Friday Night Off the Cuff Solutions to the World's Problems

Readers probably know how Tuna Melt would solve the financial crisis. It involves private defense companies.

But what if Tuna Melt were to propose politically feasible solutions (ie - things that could actually be done by politicians today if they had the desire to do so)? Here we go.

#1. A moratorium on all new government debt. No new Treasuries issued until further notice. We've got to get the investment capital going back to productive purposes right away, like stocks and corporate bonds.

#2. Capital gains tax gone, completely gone, right away. Even the most hardened socialist now knows that this is a nonsense tax that actually reduces overall tax revenue simply through its existence. It only sticks around year after year because people are petrified that the uber rich could completely finagle their way out of paying taxes at all were it not present.

#3. Stimulus? Yes. The good old fashioned way. Tax rebates. The Keynesians are falling all over themselves to argue that the summer stimulus checks didn't work, but that's not what I saw. The prices of oil, gold, steel, food, EVERYTHING, took off like a rocket in the two months following that oh so sweet mailing (I have two kids -- my check was a nice fat one). The market is smart that way. Our rebate checks last summer were made entirely of funny money, financed with government debt, and the market heartily responded. The dollar plummeted, prices went up, tah-dahhh! This time....wait, didn't we just say no new debt?

#4. Cut government spending in line to match the rebate stimulus being sent out. Yes, I know, this was supposed be politically feasible. Allow a guy to think, if only for a moment, that in times of crisis, Washington actually could find a way to pull it together. They can't...I know it and you know it....oh man...we're screwed. But, supposing they could...note that the exact opposite of this is what's being proposed. Keynes's ghost looms in Washington right now, telling those goobers that the road to recovery is paved with government expenditures, but we're seeing quite clearly as we speak that it is not. Government can finance their expenditures through tax increases (would be disastrous) or debt, and government debt more than anything is what's strangling the credit markets, and unstrangling the credit markets is priority one in rescuing the economy.

#5. Pass income tax cuts. Pass 'em to whatever brackets you want. As big as you can make 'em.

#3 would be the only temporary measure. The rest would be permanent. The rest would result in long-term growth, enough growth that we might pay down some of this debt before the Medicare crisis arrives. What's that? you say. Medicare crisis? Did you not know that we've got a meltdown on the horizon that makes this one look like the '92 recession? That will be for another post down the road. That post might be titled "Default."