Okay, is there anybody else out there who is becoming numb to all this talk about economic stimulus and bailout? I will assume that the lack of hands just means that you are, in fact, so numbed by all this that you have lost the will to even respond with a simple gesture. Or perhaps there are a number of other gestures that you have in mind, but common decency precludes mentioning them here.
The latest number, the one that I assume the powers-that-be would like us to respond to is three trillion. A quick check of my basic math facts tell me that one million times one million is one trillion. A trillion is a million squared. Today the Federal Reserve and the Senate started tossing around the figure of three trillion dollars more in government and private funds to fight against frozen credit markets and rising joblessness. If you're keeping score at home, we don't even have a trillion people on the planet. Not yet, anyway, so the idea that this sum would be somehow more manageable to consider in those terms doesn't quite wash.
The population of the United States is somewhere around three hundred million people. That works out to be about ten thousand dollars for every man, woman and child. Does this make sense? I've gone past the point of trying to make it make sense. The Lotto Machine is broken, and there will no more tickets purchased from this outlet. If it will take leventy-seben gredullion dollars to fix whatever it is that is wrong with our economy, go ahead and do it. I have stopped caring. Don't try to impress me with big numbers anymore. I am no longer worried. I'm just tired.
What economic stimulus and bailout? That's how numb I've become.
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