The national debt is currently 13.7 trillion dollars (you can round up to 14 if you ignore that piddling little GDP of Denmark). The American people could work together, movie-montage style, collecting every single physical dollar and cent in existence and they'd still have to go to Vegas*, hit the roulette tables, lay it all on black and win. Four times in a row. That's how you know you're doomed - most people crushed by debt imagine cleaning up at the casino OR having all the money in the world. When you need both, you're buggered.

On Thursday, Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s minority Conservative government announced in its budget that its paper currency will go plastic by late next year, according to the Globe and Mail. The plastic notes will also contain high security features to ensure that the $10 and $20 bills last longer.

Congressman Ron Paul has continued to run his Congressional office in a frugal manner, and was able to return more than $100,000 from his allotted office budget to the Treasury this year, an increase over the $90,000 returned last year.

Iceland is aiming to become a global haven for investigative journalism, with the country's parliament expected to vote through legislation protecting sources, guaranteeing freedom of speech and ending libel tourism.

Supporters liken the initiative to the offshore financial havens that corporations use to avoid government tax regimes – only for free speech.

Note: This article was written by Nicholas von Hoffman for The Nation. This man has a lot of courage: he points out that inflation hurts the poor the most. The rich can purchase hedges against inflation; the poor have no such protection. Even if inflation reduces unemployment, if salaries are worthless the poor are no better off. It is the worst-off of society that suffer from bad economic policy, as usual. He also implies that the Fed was counting on a looming crisis to take care of inflation for them. If this is true, then the Fed may really be as evil as many say it is.

This comes from Business Insider, and it provides a natural follow-up to my post from last week as to why public-sector workers are more optimistic than private-sector employees. For the first time, the US has more government workers than goods-producing workers:

"Bad as the deficit was under Mr Bush, it will more than triple this year, from $459 billion in 2008 to $1.845 trillion
[...]
Meanwhile, the long-term fiscal outlook grows ever grimmer. Americans are getting older. The government’s unfunded obligations to give them pensions and health care are equivalent to a debt of $483,000 for every household."