Item#6 would be difficult to calculate but we should discuss it more.
Never happen. Too much to sacrifice for politician. It’s easier to kick the can down the road.
President Bungles won’t care if people are eating their dogs. Whatever proposal Democrats come up with will be designed to slaughter more of us, and Romney, Cheney and company will join in.
We’d all be hurting’ big time. People would have to share more. Other people’s money would not exist. The market hit in 1920 was worse than 1929 but the country recovered quicker. If FDR piled on with the New Deal we can do the same and make them squeal by packing the SCOTUS.
What the Government Should Really Do in the Greater Depression...
Take a long walk off a sort pier...
$23 trillion of our $30 trillion debt is owed to Americans.
I think that idea might disturb The Force.
3. Abolish the Fed?
The Fed was originally just supposed to be a way of ensuring liquidity in a banking crisis. It's role as manager of the economy stems from abandoning the gold standard, which means that the value of money is set by interest rates, unconstitutionally transferring control of the currency to the Fed. Restore the gold standard and the Fed and overspending problem go away.
7. Disengage?
The bulk of US defense spending is on personnel, but the most wasteful part is the broken procurement system that funnels hundreds of billions to defense contractors with no requirement to produce working, affordable weapons systems. Go back to simply offering tenders for systems with stated capabilities and require the contractors to supply working prototypes like we used to do. The Navy should get its own design bureau and shipyards as it used to have because naval vessels are far too specialized for most civilian shipbuilding and right now there's zero surge capability for shipbuilding. And the reason we have forward deployed forces is that it's much cheaper to multiply force by deployment and fight on someone else's territory than rebuild defenses (coastal, air, land) in the US. Going back to a pre-WWII or even pre-WWI foreign policy will just get us WWIII. The whole libertarian/paleo-con fantasy that we will be left alone if we don't "meddle" is right up there with the delusions of the unicorn fart powered Green New Deal.
6. Default on the national debt?
I don't think the author has any idea of what this would mean. Think Weimar Germany, compounded by the inability to import the thousands of parts we need to make the US economy run as no one will take worthless US dollars. Everything from cars to combines to aircraft would cease to function within a few months.
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