We are all used to paying a sales tax when we buy things - almost 9 percent here in New York City. The application of this concept to the financial sector could solve our need for revenue, bring some sanity back into the financial sector, and give us a way to raise the revenue we need to run the government in a fiscally responsible way.

I would say to those who don't like the metaphor This is reality.

The irony is that it was tougher to rent a car from Cerberus when it owned Alamo than to buy a semi-automatic. To rent a car, one had to provide ID, a drivers' license, and get insurance coverage. To buy a gun? Cash and carry, from the back of a station wagon at a gun show. No concerns about downstream liability or risk.

The Republican argument that raising the debt ceiling encourages additional future spending is logically irresponsible. The debt ceiling has to be raised to authorize spending already approved by Congress. Despite that fallacy, the GOP has been able to score political points with its argument.

It's time to let science and medicine, not politics and rhetoric, lead us to good, sound policy.

Don't reward bad behavior. It is one of the first rules of parenting. During the financial cataclysm of 2008, we said it differently. When we bailed out banks that had created their own misfortune, we called it a 'moral hazard,' because the bailout absolved the bank's bad acts and created an incentive for it to make the same bad loans again.

Never write when you can talk. Never talk when you can nod. And never put anything in an e-mail.