That's not terribly surprising. The dollar is in such fluctuation right now that everything is all whacked. Give it a year or so and it will settle down. By then, we should be exporting more goods because the dollar is bound to settle rather low when it does stabilize.

BTW, that German national debt is almost identical to American national debt. 

Thanks! And yes, I am loving that show... one more episode to go! :) 

The unfunded liabilities in Social Security (government pension plans, medicare/health care, etc.) can not be blamed on one leader in any country; Bush may have done things that made the situation worse but for nearly half a century most western countries have been increasing spending, and adding social programs without any plan for paying for them.

I was a bit down on the show after episode 3 but once it got into his vice presidency, it picked right back up.

Who doesn't love Thomas Jefferson? His character is bloody brilliant in that show.

This is a good point.  $600 isn't a lot of money -- not enough to affect the spending habits of most.  It will just go into the pot of monies along with my tax returns. 

 You are correct. Its all credit card payments for me. Stimulus package phails.

Sorry for being off topic: 

I've been enjoying the show a good bit (on Canada's equivalent to HBO). Too bad that it doesn't have the (full frontal) nudity of other HBO series (mostly Rome). Of course, who wants to see Paul Giamatti nude especially when there is no hot chicks in the whole series.

I didn't realize this week's will be the last episode. 

I'm suprised no one has mentioned those fucked up commercials where you can hire a lawyer to settle your tax debt for virtually nothing. That there is just fucked up. Saw one last week were someone claimed they owed $480,000 in taxes and payed $800. If the tax system is that fucked up it is no wonder we are $9.5 trillion in debt.

Sixty $10 hookers!

Six $100 hookers!

I can't decide wich is better, so I guess I'll just build my PS3 library up. I get $900, by the way.

They can also turn your debt into wealth with just the money you make right now.  It doesn't matter how much debt you have!

You can sometimes settle debts for less than you owe because it is better for your creditors to get 60% of your debt from you, then it is for them to sell your debt at 40% of its value. 

This doesn't mean it's not bad for you to do so, and it doesn't mean you can rack up a bunch of debt and get away from it.  Consider it like declaring bankrupcy-lite -- you work with your creditors to restructure your debt rather than them selling your debt at a fraction of its value to a collections agency, who then pursues getting the money back from you.   It will crush you credit rating, and potentially cost you thousands of dollars in future car/house loans (since you'll get less favorable rates).

And, of course, there's the whole subprime mortgage fiasco where banks are working on restructuring loans so that people can afford them, even if the bank/investors take a loss doing so.  Banks can't simply take houses and dump them on the market at 90% of their value and see them get snapped up, because no one is buying houses right now.  So it is in their best interests to restructure loans for people to afford, take no profit or perhaps even a smaller loss then they'd otherwise take trying to foreclose then sell the house.

If I had to spend my stimulus money on something instead of just putting it into short-term savings, I'd probably buy a cheap camera lens.  Then again, I don't currently want any cheap camera lenses.