PrintAugust 8, 2011
The Bitter Fruit of Insolvency
The downgrade of the credit standing of the United States by Standard and Poor's was long overdue. The salient factor in the drop was not the current level of indebtedness but the devastation that can be seen by looking across the landscape of the next ten to twenty years -- and the indifference to that prospect by the current governing class and much of the electorate.
This past weekend I was in the company of some very liberal relatives who were incensed that S&P dared downgrade the credit standing of the United States. In their myopic worldview, this was simply another part of a vast right-wing conspiracy out to denigrate and defeat Barack Obama. They refused to accept the reality of the disaster facing the country if a dramatic change of direction is not immediately forthcoming.
In an attempt to make a complex subject understandable I recently proposed a "National Insolvency Index" that measures the ability of a country to remain solvent, avoid national...(Read Full Article)
