The money isn't there

What Washington really fears: being out of money and out on their ass

Conventional wisdom on both sides of the Atlantic is that an immediate failure to address the liquidity problems faced by both Athens and Washington will plunge the world into a new era of darkness. Conventional wisdom, as it so often is, is wrong. The problem is not illiquidity; it is insolvency.

Al Gore's "Lockbox" nonsense was always just that. The box doesn't exist, and neither does the money that was supposed to be in it. It's all being spent, and much more besides.

What's left is an accounting myth, exploding deficits and debt, a dunce president hell-bent to add new entitlements, and a Democrat Party that thinks raising the debt ceiling is a magical way to keep the money flowing.

The rating agencies are not fooled, however. A downgrade will cost hundreds of billions every year in increased government debt service and borrowing costs. Hundreds of billions that will not be available in the capital markets for efficient, job-producing private sector investment.

This is the Obamanomics recipe for further crippling the greatest wealth-producing engine that ever existed, the U.S. economy.

The country's in the best of hands.

Byron