If an employer's accountant failed so badly to manage the company's books that the company's credit was adversely affected, the accountant would be fired on the spot. If a ship's pilot was so inept, that he crashed the vessel into the rocks despite repeated warnings to shift course, he would not just be fired but he would be held to answer for malfeasance.
Yet once again the United States Congress and the President failed to cut spending drastically and raise the debt ceiling with any long-term plans for fiscal solvency.
Now, many will counter that the United States Government is not a business, that we cannot expect elected officials to make difficult decisions with the rapacious efficiency of a CEO and a board of investors. Yet in many ways, whether a business or the machinations of government, these firms run like cruise liners trade which must respond to pertinent information in a timely fashion, or risk disaster.
For over thirty years the United States Congress knew that entitlement insolvency laden with ballooning nation debt was bringing down our future. Though the wheels of government may turn slowly, federal legislators had plenty of time to turn the helm of our titanic debt obligations to safer waters before striking the breaking point. Now our debts are being called. Global investors worry that we may not pay our obligations. Our debt is more toxic to speculators. Our credibility is leaking with world markets, who have witnessed the downgrading of our credit rating one notch. This is the first of many leaks which may sink the state of fiscal affairs, unless we do something, and do something fast.
A two-step debt ceiling deal is better than nothing, yet it fails to prevent a rating down-grade, which agencies had threatened to do for five months. Yet unlike the vessels which have crashed, foundered, and disappeared forever beneath the deep, the United States can still shore up its hull and rise again. Let us hope that the captains at the helm will take every precaution to stop the leaking, get this ship back and course, and restore this nation's fiscal competence.