Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Is Anyone Else Concerned About Owing $9.5 Trillion?

I don't usually write about client stuff, but I must admit that I'm a little miffed. I'm not sure how we've let this happen, but the U.S. government now owes a LOT of money. About $9.5 trillion dollars. And there are TENS of trillions more that we owe people in promised Medicare, Social Security, etc.

There's a new movie coming out on Thursday, called I.O.U.S.A. It's a documentary, being compared to SuperSize Me for the financial world. Here's the trailer.



I'll keep it short, but it doesn't matter if you're a Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, Green Party, Apathy Party, Ignorance Party, whatever. At some point, we've got to pay this money back, and we've got to stop spending money we don't have.

This Thursday, August 21, in theatres nationwide, I.O.U.S.A is going to be shown, followed by (and this is pretty cool), a live panel, featuring Warren Buffett (the world's richest man), Pete Peterson (chairman of the Blackstone Group) and Dave Walker (who resigned as U.S. Comptroller General because of the debt).

Yes, the people putting on this show are an Ignite Social Media client, but what really matters in this case is that people stop asking candidates to spend more, and start asking candidates to figure out how to stop spending money we don't have. Ok, I'm going to get off my soapbox now, but I'm genuinely concerned about this and hope that after this movie, others will be too. (If you are, you can grab the trailer, podcasts or badges on the I.O.U.S.A MySpace page.)