Maybe I am a little paranoid, or I have finally gained the ability to see through political bullshit, but I think the deal is already in for the cutbacks, raise the debt ceiling, etc. All this is just grandstanding, and the can has been successfully kicked down the road. I’d like to play poker vs. Obama, as it seems he is way to calm during this crisis, as if his handlers have given him the script and he is just waiting for his cues and reading his lines.
Not that I care either way. The system will fail, as all systems do when stressed so much for so long. I’m still making plans either way, so if we crash I follow plan X and if we kick the can down the road I follow plan Y. This is a good thing to do, with whatever detail you feel is appropriate. In ’83 and ’39 the US developed the “rainbow plans” to provide planning for a variety of contingencies. Plan Black was war with Germany, Plan Red was war with England and Canada, and Plan Orange was war with Japan.
These war-gamed planning sessions gave our leaders a playbook, using football analogy since we will have a season after all, to start persecuting the war. War Plan Orange did not predict the importance of carrier-based aircraft in the war, but the island-hopping to close a noose around Japan was envisioned in the plan. There is a lesson here that the battlefield, even at a Macro or Strategic level cannot be fully planned for, so the plan needs to be more of a frame work than strict dogma.
Since you cannot plan macro-level events then detailed planning for long term micro-level events is impossible. This chart shows how I perceive the relationship between time and the ability to perfectly plan events. This touches on Chaos Theory (intro for beginners here) where the slightest change can have drastic effects over time disproportional to the original event in a complex system. The usual metaphor is where someone farts in China and it causes a tornado in Kansas.
So what are my plans? I will post my macro-level plans soon so that you can use them as inspiration for your own planning. Fill in detail as you have time, and as the event’s probability of use increases. To start, get a notebook from a dollar store and use one sheet per plan. The trick is is not to plan all the way to completion, but a couple years out. We do not have the resources and planning teams the Naval Board did in 1939, so good enough will have to do.
I should start a betting pool on when the deal will be reached. I called the Venetian Sports Book, but couldn’t get any action. I’m going to say Friday @1pm EST because they want the markets to rally and go into the weekend on a high note.