Create and sell products or financial derivatives

This is an interesting point of view and suggests that as a country we would be better off to reign in the Wall Street and free up engineers to build real stuff instead of paper derivatives and the like.

Virginia as a model

Virginia has a balanced budget and is a forward looking state with a lot to offer its citizens.  Mostly it offers minimal state government and taxes and much more personal freedom.  Sounds like the right formula.  Of particular note is the interesting fact that, like New Hampshire, the Virginia state legislature only meets for 45-60 days (on alternate years) to conduct its business, and also only allows one subject per bill (therefore bills are usually one page long), requires the bills to be on line for public review (three days before voting) and does not allow fund raising while the legislature is in session.  I't obvious the longer legislative bodies are in session, the more damage they can do.  Richard Rahn's article lays out the model for all states, and the federal government as well.

Ireland's meltdown

What's valuable about this article by Theodore Darlyrmple on Ireland's financial collapse, is the similarity to our very own collapse.  While there is an obvious scale difference of major proportions going on here, the abdication of banks in the matter of risk management is one common cause.  Another similarity is the political one: the democrat party in the US fulfilling the same role as the Fianna Fáil party in Ireland and for similar reasons, e.g., Fianna Fáil kept itself in office through an alliance with the government unions by both permitting overstaffing and overpaying workers.  The great unravelling thus begins in Ireland where government jobs and wages and benefits are cut, just like we're starting to see witness Wisconsin, in the US.  A big difference between us an Ireland is scale, a fact that perhaps allows us to absorb the excesses in housing/financial sectors with less permanent damage.  Ireland, on the other hand, will probably have to declare bankruptcy and default on all the debt accumulated over the past decade or two.