Geithner boosts NASA funds to probe cosmos for bail-out cash
By: Scott Ott
Examiner Columnist
March 13, 2009
News fairly unbalanced. We report. You decipher
Just a day after U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner proposed increasing U.S. contributions to his former employer, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) by $100 billion, he offered another plan to increase funding for NASA space probes to search for life, and sources of bail-out cash, on other planets.
"Let's face it," said an unnamed Treasury source, "Earth is too big to fail. We can all boost funding to the IMF, but at some point that's like scooping water out of a bucket to fill the same bucket. The fundamental problem is that Earth is a closed economic system. To rescue the global economy we need help that's literally out of this world."
Under the terms of the so-called Geithner Intergalactic Plan, NASA would launch dozens of unmanned space probes each month to "the four corners of the cosmos", each one bearing a kind of universal ATM device. When a probe lands on a planet, and is discovered by its inhabitants, a pictograph etched on the casing will give instructions on how to swipe a credit card, insert local money for automatic conversion into Euros, or simply click a PayPal button.
"Not only do Geithner and President Barack Obama believe that there must be life on other planets," said the anonymous source, "but if you do the math on how much government spending it will take to rescue the global economy, you quickly realize that the only solution lies in the hope that among the billions and billions of galaxies at least a few thousand inhabited planets have developed monetary systems that don't rely on credit to fund supply to feed demand that depends on credit."
Wall Street responded to the latest Obama administration plan by shorting so-called 'future futures' on fears that the U.S. government would, in the words of one trader, "louse up every other economy in the universe as well."
More from Scott Ott
- Scott Ott's Examiner Scrappleface: Obama hails phony stimulus jobs as faux GDP boon
- Scott Ott's Examiner Scrappleface: Obama: Palin book shows need for memoir public option
- Scott Ott's Examiner Scrappleface: Obama says jobs summit won't hike deficit
- Scott Ott's Examiner Scrappleface: Journalists raise funds for troubled Fort Hood shooter
- Scott Ott's Examiner Scrappleface: Obama plans joint library with Bush
Follow The Examiner
