The Iron triangle has two choices, contract gracefully for the Nation's benefit ... or persist in its own self-interests and beggar the Nation.

The size of our defense establishment, the operating and manpower costs of our military, and the procurement costs of current and planned defense programs are far more than needed or affordable.

This might be justified by the threat, but that's best described as small and unorganized non-state gaggle of ragtag irregulars.

It might have an argument in success, but the past decade has been one of abject failure in the military realm.

It might be argued that it's an employment program, but it sure as hell ain't the kind we need right now.

Forgive me for the dark suspicion that our national defense would improve if its funding and scope were drastically reduced. It's shameful that we pay so much and get so little. In the context of the basic posting above, every economic parameter is made worse by defense costs ... except the health index of the three fatcats of the Iron Triangle. Makes one wonder who is defending whom, them us or us them...

A contraction driven by the need to recover from too many years of over-the-top borrowing seems to be a more accurate assessment of what's been ailing the economy than calling it a recession. Contraction or recession, the problem is people expect the bad times to end and a recovery to begin within the span of months to maybe a congressional election cycle tops. It's unreasonable to expect a bounce-back in the short run but that will not keep people from demanding it of elected leaders. The political class will comply because the alternative will leave them unemployed. How is more deficit spending supposed to fix a problem created by too much debt? It's time we abandon fiscal policy as the remedy for this mess.

By the time Ezra Klein catches on to something, you can bet it's been common knowledge among those who actually pay attention for anywhere between three months to two years.

I'd advise caution accepting any estimate about a debt-deleveraging timeline. Nothing quite like this has happened before in quite this way, and seven years, while meeting the bibical notion of a lean cycle, sounds like lowballing to me. In any event, the longterm effects will be generational.

If you want to play Grand Strategy, you have to accept that, for Americans, the world has changed. With respect to those who lost and suffered, 9/15 (the date Lehman collapsed) is a far, far more important day than 9/11.

I don't know if Paul Kennedy got it right back in '87. I hope not, but I am afraid so. What I do know is that a people who refuse to accept that the global climate is changing are unlikely to accept that their own greatness is in decline, which will only lower the bottom we are heading towards. As the orcs say, "Payment is only put off."

There will be no Reagan to borrow and bs the nation into another sugar high. The current silly notion that we can have expansionary austerity belongs in the dustbin next to the one that holds we can decrease the deficit by lowering taxes. No, this one is on us.

This is probably the most important post Tom has put up for a long time. It is going to have more of an impact on the US military than just about anything I can imagine. Shame there appears to be so little interest.

We haven't had a period in world history before where one paper currency is the world's reserve currency. Economists are great and all, but they are great at "explaining tomorrow why the predictions they made yesterday didn't come true today."

The school of Austrian economics has a fundamental understanding that human social science is more important to understand than mathematical models are (in terms of understanding economics).

Liquidate, consolidate, speculate, create, and diversify your political risk!!

I agree that harder times are-a-coming. I just don't need an economist to tell me that.

in a bipartisan process shepherded by at least three administrations, our nation has decided that we needed to adapt to the new global economy- a new, global economy made possible by American taxpayer funded Pax Americana, cheap credit, and Asian (and now prison, but at least it's domestic!) slave labor. No more musty old factories for US, in the 1990s we were in the information age, and now we are in the green era. Everybody will go back and get retrained and it will be alright, everything will be fluid, and with our extra cash we can invest in emerging markets, helping the 3rd world masses out of poverty. It was all moonshine, as any skeptic could easily see. A small number of us stand to benefit, at the cost of beggaring our own nation.

The problem is, green economies, banking and investment based economies are good for small countries, with small populations. But for a nation the size of ours, you need heavy industry (and not just making things for killing folk) and lots of it. In our brave, new, globalized US we are dealing with a surplus population, what do we do with 'em? We don't really need 'em as consumers anymore now that we've got new markets and the US' credit cards are all maxed out. Let's just lock 'em all up and use them as cheap labor. And there is that trade imbalance that would make a 19th-century Manchu bureaucrat blush.

Contra Senator McCain, the essentials of our economy are weak. I doubt even a period of payback and slow growth will occur. We have no domestic economy, our political and economic leaders, willfully or not, have contributed to the 3rd World-ization of our nation. One might argue that, for many, this is a positive, a great leveling off. The Right sees an endless supply of cheap, ignorant labor while the Left sees further opportunities for social experimentation.