In a column about America's budget mess and the resulting crowding out of private sector activity George Will drops an astonishing data-point: Global electricity use will fall, on a YoY (year over year) basis for the first time since...1945. Yes, you are right: that means since the end of the Second World War.
Meanwhile, one top financial blogger notes that total US debt has risen slightly since last fall, due to massive public borrowing that offsets a modest drop in private borrowing. David Brooks sees a "Great Unwinding" in the worldwide wave of deleveraaging. Notable among the metrics in his column is that in 2007 our federal deficit had shrunk to 1.2 percent of GDP (about $165B); it is now estimated that FY09 will be more than 10 times that--13 percent of GDP (close to $2TR). We were growing out of the first number; we cannot grow out of the second. Brooks sees lots of good in Team Obama's ideas; on that, he should guess again.
One example of an awful idea: have the new "Compensation Czar" issue not only pay rules for executives at companies that take taxpayer bailout money, but also issue "guidelines" for compensation at all private companies. As a WSJ editorial notes, this is shades of...Richard Nixon's infamous, disastrous wage-price controls.
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