I have spent many minutes of valuable brain energy working out how to solve America's economic problems, and now would like to share them with you.
Just follow these 23 steps to recover the dollar.
1) Adopt the Euro. At 1.6 dollars to the Euro, that's point-six extra dollars we have to print. And paper costs money. Besides, the one economy this hurts most is Europe because they can't sell their extra stuff. They're stuck with buying our stuff because it's cheaper. Which hurts us, because everybody knows that the person with the most stuff wins.
2) Invade Iran. Okay. The other two invasions aren't working. By invading Iran, we can supplement our loss of Iraqi oil by expropriating Iranian oil. The terrorists will be too busy blowing up Iraqi oil refineries to notice.
3) Make Afghanistan the 51st state. That Karzai thing just isn't working. All the people there have this weird religion where they have to pray five times a day, can't eat bacon or drink whisky, they have to wear scratchy beards, cover their women with table sheets and can't watch porn. And we wonder why they're so cranky they blow themselves up. If I had to live like that, I'd explode, too. By making Afghanistan the 51st state, we can sell them "Playboys." Problem solved.
4) Nuke the Arctic. Then point giant air conditioners at it. When the Arctic refreezes into giant blocks of ice, it will reverse global warming.
5) Put Saddam Hussein back in charge of Iraq. He's the only one who's kept the place from turning into Dodge City. Huh? What's that? I'll read your e-mail as soon as I finish this.
6) Replace the national Eagle symbol with a fish. As the Eagle is endangered, we can't kill and eat Eagles any more. And we will always have enough fish.
7) Decide the next presidential election by making Hillary, Barack and McCain play paper-scissors-rock. We'll save a whole lot of money that way.
8) Better yet, make Harrison Ford president. He was kickin' in "Air Force One." If Harrison Ford becomes president the first thing he'd do is go to Berserkistan or somewhere to find Osama bin Ladin and kick his butt.
9) Stop turning our corn into bio-fuel. We keep telling Africa that help is on the way while we Marie Antoinettes drive our big fat SUVs a half mile to Piggly-Wiggly's to buy Sugar Sodas and Pork Rinds. Use rice for bio-fuel. There's plenty of that.
10) Genetically engineer big giant hamsters. Then build big giant treadmills in the middle of the desert and attach them to some sort of electricity making device. This will solve the power crisis.
And feed them the corn we saved by turning rice into car gas.
11) Convert our nuclear power plants into big giant hamster pens when the hamsters acquire a taste for human flesh and rampage out of control.
12) Build big giant robots to control the hamsters. Outsource the project to the Japanese. Building big giant robots will take the Japanese less time to do than it would for them to arrange a press conference to show them.
13) Eliminate the penny and nickel by turning the penny into a virtual penny worth five cents, and by turning the nickel into a virtual nickel worth ten cents. That way, when you accumulate 2 virtual pennies, you can log onto Second Life and trade them for a virtual dime which your Avatar can use to buy virtual stuff on virtual e-bay.
14) Put Dennis Rodman in charge of the Mexican-American border. When the Mexican men see Dennis beating up on their women, they will be scared and run away.
15) Ban alcohol again. This will put our under-employed ex-prisoners in the criminal underworld a way to make extra money. And people will have to start drinking in bars again, instead of at home alone by themselves in the dark.
16) Increase drunk-driving fines 200 percent. That way the police can pay for their own stuff like guns and knives and bullets and big giant Killer robots. Besides, have you noticed how nobody ever gets arrested after a night of heavy drinking at Starbucks?
17) Sell Alaska back to Russia. It's cold. It's dark half the time. And it's full of endangered animals for some reason. And it's right next door. They could build a bridge to it or something.
18) Turn the US Treasury over to a bunch of Hollywood producers. They're hardworking, and honest, and if they can make money from crap like "Failure to Launch," they can make money on anything.
19) Barbara Walters finally came clean with that affair she had with a US senator on "Oprah." Hey, she was hot in the 60s. Even as a teenage boy I had many fine moments thinking about her in the nude. All I want to know, Babs, is about that hot weekend with Castro. This has nothing to do with the economy, but, well, I'm needy.
20) Turn the Public Schools in the Midwest over to India. They speak better English. (It's Versailles, Kentucky, not "Vurssuls." And don't get me started, Pierre, South Dakota!)
21) Use the space alien technology they got locked up in Area 51 to blast all our garbage to the moon, only make sure they put it on the other side so we won't have to look at it.
22) Send the space alien "Zombie-anator" to Venezuela's President Hugo "Insane-in-the-Membrane" Chavez. Man, is he gonna be surprised what that thing does! (I never liked him anyway.)
23) Sell the rest of our space alien stuff to China. They're good at reverse-engineering all the other stuff we got. Maybe they can figure out that freak show we got in the desert.
Well, there you have it. If American implements most of these ideas (except maybe a couple), then we will be able to reduce our Federal Deficit to maybe a couple of trillion.
Oh, yeah. Then we'll be able to use Area 51 to store our inevitable overstock of giant killer robots.
What? Saddam Hussein is dead?! I can't work like this!