- Well it's time to answersome of your email questions.

Gordon, this first one comes from Mary,

who says: How does thestimulus program work?

Do these stimulus checksadd even more millions

to our national debt?

How does it help the economy?

- Well, Mary, it's addingtrillions to our national debt,

not just millions.

It's really hard to wrap our heads around

what is a trillion, letalone what is 25 trillion,

or very soon it's going to be 28 trillion.

What's going on is thegovernment is saying,

"We control the currency,

"and so because we control the currency,

"we are going to apply something

"called monetary theory, MMT."

And what that does is the Treasury borrows

from the Federal Reserve,and the Federal Reserve

picks up all the bondsthat the Treasury issues

and essentially expands its balance sheet.

So it's adding all of those things

as an asset, if you will,of the Federal Reserve.

But here's the other kicker,if I can get that slide back.

The Federal Reserve, allthe interest and profits

on those bonds gets paidback into the Treasury.

So essentially, we areborrowing from ourselves.

There was a time we soldbonds internationally,

we sold bonds to investmentbanks, it was the way

that money market funds werefunded, all of those things.

With interest rates near zero,

the appetite for bonds has gone away,

and so the Treasury sellingto the Federal Reserve

is how we're doing this.

In some ways, we'reliterally printing money,

except you don't have to actuallyprint the dollars anymore.

You just put a credit intosomebody's bank account.

So that's how the stimulus is working.

You can say we're borrowingfrom future generations,

but at some point, Ithink the policy makers

have got to come to grips with,

well, we owe ourselves this money

and why don't we just cancel it.

If the Treasury and Federal Reserve

are having this kind of interaction,

why don't we take what'sin the Federal Reserve

and shrink its balance sheet back down

and restore some sanity to it?

Usually when a government does this,

it leads to runaway inflation.

In the current crisis, it'snot gonna lead to inflation,

but what it is going to do

is help people who need to buy groceries

and need to make rent paymentsand mortgage payments,

so that's why the government's doing it,

but it's all being done on borrowed money.

- Sort of a modern day Year of Jubilee?

(Gordon laughs)Yeah.

Sort of.- Just declare a jubilee,

all debts are extinguished.

- Well I don't know that wehave time for this, Gordon,

but I'll give it to you quickly:

I'm reading the Bible, seemany laws for Jewish people

in the Old Testament.

Do any or all of thoseapply to Christianity?

- There's 613 laws in the Old Testament.

The ones that apply to you and me are two:

Love God with all your heart,

love your neighbor as yourself.

If you want more on this, go read Acts 15

where the apostle sayswe're just going to say

don't drink blood, don'teat things offer to idols,

and don't engage in sexual immorality.

Those are the laws thatstill apply to you and me.