Washington: Please Learn to Balance Your Checkbook!

In the middle of the daily dose of horrible financial news, the New York Times today ran a quiet but particularly disturbing story ("Deficit Rises, and the Consensus is to Let It Grow"). I'm all for short-term fixes, but for America to fix itself, business and government need to realize that this is not a simple economic downturn. This is a seismic realignment punctuated by a fundamental change in the values and behavior of the American consumer. Unlike recessions past, we cannot spend our way out of this. The pain we feel is a massive movement among Americans to get back into balance in every way: in their checkbooks, in their daily lives, with the environment and within the global community. But the problem seems that the government doesn't share this shift to balance. The bailout is fine. But unless the government gets very aggressive to get its spending in balance, we're only setting ourselves up for an even worse recession in a few years. To be clear: the only way out of this recession will be for the federal government to spark the U.S. economy through real change in business innovation and a fiscally responsive government. Together, erasing the trade and budget deficits is this generation's World War II. The sooner we all realize this, the sooner we can really turn this thing around.