Playing “Sovereign Monopoly”
One sign that a blog post has “legs” is how many people read it: at the moment, “Clinton’s Folly” is getting about a hundred hits an hour, from all over the world (thanks, RealClearMarkets.com!)
Another sign is that the piece proves to be “fertile” when it comes to generating off-shoot ideas.
“Clinton’s Folly” does well on that score, too.
While the idea is fanciful, it has more than a little historical precedent: selling — and buying — (especially large) tracts of land is one accepted way for indebted nations to settle their accounts with creditor nations.
Here are a couple, other fringe benefits and side angles:
–It removes the possibility of there being a “President Sarah Palin” in 2012 (only U.S. citizens are eligible to run);
–Wall Street can be counted on to throw its support behind the idea (who else did you think was going to handle the underwriting? And wait till you see their fee!!).
–Sometimes nations cede territory without getting paid a dime: even though this country bought large swaths of the Southwest — including Southern California — from Spain, which culture (and population) is ascendant more than 150 years later, Hispanic or Anglo? How about in 2050?
