At least a few people on the Sunday News Shows brought up the fact that if we cut federak spending now we are only going to make the economy worse. The thing that is so disappointing is that the democrats somehow allowed the republicans to take charge of the main issue of the day politically.

The issue that is going to hurt Obama and the country the most is the high unemployment rate. And cutting federal spending right now is probably not going to help that. In fact, it probably will have the opposite effect. And the debt, while a problem, isn't way out of control. In fact, even though interest rates on treasury bills and bonds are at historic lows, they keep selling out everytime the U.S. offers them. Does that sound like people with money are worried about the U.S. debt?

And it is the unemployment rate which is the key to so many things. It is the key to Obama's re-election, to the rebounding of the economy, to getting the prison population down, to environmental improvement, and on and on. And now it appears that Obama is taking a high stakes bet that private business will respond to his debt deal and open up their big cash stashes and start hiring. Maybe so, but it's a gamble. Big business wants a republican president. They would give them more breaks. So it's hard to imagine that big business is going to rescue Obama and the democrats.

I don't know much about the details of the deal that supposedly has been cut to spare us default. But all indications are that the republicans bullied most of the concessions out of the democrats. We'll know more in the next few days.