Running Out of Options on Economic Policy

"All in." That's when poker players have all their chips in the pot, betting all they have left on this one hand, which they hope won't be their last.

"All in" pretty well describes the state of U.S. fiscal and monetary policy. The Federal Reserve is throwing in its last chips out of the $600 billion allocated for purchases of Treasury securities, the second phase of so-called quantitative easing dubbed QE2. The federal government meanwhile has run up the budget deficit to $1.5 trillion annually, equal to 10% of the U.S. economy, a level previously only seen in wartime.