Incoming Federal Reserve Chief Ben Bernanke is best known for proclaiming that he would be willing to drop money from a helicopter to avoid deflation, so it is a safe bet that interest rates are on the way up. Inflation is the natural manager of the economy; governmental bodies and bankers are largely unable to control this. The bottom line is that interest rates have been artificially low for too long; much of those lower rates have been financed by foreign countries, who subsequently also fund our out-of-control spending habits. Speaking of which, this is something that has gotten extremely out of control. The US continues to owe more money to more people, while our ability to pay out goes down. This is a fact which Washington power brokers, both Republican and Democrat, are not willing to admit. Budgets and deficits are a bi-partisaned affair. Much of this debt has been incurred during the Bush Administration. Their decision to pursue the War against Iraq has been particularly costly. Recently, an Economics professor from a major university in the Northeast estimated that the Iraq War will cost about $2 trillion, or about $25,000 per American family. This money could have gone towards shoring up and reforming our domestic entitlement system, which will be overburdened by the retirement of the baby boomer generation by the next decade. Instead, we've spent it on a military adventure which was planned and executed under the most dubious circumstances. The bottom line is that there's going to come a time, very soon more than likely, when we're going to have to make some very tough choices. So far, I'm not seeing the necessary leadership to make them.