“Over the last century, government’s fiscal machinery has been mostly gas pedal, little brake. In 1913, the 16th Amendment gave Washington open-ended power to tax income and borrow against it, with no offsetting restraint on spending or debt,” writes, David Malpass in The Wall Street Journal. The bond buying operation by the Fed is simply creating money out of thin air. It is buying expensive bonds, lining the pockets of the crooks on Wall Street with short-term IOUs. This should be front and center in the debt ceiling talks. But no one in Washington seems to care about long-term issues other than getting re-elected or semi-retirement with a fat consulting job. As Malpass points out, “Without appropriate controls in the debt limit—such as a five-year floor on the effective maturity of the national debt that also takes into account floating-rate debt and the Fed’s debt—Washington will be tempted to expand these practices rapidly. That would lower current interest expense at the risk of future deficits and debt, precisely the concern the debt limit is meant to address.”