The wonder of Politics

The stated purpose of this BLOG is to try to make sense of things. I haven't written in it in over a month for many reasons and perhaps one of them is that it is becoming harder and harder to do just that.

There have always been many different opinions about things and at any given time there are plenty of issues that become befuddling because of the intransigence of those who hold them. However, we are facing a potential crisis in this country which in all honesty shouldn't even come close to being a crisis because certain individuals in office have taken positions that do not allow proper functioning of the Government.

I am talking about the debt limit issue that may very well lead to the depression some elected officials seem to desire. First thing we need to understand is that the debt limit is something unique to this country, most countries have no such limitation. In fact one might wonder about why congress, which approves all spending then puts a limit on how we finance this very same spending. Second, we need to consider the deficit. As economic times improve and our military adventurism also declines, I believe they are related, we will see increase revenue and decreased expenditures. Whether that change in and of itself will bring us to a surplus does not seem likely, it would take a robust amount of growth to do that, but it would diminish the problem. Of course actions that prevent prosperity or lead to a new recession or possibly a depression will only lead to a bigger problem.

Growth is the means to mitigate the problem and recession increases the problem. The problem we have now is related to the fact that we had the worst recession is many decades and are barely out of it. There are other contributory factors, but if we hadn't had the recession we would not have seen the explosive increase of the last few years. Remember, during the Clinton administration we actually had a budget surplus.

We are now faced with a situation where an artificially imposed limitation that has no impact on what congress approves or doesn't approve is possibly going to create a situation that will cause a recession, increased interest rates and tremendous worldwide distress.

Yo have to love Politics.