I wasn't referencing anyone or anything other than my own experience of growing up and being that age at one time. As you can see from my post, I said that, personally, I think that 16 is closer to the mark of the onset of adulthood than 18. I wasn't speaking authoritatively or scientifically on this, and I don't think that anyone legitimately can. I don't believe that these things can be determined with any kind of scientific precision because psychology is not a hard enough science. Nor is "growing up" a precise enough concept to allow for a clear determination. Beyond 15 or so, I believe any line that is to be drawn between adolescence and adulthood is bound to be arbitrary.

Speaking for myself, there are many ways in which I, at age 33, still haven't grown up past 14 or 15. Maybe I don't have enough myelin, or something. However, generally speaking, 16 was about the time when I found myself able to grasp the principles and perspective that I would need to function as an adult, and to apply this to my life and my decisions. Regarding sexual consent, I am not alone in thinking this way. Most of the rest of the world, including most of first world, puts the age of consent at around 16.

No, I don't have any kids, male or female, but I don't buy your broad generalization about all teenage girls being cluelessly romantic and looking for love in all the wrong places. All teenagers are certainly in the early stages of coming to know themselves, but I don't believe that that makes them all clueless - and it certainly doesn't make them all romantic.

All of that being said, I still haven't made up my mind with regard to whether I think that that arbitrary line should be drawn at 16 or 18. I do believe that, by age 18, most people have already been adults for a few years. However, I can see how a 2 year extension on adolescence may be valuable in terms of providing a safe space for the kind of self discovery that, as I mentioned above, teenagers are only in the early stages of. However, I wouldn't push it any further than that.

...the root of this whole problem is a glut of cheap money in the economy, caused by an artificially low mortgage rate, substantial tax cuts, and a huge federal deficit. Solving this problem by way of $700 billion dollars in additional spending seems to me akin to trying to douse a fire with gasoline.

....the root of the current crisis is a glut of cheap money in the economy. A glut that was created by artificially low interest rates, large top weighted tax cuts, and huge federal deficits, exacerbated by reckless spending on the war. It was this glut of cheap money that fueled both the housing bubble and its associated leveraged consumption, and the inflation that ultimately made all of that leveraged consumption unsustainable. Please correct me if I am wrong, but that is my understanding of the situation.

Given that, it seems counterintuitive to try to solve this crisis with increased government spending, as such spending would be adding to the aggregate glut of cheap money that is ultimately behind this whole mess. It seems to me, Joe, like you are proposing that we douse this out of control fire with a big bucket of gasoline. In fact, it seems to me that ending the war, repealing Bush's tax cuts, and getting the budget deficit back under control are the only productive things that we can do about any of this, as this is probably the only way that we can curb the inflation that is destabilizing these loans without causing a complete economic collapse.

Once again, I am not an economist, and I could be completely wrong about all of this - and please correct me if I am. But, given what I have read about this crisis over the past couple of weeks, my laymen's understanding of the situation indicates to me, Joe, that you have this whole situation all wrong.

Is there a difference between cheap money and easy money? It sounds to me like we are talking about the same thing - the cost, in whatever form it may take - of taking out a loan. This was kept artificially low by the Federal Reserve for about 8 or 9 years now, thus creating the glut of cheap/easy money - however you prefer to call it - that we are now dealing with.

I am not sure how that difference is relevant to my point. Yes, regulators - or the lack thereof - do have a say in whether or not you get your loan, but the laws of supply and demand do as well. Lenders are not going to make it "easy" for you unless it is "cheap" for them. And, if I am not mistaken, it was cheap for them - partially because the Fed has been holding the interest rate low, and in part because there was simply a glut of it due to deficit spending and tax cuts. Hence, the housing bubble, the leveraged spending spree, and the inflationary pressures that led to this mess.

Thus, Joe Conason's contention that the Federal Government should try to solve this problem through more leveraged spending seems counterintuitive, and quite reckless.

I don't think that this was simply a problem of bad apples being allowed to spoil the bunch. There was something more fundamental at work here.