Jumping off the fiscal cliff may be the best thing we can expect from a gridlocked Congress.
The Congressional Budget Office says this will throw us into a recession in 2013. Click here to read its report. But what’s another recession when we’re already in a depression? With a national debt approaching $16 trillion we are coming closer to the day when we all have to give up on the idea that it’s the government’s job to borrow money to manage the economy.
Click here to read my column on MarketWatch.
Reuben Espinosa
August 26, 2012
I fully agree, Al. In fact, I think this idea is four years late, akin to the notion TARP was a mistake, that we should have allowed Goldman, AIG, etc. to fail back in 2008.
It would have been painful. National Guard troops would have been brought in to handle the mayhem. Markets would have collapsed. There may have been bread-lines, govt-work programs, and financial hardship not seen since the great depression. Wall Street guys would have filed for bankruptcy and Manhattan/Greenwich real estate would plummeted along with the rest of the country.
But here’s the thing…after two or three years, things would have started to improve. The entrepreneurial American spirit would have kicked in (I mean, it isn’t like we would have been dealing with post-world-war destruction and a complete infrastructure rebuild). Confidence would have taken hold, not because we’d bottomed out and were starting the up-hill march (although that would have been part of it), but because the systematic flaws in financial-market deregulation were found and thoughtfully repaired, and capitalistic cronyism dealt with.
Morality would have been restored. Honor would have prevailed.
Maybe some goods things would have resulted from hell breaking loose. Let’s start with bi-partisanship and political civility. Maybe through all of the pain and reorganization an efficient and world-class health-care system would have materialized (some kind of hybrid between market-driven and socialized health-care). Maybe we would finally take a serious look at campaign-finance reform, our broken infrastructure, or our public-education system.
Like a lot of things in life, desperately holding on isn’t usually the healthiest thing to do. So take a deep breath and let go. Live within our means; quit piling debt on future generations. Rediscover the important things in life.