At No Risk

At the founding of our nation, Alexander Hamilton--the Federalists, generally--thought it economically prudent to ensure the debt of the Federal Government is, categorically, at no risk.

Our nation is literally founded on the assumption of debt, much to the disapproval of anti-Federalists. Federal debt is, and will continue to be, an asset class that will, without exception, be paid. This policy, Constitutionally endowed, established the Federal debt as the primary, fundamental measure of value ("bonded" to the full faith and credit of ultimate, sovereign authority--the Federal Government, or "We the People"). It essentially established a fundamental philosophy of risk with "the risk" conceptually modeled at zero (We the People will always pay it).

Operating since our founding with this fundamental philosophy of risk, how is it that the concept of zero-fundamental-risk has unConstitutionally come into question?

The theoretical, philosophical foundation of zero-risk diverges with practice, much as Thomas Jefferson at our founding warned it would. Accusing the Federalists of being counter-revolutionaries, Jefferson saw the risk of loss being fundamentally conserved (fully assumed)--certainly not at zero.

Jefferson saw "the risk" inherent to monarchy being inherited by the new, aristocratic class of elite power and, counter to The Revolution, conserved. "The risk" conceptualized to be too big and powerful to fail through the system of federalism we have today at, supposedly, no risk, was by Jefferson's calculation naturally doomed to failure.

So, here we are, today, with Republicans saying, categorically, that "100 percent of the problem comes from the spending side--100 percent of the solution comes from the spending side." In other words, the risk of loss, as Thomas Jefferson warned, is fully assumed--it is conserved...falsely valued "100 percent" at no risk.

The massive amount of disconfirmed policy rhetoric incessantly applied by conservatives, especially at this point in our political history, is fully loaded with risk--it is 100 percent! Conservatives are going to find out what it means to ontologically achieve the gamma-risk proportion.

The debate reduces to an appropriate philosophy of the risk that ideally achieves an elusive, if not illusory, fundamental, zero-sum proportion.

The practical philosophy of conceptualized risk clearly diverges from the actualized risk, empirically resulting in an ever-larger proportion of debt to equity. To reduce the debt, it is then necessary to change the practical, philosophical concept of it.