Dealing with the Deficit could be a Joke!

The recent tax bill indicates that there is no serious attention to the deficit. Meeting all of the Republican demands was clearly going to raise the deficit big time (I suppose it is hard to describe a deficit as being raised "big time" when it is already extraordinarily huge, but ...) show how hypocritical the Republican party is.

I may be most unhappy with the Democrats for caving in to the Republican demands, but at least they tried to stop the tax cut for the wealthy. And, it is not the tax cut per se (I could "compromise" if I knew that there was an agreement to end these cuts when the economy improved, as measured by some agreed upon indices). It is the fact that I believe that there is no intention to increase taxes, period!

Simon Johnson addresses this issue in usual forthright fashion. While he notes that any stimulus will be offset by the rise in interest rates, his major concern is that the prognosis for addressing the deficit is poor and, in turn, investors will demand increases in the interest of our bonds. Our nation will be losing its status as an economic haven for safe money!