Perhaps it should be explained that "deficit" means money that is owed. Maybe we should say, "You know, it's like a VISA card. It's funny money. It must be paid back. It's money we owe. There's interest to be paid."

Obviously, the meaning of 1 billion dollars must be rather vague to many people. It might help if we could get some of these people aside and say, "Ya know, it's like taking a millionaire, a million times over. Ya know, if you had 1 billion dollars you would have trouble spending it all in your lifetime. With 1 billion dollars you would be able to buy enough Domino's pizzas to completely cover the states of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and Florida. I mean completely cover every inch of ground. And that's only 1 billion. The deficit we're talking about is 427 billion dollars. That would mean that you could cover each of the states with pizzas stacked up more than 400 pizzas high.

I'm not actually sure those statistics are right but the idea of covering all of those states with pizzas certainly is appealing.

To be serious, as much as I hate it, this morning's paper indicates there is a World Economic Forum taking place in Switzerland. Apparently this is a gathering of the world's economic experts and they are discussing world economic problems. It figures! The headline is, "U.S. Deficits Worry World Forum." Other countries are now worried about our debt! How come we aren't worried?  The present administration didn't even send one senior policymaker to this gathering. The United States was represented by Rep. Barney Frank, a Democrat from Massachusetts. Representative Frank is on the House Financial Services Committee, but it does seem the Powers That Be don't seem very concerned.

How come we didn't do something about this in the recent election?

The only explanation has to be we don't understand.

 Perhaps it's better that way.

The Old Professor
Carmel, CA
December 2004