So, I saw a crazy statistic this weekend at the gym, on CNN. I mean, I was only half paying attention. Hell, I get up at 4:45am, Eastern, every day, to take in first sportscenter...then CNBC. I'm not endorsing CNBC as the best thing out there...not in the slightest. It's more I am in a routine, and I genuinely enjoy some of the regular guests. But, I'm at the gym, and to give myself a break, I have my ipod on, with which I am using my new wireless headphones and watching, of all movies, cruel intentions. It was a 5 dollar special on Itunes...I had a gift card...and like many other americans responsible for knee jerk type reactions and purchases (just on credit, not gift cards...you'd like to think in some cases that some thought they had gift cards...they must have...10x salary for a house in an urban area...seriously?) And, in the movie satisfaction is supposedly derived from some finite amount of happiness. If you think about it, no one is creating happiness. From the first scene, the therapist gets off by over-charging the patient, who then gets off by pulling the wool over her eyes and fucking her daughter. Zero sum game anyone? For one to win, the other must lose. And, it's interesting b/c as this debauchery was playing on my 32 gig ipod (which I know, is like the ultimate in electronic debauchery, who needs 32 gigs of multimedia at their beck and call...right?) I saw out of the corner of my eye warren buffett being quoted on CNN...or interviewed...or whatever...about the national debt. And, I have paid attention to warren buffett...as anyone who even thinks about investing in any way should, and he was expounding on one of his common themes. America's financing of its lifestyle. One word...Debt. In a word, we as a nation are like the weak side of the "emotional trade" and game going on in Cruel Intentions. Please buy our pieces of paper...please....please...please. And please, do be kind enough to keep rolling them over and never "calling it in." We'll do anything...ANYTHING...to make sure that this relationship persists. But, like in the movie, in the end, the weak player becomes the strong, in that the strong tries to grasp power from the weak at the climactic point (the protagonist dies) and, as evil is about to plant itself for the long term, her foundation collapses and she realizes she has never created happiness...nor has she created anything. She has merely traded disfavor. How is it any different? I see Buffett, I see a statistic that the national debt will balloon to something like 54 trillion or 184,000 for every american. Not saying that's a good thing. Not saying that it will do anything to help interest rates or borrowing costs. But, would we not have to see a new world power supplant the USA to really have a threat the foreign powers would call the notes? They haven't created anything of their own if, when our credit markets melt down, global aggregate demand stops on a dime. Where is their domestic demand? China has 1.2 or 1.3 BILLION people. If they call our notes, who would buy their exports? Japan was also supposed to destroy us in the 1980s...right before they more or less lost a decade. So, in the movie it was happiness, and when the protagonist figured out how to create happiness, by looking outside of himself, his death awakened the little "society" of the private school to the larger possibilities of living well. Until countries or regions can find their own economies and their own footing, independent of what happens externally, why should we bask in the empty rhetoric of worrying about our ballooning national debt? I could certainly see benefits in not embarking on such a massive jaunt of fiscal stimulus. The market always knows best. But, there is ideology, and then there is what is politically palatable. How it was specifically done aside, our government had to do what it had to do in terms of injecting money...it's a different point about how it was done...it had to lower interest rates, it had to do something like the tarp, it had to do something like buy the troubled assets, and it had to embark on the quantitative easing. No system would ever be PERFECT, but the fact that it is a system and we have committed to it is a start. Secondly, if not treasuries, what the hell else are other central banks going to buy? Really? In an environment of crisis, where do you want to be? What currency combines the liquidity, the property rights, and the reputation as a safe haven like the dollar? If we're to assume that the USA is to be supplanted anytime soon, just realize one thing. We're making a ton of assumptions on other governments of the world and other societies...many of which have given us no long term reason to do so.