A modest proposal on how to lick deflation one family at a time

Dear President-elect Obama,

By the time you read this you will be preparing to be sworn in. That’s good, since what I’m about to propose will require the full authority of your office to ensure proper implementation and to reap maximum benefit for our troubled economy. In these difficult times, you and your foreign counterparts have been deluged with requests to bail out the banking industry, the securities industry, the insurance industry, the auto industry and just about every other beleaguered business on the planet. They all deserve your serious consideration, and some will no doubt have received it by the April crisis meeting of the G-20.

What I am suggesting is a far less expensive, vastly more cost-effective program for breathing life into the global economy.

I want a bailout for me.

I know what you’re thinking: here’s another greed-is-good, special-interest pleader who should have seen this storm coming and pushed for stricter regulation of credit default swaps. The truth is, Mr President, that I – like much of corporate America – did participate heedlessly in the Alan Greenspan-approved asset bubble of the past few years. I cheered the rise in value of my home, my wife’s collection of yard-sale gewgaws and my sons’ baseball cards. We even put on quite a few kilos ourselves, confident – as were countless other pillars of the economy – that this would make us too big to fail. It’s called the American Dream, Mr President, and you can’t really blame us for pursuing it. You and every other politician in the land said as much during the election campaign.

It’s not as if I haven’t been hustling to adapt to the new fiscal environment. I have kept producer prices in check, charging less for my writings than I did last year. (Editors have complied by giving me fewer assignments and paying me less, even without my having to ask.) I have cancelled executive bonuses, though I’ve never gotten one. I have disposed of toxic assets, most of them bought at Wal-Mart and made with melamine in the Pearl River Delta. I have deleveraged aggressively, giving up the home equity loan and scissoring some of the credit cards. At dinner the other night, I announced a bold program of cost-containment measures: no more gym memberships, pricey restaurant meals, manicures and premium cable TV packages. My family laughed and said I’d never give up my old-movie channels. Well, of course not. That’s research. My wife threatened a job action if I even thought about axing the manicures.

In response, I announced that we would have to implement a temporary reduction-in-force. My wife made good on her job-action threat and now I sleep in the basement. The kids, meanwhile, demanded costly buyout packages. Nonetheless, I soldier on. Inspired by Alaska Governor Sarah Palin’s example, I am currently advertising the children on eBay. So far no takers, but the auction still has five days and 13 hours to go.

So here’s the deal. For a mere US$1 billion – one 25th the cost of the saving the US auto industry, one 700th the price of cleaning up the bank mess – I pledge to reflate the entire global economy through an aggressive and carefully targeted program of enhanced consumer spending. Just give them the word, and my family will rampage through the retail, travel, fashion, home entertainment, interior decoration, consumer electronics and automotive-aftermarket sectors spreading liquidity like pollen in a field of flowers.

And no economic entity in the land has a larger multiplier effect than my family. That’s because our pushy neighbors rush to one-up us every time we get a new car or snow blower or pool vacuuming thingy. And it’s because everything we buy breaks down soon after, forcing us to pump money into the service economy through outlays on repairs and those overpriced maintenance contracts. The result will be more revenues, more profits, more tax receipts and more jobs. Good jobs at decent wages, as you said during the campaign.

So for a mere $1 billion, you will get exactly what this slowdown needs: instant stimulus, efficiently delivered with minimum leakage and zero administrative costs. With your help, Mr President, my family of irrepressible profligates will lift our country – and indeed the entire world economy – out of this slough of despair. In a trillion-dollar economy, a $1 billion is small change. But it’s change you can count on.

Yours with true blue American optimism and sense of entitlement,

Don “Six-Pack/the Plumber” Morrison