Greenbacks do too, whether I like it or not. The coins and banknotes of a place are one of the few remaining touch-points of national identity left in our increasingly digital world. The monuments, symbols, and famous people splashed on them help reinforce this sense of nationhood. But as representations of the currency, they do more than that, because the currency is both the fabric of the economy and the stitching of the state. Even Marco Polo saw this in China, as the currency pulled a vast kingdom together under one umbrella of economic organization.

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In his new book, "Borrow: The American Way of Debt," Cornell professor Louis Hyman writes, in essence, a biography of American debt. He traces debt through American history: from the late 19^th century, when unpaid dues meant public ignominy, to the 1920s, when the auto industry changed the face of borrowing to the mortgage fallouts that led the Great Depression to the invention of the credit card as we now know it, all the way to the current shambles of our national economic livelihood. Along the way we meet characters like the Henry Ford, the xenophobic inventor of the Model T whose scorn for the liberal age of borrowing got the best him, and Lower East Side grocery clerk Joseph Miraglia, whose miraculous $10,000 spending spree in 1965 made history as one of America’s heftiest credit cart blunders.

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The late economist Julian Simon devoted his life to challenging that notion. "Adding more people causes problems," he acknowledged, "but people are also the means to solve these problems."  Simon’s optimism was famously vindicated in 1990, when he won a 1980 bet with Ehrlich over commodity prices.  Ingenuity had driven down prices of the very resources Ehrlich thought would be made more scarce by population growth.

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I've been reading your column for years now, and love it. I'm hoping you can use your knack for getting to the heart of a matter to help me get a fresh perspective.

Where to begin.

About three years ago I married the love of my life. My husband and I have known each other 10 years. He is the kindest, funniest, most gentle man that I know. He is also my best friend, and always will be.

While I have a master's degree (granted, it's in a pretty useless liberal arts field), he has an associate's degree from a for-profit school. There has always been a big gap in the amount of money that we earn, but it has never bothered me.

Money was something neither of us have ever felt was that important. We make enough to get by. We buy our clothes at thrift stores, we share an older car, we live in a small apartment, and we go hiking and rent old movies for our entertainment. That always felt right to us.

Four months ago, we had a beautiful baby son.

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For anybody interested in understanding the reasons behind this economic travesty, economist Jeffrey Sachs’ new book, "The Price of Civilization," is required reading. In the book, Sachs, who has focused much of his career on the developing world and eradicating global poverty, turns his eye homeward to examine the current economic crisis, tracing its roots not to the housing or financial bubbles of the '00s, but to a shift in Washington toward smaller government that began in the early '80s and has yet to be reversed.

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Sargent and Sims -- both 68 -- carried out their research independently in the 1970s and '80s, but it is highly relevant today as world governments and central banks seek ways to steer their economies away from another recession.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said the winners have developed methods for answering questions such as how economic growth and inflation are affected by a temporary increase in the interest rate or a tax cut.

"Today, the methods developed by Sargent and Sims are essential tools in macroeconomic analysis," the academy said in its citation.

Sargent is a professor at New York University, and Sims is a professor at Princeton University.

Sims told a news conference in Stockholm by telephone that he was sleeping when he got the call from the prize committee and that he had not expected to win.

"Actually, at first we were called twice and my wife couldn't find the talk button on the phone so we went back to sleep," he said.

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Sargent and Sims — both 68 — carried out their research independently in the 1970s and '80s, but it is highly relevant today as world governments and central banks seek ways to steer their economies away from another recession.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said the winners have developed methods for answering questions such as how economic growth and inflation are affected by a temporary increase in the interest rate or a tax cut.

"Today, the methods developed by Sargent and Sims are essential tools in macroeconomic analysis," the academy said in its citation.

Sargent is a professor at New York University, and Sims is a professor at Princeton University.

Sims told a news conference in Stockholm by telephone that he was sleeping when he got the call from the prize committee and that he had not expected to win.

"Actually, at first we were called twice and my wife couldn't find the talk button on the phone so we went back to sleep," he said.

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That stream of basic discoveries was produced not mainly by self-funded geniuses in backyard garages but rather by a quite unusual and focused machine for discovery and innovation — a network of institutions deliberately founded, organized, and run for the purpose of fueling scientific and technological insight. Including such legendary institutions as Bell Labs, Xerox PARC, RCA Laboratories, DARPA, and others, this network consisted of public, private, nonprofit, and for-profit efforts working in combination. Programs with clear commercial potential were supported alongside efforts at “pure science,” with the two streams resonating with and feeding off each other. This discovery and innovation machine existed because of a business and political culture that supported invention independent of immediate practical applications, as being “good for the country.”

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The Fortune piece went on to describe other properties the Chinese were snapping up. Just the previous month the China Investment Corporation, the government's sovereign wealth fund, had spent a billion dollars on a minority stake in a Kazakhstan oil and gas company. About the same time the CIC paid $850 million for part of a Hong Kong trading firm. The China Development Bank floated Brazil a $10 billion loan to underwrite exploration off the South American coast. "So far this decade," the Fortune correspondent recounted breathlessly, "China has spent an estimated $115 billion on foreign acquisitions. Now that the nation is sitting on massive foreign-exchange wealth ($2.1 trillion and counting), it is eager to find something (anything!) to invest in besides U.S. Treasury debt."

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I don't do it on a daily basis. I do it when I really, really need the money -- if I can't pay a phone bill, or if I need food or something that really, really is needed. For little things, I charge from $20 to $45. For anything, you know, past "3rd base" it's more expensive, from $100 to $150.

When I say little I mean, like a hand job. Or, say, the person is into looking, and really likes how my body looks they'll want to touch. Because I take care of my body and I like how I look, I charge a touching fee. You can touch wherever you like, but I just need the money upfront. That's roughly $20 to $30.

Within the last month I've had three, yeah, dates -- if that's what you want to call them. And all three were generous, actually. I got a good amount of money; I was quite happy. Most of my customers are men. I'll rarely get females; the majority are men. For the big thing, actually going the whole way, my prices usually run from $100- $150 to about $200. Actually, the prices vary a lot. For most women I would only charge $50 to $70 for 30 to 35 minutes. This is for oral. It never goes as far as sleeping with the women. It's always oral or touchy-feely type things.

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What do they all have in common? They're part of the "shadow economy." Also known as: the underground economy. Pick an adjective, any adjective: informal, gray, black market, under-the-table, hidden, unobserved. There are many different names for the realm where taxes aren't paid, labor laws are ignored, and cash is king. But on at least one point most observers agree: the shadow economy -- in the U.S. and abroad -- is growing. And that's not healthy. In a shadow economy, workers are often unsafe and ruthlessly exploited, while governments are deprived of crucial revenue -- yet still forced to foot the bill for essential services.

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The protestors were gathered in the square at the corner of Broadway and Liberty Street, after police blocked them from the epicenter of American finance a couple of blocks away. Many had spent the night in sleeping bags and insisted they were prepared to spend many more to make their point.

"This country is in decline," said Jack Laxson, an 18-year-old Hampshire College student who was carrying a sign that read, "Corporations Run This Country -- Let's Do Something About It."

"Even with a good education, you don't have much to look forward to. No jobs, lots of debt."

Like many of the protestors, Laxson expressed strong disappointment with President Obama, but said the Republican presidential field was even more demoralizing. "They're a social psych experiment," he said.

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As Ellen E. Schultz, an investigative reporter for the Wall Street Journal, reveals in her new book, "Retirement Heist," it wasn't the dire economy that led these companies to plunder their own employees' earnings, it was greed. Over the last decade, some of the biggest companies -- including Bank of America, IBM, General Motors, GE and even the NFL -- found loopholes, abused ambiguous regulations and used litigation to turn their employees' hard-earned retirement funds into profits, and in some cases, executive compensation. Schultz's book offers a relentlessly infuriating look at the mechanisms they used to get away with it. 

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Take direct state aid. States can't run budget deficits, and they tend to have regressive tax systems (because they need to "attract business" by placing the tax burden onto working people instead of corporations and the wealthy), so a burst housing bubble, massive recession and ongoing unemployment crisis basically means a whole lot of states that need to slash essential services to balance the budget. Federal aid allows them to keep the lights on.

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I heard Obama's jobs plan mentioned exactly once, by Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., who undermined the proposal by linking it to the bipartisan, Simpson-Bowles deficit reduction plan, which says little about job creation. Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., did mention Obama's speech ("We were on our feet when the president talked about entitlement reform,") but not jobs.  As Congressional Budget Office chief Doug Elmendorf went on to sketch the stark choices facing the committee, the president jobs agenda was forgotten.

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If you've been unemployed you already know this, but if you haven't, here's a news flash: Coping with prolonged joblessness is hugely demanding. It requires deep reservoirs of fortitude, faith, patience, courage and self-control, traditional virtues generally accorded high regard in our nation's pantheon of values. Of course, we're a country that values hard work, and that's as it should be. But don't our values also dictate respect for the efforts of the struggling unemployed?

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Alas, for the future of America, each side is right about the other. The progressive blue states depend on a demographic Ponzi scheme, while the conservative red states depend on an economic Ponzi scheme. The combination of these two unsustainable Ponzi schemes augurs ill for the future of the U.S.

In the last generation, the trickle of domestic migration from Democratic-leaning blue states like New York and California to Republican-dominated red states, mostly in the South, has swollen into a flood. Between 2000 and 2010, six of the top 10 states receiving migrants from other states were in the South; the other four were in the non-California West. In the South, the only states that lost domestic migrants were Maryland (a Southern state only in heritage), Mississippi and Louisiana, following Hurricane Katrina. During the Dust Bowl, Californians tried to stop "Okies" from moving there. Today Oklahoma is experiencing an influx of former Californians.

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