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I guess we should have listened more to Mary Meeker's analysis. The analysis seems incontrovertible IMO, it's the proposed solutions that end up mucking things up politically. I think most everyone understands that the math does not work in our favor.
Of course, we'll push the sound reasoning aside and Mary Meeker in ten years will look like Brooksley Born looks right now, like a voice of reason drowned out by the insane cries of madmen and idiots.
Uploaded by KPCBchannel on Jul 20, 2011---------
USA Inc. is a non-partisan report that looks at the U.S. federal government as if it were a business. Mary Meeker, Partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and former research analyst at Morgan Stanley, created and compiled the report with the goal of informing the discussion about our financial situation and outlook. USA Inc. examines the country's income statement and balance sheet, aiming to interpret the underlying data and facts, and illustrate patterns and trends in easy-to-understand ways. The report also analyzes the drivers of federal revenue and the history of expense growth, and discusses basic scenarios for how revenue and expense growth might change to help America move toward positive cash flow. The full report, as well as the summary presentation, is available at kpcb.com/usainc
Other than release of a significant source of political power I'm not sure what the problem is with a Balanced Budget Amendment (BBA) or a Term Limits Amendment for the Congress. As S&P has now made clear, nobody has any faith in out so-called current leadership to actually make difficult decisions.
Almost every state has a (BBA), Switzerland and Germany (the "Schuldenbremse" or debt brake) have them and seem to be able to provide for it's citizens basic needs as well as emergency needs.
Neither one has funded any military adventures of late either, hmmmm.......
The Germans debt brake forbids deficits of more than 0.35% of GDP. I'm sure we can be flexible somewhat on that number, but not high enough where you could get into long-term difficulties, like we have now.
It seems as if the Keynesian Kool-Aid drinkers (like Paul Krugman), would vehemently (violently?) oppose any form of budgetary restraint. Even at the risk of throwing the entire economy off a cliff. One wonders why these kooks never have to endure being referred to as hostage-takers.
So far, I haven't heard any of these geniuses, or any of the numerous commissions, seriously suggest a return of Glass-Steagall Act. OK, maybe Sheila Bair and the FDIC have made the suggestion (another woman running contrary to the generally accepted, conventional wisdom. Hmmmm.........Brooksley Born, Mary Meeker, now Sheila Bair.
Glass-Steagall worked well for over 60 years. It only took around a decade for Glass-Stegall's repeal and the Gramm-Leach-Billey Act of 1999 (aka also known as the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999) to bring the system to its knees. Throw in a little Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 (CFMA) and a dash of Community Reinvestment Act arm-twisting, and all the ingredients for a financial disaster are in the soup.
Leave on simmer and wait for the Bush Administration to become distracted by national security issues and you have a pretty toxic recipe.
Amazing how many of these seeds were planted during the wonderful Clinton administration when all we hear from the media experts was that was exclusively a Bush II - Reagan production.
Hmmmmm........skipped an administration there, about eight years worth of seed planting, some of it with Congressional majorities.
Seems to me as if you are lost, if you don't first establish where you are and how you got there, it becomes very difficult to figure out how to get to the correct destination. We still seem to have a problem with that whole "being honest with ourselves", "take a long hard look in the mirror" thing. If that's the case, we could be stuck here for quite a while.
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