The important lesson is to learn why Europe's the banks mustn't be allowed to fail and no government's ability to loan should be taken off the credit wagon failed, which Iceland's let the banks face bankruptcy and let the government start over has worked. The way ahead is to allow bankruptcy, dissolving of failed corporations, auctioning of remaining assets, and getting assets into economically efficient managers rather than to reward cronies close to government power. Economics begins with competition and efficiency, being economical. Not with political power and patronage.

There used to be in America arguments between socialists and free entrerprise idealists, but now we have the capitalists trained to bribe and extort their way to city, state, and federal government subsidies. Katie you may have mentioned that stadiums do provide a lesson in subsidies. The subsidized stadium does not lead to better sports teams, but only to more money for the subsidized personnel who do not lower ticket prices as a rseult of the subsidies. That little boys and girls is how subsidizing agriculture and health care and environmentally friendly alternative energy companies always work. Subisdies simply reduce private inititiative to hold down production costs. Little boys and girls, Katie understands economics.

Private ownership is an even better alternative to collective democratic government. Imagine you want to buy your child a pet. Your pet store is a democratically elected store with a full monopoly. Somehow the bureaucracy has become corrupt and keeps most of the pets for their own families. When you go to the store you are offered two pets, the last pets in the store because the families running the store have taken the rest. You have a rattlesnake and a copperhead. In private enterprise you walk away refusing to buy. In an election you get stuck with one of them having say over your household.

Democracy has three tendencies that tend to lead governments into points of no return. Democracy by its nature is collectivist. It begins with a collectivist ownership of government. Representatives of the collective have authority to regulate and tax and that authority is used to regulate and tax mostly private enterprise. It gradually tends to regulate all private enterprise and property for the collective. There is a tendency in all democracies towards totalitarianism. By totalitarianism I mean all facets of life come under the scrutiny of government leaving less and less freedom and liberty. As government grows it overreaches and and becomes hopelessly bureaucratic. The two parties can argue about it but have no remedy.

There is another possible way of reading the division between supporting the idea of upholding marriage as between a man and a woman; with growing tendencies towards acceptance of homosexual behavior. Americans, as people throughout the world remain generally speaking heterosexuals and plan on falling in love, marrying, and having children around a marriage of a man and a woman. We possess ideals regarding freedom and liberty. So Americans tend to be willing to accept that there are people who live alternative lifestyles. But Americans don't like the alternative lifestyle thrown into their face every time some homosexual activist group gets the urge to do just that. We are ready to accept non-intrusive alternative life styles.

I fear that organizations like NATO simply become bureaucracies looking to eternalize their positions and powers. Even worse they have become the international playground of elitists aiming to reduce the authority of nation states with some sort of international organizations run by hidden nameless oligarchs. We have seen how the banking industry has used recession to get American money to save European banks in the name of security. Do we really want to eternalize such a mess?

Imagine you are at an auction. You have a good feel for what certain items ought to be valued at. Then you learn that someone has come to the auction passing out buckets of cash to various people bidding at the auction. You are in the dark about how many buckets of cash are being passed on, but pretty soon if you aren't being given the buckets of new cash entering the auction, you have to pretty much withdraw from bidding. That is the govenrment's game. It creates debt and pays for it with fiat money and calls it austerity.

What is needed? I would propose lower taxes, even lower spending to compensate for lower taxes, less debt, and a system of sound money that penalizes government for relying on debt and passing on the costs by simply dilluting the value of the money supplied by the printing machines and computer digit machines. The fiat money machine is wrecking the economy by allowing governments to perpetually borrow, while the unstable money fails to allow the free market the ability to naturally price the value of goods and services.

We live in a dangerous situation, where governments always assume they are the answer to all problems and never suspect they are the problem in any. Therefore every solution sought for problems created by the inefficiency of government managed economies is to further expand the size and scope of government with more taxes, more regulation, and more money printing. In this young century we have seen no child left behind, wars to spread democracy, and a national health care boondoggle and all government can imagine is that there was a hiccup in the economy because the free market failed. Meanwhile our freedoms are diminished and our economy is stalled.

Good article. In a similar article with many of the same points, Gary North pointed out that it is a strange austerity budget that maintains a 6% spending beyond revenue, as is now the average in the European nations employing their harsh "austerity" programs. Don't try that at home unless you are betting your neighbor on who can bankrupt themselves first.