The debt and the media

With all the attention now being lavished on the US debt problem by the media, one wonders where were they when all this debt was being accumulated over the last few decades?  If memory serves there was a time in my lifetime when if we had a war or some unusual event facing the nation there was a discussion about raising the money to pay for the consequences of the event or war.  When did we lose this sense of fiscal rectitude and responsibility to not run up debt willy nilly?  Was it during the Johnson administration of the '60s when simultaneously all the liberal programs for eliminating poverty were put in place and the Vietnam war was making its demands on the public treasury?  Whenever it happened it put us on the slippery slope of accumulated debt that we are now faced with having to manage since it fairly clear to everyone that there simply is no more capacity for additional debt left in the system.  The key to our dilemma is interest payment on all the accumulated debt.  It must be payed, it won't go away, and it has had this annoying habit of compounding each time we've added debt to the country's balance sheet.

All of this brings to mind my recently departed good friend Jim Whelpley, a life long toiler in the financial services business, who back in the 60's used to point out -- to anyone who would listen -- that mechanisms were being put in place by the government and banks to expand the use of credit in the economy.  Jim was way ahead of his time, and remained so throughout his life.  He was also largely ignored because, as he liked to say, he was simply the guy who was saying at the height of a party that it was time to remove the punch bowl before everyone got ripping drunk.  We're now "ripping drunk" and still having a very hard time figuring out who's going to remove the punch bowl.  Obama's recently submitted budget says loud and clear he's not going to remove the punch bowl.  That leaves it up to the Republicans who, let's face it,  in the past have been much less than courageous in this matter as well.  What's different now is the Tea Party whose influence just may have put some spine in the "career" Republican pols like Mitch McConnell, Speaker Boehner, et al.  Two young Republican turks, Paul Ryan and Eric Cantor, the House Majority leader from Virginia, may be the key players here since they represent the generation that will have to deal with the consequences of a wild drunken party gone completely out of control.  The debt problem gets a good airing here in this strait forward reporting, at last, from the media.