FIVE CULTURES LATER

NATIONAL DEBT IS NO BIG DEAL, OR IS IT?

When I was looking for a logo, I wanted it to include a bell. For other than Dutch speakers, the connection may be difficult to make. In English a bell rings or clangs. In Dutch it rinkels. Our family coat-of-arms includes a bell.  When I asked for opinions on Facebook and Twitter to make a choice out of 6-8 logos, the first four respondents were Dutch, and I don’t believe by coincidence! They immediately saw the connection. :)

The title of this blog is translated from a Dutch saying, which means that someone has heard of something, but does not know the specifics.

“Klepel” is clapper in English. The translation above is by definition. A literal translation would be meaningless. It was the same for me when we lived in the Czech Republic. A joke would be told, and I would understand some of the sentence, but not the meaning. I would ask:“what is so funny?” The standard answer was: “you wouldn’t understand it anyway.”

That is how I feel about this blog, sometimes. I recognize a lot when reviewing macro economics, but I cannot (yet) answer the question:

National debt is no big deal, or is it?