The Bailout Solution

As my faithful readers well know, I suspended my blogging operations last week in order to devote my attention to the national economic crisis. Such was my willingness to lay aside my personal agenda for the good of my country. And now I am happy to announce that my sacrifice has paid off. I got it figured out. Yes; that’s right. I know what we should do. I solved it.

Pelosi, Paulsen, Bernanke; you guys can all thank me later.

But for now, since time is money, or the square root of all evil, or it used to buy happiness, or something or other some-such like that and so on, I will keep you waiting no longer and I will right here and now reveal you to you my Bailout Plan B. (Prepare to be amazed.) It’s revolutionary. It’s simple. It’s elegant. It’s no worse than anybody else's.

POINT 1:
Monday, October 6th, 2008 at 7:45 AM EST, Everybody all over the world agrees to mentally move every single decimal place on every number two places to the left.

And that’s pretty much the only point. Point Two is something about having to talk the Chinese into this by agreeing to go ahead and let them keep saying that they still have a population of billions of people instead of millions. I think that should convince them to get on board.

Anyway. Here’s how it would play out:

A number that used to be 10,000,000 would, under my new plan, now be only 100,000. A number that was once a bloated 1000 would be a very trim and easy-to-count-on-your-fingers-or-remember-in-your-head 10. The implementation cost of this plan would be, pretty much, uh, 0. And the benefits, enormous.

For instance, all the numbers that are so mind-bogglingly obscene to us now, (120 BILLION dollars last year for the war in Iraq? TRILLIONS of dollars of national debt? ONE HUNDRED-SEVENTY DOLLARS a month for a family cell-phone plan? Oh. Wait. Did I just write that? Yeah. OK. Leave it in. You know what I mean.) those numbers would instantly become manageable, believable, palatable, even. A ten-million-a-month war doesn’t sound nearly so luxurious and extravagant, does it?

Think about it. Trillions. Trillions. What kind of a crazy, made-up sci-fi word is that, anyway? That’s not a real money word. Real money comes in twenties and hundreds and thousands. And, OK, maybe in fairy tales, millions. That’s the kind of budget talk we can understand. But billions and trillions? No wonder people are in a panic! We’re hearing all about billions and trillions and we don’t have any more understanding of what those actually are than we do of a Demyleniazating Super-Colliding Hydrolyzer. I repeat: We don’t understand those words. We don’t know what things like trillions are. We just know people keep going on and on about them, and we’re pretty sure they ain’t natural.

Which is why the time is ripe for my bailout plan.

Well, no, duh, of course my plan wouldn’t wipe out the staggering percentage of debt and loss. It would just make us all feel better about it. Think about it. Are you losing sleep over the loss of $200,000 worth of equity in your home? What a relief to find out you are, magically, only $2000 upside down! $700 billion outlay of tax-payer money kinda creep you out a little? Think of it as only $7 billion. Seven billion? Pfooey! That’s just latte money, in government-world.

Now you try it. Instead of $20,000 credit card debt, an average American family would have $200. Ah. Doesn’t that feel better? Can’t you just imagine the panic melting away as all over the country, people say, “Oh! Look, Honey! The heating bill was only $1.70 in December”?

And, yeah, I do realize that would also mean that our take-home pay would now be about $29 a month. But, hey, since when does our take-home pay actually have anything to do with what we spend?

See? I think it’s already working. I’m feeling better anyway, daydreaming about buying a new car for about $220. Aren’t you feeling better?

And THAT, right there, guys, is it. The power cell of my whole plan. The feeling-better-about-it thing. Never underestimate the magnitude of the feel-better-about-it-thing.

Which is, in all seriousness, the Big Bang of our economy, and the source of the security and future of our nation.

Because when I see that the slip of paper in my inbox at work that says some numbers appeared beside my name somewhere on some bank's computer and that means that I can swipe a piece of plastic in a machine at Wal-Mart and get some milk and bread and cheerios for the kids tonight on my way home, I want that clerk to feel good about handing me my groceries.

And when I see my friends go on a long vacation knowing that they can because some letter they get in the mail every month tells them that, yeah, all those years working extra jobs and mowing lawns is fairly represented by the numbers on that piece of paper, yeah, we all feel pretty good about it.

And when you look at a dollar bill and see the seal of the Federal Reserve System and know that it means that the full faith and credit of the government of the United States Of America still agrees that piece of paper is legal tender for all debts, charges, taxes and dues public or private, you dang well better feel good about it.