Nicolas Cage has gone and gotten himself in a bit of financial trouble. It might surprise you that someone who makes tens of millions of dollars per movie could be headed the way of Lehman Brothers. However, when you look at the purchases he’s made, well, the reason for his money woes becomes somewhat more understandable:

- 30 to 50 cars and 18 motorcycles including a $500,000 Lamborghini, previously owned by the Shah of Iran

- Several supposedly-haunted mansions in New Orleans

- A jet

- A castle

- Two Bahamanian islands

- Over a million dollars worth of comic books

- And my favorite, a $276,000 dinosaur skull he won in a “heated auction with Leonardo DiCaprio” (1)

Apparently, a penny saved is a penny that can’t be spent on a Bahamanian island. It’s safe to say Nicolas Cage’s spending spree makes the average American, who had a negative savings rate for most of the decade, look like our frugal grandparents who love to recite tales of the Great Depression.

This summer, the IRS rewarded Nicolas Cage for his “efforts” with a $6 million tax lien on his New Orleans properties for unpaid taxes. So the IRS, lead by tax cheat Timothy Geithner, is cracking down on Nicolas Cage for unpaid taxes. How ironic. Or perhaps, “how fitting” would be a better way to put it. After all, I think Tim Geithner, our spend-happy Congress, the Federal Reserve, George Bush and Barack Obama can give Nicolas Cage a run for his money (what little is left of it) when it comes to irresponsible spending. Honestly, look at what our government has been doing:

- $700 billion bank bailout

- $25 billion auto bailout

- Take over of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, GM and AIG

- $787 billion stimulus package

- $2 billion “cash for clunkers” program

- $1 trillion injection of capital from the Fed (2)

- Attempting to pass healthcare reform which is expected to cost $1 trillion over 10 years (probably a low estimate) (3)

- Attempting to pass cap and trade which could cost the United States as much as $100 to $200 billion a year (4)

Much of this was done by Bush and the Fed, but Tim Geithner, as Treasury Secretary, has certainly pulled his own weight in the Obama Administration when it comes to fiscal recklessness. The United States is going to have a $1.4 trillion deficit this year, pushing the national debt up over $12 trillion. Furthermore, we may have as much as $107 trillion in unfunded liabilities; a sort of ticking time bomb nobody wants to talk about. (5)

And yet we spend, spend and spend some more. And yes, shocking as it may sound, some of this spending is of somewhat dubious merit. Remember some of the things that were put into the stimulus bill? (And keep Nicolas Cage in mind while doing so):

- $650 million for digital TV coupons

- $44 million for repairs to U.S. Department of Agriculture

- $200 million for the National Mall ($21 million of it for sod)

- $50 million for the National Endowment of the Arts

- $1.1 billion for the Amtrak, which, by the way, is chronically broke

- $2 million for North Miami households to switch to energy-efficient light bulbs

- $500,000 for a dog park in Chula Vista, California

- $50,000 for two dog parks in Lewiston, Maine (apparently Barack and Tim like dogs)

- $33,725 for automatically flushing toilets in Sumter, South Carolina

- $886,000 for a 36-hole “disk-golf” course in Austin, Texas* (6)

Again, we can’t give all the credit to Timothy Geithner, but he is the Treasury Secretary, so I think he deserves a large share. And while he has done a very good job of spending us into oblivion, I think Nicolas Cage could do him one better. Therefore, I am proposing Timothy Geithner step down and let the master of financial incompetence replace him. And while we’re at it, I think we should nominate Mike Tyson as the next Fed Chairman, just for good measure.

_________________________________________________________________

*Several of these projects were not officially in the stimulus bill, but instead were projects proposed to take place with stimulus money.

(1) Lindsey Robertson, “Nicolas Cage’s Outrageous Decades-Long Shopping Spree,” Yahoo! Movies, November 4, 2009, http://movies.yahoo.com/feature/movie-talk-nicolas-cage-spending.html
(2) Eamon Javers, “Bernanke’s trillion dollar decision,” The Politico, October 24, 2009, http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/28677
(3) Nick Loris, “Treasury Admits Cap and Trade is a Massive Tax,” The Heritage Foundation, September 16, 2009, http://blog.heritage.org/2009/09/16/treasury-admits-cap-and-trade-is-a-massive-tax/
(4) Susan Page, “How much health care for $1 trillion?,” USA Today, July 15, 2009, http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2009-07-14-trillion-dollars-for-health-care_N.htm
(5) For deficit, see “Federal Budget Deficit Totals $1.4 Trillion in Fiscal Year 2009,” Congressional Budget Office, November 6, 2009, http://cboblog.cbo.gov/?p=422, For debt, see “U.S. National Debt Clock,” Brillig.com, http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/, For unfunded liabilities, see Bob Brooks, “The 107 Trillion Dollar Problem,” Prudent Money Blog, June 25, 2009, http://www.mahalo.com/answers/economics/according-to-one-recent-estimate-the-unfunded-liability-of-social-security-plus-medicare-is-107-trillion-dollars-how-will-this-be-paid
(6) Terry Neese, “Stimulus Package Will Not Help Small Business,” Terry Neese’s Blog, February 2, 2009, http://terry-neese-blog.com/stimulus-package-will-not-help-small-business/