Uncle Sam wants you -- to take $1,600

Who says government never solves problems? My problem lately has been trying to convince my wife we need a 42" plasma. The $1,600 the president and his minions want to give every American family to buy our way out of recession should just about cover it.

Of course, it'll likely be made overseas and the only American economy stimulated will be a commission to some guy at Best Buy. But I digress.

The story so far....

The big banks came up with clever schemes to loan money to people without a prayer of ever paying it back, and then resell those loans like they were as secure as lending a five-spot to Bill Gates. (ie, they schemed.)

Those loans were used by a bunch of would-be yuppies to buy minimansions they couldn't afford but, hey, figured they could get better loans before they really had to make the payments. (ie, they schemed.)

So now, the pyramid scheme is falling apart and we, as taxpayers, are going to have to refund all these schemes so the banks can keep their profits and the yuppies can keep their houses.

Can I get a deal like that? Say, I'll rent a private jet, dash off to Vegas, drop a bundle on a suite at the Bellagio, pick up drinks for the crowd at the Palms, all the while banking on the grand I drop onto 33 black to pay for it all. And when it doesn't happen, I'll call on you to bail me out. You're good for it, right?

Notgonnahappen. But the bankers are too big to fail, and the yuppies will keep their houses -- mind you, the plan isn't to bail out the poor who can't pay, just those sacrificing their third car to keep their payments current. At our cost.

So I suppose to keep us happy, the Shopper in Chief wants to cut us a check. Shopping seems to be the Bush economic plan. Remember how, after 9/11, he called on the nation to sacrifice for the war effort by going shopping? Terrorists on the horizon: charge!

Of course, this still has to go through Congress, which will try to muck it up. The Democrats will only want to send money to the poor. Republicans would rather see tax cuts for the very rich. They'll fret about the deficit. You know. Blah blah blah.

Since Reagan took office, we've already borrowed more than my generation can ever pay in taxes. Or the next generation. Or the next generation. We're no longer stealing from our kids. We're stealing from creatures that, after a dozen more decades of evolution, probably aren't even recognizably human.

So let 'em do what they want. Long as my piece of the latest economic plan gets HD and has an anti-glare screen.