The reason the old adage, neither a lender nor a borrower be is essentially quite true is because of exactly the sort of lock up we're seeing take place on a global scale right now.

Debt levels at every level have grown so high during the debt-driven boom, (two in a row actually), now that there is a re-adjustment below the reality in jobs and universally, revenues, as the defaults grow, (first consumer, sub primes, then alt-A, then corporate defaults, followed by municipal defaults ...), and as layoffs and canceled orders take their toll, we have the same debt-lockup predicament at every level where revenue sources that pay less cannot even begin to bridge the gap to fiscal solvency, any possible illusion of it, or to the entrepreneurial/capitalist incentive/motive necessary to make our system work beyond that goal of catching up on the fall-behind debt-lag of the accumulating defaulted debt.

Debt is like digging your own grave. When anyone falls behind on their debt, it is just as if someone is shoveling dirt on top of them as they lay immobilized at the bottom of that grave. If they cannot get out from underneath the dirt that is burying them today, by tommorrow, they'll start to putrify.

And pretty soon the whole world is starting to stink.

Look at the faces of those men you see standing in the food lines in the photos of the Great Depression, and you'll see what I mean. Every single one of those guys in those food lines had debt that was gnawing away at their psyche, burying them ever deeper. And a lot of that debt back then was indebtedness to friends and family.

And today, EVERYONE is shoveling dirt on everyone else in an effort to uncover themselves from the dirt that is being shoveled upon them, faster and faster in a escalatingly desperate attempt not to be buried alive.

Too late!

The govermental approach has been a much more innovative implementation of the same approach that exacerbated the 1929 crash. They've decided to try and un-bury the banks.

Oh! Good F-ing idea!

The loads to fire off that cannon are so large, letting the cork fly the first time threatens to bury us all including the otherwise solvent. And letting the cork fly a second time, and third will quickly ruin the resolve anyone might have to try and find any solution short of letting God sort the matter out.

Hawawuyah! Gimmie some a dat ode time weewigion!

Everyone is looking for somewhere to put their money, something to invest in. Might I suggest moonshining? I digress though.

Despite Hank Paulson's close resemblance to Mr. Clean, I don't think the guy could unplug either one of his own snot holes without sitting in the sauna for a week or two. So forget about the Treasury Secretary.

FORGET ABOUT THE TREASURY SECRETARY!!!

And Ben Bernanke should have been raising interest rates since way back in last year, and NOW, everyone seems to think this guy is somehow credible? Give some EXTRA credit to everyone who dropped out of his university course at Stanford University.

In fact, give them the genius award.

Wait! Instead of that, the next time you see someone applying for a job with a degree from Stanford, show them the door immediately. Tell them they simply must be brain-dead to have actually paid for what Stanford calls an education.

Which provides me with a segue into one thing we can do to resolve the crisis plaguing and educating the country at the same time.

Instead of giving money to banks that are so far gone into the red column they shouldn't be allowed to get back into the black, why not absolve the educational debt of everyone in the country? This surely would be a pittance in the insane scheme of things recently, and I expect we'll get a bigger bang for the buck too.

For this initiative would at least put one segment of the population into the black. And it's a segment of the population that has the most potential to make something of themselves and the country over the next little while too.

Who knows? This younger generation might just have the sense to pick up the pieces and start over again.

That's what eventually brought the country out of the 1929 Depression, though it is commonly attributed to the war by the rabid mongers of war. It ain't true though.

A younger population eventually became dominant and built a new economy around their own ethic, interests and ability after The Great Depression, and you can re-write the economics books to reflect what really happened.

And we shouldn't forget, it is guys like Bernanke and Paulson who have unequivocallly demonstrated, this older set just doesn't have what it takes anymore.