Lefty Is Very Sad We're Broke, Hates Republicans for Admitting It

I recently blogged on how we are defaulting as we speak and, more importantly as we simply must.  We are defaulting in a number of ways to reflect a number of promises we've made.  This will continue and get worse, although, coming at the problem from the right, I find this regrettable but necessary and ultimately beneficial.  So, on net, I welcome it.  I didn't make trillions of dollars of phony baloney promises that if kept will be damaging beyond all imagination, but they were made nonetheless and they need to be expunged in the most efficient and realistic way in order to reset expectations and avoid said damage.

As a point of comparison, here is a guy who is saying the same thing - we are defaulting - but comes at the problem from the left.  Salmon clearly gets what is going on, but his kvetching is a little hard to swallow.  Like most lefties, he laments the ever so slight shave we've applied to our $3.8 trillion check-cutting Leviathan.  Break out the smallest violin for this one:

Right now, with the shutdown, we’ve already reached the point at which the government is breaking very important promises indeed: we promised to pay hundreds of thousands of government employees a certain amount on certain dates, in return for their honest work.

First of all, this is not where the problem lies.  The cost of the federal workforce is peanuts in our fiscal mess.  Second of all, really?  Honest work?  Didn't Salmon read the bits about the huge number of personnel that are non-essential?  More than that, does he not read, talk, learn and understand the effects of excessive regulation on our economy.  Tens of thousands of these folks are not providing honest work but gumming up the works, they're providing dead weight loss.  Not only should we not be upset that we are 'defaulting' on them, we should fire them.

And, of course, it is all the Republicans fault.

The Republicans in the House have already managed to inflict significant, lasting damage to the US and the global economy — even if they were to pass a completely clean bill tomorrow morning, which they won’t. The default has already started, and is already causing real harm. The only question is how much worse it’s going to get.

Poppycock.  There has been no damage done, certainly neither significant nor lasting, by virtue of the sequester or the shutdown.  At least we can't detect any from the reaction of the stock or bond markets.   These are symptoms.  The damage, significant and lasting, has been done by, among other things, adding gobs of debt at a rate greater than our wealth can handle it, adding a $1 trillion plus entitlement in ObamaCare, and covering it all over by printing money.

You don't incur financial damage by drawing attention to your insolvency, your incur damage by actually being insolvent.  Salmon directs his ire at Republicans for admitting we're broke (while they propose nothing even close to the magnitude of the problem) rather than those who have been and are doing everything they can to bankrupt us.