We have just gotten through one bubble, but in the process created another one. The first was a financial bubble and the second, which grew out of the first, is a government bubble. Perhaps our experience of living through two bubbles in such close succession can help us draw lessons about how bubbles work and what we should do about them.

First, the illusion of unlimited resources makes it impossible to establish priorities and make sensible decisions. Borrowers could take advantage of free money from lenders who were offloading the risk onto others. The illusion of limitless and risk-free financing made it possible for borrowers and investors to think we could have it all.

Second, bubbles end ? Badly. It cannot go on forever so it doesn?t. Once the last patsy is onboard, a bubble ends. Our financial bubble is ending and our financial markets are reverting to making sense.

Our next bubble is government. Our government seems to think it can have it all. For a while, it can: each new program can be a ?right? because it doesn?t need to be a priority. There is no need for priorities while everything appears possible. Our government has found its patsies in its accommodating creditors, taxpayers, and future taxpayers.

This too will end ? sooner or later and a higher or lower cost. Post-bubble, we will re-familiarize ourselves with the fact of resource constraints. We will prioritize. It will be an exciting period for public policy in which serious people will have to convey reasons for their best ideas and convince others of their wisdom.

Jim Himes is a politician of the bubble era ? he is the representative of unlimited government to Fairfield County and a symbol of the excesses of our past. Watch for him to appropriate an ?independent? label in the coming months. While we should sympathize with his efforts to distance himself from his extremist record, we cannot allow him to become independent of reality. He votes with Nancy Pelosi 96% of the time; that is not an independent record. It is a record of profligate spending that we cannot sustain. Times have changed. Our families cannot afford Himes anymore.