Funyuns and Gummy Sharks!

Even if you're like me, and the idea of watching the news is similar to getting a root canal from a gerbal, you still hear a LOT about how the U.S. is going into more and more debt. And if you're like any normal person, you might say to yourself, "um, the U.S. going into debt? with who? and how? Ah, who cares - let's get Cafe Rio for dinner" I know I've said that a few times myself.

I'll make this one quick - because it's going to be painful. Promise.

First - think of the U.S. as a person, not a country.
Second - think of every country in the whole wide world as a person, not a 'country'
Third - put yourself in one of those person's shoes. What do YOU do when you want a specific resource and you don't have any resources to trade? You borrow a resource to trade! (personally, I like to borrow from family. It makes Sunday dinner much more interesting and tends to liven up the conversation)

Now, put the U.S. into that scenario. 'We' want stuff. And we want it now. Free food, free health care, free everything!!!! Unfortunately, we don't have anything to trade for it, so we decide to borrow stuff to trade for the stuff we want. (interesting how that works) This "stuff" is referred to as "money" but it can be anything of value (but most people like money, because they're more confident that the next guy in line will think that it's valuable as well, aka, it will be easier to trade for other stuff. Don't think about it too hard, remember, you have Cafe Rio waiting at 7:42 on the dot)

In our case, we like to borrow from China, Japan, and a bunch of other people, er, I mean, countries around the world. Technically they could come back and say "hey, gimme all your lunch money!" but if they did then we'd have to say "sorry, I spent it all on funyuns and gummy sharks" and then there'd be fighting and stuff. Countries are usually pretty good about paying other countries back, unless of course they borrow from the U.S. - then they just wait it out until we say "OK, keep it, we'll borrow more money and pay off your debt."

So, there you have it. "We" aka the U.S. like to have our stuff, and let other people just give it to us. Next time I'll talk about printing money, er, I mean, pulling our own resources out of the air, and we'll go into exchange rates. Now, depressurize and go get your dinner. It's already 7:43.