In short, China has likely done more to help America’s poor than the stimulus, TARP or any other program invented by Uncle Sam.

Only the most blinkered intellectual could be attempting to introduce social democracy to America precisely when the world’s foremost exemplar of that model – Europe – is in chaotic meltdown.

Satellite dishes amid the tin-roofed shacks of El Salvador. So much for Maslow’s hierarchy.

And another aspect of the DC insider versus outsider dynamic is the blatant bias in favor of people with the right credentials, meaning top schools, past roles at well respected firms or top policy positions. That bias means anyone representing the borrower point of view is going to be discounted because they are not members of the club. The people on the front lines of the foreclosure crisis are consumer lawyers, and a handful of academics, largely from second tier institutions (real estate law has been a backwater until the crisis made it sexy).

In short, even though a solution to the NAFTA trucking mess appears to be ready, the Obama administration is refusing to move on it because of politics and nothing more; thus, American exporters will keep paying those pointless Mexican tariffs until DOT has been told by the White House that the electoral coast is clear. Man, it’s a good thing that the US economy is just humming along right now, or this political decision might be considered a pretty absurd, irresponsible and brazen move, huh?

In any event, a free people have nothing to fear from falling prices. The market economy is quite resilient, if only the politicians and central bankers would let it operate. Nobody would be so foolish as to claim that the computer industry is stagnant because of constantly falling prices, and nobody breathes a sigh of relief that medical care keeps getting more expensive.

This turn of events has been an enormous shock to the system yet most people have not recognized these demographic changes. Everyone is so used to upward progress that we have a very hard time imagining anything else.

Here’s the real deal: If lenders gave loan modifications to everyone who was seriously underwater, it would openly invite everyone who was underwater to stop paying their mortgages.

Every politician in the U.S. is running for election on a platform of “creating” new good paying jobs for Americans. Only one problem. Politicians don’t create jobs. Businesses create jobs. When politicians and the Federal Reserve get involved in the job market, bad things happen.

College is the new subprime. A bubble in costs, massive lending supported by the government, heavy consumer leverage, and a lack of realism on the ability of consumers to pay back the loans out of wages.