Credit Score: US 254 - Greece 0

Can a certain great economic power lose its A+ debt rating due to some over-spending?  "Absolutely not... That will never happen to this country"

It so happens that Tim Geithner, GSA (Goldman Sachs Alum) said that to ABC News.  He seemed almost incredulous that anyone would suggest that a $1.6 Trillion budget deficit would worry anyone, especially the smart money, worry about getting paid back.

Heard that before?  That's what the Romans said, except it was in Latin and the Greeks, back when Alexander the Great was learning Egyptian.  Probably the Russians and the Incas.  Definitely Spain.

Spain?  Yes, a while back Spain had accumulated more gold than the Incas, having stolen every movable object in Peru.  Spain even got a pope to divide half the western hemisphere between themselves and that rival great power, Portugal.

Portugal, honest.  Which is why Brazil speaks Portuguese instead of the Spanish we speak in California.  Yes, it was a long time ago, 1494 or something.

Now, more than 600 years later, once-big-shots Spain and Portugal are in big economic trouble because of deficits. But Greece is the headliner.  It pulled a surprise deficit-rabbit out of Zorba's cap and the mighty Euro is still trembling.  If countries had a credit score, Greece's would be zero.  Or less.

Everyone loves Greece.  It gave us Aristotle, the brilliant philosopher who taught Alexander Egyptian; Plato, the idiot who invented platonic relationships; Euclid, who made up middle-school geometry; the Boston Marathon; "300 Spartans" and that really hot Queen Gorgo; Helen of Troy and don't let the Troy fool you, that ship-launching face was from the same Sparta as the movie; and Retsina, a wine so awful the Greeks juice it with pine tar to make it taste better.

The Greeks also gave us the Philistines (and probably the all of the Palestinian crises) and the name "Jesus" (except for the "j" which even Jesus couldn't say because it didn't exist.  Not until after Spain and Portugal ate up Latin America, so named because the pope couldn't use either Spanish- or Portuguese-America without someone's hissy fit).

Greece always gets cut extra slack because it kept beating back the Persians and their power-hungry leaders (oh, how times have changed).  Greece created the foundation of Western Culture, which did not, in fact, begin with Ronald Reagan.  The European Union has tried to be patient with Greece, but the surprise deficit finished that.

Greece will have to cut spending, raise taxes and run 26.2 odd miles or it's credit score will hit Zero faster than the pop-up window warning you of just that. And all Greek credit cards will all carry the same 48% interest you and I are paying. The Euro is taking a hit, especially against the US Dollar

Tim Geithner is probably emailing overseas investors like crazy. "Won't say I told you so, but do you still want to buy bonds in Euros?  Greece has some nice ones.  Spain and Portugal, too.  Oh, and we are still selling bonds in Absolutely-Not Dollars.  Call me."

The smart money (that would be the Chinese) is looking for bonds in Nepal.

Bank Bonus Scandal. One Solution.

Here we go again.  Bank Bonus Scandal Season.

Banks are paying out pretty much every spare dollar to employees.  Each one, you see, has to pay tons of freshly printed money to keep all the talented stars that guided it so well to the bottom of, well, a well, that it had to look up for a bucket of Government aid.  Which aid was attached to a thick rope needed because of that bank's largeass (which is Latin or Greek for... it's obvious).

The Feds forced the banks to shed a few hundred million pounds (converted into dollars, it's more) of largeass so that the Treasury could crank the banks up out of the metaphorical well.

Some banks were so crazed to regain their largeass that they actually paid the Feds back.  All the better to restore the bonus practices that rewarded top producers of catastrophes, less these valuable types flee to... another well, I guess.  Citi, which never sleeps, paid employees so much it ended up with a loss.

How do those bonuses compare to investor dividends, kind of the reason to buy a bank stock in the first place?  Sorry, but if you see dividends out there, you might want to see a shrink.

All the Bernanke's, Geithner's and Dodd's in the world can't solve this bonus dilemma.  Surprise.  But I can.

Pay all bank bonuses in Nano-Dollars.

Nano-Dollars were invented by Quants, the Geeks of Quantum theory investing fame, even before Venezuela double devalued its Bolivar.  Nano-dollars are the way I make... will make money off of this blog (although the offer to sell it out to non-bank corporations for free speech purposes remains open.  I doubt banks will be bidding after today).  If you click (please, one lousy click) on the Google Adsense or Amazon ads on this page, I get, like, a zillion nano-dollars.  A nano-dollar is too small to see.  You can't even ponder how many get sucked into a black hole (a gravitational well, you know, like your VISA). 

The nano-dollar is something around 10 to the minus nine dollars.  It is a lot smaller than a quantum dot and harder to see than that tenth of a cent in interest you are getting for your regular dollar presently stowed safely in a money market account (instead of that Pacific Rim ETF sitting at the bottom of another well I don't want to think about).  Nano-dollars won't disappear into your couch, assuming your furniture was not repossessed along with your house, because they were never in you pocket in the first place.

The key is that a bank could give billions of nano-dollars to its CEO, CFO, CTO and CFSO (the newly created Chief Free Speech Officer) and still have plenty of regular dollars to give shareholders, a class that includes your mutual funds, by the way.  Of course, they can't pay their Quants with nano-dollars because Quants know how unmeasurable nano-bucks are without an electron microscope. 

Fortunately, all the derivative and hedge fund hawkers don't understand physics, negative exponentials or long division any better than mortgages.  They will hurry home all puffed up and wave their nano-dollar checks at their spouses.  "Look, Darling.  I got a bonus for 2009 of Ten Billion Nano-Dollars!  I'll bet that asshole Jones, next door, will positively sh_t himself!"

You know that asshole Jones, who probably works for a bank, too, will.  Positively.  And next year, he'll demand a of billions in nano-dollars.  Soon, Warren Buffet will be pricing his stock in nano-dollars so you can buy some Berkshire Hathaway shares without hitting the lottery or going to Heaven.

It sounds very workable to me.  In the meantime, I'm about to have several zillion more nano-bucks to invest in nano-slots in Pittsburgh's new Casino, all thanks to a single click on that Google ad on the right column of this blog.

You promised.