You are joining the chorus of those saying that we must delever. Well we have already done a lot of that, so how much more is there? I am sure that you understand that many market commentators are claiming that decades of prosperity were built on debt. As a result, we now have to pay penance for a decade or more.

You are an expert about quantification, so how about it? What amount of leverage reduction would suffice? Also, when you show an increase in debt, shouldn’t you also consider assets?

Just a thought….

Jeff

To be fair, half of President Bush’s reform proposal for Social Security (progressive indexing of benefits) made plenty of sense, and it took political courage from him to propose it. He did unnecessarily muddy the waters by combining it with a separate proposal (adding private accounts), but it’s unlikely he would have had the political capital to push through progressive indexing on its own anyway. History suggests that an imminent crisis is necessary to get any significant legislative reining in of entitlements.

On Medicare Part D, President Bush initially attempted to tie the carrot of a prescription drug benefit to cost saving reforms in Medicare Parts A & B. I was initially against this expansion of Medicare, but in hindsight, it may have been better than the alternative (price controls on the pharmaceutical industry).