Back to the Future 1929

1. In America a mother worried
2. where she will get food, in the Great Depression

This hundred million marks would buy one thousand houses in 1918 and maybe a cup of coffee in 1923. The same sort of thing could happen in America. You better believe it! http://blip.tv/file/471283 Photos of the Depression.

• Inflation could cut its value to one loaf of bread. It has happened before to the German Mark in the 1920's.

On Tuesday, the U.S. national debt topped $9 trillion for the first time in history, according to the U.S. Treasury Department's daily accounting of the national debt. Nine trillion dollars! The number is so staggeringly high that it exceeds our ability to comprehend it in monetary units.

Million, billion, trillion – in financial terms, for most of us, it means a lot of money, really a lot of money, but that is about as specific a picture as most ordinary people can grasp.

Let's put all these “illions” into perspective. A million seconds is roughly 12 days, whereas a billion seconds is approximately 32 years.

We understand dollars. And we understand time. So it would take 12 days to pay back a million dollars at a dollar a second. But if you started right now, you'd pay back a BILLION dollars, at a dollar a second, in the year 2039.

A trillion seconds is roughly 32 thousand years. At a dollar a second, you'd pay back a TRILLION dollars in the year 34007.

The U.S. debt stands at $9 trillion. If my calculator is working, then at a dollar a second, the U.S. could be debt- free in the year 290007.

The point of that little exercise was two-fold. The first was to clarify the sheer volume of the debt; the second was to demonstrate the possibility that anybody in government really believes we can ever pay it off.

Each U.S. citizen's share of the national debt works out, according to the National Debt clock, to $29,947.50. That means the average American family of five owes, collectively, $149,737.50.

It also means that unless the average American family of five has a net worth of at least $149,737,50 in assets excluding liabilities (they don't), America is already bankrupt. http://www.dollarcollapse.com/

The way the U.S. Administration is rapidly printing currency to pay the $ 700,000,000,000 (actually closer to one+ trillion) a million dollars might buy you a meal in the future. Unemployed march in the Great Depression. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/rails/timeline/index.html

1923 Weimar Republic inflation: A German woman feeding a stove with Papiermarks, which burned longer than the amount of firewood people could buy with them.In America banks failed (below)

Run on Banks. and people lost their money.