Solution Pending

When I was in high school, I used to play air guitar. (Yes, I know this is usually the bailiwick of teenaged boys - I was ahead of my time.) Anyway, I was really good at playing, as long as I didn't have to actually touch an instrument.

I suspect Congress would be very good at air guitar, too - as long as they don't actually get to touch anything. Anyone who can glibly suggest spending $700 bil - the only thing they seem to agree on - without a visible means of support, gets my vote for best fake lead, of any air music.

I told you I grew up with a politician, right? He was (and is) terrible with money. I spent my entire life in cycles of poverty and plenty. My entire life. The act of handing our current elected officials my tax money every month makes me break out in a rash; $700 bil just staggers me, especially since no one has told me where it's coming from.

It won't be a tax hike - they think that cutting taxes we can't afford to cut and still pay the bills, or rebating money they don't even have in the first place, is the best solution for every ill (probably because it will buy our vote). It could be a loan, I suppose, but since no American in his right mind will buy a Savings Bond (even if he could) much less $700 bil worth of them, I doubt it will come from local sources - especially since the banks have frozen, or at least strangled, the credit lines to us peons. Likely we'll borrow it from China, the same source we've been tapping to continue the war. (Oh, well, so much for cutting trade with a country that's been poisoning our toys and milk products - but since our wonderful corporations, the ones in trouble right now, moved their factories over there anyway, we're paying our own way, right?)

Confused? Me, too. Here's some simple math - there are 305,261,586 Americans right now, living in approximately 114, 384,000 households. $700,000,000,000 (that's the billions) divvied up works out to $2293.12 for every man, woman and child, or about $6119.74 per household. (That's more than the average American household carries on a credit card.) But don't worry - since we'll be borrowing it instead of taxing it to each of us, we won't feel the effects until much later, probably just in time to deepen the next economic downturn to monumental proportions.

And this in an era when fewer of us are carrying balances on our credit cards (though, admittedly, more on our mortgages). This, in an era when people are required - not optional - to carry insurance on our home loans until they drop below 80% (or is it 70%?) of the home's value. This in an era when we know credit has gotten us in trouble, yet we keep running to the well.

I don't know the solution for the country. Maybe this really is the most dangerous fiscal situation we've ever been in, as the more inflammatory rhetoric is telling us. (I guess I've heard the Weather Channel telling me about death and destruction - and "dodging the bullet" - so many times I don't listen to overblown projections any more.) Maybe the solution is making the banks go back to the teaser rates, at least for people whose primary residence is on the line. Or maybe it's just let everyone fall down and go boom. There are just too many variables to understand this on a national level. But I know what I'm going to propose for myself.

A money fast.

Yep, coming on the heels of the successful jewelry fast, Bunny is going to go cold turkey on spending. Okay, more like warm turkey - I'm going to talk to the Big Lug about cutting our cable, our cell phones, and various other cutting places, and live on his salary while we use mine to pay off ALL our debts, as fast as we can. In a single year, despite the fact that I don't make nearly as much as he does, we will not only finish paying off the cards but also the kids' college loans, our last home improvement thing, and even start working our way through our mortgage. In one year.

See, I know that no matter how much congress spends to "bail" me out, I'm the only one who can make it stick. And I know that the only way to have $5 mil in my hands by 2014 is to wipe the slate clean, get off the economic grid as much as possible. I don't want to be beholden - or vulnerable - to anyone, and especially not to the people who make laws the same way they make salad dressing (a little of this, a little of that, what do you think, hon, too much garlic?). I want economic independence, from all of them.

But until that day, I can at least thumb my nose (and my imaginary strings) at anyone who wants to scare me here. Because if Congress can make a case for pulling $700 bil out of thin air, and get so many to go along with the scam, then anything is possible.

Even this crazy, wild scheme of mine.

5 by 55!

In B-sharp!

Eat your heart out, John Entwistle!