OK. What would you say about this doctor?

The patient has had a long history of overeating , smoking, and not getting any exercise. So he had a heart attack. And he had heart surgery. He’s still laid up and feeling down.

Here’s the doctor’s prescription: just go back to eating and smoking. Stop that exercise. You enjoyed life when you didn’t worry about your health, didn’t you? So what you have to do is stop worrying. Live with confidence again! Then you’ll enjoy life.

So suppose the patient has been living beyond its means, borrowing 20% of its national budget. When the economic heart attack comes, the doctors tell us that the most important thing is to regain our trust in the system so that it can go back to borrowing, lending, and living beyond its means.

Of course, there is a little talk about setting up different rules about eating and smoking. Our economic doctors really don’t want us to cut back, but they think some new rules about borrowing and lending might be in order so that we will borrow and lend differently. Then, even if we eat too much and live beyond our means, at least we will be eating vegetables.

So am I saying that we should not borrow more money from the Chinese? Not have a stimulus package built on borrowing even more?

I don’t know, and I’m glad I’m not the doctor.

Living beyond our collective means is a bad thing, but if we as a country don’t borrow big time, then we will have no stimulus package. And with no stimulus package a lot of people will lose their jobs.

So, what’s the solution? When somebody is as addicted as we are, that addiction has to be broken bit by bit. If I were President, that is what I would work to do. We cannot quit our debt addiction cold turkey, but we will have to work on breaking the habit a little bit at a time.

But it has to be done.