"DISCHANGEFULNESS"

Eternal Optimist was feeling forlorn, long ago, toward the beginning of Mr. Obama's first term:

Now, I am quite willing – and even eager – for someone to point me toward an example where sustained deficit spending worked out well.

See, this is where things get scary, because I can’t think of any. So help me out here. Maybe someone knows an example where this worked. Or maybe even if there is no good example, you can help me understand how buying up toxic mortgages, and nationalizing banks and the health care industry are going to allow us to pay off the piles of debt we are racking up. Even if it is just a theory. Because for the life of me I can’t even figure out a theory, much less recite an example, of how it works.

So let me know if you have some great examples of chronic deficit spending success stories. I could use the encouragement.

I haven't had any response on this one.  Anyone got any encouraging stories yet?  It's been 5 years.  Greece?  Portugal?  Spain?  Illinois?  California?

Detroit?

Detroit: Suffering From Poor Self Esteem

I heard Cleveland has a great new marketing slogan, "We're Not Detroit!"  Watch the video here.

Cleveland: 'Murcan for "Schadenfreude"

The idea seems to be that America is different.  Somehow we are immune to all that.  Just like the junk bond bubble in the 80s, the tech bubble in the late 90s, and the housing bubble in the mid-00s.  Just like economists told us the debt-propelled stock bubble in the late 1920s was "different," and could go on indefinitely.
 
I have a new investment strategy.  Whenever economists and politicians begin telling you how this particular debt-propelled binge is different, and can go on indefinitely, begin selling whatever is currently blowing up. Because the reason they are saying this is that they have run out of other explanations, and people are getting nervous, since the situation doesn't make sense.

Here is a new word for our current condition: dischangefulness: the state of depriving yourself of change for the better.