Economics Is Not A Morality Play.

To The Extent That Sacrifices Need To Be Made, Shouldn't The People Who've Made Out Like Bandits This Past Generation Be First In Line? The Problem With Getting Out Of The Slump Is That We Need To Spend More. It's Not That Somebody Needs To Spend Less. We Have Idle Workers Who Have The Skills And The Willingness To Work. We Have Idle Factories. Dealing With This Is Not About Saying Somebody Needs To Suffer. It's Saying That We Need To Be Prepared To Open The Taps.

Congress Has Always Had A Soft Spot For "experts" Who Tell Members What They Want To Hear, Whether It's Supply-side Economists Declaring That Tax Cuts Increase Revenue Or Climate-change Skeptics Insisting That Global Warming Is A Myth.

Seven Habits That Help Produce The Anything-but-efficient Markets That Rule The World. 1. Think Short Term. 2. Be Greedy. 3. Believe In The Greater Fool 4. Run With The Herd. 5. Overgeneralize 6. Be Trendy 7. Play With Other People's Money

The Problem Isn't That People Don't Understand How Good Things Are. It's That They Know, From Personal Experience, That Things Really Aren't That Good.

Where's That Toxic Rhetoric Coming From? Let's Not Make A False Pretense Of Balance: It's Coming, Overwhelmingly, From The Right. It's Hard To Imagine A Democratic Member Of Congress Urging Constituents To Be "armed And Dangerous" Without Being Ostracized; But Representative Michele Bachmann, Who Did Just That, Is A Rising Star In The G.o.p.