http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/carter/filmmore/ps_crisis.html

Healthcare:
No socialist takeover by evil Feds! I WANT to pay more for my coverage and copayments and get my coverage cut, and SO DOES EVERYBODY ELSE! God bless the health insurance companies!

Energy:
Energy conservation is a subplot by Osama-loving ecofreaks who want to foist evil socialist government through their global-warming conspiracy. You can pry my Hummer out of my cold dead fingers!

Keith “Don’t Contaminate My Precious Bodily Fluids” Halperin
;)

Just the decrease in house values alone represents a massive deflation unlikely to be set off by more expensive Wal-Mart junk, which can hardly happen with massive overcapcity everywhere you look except in energy and health……

I think we are going to have to save and de-leverage ourselves out of this one….hard political choices in the defense and entitlement areas are the only real choices- which will be made for us one way or another….

Fix healthcare and energy and we have a chance….dont fix them and we will be looking at 80% tax rates just to stay poor…..

On the other hand, there are signs everywhere that we are looking at debt-deflation cycle which could keep any real recovery in the wide economy from occuring for some time. States and pension funds are all in very bad shape- historic bad shape…..epic bad shape in IL and CA.

Recruiting might be OK because of demographic and cycle issues with skilled people, even facing economic headwinds, plus most people don’t realize that the American workforce (for domestic recruiting) is one of the hardest-working and most productive in the world whenever there is a level playing-field.

In other words, things may be weak here for a long time to come, but unlikely to be much better elsewhere except for a bright spot here and there (Canada looks pretty good long term).

If we get our energy, health, and defense expenses in line, we should be in good shape too. Big if, but high hopes ;-)