DEBT!

Ian Welsh has predictions about the economy
(and it's not pretty)

[excerpt]

It's bad. It's going to get worse. Governments are going to slash at the wrong time and instead of demanding that private actors clean up their books and take their losses, Treasury and the Fed are doing everything they can to aid and abet Banks and Wall Street in covering up how bad the losses are. This will mean years and years of zombie-banks, fictionally solvent, who actually have very little lending capacity.

If they are completely bailed out, it will be done at the expense of taxpayers, and probably on the basis of largely regressive taxes, and cutbacks in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid (this is the current Washington (village) consensus, that "entitlement" programs are the problem— not the debt, tax cuts for the rich, the Iraq war and a bloated military budget.)


via The Left Coaster