Unlike the actual Greeks, whose fiscal ways have exasperated some of their European Union partners, they cannot be kicked out of the union.
Americans like to talk a big game on spending; in reality, they don't want the government to change its fiscal ways.
Indeed, Mr. Bloomberg's constant claims that he is unclear as to how the authority is managing its finances sounds a bit odd, since all he has to do is literally look up and ask Mr. Shaw, who sits across from the mayor in City Hall and is perhaps the world's leading expert on the transit system's convoluted fiscal ways.
Either way, fiscal reform may well be the loser.
"The next mayor has to be a fiscal expert, the way I was an expert on crime".
Conservative pundits like Josh Barro of Business Insider have welcomed inflation as the right's answer to fiscal stimulus — a way to juice the economy without increasing government spending.
Mr. Bloomberg, Mr. Cunningham argued, was by nature optimistic and neither accustomed to, nor comfortable with, the notion of invoking fiscal catastrophe as way of preparing the city for severe cutbacks.
This was particularly obvious in Europe, where a currency crisis gave the upper hand to budget-cutters, but it was also evident in the United States, where the Tea Party had its coming-out party and fiscal stimulus gave way to fiscal drag.
Ron Suskind argued that Mr. Obama's bold campaign promises to implement a broad swath of new fiscal regulations gave way to Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner's more tepid, Wall Street-friendly approach.
Mr. Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee who is deeply involved in the contentious fiscal talks under way in Washington, did not wade into specific details of the negotiations.
