Spencer Solves the US Debt Problem: Fire Sale of Guam

My dad went to business school, or so he tells me whenever I suggest he changes the asset allocation in my 529 plan. According to my Dad, in business, if you're short on cash, you sell any asset that's not core so you can save the company. My mom - a doctor by training who excels at diagnosing any cough or sneeze from me as a potentially fatal illness - would liken this to cutting off a gangrenous toe so it doesn't spread...but that's gross.

So the US is short on cash - well, we get plenty of cash from China...but apparently their funding agreement dictates that starting in 2010 Tim Geithner has to start delivering hamburgers to Beijing on a bike.

Did you know that we own Guam?

How much do you think Guam is worth? In my free time...between visits to the playground and poops...I've done a few calculations.

In San Francisco's tony Pacific Heights neighborhood, houses are going for roughly $1,000 per square foot. I'm rounding here - I don't want to get 50 emails from recent buyers in Pac Heights bragging about how they got their place for only $950/sqft.

The total size of Guam is 209 square miles, which is about 5.8 billion square feet. At Pac Heights values, that's a total value of $5.8 Trillion! And I could make a good argument that all that beach front property should go for way over $1K/sqft.

Once you take out the 6% real estate commission (those damn real estate agents!), that would leave $5.5T to pay down the national debt.

Now sadly, that only takes out about half of our debt....so Puerto Rico, watch out. You may be next.


OK enough about economics - let's get to the important stuff: me!

I'm currently in intense training for the 2010 mini-x-games (which will be broadcast on ESPNBaby). Today I set up a little stunt set in my living room - I'm not kidding, I set this up myself (note from Spencer's Dad: he's not kidding...). Check out my mad couch diving skills!





Don't worry, I won't get too crazy with this. Our windows are baby proofed. I already tried.


I found some pictures on our little PowerShot from when my grandma Joyce came to visit a month or so ago - and realized there were a few cute ones on there! Here's one of my mom, grandma and me at the playground.







And a few months ago my parents went with some friends up to wine country for the weekend...and I totally forgot about this shot at a winery where I was playing with my dad's sunglasses!






This was the same place where I saw a cat playing around with a partially-disemboweled mouse that was clearly peeping for its life...not for the squeamish. Yes, the cat eventually ate it. Just like in National Geographic!







OK, OK, just a few more ludicrously cute shots of....me!









Love,
Spencer

Am I past my prime?

You know what everyone says about parents, children and photography: parents take more pictures in the first month than they do in the rest of the kid's life total. And, despite the fact that Google had to build 3 new cloud computing centers just to house my parent's pictures of my birth (yuck!), I didn't believe that my parents would fall into this trap. How wrong could I have been!

Notice that I haven't posted a blog entry in over 3 weeks. I can tell you honestly, it's not for a lack of interesting political events that require - nay, that beg for - my commentary. Rush Limbaugh AND Dick Cheney dominating the conservative airwaves? Shouldn't they be flogging diet pills on late night infomercials instead? Arlen Specter leaving the republican party because the card-carrying republicans from the Alabama section of Pennsylvania wouldn't vote for him in the primaries? (Have you ever been to Alavania? It's scary. Deliverance scary. I would have used the contraction Pennsylbama, but that sounds too much like the part of PA that votes for Obama. Makes me wonder whether the Obama campaign team could have won Alabama by calling it AlObama? Although that does sound a bit middle eastern, so maybe it's better he didn't hire me as his AlObama campaign manager. Also, I'm not yet 2. But I digress...)

Anyhoo, it's sad to see how few pictures there are of me as of late. I had my dad download pictures from the last month, and there were fewer than 30 of them....fewer than 30! With this shana punum, you can't even get 1 per day?



OK, so it's a shana punum, but a very dirty shana punum.

On that point, how many bananas do you think I can stuff into my mouth?



What I have noticed is that my parents are taking more videos of me. I think this is a fair trade, only because I am even more cute in real life. Here I am doing a bit of a magic trick...escaping from my high chair. I have NO idea how I got stuck in that position, but I still beam with pride at my escape technique!




Have I ever mentioned how much I like being tickled?





So anyway, there were enough pictures for me to throw a few uber-cute ones at you.

I'm learning to use the ipod. I can actually change songs now to find my favorites!






OK, what's with this picture? Oh yeah, I was trying to do a front flip, and failing miserably.





And to finish off, three ludicrously cute pictures in succession....like a 3 gun salute to Spencer!









Happy Memorial Day to all the veterans in my family! Oh wait, we're Jewish. Enjoy the day off work then!

Love,
Spencer