Fiscally Unsustainable

Greenspan, the harbinger of truth and reason, has declared our current budgeting to be unsustainable. Thankfully, Greenspan, in his penultimate financial wisdom, has done everything he possibly could to prevent the economic stagnation he warns about.

Thankfully. Phew. For a second there I was worried that everybody was flipping sides left and right...

Oh... That's right. In 2001 and essentially every year since then, Greeny OK'd Bush's tax cuts, which have led us to this sorry state, and Sen. Clinton (D-NY) has called him out on it earlier in the year.

Here's Greeny's read of things now.

In the fiscal year ended Sept. 20, 2004, the federal budget ran a deficit of $412 billion, or about 3.5 percent of the nation's gross domestic product, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Moreover, the size of federal debt relative to G.D.P. has "risen noticeably" since bottoming out in 2001, Mr. Greenspan told the Senate Budget Committee.

Noticably? Holy shit! He understands that when deficits smash records, that easily qualifies as "noticable." "Shockingly," even, or "Mind-numbingly."

Although Mr. Greenspan in 2001 approved the tax cuts that helped take the federal budget from a surplus to its current deficit, he has increasingly pointed to the dangers of the deficit, saying it can lead to higher interest rates as the government's revenues fall. Congress has nonetheless expanded its spending.

"Every successive testimony, I can see him getting more and more impatient," said David Wyss, chief economist at Standard & Poor's. "It's like, 'Why don't you idiots get this - that you can't continue spending more than you take in?'"

Ahh yes, let's put words in the mouth of the dragon and pretend he is part of the team of skeptical and critical heros. I cry foul! Greenspan has not helped solve this problem when it needed to be solved- at the moment of its inception. He could have pointed out the variables he's looking at now- the rising retirement, lost of the dollar's value, slow gains in unemployment, etc etc etc. But he didn't.

When the time came for criticism and reason, Greenspan, like virtually every other figure in government in 2001, did nothing to stop this mindlessness. Nothing. Most of them, in fact, like Greenspan, helped it along.

And frankly, despite "noticible" groups of Americans, we didn't do much, either. We just sat and watched it happen in post-9/11 comashock.

So Al, buddy, Thanks a bundle. As much as you're trying to fix things now, please realize that you didn't do much to prevent them from happening in the first place.