During the Public Comment portion of tonight’s meeting of the Buncombe County Commissioners, a steel workers’ union member asked the board to use its powers to encourage people to buy American with their stimulus. (The English is tortured, but that’s the way people talk these days.) The worker reminded the commissioners that stimulus was supposed to strengthen the national economy by creating jobs.

Does this apply to banks? To dumb down for those who still don’t get it, stimulus funds are coming from the federal deficit, a quarter of which is owed to foreign lenders with interest. In other words, with no trickle-down double-counting, stimuli net a financial loss for the United States.

The federal deficit is now over $11 trillion.