The Economic Maginot Line

[Donnachaidh]

http://blog.prospect.org/robert_kuttner/2011/08/the-economic-maginot-line.html

In the late 1920s, the French Minister of War was one Andre Maginot, a World War I veteran with a handlebar moustache and a limp. M. Maginot, learning the lessons of the last war, had the idea that if France could just build an impregnable fortification on its eastern frontiers, Germany could never again invade it.

So between 1930 and 1940, at a cost of $3 billion francs, France constructed the unfortunate Maginot Line. When Hitler decided to invade, his Wermacht simply went around it, via Luxembourg and Belgium.

The Super-Committee created by the great deficit reduction deal is the economic equivalent of a Maginot Line. It is required to defend and fortify the economy by coming up with at least $1.2 billion in budget cuts. If it fails to agree, then an automatic trigger mechanism kicks in, cutting $1.5 trillion.

But like the Maginot line, the committee is pointed in the wrong direction. Its laborious construction is a waste and a diversion.

More at the link --

[dtexdem]

1. An economic Maginot LIne that the Repukes stocked with maggots.