Article authored by William Gale and appeared on The Brookings Institution.  Article is courtesy of brookings.edu

Your uncle, Sam, has ignored his chronic health condition – let’s say he’s diabetic – for a long time. Then he suddenly has a heart attack, followed by a long, slow painful recovery. As he is recovering, he is feeling good about his health – after all, he got though a crisis. But he is not actually healthier than he was before. He’s still diabetic, and now he has to deal with the cautions of being a heart attack victim as well.

I think of a situation like that whenever I hear or read people saying that our debt problems are behind us. It’s true that there has been good news recently on a variety of fronts regarding the budget, but it is premature to say that we’ve solved the long-term fiscal imbalance. [Read more...]