EclecticLip

This Bloomberg article neatly encapsulates the financial zeitgeist at the moment — and as such, is a fitting year-end piece.
Akio Mikuni, President of one of Japan’s rating agencies essentially suggests letting the US default on some of its debt and investing in its infrastructure.  Though it couldn’t possibly be as extensive as the Marshall Plan, perhaps this could be termed the “Mikuni Plan”.

It is a Big Idea though, that deserves re-emphasis — Mikuni is proposing debt cancellation to provide relief for the United States.  Debt cancellation, so over-deserved by hundreds of millions (if not billions) of impoverished people in the Majority World, weighed down by government borrowings of a generation past…  going instead to the US, which remains one of the world’s wealthiest countries?  It is… counter-intuitive, to put a polite euphemism to it.  Perhaps I’d warm the idea if the US announced debt cancellation policies of its own.  (Ecuador took the initiative and simply decided not to pay.)