I have read Fisher's account and I am afraid I must admit I am in almost total agreement with it. It's not that I never believed there was a budget problem, I have never doubted that, and I doubt anyone else has, either. I just did not realize the breadth and depth of the problem, and for some unfathomable reason, I believe this man. I do believe you're right. It has become unsustainable, regardless of what we do.

Where I do not agree with you is that it is a failure of the New Deal. As Fisher himself points out, mistakes have been made all along, by Republican and Democratic administrations, including the Bush administration, which squandered the last (but admittedly slight) chance to correct the problem. At the close of the Clinton years, the budget was balanced, but the debt was still there, and it was huge. The Obama deficits, even if they serve their intended purpose, may save the economy from collapse in the short term, but not in the long. It could all have been done more judiciously from the start, and by that I mean the end of WWII, if we had had more self-discipline. Neither do I abandon my earlier assertions that Conservative policies are designed primarily to ensure Conservative survival, not the nation's. As the ship goes down by the head, the Right is making sure they have bought up all the reserved seating astern. I guess that qualifies as cynical.

But that is just quibbling on my part. The main fact remains tbat financial disaster now appears inevitable, that it is primarily the result of Liberal policies, and even the most heroic (or Draconic, depending on whether you survive them or not) measures can only serve to postpone the apocalypse, not prevent it. Our only hope as a nation is that the collapse will not just be national, but will drag the world down with it. After all, all economies are now intertwined, and as you yourself continuously point out, the rest of the world is already there, awaiting our arrival. Perhaps if the whole world goes through it together, it won't seem as bad. At least we won't have any rich neighbors telling us "I told you so".

The ironic part is that in spite of all that, I personally seem to have made it through this emergency intact, and will either be dead when it finally catches up to us, or too sick to care. (See the "Hangin'" post above, which I wrote prior to reading the Fisher article). After all, the system has a great deal of inertia, it will carry on for a while yet. Chances are I'll miss the worst of it, and I still have more resources available to me than most. But for those of you with children, I am deeply and genuinely sorry.