With the talk of possibly backing off on quantitative easing, I'm starting to re-evaluate some things. Let's say the United States does what it takes to get back on track. What all would it take really?

If I were to take a stab at it, I would say that money printing would have to stop to prevent hyper-inflation at some point in the future. My understanding is that there's already enough dollars out there to do it, it's just that the velocity of those dollars is not high enough.

If money printing stops, does the value of the dollar increase enough that interest rates go up and interest on our debt becomes unbearable? Or can the Fed control interest rates without a printing press?

So then, let's say interest rates can be managed if the printing press stops. There is still the problem of reducing the deficit to a manageable level. According to this video it is not possible unless the entire government is shut down (both the security and non-security side) AND funding for mandatory programs such as social security, medicare and medicaid are cut significantly.

Now in the real world, even if we were serious about cutting spending and developing a surplus to reduce the deficit it wouldn't look like that. I'm sure all of those categories would take major cuts rather than any of them being totally shut down. However, it would be extremely painful no matter what way you look at it.

The President and Congress and the Senate would have to get up in front of the American people and say, look, here are the numbers. We've screwed up, but we're going to start working towards a firm foundation for our children. We're all going to have to experience a great deal of pain to get to the other side, but it's going to be better this way than if we wait for things to implode. We need you to get behind us and do what you can to help us get back on track.

Is that what righting the ship would look like? To me that would ensure a really rough time for the ag sector and would spell doom for my silver investment. However, I'd be all for it. My approach to marketing and my business and investments would change significantly. People would band together in hopes of a better future for our children.

Please tell me all the flaws in my obviously simple analysis of how things work and what it would take. I'm sure there are a ton of them.