we remain at the mercy of bon mots, metaphor, rhetoric, parody, and magical deception by practiced professional pundits.

It remains an open question, however, whether diagrams would change enough votes overcome self-deception and imagined self-interest and force of habit.

By chance I just watched "The First of the Few", a Leslie Howard movie biography of RJ Mitchell, designer of the RAF Spitfire. (Names -- from memory -- may be off.)

Without the Spitfire, Hitler may have won the war. The world may have become unimaginably worse than it is. Why were we given Mitchell in the nick of time?

I also heard Warren Buffet last night mention we had too few jobs in home construction and implied for me that too many families were living in places inferior to what ought to be built for them -- if we wanted better lives for all our neighbors. So what are we going to do about it? Build far better homes for all of us as a minimum standard -- to improve lives and neighborhoods and create jobs and recovery on purpose?

Or wait for events to happen -- not purpose, but by chance?

Like the Spitfire? Mitchell designed it on purpose -- according to the movie (with which his family cooperated). Of course chance played a great part in why it was built and was so good.

It is true that everything owes much to chance. Somethings owe a lot to purpose. Let us on Charlie Rose archive of comments plead for purpose at every chance.

doodah  07/09/2011 04:48 PM Report

Very well put, Shark. I can't find disagreement with Any of that. That's what it is.

I consider myself conservative, and have always voted republican. It took the 'financial meltdown' and the 'Tea Party' to make me wake up and realize what an Ass i've been.

SharkswithfrikingLazers  07/09/2011 04:27 PM Report

On January 25, 2001 Alan Greenspan told the Senate we needed a tax cut--the huge $5.6 trillion SURPLUS was too much. He also told them to put some fail safes in to stop the spending when it got to be too much. No one listened to the fail-safe part and we went CRAZY. $11.4 trillion crazy on two wars, unfunded drug benefits in Medicare and GIGANTIC tax cuts.

The Republicans are still responsible for this--yes Obama has held the reins for two and a half years. Bush drove the car into the ditch breaking both axles. The stimulus could only fix one axle because the Republicans would not allow the money necessary to fix both the axles. Now a flood of debt is coming down the ditch toward the car but we still need the money to fix the other axle before the flood pushes us down again.

The Republicans scream the end of world so all focus is off the car axle and onto the flood. (The Republicans appear to think America requires a good dose of fear at least once every two weeks.)

There is no consumer nor industrial demand and therefore the government normally steps in to create demand. The government could NOT get enough money, nor get the money out the door fast enough, to get both the axles repaired.

So the flood waters will probably push us down and some may drown. Hopefully we can get the money to get the car out before the "American Summer" (follows the Arab Spring).

We really need to give the Republicans another color coded threat level to make them feel better.

doodah  07/09/2011 08:01 AM Report

'The Establishment' doesn't care for him; That Alone, says alot - http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20072261-503544.html

And he's still in it - http://www.uncoveredpolitics.com/2011/07/07/roemer-to-declare-candidacy-at-saturday-rally/

What uh ya, think of THAT, 'Al Hunt'. Jerk

doodah  07/09/2011 07:31 AM Report

...not literally kill, but just take away their Power ($dirty money$ $filthy money$ $stolen money$) So that Intellect and Fairness CAN filter thru the politics as the founding fathers intended.

doodah  07/09/2011 07:23 AM Report

...But First, We must kill our enemies(Lobbyists and Political Action Committees). Only ONE candidate Understands this PRIORITY. - http://buddyroemer.com/

doodah  07/09/2011 07:17 AM Report

Sounds 'Utopian', John... Lennon?

....which, by the way, I'm All For.

x :)

JohnGelles  07/09/2011 06:16 AM Report

There is a flow of stock keeping units, call them material supplies that must be in use and consumed by the civilian economy for them to supply their military forces in peace and war that define nations struggling to survive over time.

There is a separate flow of beliefs, plans, laws, contracts, credit, money, debt, expenditures, taxes and property rights, etc., that define the energy system that motivates and drives the people whose performance is tested by the above struggle.

These two systematic flows are separate but equal parts of a single whole that periodically crumbles to dust to be replaced by a new nation.

Is the West crumbling to dust? When will the East replace it? These are the questions of today. Is there anyone competent to address them?

If the above is a horizontal view of history, the vertical one is different. It sees East and West evolving as one globe, one language, one purpose: to survive with life aboard as more than a place of rocks and sterile water.

All of that said and ignored, is it not time to get down to business. There is no reason on God's green Earth for anyone to be out of work or out of money. Rearrange the software with this in mind, and the hardware will soon conform.

doodah  07/09/2011 05:39 AM Report

... that's why I support 'Buddy Roemer' for President, he's smart and noble enough to identify the real American enemies, Lobbyists and PACs.

doodah  07/09/2011 05:35 AM Report

What makes these problems so complicated is 'politics', a 'benevolent dictator' could solve these problems quite effortlessly. And then go back to smashing dissidents and torturing enemies. Like a 'free range Nixon', he'd understand your concepts.

JohnGelles  07/08/2011 06:16 PM Report

It would be unbelievable EXCEPT that it is happening !

1. The human being KNOWS we must have work so that we DO SOMETHING: if you DO nothing -- you are no one.

2. We must have work so that we HAVE something. If you have nothing to eat -- not even to steal -- you die.

3. THEREFORE full employment and full employment budget and money systems are necessary! Yet only nations like Denmark have this. Almost all the rest of the world wants to COMPETE. They do not want to COOPERATE on planned full employment everywhere all the time.

4. Our President wants us to compete in exports so that we take back jobs we have lost. But why would we want to export if we could create jobs to fill our own unfilled needs? Our unfilled needs for clean energy, housing the homeless, training the untrained, caring for our returned soldiers and everyone else, etc., etc.

..... our excuse is that these people in need have no money to pay for what we would provide.

..... so we counter -- let us create the money we need to pay for the things we need.

..... the critic and Obama will answer, we cannot create the money we must EARN the money !!!!!

5. Common sense replies, "earned money" and "found money" look the same. The only problem that will arise will be INFLATION.

6. But at the moment we have DEFLATION. We need some inflation to fight it.

7. So all boils down to fighting simultaneously both inflation and deflation.

8. Functional finance is designed to solve this problem. It finds new money to fight deflation. Then it finds savings accounts to take money away from consumers who must wait for supply to catch up with new money -- the money is not taxed or cancelled. It is saved until needed again to fight deflation.

9. All this is computation intense management of supply, demand and money.

10. Such computation is less difficult than going to Mars and back. Yet Russia, America and others, will go to Mars and back sooner -- not later.

..... We obviously have the wrong President -- else he would have said all this yesterday and last year!

11. So how to we find a better President? Ask General Petraeus to take the job. He has common sense. Lawyers never do. There stock in trade is nonsense -- so that every question has two sides.

SharkswithfrikingLazers  07/08/2011 04:38 PM Report

We need a color coded threat level to make the fear more intense--but NO pastel colors. They just aren't serious enough.

America requires a good dose of fear at least once every two weeks.

Yes, the problem is so, so complex that no one can solve it: not Simpson-Bowles, not the Gang of Six, not the Gang of Five with a Simpson-Bowles template, not Joe Biden, not the White House, nobody.

So I will solve it here. Let the tax cuts expire. This is not raising taxes. The word is "temporary". The tax cuts were and ARE temporary. You are letting something expire. You are not raising anything. This will take care of the deficit:

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/06/chart-of-the-day-if-congress-does-nothing-the-deficit-will -disappear.php?ref=fpb

Now to the debt: get the oil flowing out of Iraq and charge a security fee/protection fee/your-welcome-fee that goes right to paying the Chinese for the war they financed. Have the checks made out to "China, our favorite banker".

You are welcome. Now, can we get back to getting that $2 trillion off the sidelines using the cheap oil from Iraq?

tabs  07/08/2011 03:33 PM Report

The following is excerpted from an e-mail to Mr Rose on 4/28/10 and might be an illumination of BO's personality and attendant policies.

"President Obama has lost political touch and pleases virtually no one on the Left, Right or even Middle politically because he speaks almost entirely from the head and not the heart. In every speech he makes it is from the intellect, and as such rings hollow or empty emotionally. What the Conservatives see as being Socialist in BO is the fact that he believes in the centralized government planning of a technocrat, which requires greater government control to direct and a larger government to implement. The irony of it is that BO's personality of the intellect superseding the heart or emotion is an identical overlay to how he views governments function in society. BO is in essence a prisoner of his own personal ideology" TABS 4/28/10

tabs  07/08/2011 03:16 PM Report

Further one Mr Malone this week at the DAVOS confrence stated that, "America should be more like Germany." To which one could reply by refering to the excerpt taken from the TG Ash interview comments of 6/30/11.

"Now some might bring up Europe and Germany in particular as the stunning success of a model of social democracy to emulate. What they don't factor in is the following:

1. Germany after 1990 had to rebuild the East after the fall of the Wall.

2. Germany uses shorter work weeks and long vacations to hide underemployment

3. Germany has had a ready and willing consumer for its goods and services in America (among others), which presumably could afford it all.

4. Germany has not had to have a REAL military to defend itself, thus it didn't have to divert capital into an overhead expense and could presumably afford its social programs. It has relied upon America for its defense. Take for example German troops have not left German soil since WW2 except for their NON COMBAT ROLE in Afghanistan.

5 German and Euro debt in general is not exactly nothing and has the potential like the American debt to bring the whole house of cards down." TABS 6/30/11

tabs  07/08/2011 02:52 PM Report

The following was an e-mail sent to Mr Rose on 7/5/11. Since that e-mail was written and sent events have moved on a bit. First the President has proposed a 4T USD in Budget cuts along with Tax increases, Two Buffet has come out optimistically and said that the debt levels after WW2 were much higher, and everything turned out OK. The unemployment numbers have come out MUCH worse than expected raising the unemployment rate to 9.2%, which shows that it just may not be a slow patch for the economy.

To this one has to comment that 5T USD over 10 years is 500B in cuts per year against a 1.5T USD deficit per year. What about that other Trillion in deficit? Further if the Republicans can get a 4T plus deal (with SS and Medicare reforms) and Tax Reforms and not tax increases they have substantially achieved their immediate goal.

Second Mr Buffet is being extraordinarily Pollyannaish in his views. The debt ratio that the US had after WW2 was under completely different circumstance. If one recalls the US was just entering into a 20 year Post WW2 Prosperity Boom where the world needed rebuilding primarily by the "Arsenal of Democracy", the returning GI's started families where they needed everything from houses to baby shoes, and there was 15 years worth of pent up demand for consumer goods that was not satisfied because of the Depression and later the war effort of WW2. The other thing one can say about Buffet is that he came of age right on the cusp of the Greatest Prosperity Boom in the history of mankind, one where the average uneducated working Joe could attain Middle Class Status. Thus Mr Buffets experience has only been a positive one of great prosperity and change, from which it is dificult for him to see anything different happenng.

Third with the continuing, almost nonexistant job growth of the past several months the efficacy of President Obama's economic policies are being called a total failure by a growing chorus of people from mainstreet, wall street and DC. One Mr Kaufamn this morning on CNBC was most adamant that any CEO who had such poor economic accumen that produced such a failing result would have been fired. Thus it is now becoming widely apparent that BO's of living better through bigger and better governmental planning is not only naive but a ruinious failure. This is especially so when one refers to BO's policies as a 4 year old with a hammer trying to continually hit the head of a nail and missing.

SPELLING OUT A LOSS OF CONFIDENCE

It seems like a deal is about to be cut on raising the Debt Ceiling. The Republicans have been fighting for 4T USD in cuts with no tax increases, and the Democrats have been proposing 2T USD in cuts with a tax increases to enhance Federal revenues. The spending of the Federal government is at an above historic norm of 24% while tax revenues are lower than normal at roughly 11% due to a Recession and moribund growth that the US is experiencing. The deal that is likely to be cut is going to be a 2T USD plus cut in spending and a tax increase. This deal in the final analysis falls short of the needed remedy and is merely kicking the can down the road once again.

The ramifications of this deal on the US financial markets will be that it is viewed as a positive step in the right direction. The Markets are likely to go higher on the announcement of a struck deal as it is one more worry off the table, and that the a further debate will occur after the 2012 elections.. However this is going to be a relatively short lived affect as the central issue of the US being a nation that can act responsibly will have been eroded. The hope that the US House of Representatives being in Republican control could act with a firm principled resolve to rectify a universally acknowledged unsustainable deficit will have been dashed. The air will go out of the room and the world will conclude it is just more of the same business as usual. The second affect of raising taxes is that it will have a slightly increased drag on an already sluggish economy. So what one can expect in the medium term is that an already sluggish economy will continue to be even more so. Thus what we are seeing economically is that a new normal is emerging.

While the debate of whether the US becomes all of one thing (Conservative) or all of another (Liberal) will largely be decided in the 2012 election. The terminal* moment for the US with regards to its debt may well be the Republican acquiescence to raising taxes as part of raising the debt ceiling. The reason why this is so is that the world will view it that political expediency took precedence over the principle that the well being of the nation comes first. The world will in affect cease to believe in its heart that the US has the will or capability of making the hard choices that are necessary to save itself from a debt crisis. One can not underestimate the air that will have been sucked out of the room by such a compromise.

* The rational for stopping short of saying that a tax increase compromise as part of the lifting of the debt ceiling is a Terminal moment is that after the 2012 election there will be one more chance albeit harder to accomplish than making the hard choice of holding firm now. The act of acquiescing is a slippery slope that will be difficult to re climb once one has already given in on their principles.

If one were to make a guess the period after the 2012 election will be a period of high risk for a debt crisis if Obama is reelected. BO reelection will signify that there will be either no modification of US spending or at the very least there will be another 4 years of gridlock . The second window for failure comes in 2014 when most of the provisions of the HC Bill take affect. If the HC Bill is not repealed the provisions will have a detrimental affect on an already laboring economy. It is as those provisions of HC take affect that a precipitous slide in the economy will begin,

TABS

doodah  07/08/2011 12:15 PM Report

Republicans had their chance(s) to back up their rhetoric with 'Action', they chose to kick the can down the road and be typical hypocrites. Renaming their 'disorder', 'Tea Party' doesn't do much to regain my trust, esp. after catching them in bed with the Wall Street Lobbyists (SocialistsElite) (probably the reason for the name change; that's what banks do, don't they?.)

I Trust Mark Warner, he's different.

REMant  07/08/2011 11:17 AM Report

Sen Warner's assertion that no responsible business leader would disagree with increasing the debt limit was also made in his op-ed yesterday in the Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/time-to-call-out-the-dishonesty-in-the-debt-talks/2011/07/06/g IQAPDmI1H_story.html?hpid=z2 but is at odds with the further assertion there that they seem not to care.

"Business leaders all tell me the same thing: Failing to raise the debt ceiling will increase interest rates, gut consumer confidence, and drag down business investment and job creation. Every one-point increase in interest rates increases the national debt by $1.3 trillion over a 10-year period, and who knows how much rates could increase." But, "Two years after a near-collapse of our financial markets, even with ominous credit-watch pronouncements issued last month by Moody’s, Fitch and Standard & Poor’s, many business leaders yawn as some elected officials prepare to punt on the full faith and credit of the United States. Maybe business leaders think that this debate is just political theater and assume that a deal will emerge. Maybe they don't believe politicians who declare that they will never vote to raise the debt ceiling or casually rule out entitlement reform or a penny of additional revenue." Besides the appearance that the senator has been talking exclusively to Keynesians, I think Wall St believes it can make money either way, but, be that as may, the avg American can only one way.

The Republican or Bowles-Simpson position is not so much about raising taxes as it is redistributing their burden, the precise effect of which at the moment would be hard to assess, but I think it is clear a flatter, simplified code would likely increase funds in the hands of ppl who will use them and increase govt revenue as a result. At the same time it may well decrease taxes on the rich, tho they would still be paying more.

Getting rid of the inflation adjustment on welfare and retirement programs is essential to getting inflation under control and should have been done long ago. I think the president seems to be on a better track now, and agree that many Dems need to catch up. But I'm afraid the politicians are getting ahead of the largely Keynesian economic community. When we don't do things that are really productive, inflation and depreciation ensue, which if met with more spending and money printing, just creates a vicious circle. We need investment, work, and saving, and being tougher (and fairer) is the way to do it.

As Sen Crapo pointed out repeatedly the real difficulty here is getting out of the current paradigm that pits taxes against spending and it will take both political courage and faith in the American ppl. But if a flat tax is as successful as many classical economists think, it will easily undercut all those on the far left and right who argue for the status quo.

The 14th Amendment reading is pure hokum. It was passed by the victors in the Civil War to justify their actions. It is, itself, unconstitutional, as should be obvious to anyone who has looked at the way it has been used to undermine the rest of the document. In any case, no one is presently arguing about repudiating the debt, just not adding to it.