My Son: Global Economic Problem Solver Extraordinaire

[Joanne98]

Saturday, November 15, 2008

My Son: Global Economic Problem Solver Extraordinaire

This year's financing needs will be unprecedented. --Anthony Ryan, U.S. Treasury

My ten-year-old son is trying to figure it out. Last week he asked me was what the oil companies, who keep upping their prices, would do if our government just told them they had to stop. He said to me: "The U.S. government is so powerful, they should just tell the oil companies they can't charge any more. THEN what would the oil companies do?!!" I explained to him that the combined assets of all the oil companies exceeded the economic power of the U.S. government. Very surprised, he said: "Oh." He thought about it for a long time, stumped. Me too.

Today my fourth-grader suggested:

Since we don't have the collateral to pay for a one-trillion-dollar bailout, but we do produce the most weapons of any country in the world, why not just trade all of our weapons for the money? His logic was impeccable: we create more weapons than any other country in the world. We must have more than a trillion worth of weapons to trade.

My son, future statesman and world economic leader.

(He lucked into an excellent teacher at school this year. This is good. He is eager to learn.)

On a completely unrelated note:

Last night's dinner menu at the economic summit was Quail and Lamb. I assume red wine was also consumed, along with plenty of bread.
Posted by Mom of three at 8:40 AM

http://mom-of-three-journal.blogspot.com/2008/11/my-son-global-economic-problem-solver.html

[MissWaverly]

1. The main entree should have been crow

the entire world community knew that these financial transaction were wildly speculative and they allowed them anyway,
now unchecked greed by wall street insiders and bankers has caused a global collapse. I do applaud the thinking outside the box ideas. Mine is to mine the moon, since the moon was once part of earth surely it must contain the same mineral resources as earth. I am thinking primarily of gold, iron, cooper, etc. But I was also thinking of creating a large solar center on the moon, could the energy captured be then transmitted back to earth. Must admit I am not a techie.

[ben_meyers]

2. Now he's thinking like FDR

"why not just trade all of our weapons for the money"? That's almost exactly what FDR did to end the "Great Depression", starting with "lend-lease" where we let Europe just kind of "rent" our weapons until they could pay us back.

Many people in the US were opposed to our involvement in WW2 and FDR created a work around until Pearl Harbor happened. (lihop or mihop? you decide.)

[Auggie]

3. Pearl Harbor?

lihop IMO

Though if the Oil Embargo was enacted for the dual purpose of creating conflict, then it's mihop.