I'm old enough to remember when people said that the debt Ronald Reagan racked up would never be repaid. Which means I also am old enough to remember Clinton turning record deficits into record surpluses.

I remember when the U.S. Treasury stopped issuing 30 year bonds---no deficit, no need to borrow!! Boy did that scare the bejezuz out of the financial industry though. I read an op-ed in the Wall Street journal about how are we ever going to offer 30 year mortgages if the banks can't buy 30 year treasury bonds?

Then the supreme court handed the 2000 election to George Bush, and the financial industry was happy again, because record surpluses turned into record deficits again. The banks still lent money to homebuyers--in fact, so many people took out mortgages that.....

The answer is so simple, everybody know it: spend less than you earn, borrow only for things which will pay you back. We can start doing that this afternoon, if we wanted to.