Well, I just ran the numbers for a third time, with identical results.

The numbers say, that what it's really gonna take to get us out of this economic mess, is somewhere just north of 20 trillion dollars. 22-23, right around there.

So, right now, they're into us for about 10, give or take. That's Loan Value, not Reserve Value, right? ( )

So, "in theory", they'd only have to come up with another trillion or so in hard cash - only, there's a little PROBLEM with that now.

The United States, is very close to defaulting on its debt service. China isn't loaning us any more money, and neither are our other usual partners like the UK and Japan. Each of them is having problems of their own, and they're not especially enamored with us anyway rignt now - and you can forget about the EU loaning us anything after what we did to 'em in the SWIFT banking scandal -

So I mean, the problem now is, it's very likely they won't be able to get that extra trillion in cash.

And the other problem is, that even if they could, the Republicans would do everything they could to stop 'em!

The only way the guvmint was able to do this first bailout, was to restructure debt - what they essentially did, was a little "credit swap" of their own, right? 'Cause now they own Citibank stock, at an 8% coupon! Man, I am not doing any business with Citibank anymore, period full stop! Those clowns were ripping us off before they had to start paying the gubmint 8 percent!!!

I dunno, I'm not gettin' a good feeling about this. If they're gonna kick it, they're gonna to do it soon, and hard. They're going to have to take the ENTIRE remaining money and force it into the pipe, otherwise the rest of the effect is going to dissipate and it won't be additive like it's supposed to.

And then we're really in trouble, if that doesn't work. If it either doesn't work, or political forces won't allow it to run ALL the way to completion, then we're in deep trouble. Then I would probably move out of my house, and set up shop immediately next to a running stream in the mountains somewhere. I can fend for myself in the wild, with just a slingshot and a blanket. I'm not sure I could do the same thing in the city.