Once again it's time to talk about raising the statutory limit on the U.S. government's debt - the so-called "debt ceiling." Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has estimated that Uncle Sam will reach the debt ceiling before Tax Day, possibly even before the end of March.

Even earlier, on March 18 to be precise, the current two-week appropriations resolution that is funding government spending will expire.

Are these two stories giving you a sense of déjà vu? They should. These two closely related issues are perennial events. Congress has raised the debt ceiling 74 times in the past 70 years, and, of course, passing an annual budget is necessarily an annual event.

It is hard to find anything positive to say about the corporate-income (i.e., profits) tax. Economists across the ideological spectrum agree that the corporate-profits tax is woefully inefficient:

1) It warps corporate decision-making, inducing expenditures made only to reduce a company's tax liability.

2) The compliance costs are astronomical, often exceeding 60 cents for every dollar of revenue that the government raises from taxing corporate profits. How would you like to spend $6,000 per year calculating that you owe Uncle Sam $10,000?

3) It fosters over-reliance on debt. Corporations often need to borrow money to replace funds that government taxed. In fact, the tax code encourages debt, making corporate debt tax-deductible.

The corporate-profits tax is also ethically problematic.

In 1962, President John F. Kennedy hosted a dinner for 49 Nobel laureates. The occasion provided the opportunity for JFK to display his keen wit in this memorable quote: "I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered at the White House -- with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone."

I wonder how many of today's high-school and college students appreciate Jefferson's genius. Our third president -- the author of the Declaration of Independence and the founder of the University of Virginia -- was a masterful scholar of history, a political philosopher for the ages, a noted horticulturist, an archaeologist, an architect, and an inventor. He also knew a thing or two about money and banking. Let's take a moment here to review the wise insights on money and banking left to us by this consummate Renaissance man.

Regarding money, Jefferson commented, "Paper is poverty. ... It is only the ghost of money, and not money itself." We should remember this when we contemplate the loss of 95 percent of the purchasing power of the paper currency called "Federal Reserve notes" in less than a century. As Ben Bernanke and the Fed create trillions of new paper "dollars," we, the richest country in history, face the possibility of a hyperinflationary collapse and accompanying impoverishment.

The British economist John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) turns out to have been something of a prophet. He once wrote that "practical men," as opposed to theoreticians, "are usually the slaves of some defunct economist." Ironically, the defunct economist who is influencing Barack Obama, his advisers, and his supporters in Washington is Keynes himself.

Like a ghostly presence, Keynes' ideas are hovering over us. The very notion of a government "stimulus" for the economy originated in Keynes' 1936 book The General Theory of Employment, Interest, & Money. In it, Keynes spelled out his theory that government could offset the economic ups and downs of the business cycle with "contracyclical" policies -- that is, by running surpluses when economic activity is vibrant and deficits during slowdowns.