by Rick Davis

(In a number of recent articles we have explored potential "unthinkable" solutions to both the U.S. sovereign debt problem and the fiscal consequences of a suddenly balanced U.S. Federal budget -- given that a balanced budget would suck about 14% out of the country's GDP, meeting the clinical definition of a depression. These articles are listed at the end of this one under Related Articles)

As we consider the "unthinkable" paths out of our current economic mess, some are clearly more nightmarish than others. Full fledged episodes of either deflationary depression or runaway hyper-inflation certainly fall into that category. A couple of decades of anemic and stagnating growth while "kicking the can down the road" (e.g., Japan since 1990) probably also qualifies as a nightmare -- at least for those currently not enjoying life near the top of the food chain. But there are other possible nightmares, particularly if governments conclude that past interventions in the economy failed merely because they were not intrusive enough.

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by Dirk Ehnts

Søren Kierkegaard’s 1849 classic The Sickness unto Death provides us with some thoughts about debt and sin. Let me present a quote from the Penguin Great Ideas edition of the book (p.131):

Also the law for the growth of this continuity differs from that of a debt or a negation. A debt does not grow by not being paid back, it grows every time it is increased. But sin grows every moment one fails to get out of it. Far from being correct in thinking that only new sin increases the sin, it is his being in a state of sin that, in Christian terms, puts the sinner in the greater sin, it is the new sin. We even have a proverb which says that to err is human while to remain in error is of the devil.

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