LEAD US NOT INTO DEBT: Megan McArdle on Dave Ramsey.

His debt advice sounds good — I don’t really have any debt except a modest mortgage, so I haven’t tried it, since we’ve always favored a sort of Dave Ramsey-lite approach to finances — but his investment advice is lousy. Or, at least, I wish he’d name some names when he talks about “putting your money into a good aggressive growth-stock mutual fund with a 12% annual yield.”

UPDATE: Some related thoughts from Megan here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Michael Kennedy writes:

I think we are in for a long and severe period of fiscal bad times. I am a high income professional but I am battening down hatches as fast as I can, including selling things I don’t need to own. Those kinds of links will be popular, not as popular as they should be, but that will change. It is heavy weather ahead and worse than we have seen since the 1930s. The fools running the country have no idea what they are doing.

It does appear that way. But perhaps we’re simply too dull to fathom their cunning plans.