Paragraph of the Day

Two trillion dollars sounds like a lot of money, but in a pinch we could pay it all back in just one year if we were willing to reduce household and government spending by about 15 percent. It would require temporary sacrifice on everyone’s part but would hardly be the death of the American dream.

—Steven Pearlstein (hat-tip: Arnold King

It’s interesting how the above quote is in the context of trying to avoid a loss in output that the pessimists claim could be as high as 10%! So either, a 15% drop isn’t a big thing, in which case, the world economy is doing just fine, thank you very much; or we are all suffering, in which case, a 15% drop would be terrible. So, what is it?