ADDING UP THE ZEROS

How many zeros in a trillion? Ever wondered? I did and checked. There are a dozen zeros in a trillion. One trillion looks like this - 1,000,000,000,000. Ohhhhh, that is a lot of zeros by anyone's count.

Late Friday afternoon, when many news reporters had taken off for the weekend, when evening newscasts regularly have the lowest viewership for a weekday, and the Obamas were safely out of camera-shot on Martha's Vineyard, we learned the numbers crunchers at the White House had a little add-on to the seven trillion dollar (7,000,000,000,000) national budget deficit -two trillion dollars (2,000,000,000,000).

How, you may ask, can highly paid accountants make a nearly 30-percent mistake? Is this a case of attempting to deceive the American people? Good questions both. Questions the news media needs to ask and try to get answers from the ever recalcitrant presidential spokesman Robert Gibbs. Good luck on that.

In July, even President Obama admitted the United States is out of money. Not to worry. The Federal Reserve has a printing press that prints nothing but money.

Now we can add almost certain hyper-inflation (that is what we had during the Jimmy Carter term) to our other fiscal worries: like the impact of skyrocketing (Obama's word) utility bills under the President's Cap and Trade bill; higher taxes to pay for single payer healthcare unless, of course, those of us past 65, the mentally and physically disabled, and aging veterans, agree to cash out early; and third, but not least, the end of the Bush tax cuts, set to expire in 2010, which will hike income tax levels for everyone who pays, and raise the amount we pay on dividends and other capital gains, including what we earn in our 401Ks and IRAs.

What's another two trillion or so in the face of all that?

Bankruptcy comes to mind.

How about this, Mr. Obama. Let's not spend any more of the stimulus money. What has been spent so far is long on pork and short on job expansion. It has saved some endangered teaching and law enforcement jobs around the country. But, for how long? That money will dry up in a couple of years. What then?

No more TARP money to any bank, business, etc. And no more cash for clunkers. I just bought a new car. It is a Ford because Ford did not take TRAP money. And I did not have a clunker to trade. So, my new car will be fully paid for from my pocket and not from the three-billion dollar largess of my fellow taxpayers.

One expenditure I would heartily endorse by the White House - purchase new calculators. Walmart has them in the school supply aisles for about five to ten bucks.