Debt Ceiling Follies

It's possible that the Greek austerity program is a sufficiently bad thing for Greece that they might've done better to just default. I don't know the situation well enough to say. What I do know is that passing this austerity program was a pretty decisive bit of political action.

I'm thinking about that in light of the debt ceiling situation in America. We're not facing a brutal choice like Greece. Everybody who understands the issues -- supermajorities in both houses of Congress -- knows that not raising the debt ceiling would lead to an unnecessary catastrophe. And yet it's such a difficult thing to do.

You know this already, but the US legislative system is a structural disaster.