Complete rubbish.

The methods for fixing the current global problems are well known, but they require leadership and political courage. These qualities are in very short supply.

Sage advice here. Why poster no. 1 calls it rubbish is not clear. Yes, of course we need leadership, but it as the article says, the solution is an austerity program that will be painful given the excesses we've enjoyed. To me government spending is the major problem here and worldwide, not just because of the absurd deficits and debt, but because every dollar spent by the government is a reduction to the private sector, made worse because the private sector has to pay for the government spending. It's a double hit when spending goes up, but a double plus when (and If) spending ever actually goes down, as it must.

Thanks to our knuckling under to all the environmentalist nonsense, we don't make what we need anymore and jumped head-first into the shallow end of the "global pool" only to concuss ourselves.

We need to encapsulate our economy again and bring it on home. Throw the yoke of government off of the backs of the entrepreneurs and get back to basics. I don't need cheap Chinese dog food. I need my country back and I'm willing to pay for it.

Total garbage written by an economic idiot.

"When the alternative is mass liquidation, it is quite hard to see how governments could have done anything else."

Actually "mass liquidation" was not necessary, either. The tranched debt instruments that were at the base of the crisis were not worthless, they were worth less, and the banks, investment houses and complicit government went off the deep end to keep the moneychangers whole at the expense of the middle class, who owe both the underwater mortgage debt PLUS the additional sovereign debt while their net worth collapsed. There are boatloads of potential foreclosures out there withheld by the debt owners for a number of reasons, not least to cause a housing market collapse. On my block in utopia there are more moved to the shortsale market weekly, and one boarded up. The courts see new foreclosures filed weekly...and this in one of America's wealthiest counties.

Its really quite simple so its no wonder that no economists can figure it out, besides its those economists that helped cause this problem in the first place. Solution is, Don't spend what you don't have.

Central planning is the great destroyer of economic wealth. The key to restarting the economy is moving economic power out of the hands of central planners in DC and into the hands of productive people. Eliminating unproductive departments of government is the first step. Allowing free markets to operate is the second. There's no real mystery to this. It was done in New Zealand when they faced government debt problems and could be done in the US if we had any kind of political leadership.