We will be hearing quite a bit about the Chained Consumer Price Index (chained CPI) over the next couple days, though most of the details don’t matter. It’s the first of two major takeaways from the president’s proposed budget.

For the sake of completeness, here’s the definition of chained CPI. What matters for the average citizen, however, is one thing: chained CPI increases more slowly than the inflation measures that are currently used, the CPI-U (the CPI for All Urban Workers) and CPI-W (the CPI for All Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers). By shifting the measure used, payments for social security will increase more slowly over time.

I love alliteration. A game my family plays on long car trips is to see how many words starting with the same letter we can string together and still make sense. I hold the record so far with something like Cape Cod Canal Commission Community College Cheerleading Co-Captain’s Conference Center classroom chatter, or CCCCCCCCCCCcc. Top that!

The topic for today, however, is the budget battle. We now have three budgets out there—the Senate Democrats’, the House Republicans’, and the President’s. While none of them will be passed as presented, we can reasonably define the box that the final budget will fit in. I plan to do a detailed analysis and comparison in the next couple of days.

In my response to David Stockman’s op-ed piece in the New York Times, I stated that our problems are, in fact, solvable, and that we are—however slowly and painfully—in the process of solving them.

Not everyone is convinced, to put it mildly, and to state it is not to demonstrate it. Looking through today’s papers, though, I found a couple examples of exactly what I was talking about.

Several people have forwarded me “State-Wrecked: The Corruption of Capitalism in America”—a recent New York Times op-ed by David Stockman, former budget director for President Reagan—and asked for my thoughts. Having read through the piece, it’s actually not that easy to respond, as Mr. Stockman seems to be all over the place. In fact, I’m not sure exactly what he’s saying other than that we’re all doomed.

Trying to pick out the different parts of his argument, I come up with following. First, abandoning the gold standard was a huge mistake and has led to fiscal and moral debasement. Second, the Fed has been the agent of said debasement, printing money to enable the federal government’s wanton spending. Third, Wall Street has captured both the Fed and Washington, D.C., and is using them to enrich itself. Fourth, the 2008 financial crisis would have burned itself out and we would have been fine had the government not intervened. Fifth, our fiscal situation is not only worse than admitted but beyond hope. We cannot solve our present problems and face a future of poverty. In short, under the present system, we’re doomed, and we largely deserve it for past sins. Thus endeth the lesson.

With all of the focus on Cyprus over the past couple of days, the refrain has gone something like this: what really matters isn’t Cyprus itself but the bigger picture and what that might mean for Europe. No one has really gotten into what happens and how, so I thought I’d give that a shot.

Cyprus is an even smaller piece of Europe than Greece was. The banking system, which was seven times the size of the economy, is also small in the larger scheme of things. The amount of money required to bail out the system was a rounding error; there was no financial reason not to simply write a check.

In the absence of a single overarching theme today, I thought I’d hit a bunch of smaller points that are important but don’t warrant individual posts.

Cyprus

Part of our conversation yesterday revolved around the tax increases we saw early this year and the spending cuts that took effect yesterday. As I mentioned, these are both positive developments, but they’re only the first steps on a long road. What remains to be done is a multiple of what’s been done so far.

Politically, both moves are problematic. But, in my opinion, the tax increases are by far the more difficult. Everyone seems to be in favor of both tax increases and spending cuts—they just can’t agree on whom to tax or what to cut! Taxes, however, are more challenging in that they require taking something away from people that they already have. In many cases, spending is more nebulous, and defense spending cuts won’t mean I have fewer dollars in my paycheck.

Despite the dire warnings, the sun rose today and people went to work. Planning shifted, if it hadn’t already, from avoiding the sequester’s spending cuts to implementing them. Entrepreneurs launched t-shirts and tchotchkes based the sequester and furlough.

Politicians, who had been warning of the disastrous consequences of the spending cuts, haven’t exactly backed off. Instead, they’ve adjusted the time frame—much like the doctor who had given his patient six months to live but then granted him an extension when he couldn’t pay off the bill during that time.

I was sitting on a plane home last night, watching SpongeBob with Jackson, and as I flipped through the channels, I saw that the stock market had cratered since we got on the plane. What?

The headlines today seem to imply that the sequester will hit, as the Republicans have very little incentive to back down.