Spend!, Baby!, Spend!

Oil spills. They create gross domestic product. And it's a damn good thing they do, too, because 70% of our economy is consumer spending, and our consumers have halted spending. Oil spills and other environmental cleanup are a bright spot in our quest to return to unending consecutive quarters of ad infinitum economic growth.

I can't get over the fact that two thirds of what makes us tick is buying stuff, while two thirds of us don't produce anything. Two thirds is debt-based consumption. This is our vexing dilemma -- the only way to recover from our financial perils would be to restart that debt-based consumption engine again...or, perhaps, we grow our government spending.

We're gonna do the latter in 2009 and 2010. Spend, baby, spend. Drive trillion dollar deficits in the hope that government spending will stimulate consumer spending. I suppose, as government spending goes, cleaning up our environment is preferred over bombing brown people. I might be facetious concerning oil spills, but the truth is, no matter how hard I might try, I am leaving a trail of residual pollution too, perhaps just not as much as the average Merikan. So in some sense, as I consume little and pollute less, I am a twin blow to our economy.