Two Separate Worlds

Among other things, every day I read a few political sites and lots of financial ones. Every day, these sites diverge just a little bit more until they now resemble reports from completely different planets.

The financial sites I read, particularly those dealing with the debt crisis, tell you in nauseating detail how wages and spending have gotten out of control over the last few decades, resulting in certain doom for many European countries and Japan as well. Not kind of trouble, not a problem they can navigate with some skill and compromise, but rock-bottom fiscal collapse.

Greece is now paying in the 30's for 2-year loans. The 30's!

Meanwhile, the political pages are full of accusation that the US debt ceiling talks are being held up by crazed radicals who refuse to compromise and allow yet more taxing, borrowing and spending. The Gang of (6? 20?) Whatever compromise from the Senate will cut the deficit by a whopping 3.7 trillion over the next decade. That sounds great until you realize that the projected deficits are currently more than 1 trillion a year, leaving us with an annual deficit of about 700 billion. Go big or go home, boys.

Annual deficits of 700 billion = ruin and catastrophe. You can see it in action all around you and yet those events don't seem to make it into the political pages except as cursory notes.

I don't blame the politicians who are making the speeches. They're doing what they're paid to do - pander and bloviate. I do blame the political press. It's like they have no idea at all why, how or where this is going on: