• January 5, 2024

A Muddle-Through Year

First, let me wish you the best for the new year. I look forward to exploring it with you.

• December 22, 2023

Time to Consider a VAT?

First, let me wish you Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays or your favorite personal form of greetings for this time of year. I realize as you read this you are more focused on Christmas and the approaching New Year and family, so this will be a shorter letter than normal, but still a topic that is seminal in our discussions on taxes and debt.

• December 15, 2023

Finding Revenue

If you really want to reduce the federal debt, you don’t have to convince Congress of anything. You can just write a check. The Treasury Department gladly accepts gifts from anyone so inclined.

• December 8, 2023

Fair Shares of Debt

Don’t Tax You. Don’t Tax Me. Tax That Fellow Behind the Tree

-   Attributed to Senator Russell B. Long, Louisiana ~1930s

• December 1, 2023

Healthcare, a Minor Major Problem

Back in the Great Financial Crisis era, someone quipped that the federal government had become a giant hedge fund with an army attached. That wasn’t far off. Various agencies and entities were absorbing all kinds of risky assets to stabilize an overleveraged system. It was ugly but worked, more or less…. with a heavy dose of unintended consequences like the distortion of zero interest rates on the markets.

• November 24, 2023

The Survival of the Republic

Thanksgiving brings to mind not only turkeys, family, and friends, but also should help us recall the remarkable ideas and philosophies that helped shape, and indeed were, the foundation for the United States of America as a Republic.

• November 17, 2023

Socially Insecure

If you get beyond the political rhetoric [and assembled a group to solve Social Security] it would take them 15 minutes. It would take them 15 minutes only because 10 minutes was used for pleasantries.

—Alan Greenspan, Speech to the Commercial Finance Association on October 26, 2006

• November 10, 2023

What Could Go Wrong?

Exploring federal budget data is a journey through endless rabbit holes, some of which are eerily close to Alice in Wonderland insanity. Countless variables interact in unexpected ways. Seemingly small changes can cascade into billions of dollars within a few years.

• November 3, 2023

Debt Scores

Identifying problems is great. Identifying solutions is even better, especially when the politicians who are supposed to be solving our big problems don’t even try.

• October 27, 2023

Debt Catharsis

The ancient Greeks had a word κάθαρσις, which in English we now spell as “catharsis,” although it’s pronounced basically the same. It originally referred to purifying religious ceremonies, medical treatments, and so on.