Printing a Trillion?

Ok so let's say that my next door neighbor has a bag of apples and 3 bags of stinky garbage in front of his house. I decide it's a good idea to go to my photocopier and printer a bunch of green triangles. I give these papers to my neighbor and he gives me the bags of garbage to move directly in front of my house.

Have I conducted good business here? Am I better off? Why didn't I at least get the apples?

I know I'm being facetious here, but I'd love to hear what I'm missing. Because I am an Obama fan and I'm aware that he didn't create this mess. But I don't see how this helps.

ATSers will certainly have opinions on both sides - I'd love to hear the polite arguments


www.marketwatch.com...

Try and wrap you head around this one, and if you didn't buy the bags of garbage with your green triangles, you wouldn't be able to buy t he apples later. Because the triangles wouldn't even be worth enough to buy the original bags of garbage.

reply to post by dashen


I can see why my neighbor would be fine with giving me the garbage for the green rectangles. He's better off, not richer, but it smells nicer at his place now.

Of course the wind blows and we both smell the garbage since its still near both of us - it hasn't gone anywhere. It's just moved around (like a shell game).

And of course if you say, well the green rectangles aren't worth anything, so they're not really buying the garbage.

Then you could respond... but the garbage isn't worth anything...

and then you look at the credit default swaps and sigh.