As governments sling mind-boggling sums of money about in a misguided effort to revive the economy by doing stuff that would be unaffordably stupid in good times, this cute little graphic at least gives some perspective on what this "trillion" they keep spending really is.

The Canadian Taxpayers' Federation has relaunched its federal debt clock. It doesn't come with an alarm... it is one.

Remember the jokes about medicine in the bad old days where they'd bleed the patient and he'd get weaker so they'd bleed him some more until, for instance, George Washington lay dead? Well, today's news from the New York Times is that the financial firms and car companies that have slurped tens of billions of dollars out of the healthy economy now desperately need to slurp down tens of billions more or the economy will get sicker.

I've always treasured a crack by Rose Friedman about the illusion of precision in economics. Her husband Milton was half-way through declaring that if you can't measure something you don't really understand it when she interrupted with "If you can't measure it, measure it anyway". Which brings me to Michael Ignatieff's latest swaggering statement that he and his party will support the Tory budget provided they get quarterly updates including how many jobs it is creating. The trouble is, you can only know how many jobs it created if you know exactly what would have happened in employment markets if the budget had been different or absent. And since we can't run history two different ways we can't even if we have really fast computers that let us pretend we've somehow created a spreadsheet that completely accurately captures every interrelationship in the economy and accounts for chance as well. (To test this proposition, plug 1980 data into the spreadsheet and see if it predicts 1985.) On the plus side, this approach lets talking heads sound wise and politicians talk tough while acting weak. If you think that's good.

During the campaign, the Tories said no deficits; wouldn't be prudent. Now they insist that only hair-raisingly huge deficits are prudent. As, apparently, is leaking your budget so it won't terrify people on the day. It's as if "prudent" were a magic word that justifies anything you decide to do. Except they didn't really decide to do this. Spending rockets up in good times and bad and when revenue drops off big deficits gape and none of it is the result of financial or political calculation. It's structural features of the budget the politicians neither control nor understand so they babble gravely in an attempt to look relevant. Happy budget day.

I see that Michael Ignatieff is double-talking tough on the new Tory budget, telling his first caucus meeting as leader

"This budget has three simple tests that it must pass. Will it protect the most vulnerable? Will it save jobs? And most important of all, will it create the jobs of tomorrow?"

The Ottawa Citizen added that "While Mr. Ignatieff did not directly threaten to defeat the government over the budget, Toronto MP John McCallum, the party’s economic policy critic, told reporters that Mr. Ignatieff has frequently said a Liberal vote against the Jan. 27th budget ‘is still very much a possibility.’”

Such appalling verbiage manages at once to be substanceless spin (what sort of infinitely flexible ruler is "protect the most vulnerable"? Especially when you're dug in on the hill of "very much a possibility") and to contain a grievous error: Does anyone now seriously think governments, rather than entrepreneurs, "create the jobs of tomorrow"?

Barack Obama's "stimulus" plan now includes, "advisers said", $300 billion in tax cuts because he seemed too focused on making government bigger to help the economy. Which means it's not really a "plan" because sudden kluges on this scale would undermine its structural integrity if it had any. But as long as politicians keep hurling hundreds of billions of dollars about in a weirdly self-satisfied panic, market participants are unlikely to recover their confidence. Would you?

Now that the car industry has its (first) financial crisis bailout package, guess what? Big Steel has joined the queue, asking for a huge infrastructure program with massive "buy America" provisions that might risk trade wars that worsen the global crisis and raise costs for everybody else but on the plus side would send money right to them. As everyone gets bailouts, though, some question must arise as to who's going to pay. Will homeowners fund autos, autos fund steel and steel fund homeowners? It's like that Battle of the Bulge joke about the Sarge saying "Men, I have good news and bad. The good news is after a week in foxholes you all get a change of socks. The bad news is, Harry you change with George, Sam you change with Fred..."