America’s Broken Politics Will Lead to Fiscal Doom: Clive Crook

Few any longer dispute that America’s public debt is growing unsustainably and that, sooner or later, the task of reining it in will be unavoidable. Oddly, this presumption of inevitability has bred a kind of complacency. In the end, whether we like it or not, the problem will have to be solved. Therefore, it will be solved. So what’s the hurry?

The answer is that further delay makes an orderly solution harder to envisage. Eventually a point will come where a well-planned remedy is impossible, because the fiscal adjustments would crash the economy. At that point, the only remedy will ...