Together we can.

Each day – barring significant upheavals, natural catastrophes, pestilence, or war – the number of people on Earth grows slightly, and the natural resources are slightly depleted. Populations grow. Natural resources shrink. We use numbers as symbols to express these and as a means to understand reality and to monitor changes and exchanges. Each country has its own economy reflective of its peoples, its culture, its physical assets, and its relationship with other countries. Combined we have the world economy, hurting at the moment. Hurting because of the pandemic, but also because of the enormous global debt that has resulted from the lives of creative, destructive, and industrious humans blessed by innovative financial instruments, but bridled by nonviable methodologies.  

The World Debt is accepted to be above 250 trillion dollars.  And growing.  U.S. debt is over 27 trillion dollars.  But what does this mean?   

To put it into perspective, let us consider a million, billion, and trillion:

A million seconds equals 11.5 days. 

A billion seconds equals 32 years. 

A trillion seconds equals 32,000 years, 31,688 years to be exact.  

It is estimated that if things do not change the United States of America will only be able to pay the interest on its debt in 8 years. This is unacceptable and unsustainable.  If the world's richest nation is in such dire financial straits, what of the rest of the world?  Many other countries are in similar serious fiscal peril.  None are immune. All are affected.  In America the Republicans worry about funding saying the budget must be balanced.  It is a futile attempt, an ignorant attempt.  But the Republicans are not alone. The Republicans and Democrats are like two NFL teams.  They play the same game.  Ignorance is a wet blanket on progress.  

Ignorance causes governments to hesitate spending when spending is absolutely imperative.  The world is at war with the pandemic. To win, we must finance people staying at home, businesses in hibernation, and governments at the national, state, and local levels.  We must be free to have a paid full lock-down NOW that vaccines are ready with $2,000 per month to all now eligible for payments.  With the advent of vaccinations this should take 3-6 months, with constant appraisal - if we vaccinate the whole world, which for our own safety we must.  This is costly.  We must fully fund it. Global debt realignment allows this and more. 

Countries grapple with the thoughts of lock-downs or partial lock-downs. But the specter of the debt disables everyone from taking the needed action.  We must be bold and think big as the new Secretary of the Treasury Yellin has stated.  This can be a slam dunk, if the present administration will think big and bold.  

A doctor on President Joe Biden’s coronavirus task force floated the idea of shutting down businesses in a lockdown that could last four to six weeks to control the spread of the pandemic. 

Dr. Michael Osterholm, who currently serves as director of the Center of Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, said:

“We could pay for a package right now to cover all of the lost wages for individual workers, for losses to small companies, to medium-sized companies or city, state, county governments. We could do all of that.” 

Of course we can:   

Fed Chairman Jerome Powell has said:

"As a central bank, we have the ability to create money digitally. And we do that by buying Treasury Bills or bonds for other government guaranteed securities. And that actually increases the money supply.  We also print actual currency and we distribute that through the Federal Reserve banks." 

So, even though we can do it, we don’t.  We squabbled about $600 per week, Congress takes a break and lets the stimulus package expire, evictions loom, states and municipalities contemplate layoffs in essential services.     

We need a global plan to fight the pandemic and we need to be free to fund such a plan fully.  We need to reboot the world economy and fund a worldwide lock-down wherever needed.  Pay people to stay home.  Pay them well.