In case your head isn't already hurting bad enough, Nobel economist Joseph E. Stiglitz surveys the wreckage we're going to have to try to dig out of

"There is no threat of America’s being displaced from its position as the world’s richest economy. But our grandchildren will still be living with, and struggling with, the economic consequences of Mr. Bush."
--Nobel economics laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz, in "The Economic Consequences of Mr. Bush," in the December Vanity Fair

It's not happy reading, but I pass on a tip that was passed on to me: a good, meaty peace on the fine economic mess Chimpy the Prez has gotten us into. More important, though, Stiglitz focuses on what we're going to have to do to get out of this mess--with the warning, "there’s a momentum here that will require a generation to reverse."

Here's the short version of Stiglitz's bill of particulars:

a tax code that has become hideously biased in favor of the rich; a national debt that will probably have grown 70 percent by the time this president leaves Washington; a swelling cascade of mortgage defaults; a record near-$850 billion trade deficit; oil prices that are higher than they have ever been; and a dollar so weak that for an American to buy a cup of coffee in London or Paris—or even the Yukon—becomes a venture in high finance.

And it gets worse. After almost seven years of this president, the United States is less prepared than ever to face the future. We have not been educating enough engineers and scientists, people with the skills we will need to compete with China and India. We have not been investing in the kinds of basic research that made us the technological powerhouse of the late 20th century. And although the president now understands—or so he says—that we must begin to wean ourselves from oil and coal, we have on his watch become more deeply dependent on both.

[The illustration that accompanies the piece is by the great Edward Sorel.]

And here's the short version of what we're going to have to do about it:

What is required is in some ways simple to describe: it amounts to ceasing our current behavior and doing exactly the opposite. It means not spending money that we don’t have, increasing taxes on the rich, reducing corporate welfare, strengthening the safety net for the less well off, and making greater investment in education, technology, and infrastructure. . . .

Some portion of the damage done by the Bush administration could be rectified quickly. A large portion will take decades to fix—and that’s assuming the political will to do so exists both in the White House and in Congress. Think of the interest we are paying, year after year, on the almost $4 trillion of increased debt burden—even at 5 percent, that’s an annual payment of $200 billion, two Iraq wars a year forever. Think of the taxes that future governments will have to levy to repay even a fraction of the debt we have accumulated. And think of the widening divide between rich and poor in America, a phenomenon that goes beyond economics and speaks to the very future of the American Dream.

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