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"America is like a championship team that has hit a slump," according to former U.S. Senator and basketball Hall of Famer Bill Bradley.

In his latest book, We Can All Do Better, Bradley lays out a game plan designed to get America back in championship form. The book reads a bit like a campaign platform, featuring a number of policy prescriptions designed to revive the economy, although Bradley assures me he's not running for any political office.

"I wanted to write a book to restore hope," he says. "To remind people we've encountered difficult problems in the past...and we always managed to pull through. So be optimistic we'll do it this time."

Despite the highly partisan atmosphere in Washington, Bradley is even optimistic about our elected officials being able to work together to address America's seemingly intractable problems. "Don't count Congress out yet," he writes. "Good sense and true patriotism may well prevail." ('May' being the

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Austerity vs. more stimulus is the ongoing debate plaguing policymakers around the globe as countries try to figure out ways to eliminate rising government debt without creating an economic catastrophe.

Europe took to the path of austerity and it did not go well for the eurozone economies, which have tipped back into recession. In fact, things have gotten so bad in Europe that voters in France and Greece this weekend ousted leadership who agreed to the austerity programs proposed by the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund. (See: France's Hollande Is "Bluffing" But Greek Vote Raises Real Concern: Kirkegaard)

In the United States, political ideologies have stalled any progress on the federal budget and efforts to reduce the country's $15.7 trillion (and growing) debt load. Washington's dysfunctional politics is what led to the country losing its triple-A debt rating last August —rating agency S&P actually feared political

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Last fall, some U.S. economic data began to come in weak, and the stock market sold off. This prompted many economists and analysts to begin talking about the possibility of a new recession.

One analyst, however--Lakshman Achuthan of the Economic Cycle Research Institute--did not just talk about the possibility of one.

He said, definitively, that the U.S. was "tipping back into recession. And there's nothing that policy makers can do to head it off."

Well, the U.S. economy did not tip back into recession. In fact, the data started coming in better-than-expected again, and the country experienced modest growth in Q4 and Q1.

ECRI's forecasting model often antagonizes observers because it's a "black box": ECRI refuses to say what data points it includes in its leading indicators. So when the U.S. did not go into recession, Lakshman Achuthan was once again pressed for details about what went into his definitive recession call--and he was often upbraided when he refused to say.