This the development page for Advertising Inventory Maximizer. The goal of this plugin is to display different amounts of advertisements based on the length of the page. For example, if I have a post that is 1000 pixels tall (roughly a 600 word post with no pictures) the Advertising Inventory Maximizer plugin will display one 600 pixel tall skyscraper ad. But, if my post is 6000 pixels tall this plugin will dynamically put in as many ads as needed to asure that the reader always has an ad in sight. This will ensure maximum ad inventory for a website without having to break long posts into pages.

I thought this would make an interesting photo. It was taking at a plantation outside of Jacksonville, FL.

Everywhere I look I can’t help but see news of the $1.2 trillion dollar deficit planned for 2009. This got me thinking: where’s the money going to come from? According to The United States Department of the Treasury, the top holders of US treasuries , in order, are China, Japan, The United Kingdom,  Caribbean Banking Centers, and Oil Exporters. This begs the question: where is the government going to borrow the money from? As far as I can tell, the top holders are not in the most prosperous of times, and I see only one buyer, The Federal Reserve. While The Federal Reserve buying treasuries may not seem that bad, think about how that works. The Treasury has to print money in order to buy the treasuries. Therefore, there are more dollars in the world; thus devaluing our currency. This devaluing of the dollar helps institutions with large amounts of debt (like the US government with over $10 trillion in debt) and hurts responsible individuals that keep reserves of cash instead of using  credit. This devaluing of our currency is the widely unknown inflation tax.

With a brief look at the top five treasury buyers I found that none of them are looking to be very promising purchasers in the future. China, the largest purchaser of US treasuries, is not in the best of times. With news of China’s near $600 billion bailout it would be surprising to find China rapidly expanding its purchasing of treasuries. When looking at Japan’s economy there seems to be a consensus that Japan’s economy is looking at negative or no growth for 2009. Consequently, Japan is looking at a $110 billion dollar bailout. Combining the shrinking economy with increases of spending on Japan’s own economy would leave the second largest treasury holder little money left to purchase more U.S. treasuries. The third largest purchaser, The United Kingdom, is also not looking promising as a large purchaser of treasuries. Not only is the United Kingdom looking at a recession in 2009, it’s also looking at more massive deficit spending to help its own ailing economy.

Numbers four (Caribbean Banking Centers) and five (Oil Exporters) on the top five treasury buyers list are in worse conditions than the top three. In the current financial climate, the Caribbean Banking Centers may be the least likely to buy treasury bills. Can you guess what industry holds a majority of the money in the Caribbean Banking Centers? Yes, that’s right, banks. Looking at the current situation of most banks, I can’t imagine banks purchasing very many treasuries over the next couple of years. The fifth largest purchaser of US treasuries is the Oil Exporters. Crude oil closed today at $40.83 a barrel, down over $100 from its peak of $147. The low price of oil forces Venezuela, Iran, and many of other prominent oil exporting nations to make spending cuts. With the budget cuts coming to these countries I don’t foresee large increases in U.S. treasury purchases.

China is already spending $600 billion on its own economy. Japan and the United Kingdom are having to borrow the money to fund their economies. All the while, banks are in their worst condition in years and oil has had one of the largest price drops in history. Are these former treasury purchasers really going to be able to buy U.S. treasuries and fund our economy? Without the ability to borrow trillions and trillions of dollars, the U.S. government is faced with the hard political choice of cutting spending or the easy choice of printing money and pushing the problem off to another day. Which do you think they’re going to pick? Help make spending cuts an easier choice. Write to your local senators and congressmen and ask them to vote down any bailout or stimulas package. After all, they work for you.