"The US Is Not Drowning In Debt"

It's hard to believe he actually said it in a Time magazine column, but Zachary Karabell at Time Moneyland goes against the grain and puts the debt and deficits in much-needed perspective.

Ridin' the Crazy Train!

The GOP has intentionally generated an artificial crisis and forced the entire political and media machinery - at a time of deep unemployment and a crisis in demand that is keeping the economy stalled - into a bogus "debate" over a phony, manufactured and disastrously diversionary issue.

One is not supposed to raise any questions about the irrationality and dishonesty of the "deficit hype" - or that this misdirection is dangerous in an extremely weak economy - at the risk of exclusion from the circle of "seriousness,"  but Karabell does - and to his credit he does it in a mainstream media outlet:

...Washington is currently consumed in an acrimonious debate over whether to raise the debt ceiling. There is no agreement about whether to do so or how, but both parties appear to accept the logic that the United States is suffering from an unacceptably high level of government debt and that further debt will doom the U.S. to generations of decline. Judging by polling data, large swaths of the country agree. Nonetheless, that consensus is wrong...