I liked this piece in the times quite a lot. It is a useful refresher course on macroeconomics and articulate the deficit hawks thoughtful worries about ballooning deficits and debt. It argues fairly persuasively that the lack of apparent inflation in reported numbers might be a smoking mirror or at any rate unhealthy.
It is a fairly challenging counter argument to the "forget-about-the-deficit,-there-is-no- inflation,-expansionary-government-policies" Krugman regularly pushes in his pieces.
The weakness of this analysis in my view is that it is poorly prescriptive. Mindless belt tightening at all costs as one would would asphyxiate the economy making the current predicament even worse. Krugman pushes for expansion but in traditional sectors of the economy.
What I have failed to see in both analyses is the effort to help flow credit to start ups in the services industry who are likely to open up the new industries which are most likely to help the country grow out of its mounting liabilities. When I read about the paltry efforts to get money through the SBA, it is quite puzzling. Thomas Friedman regularly does a god job at drawing the need to focus efforts on high tech startups of the future, but again his prescription for helping flow money in a timely manner to this sector is neither refined nor well calibrated enough.
And this would get me to... BICs
References:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/27/opinion/27einhorn.html?hp=&pagewanted=all
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