Saturday, March 18, 2006

Buddy, Can You Spare A Dime?

I’ve always tended to avoid debt. I’m not much of a risk-taker. With this in mind, I was interested to read this Times Online article about The USA’s National Debt. Apparently, Congress has agreed to allow the Government to borrow another $781 billion (£447 billion), increasing the national debt limit — the maximum America can borrow — from $8 trillion and $184 billion to $8 trillion and $961 billion.

This is quite a lot of dosh:

  • Enough to buy Buckingham Palace 9000 times (as if you would want to)

  • Enough to give every person on the planet $1500.00 (a fortune to many, small change to some)

  • Enough to build 28 solid gold Eiffel Towers (another pointless exercise)

  • Enough to solve the Palestinian crisis by rehousing every Israeli and Palestinian family in a £1.5m detached house in Henley-on-Thames (Interesting, but they’d probably still bicker over the relative sizes of their swimming pools etc).
Anyway, what do you think would be the best use of $9 trillion?