Smarty_Pants

Have We Learned Anything Yet?

Good article, good comments.

One point to play devil's advocate:

"The great challenge for the years ahead is finding a [1] reasonable balance between promoting growth and prosperity while [2] allowing a prudent degree of excess trimming. This is a political question as much as it is an economic one."

These goals are mutually exclusive. Politically 'promoting' growth would entail providing external agents which cause growth in places where it might not naturally occur (or occur with less vitality). This is directly counter to 'prudent trimming' (or eliminating that which is non-sustainable).

The beauty of the unfettered marketplace is that ventures which have no meaninful demand will fail and cease to use valuable and scarce resources.

You cannot 'promote' gains by unneeded ventures without failing to 'prune' it away. The market will prune it without outside help.