
The cost of doing nothing for two years - fogus
http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2010/11/05/the-cost-of-doing-nothing-for-two-years/
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AndyKelley
What would happen if we made it unconstitutional to change the budget in a
such a way that expenses were greater than income?

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iwr
That's not enough. As we've seen, government income can occasionally spike.
You also need a flexible way to cut expenses further.

It's probably not possible to economize on government budgets, why they
periodically go bust (debt is cleared by sticking it to the creditors). It
happens more often than people think. In the last century, the US did in 1971,
the USSR was bankrupt at the end, Russia itself reneged again in 1998.

The worrying trend is that, to prevent smaller bankruptcies, the US, EU, Japan
etc. are prepared to stake their collective solvency. I call that the real
systemic risk. What was the terrible scenario evoked by the financial papers
back in '08? Could it be any worse than the debt collapse of all the major
economies?

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AndyKelley
I guess that's what happens when money is imaginary. I'm sad that more
politicians (citizens?) don't care about the budget. It's not that hard to
balance a budget!

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LurkingGrue
"You know, Paul, Reagan proved deficits don't matter," - Dick Cheney

