Dollar to lose reserve status? Geithner, "Not in our lifetime"

The sad thing about this 4 word response is that it does a fabulous job of summarizing the current attitude of our policymakers and other officials. "Not in our lifetime." While I do not propose to argue with the veracity of that statement as forecasting such a thing is virtually impossible (and thus somewhat mitigating the strength of meaning of his off-the-cuff remark), it still strikes me that the focus on the short term by our leaders is going to have serious consequences for both my own and future generations. We haven't really begun fixing the systemic failures that have lead us into this morass. A great deal of the current and mounting frustration by the electorate is the direct result of the notion that the stop loss measures taken by the Fed, Treasury, Congress, etc were aligned more closely with protecting the wealth of the wealthy rather than ending a morally and financially bankrupt banking cartel, pushing into renewables to create jobs, improving the enforcement powers of the various federal agencies (see Deepwater Horizon, Bernie Madoff, etc), protect US jobs from moving overseas, etc, etc, etc.

We need to start considering the long term ramifications of allowing policy drift and generational favoritism to dominate our political landscape.