] In February, the president's new budget will probably
] call for sizable cuts in almost every program except
] defense and homeland security.
]
] "Then will begin a long fight ... that will not just
] cause tremendous discomfort to Democrats but will rend
] the Republican Party," says Robert Reischauer, president
] of the Urban Institute in Washington.
]
]"The next four years are going to be unusually challenging
] from the standpoint of America's economic stewardship,"
] warns Stephen Roach, chief economist of Morgan Stanley,
] an investment firm. "Never before has the United States
] pushed the envelope to this degree.... The US economy is
] an accident waiting to happen." Roach's complete comments are here:
http://www.morganstanley.com/GEFdata/digests/20040823-mon.html
He is referring to debt problems that many economists have been sounding the alarm about for over a year After all, goes the logic, the world has learned to live with Americas outsize deficits. Why cant it continue to do so indefinitely? In my view, this is yet another example of the greater fool theory that took NASDAQ to 5000 four and a half years ago. All the classic symptoms of a US current-account adjustment are now evident. | 
