The primary drivers of our growing debt burden are the “Big 3” entitlements of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Yet as part of the debt ceiling deal that created sequestration when the Super Committee failed, politicians effectively fenced off nearly two-thirds of the federal budget and the main source of our over-spending. 

Because of massive, sustained budget deficits by several eurozone countries, some could default on their sovereign debt obligations, or the euro itself might disintegrate, profoundly affecting the EU’s political and economic future. Very little media attention, however, is focused on a very different, but even more important, EU problem, namely its “democratic deficit.”

Many commentators have noted that if the Super Committee fails, the sky will not fall, at least not immediately. The sequesters that would be triggered do not take effect until 2013, after all. Here is the starker reality.

The chained Consumer Price Index can be used to index tax brackets and federal benefit payments.

Question for the super committee: Why are you there, if not to make history and improve the lives of Americans? You all have a rare, maybe unprecedented chance to do something remarkable. Don’t blow it.

Europe’s current debt crises are a consequence of a region-wide crisis of the welfare state, whose vast promised benefits voters demand, yet are unwilling to finance through self-taxation.

It's not really economics. I think everyone understood what the president was doing--it was politics. He wants to increase taxes to support higher spending. I think that's probably the wrong approach.

Austerity measures in Europe have been the topic of a heated and mostly confused debate in the economic world. During the May summit of the leading industrial nations at Camp David, German chancellor Angela Merkel and other European leaders pushed for continued European austerity. Keynesian critics argue that these policies destroy economic growth.