Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Some Good 'Splaining


Enjoy.

3 comments:

Jay said...

Brilliant.

Dave said...

How am I supposed to bail out Joe if Jay can't pay the money to me because he's owed by Eric? Bastardonomics.

Mike said...

I get the humor of this, but isn't it a fallacy to think of the debt of nations in the same way we think of individual debt?

There's more than a kernel of truth in it probably, but the debt of nations is bound up in the purchase of treasuries. If I buy $millions in T-bills, the US owes me $millions even if we're running a budget surplus. So large debt can also be related to the perceived stability of a currency, I think. And then there's the wild card of how much currency is created.

But I'm no economist, so feel free to straighten me out on this if need be.