NEW YORK – In a sign of the times, the National Debt Clock in New York City has run out of digits to record the growing figure.

As a short-term fix, the digital dollar sign on the billboard-style clock near Times Square has been switched to a figure – the “1” in $10 trillion. It’s marking the federal government’s current debt at about $10.2 trillion.

[Remainder of newsbrief item at link, above.]

Short-term fix; that seems to be the word of the day, um, week…month? As I recently posted over at LiveJournal:

A Fable for Our Time:

A Japanese company and an American company decided to have a canoe race on the Missouri River. Both teams practiced long and hard to reach their peak performance before the race.

On the big day, the Japanese team won by a mile.

The Americans, very discouraged and depressed, decided to investigate the reason for the crushing defeat.

A team made up of senior management was formed to investigate and recommend appropriate action. Their conclusion was the Japanese team had 8 people rowing and 1 person steering, while the American team had 8 people steering and 1 person rowing. So American management hired a consulting company and paid them a large amount of money for a second opinion.

The consulting firm advised that too many people were steering the boat, while not enough people were rowing.

To prevent another loss to the Japanese, the American’s rowing team’s management structure was totally reorganized to consist of 4 steering supervisors, 3 area steering superintendents and 1 assistant superintendent steering manager. They also implemented a new performance system that would give the 1 person rowing the boat greater incentive to work harder. It was called the “Rowing Team Quality First Program”, with meetings, dinners and free pens for the rower. There was discussion of getting new paddles, canoes and other equipment, extra vacation days for practices and bonuses.

The next year the Japanese won by two miles.

Humiliated, the American management:

1. laid off the rower for poor performance,
2. halted development of a new canoe,
3. sold the paddles, and
4. cancelled all capital investments for new equipment.

The money saved was distributed to the Senior Executives as bonuses.

The next year’s racing team was outsourced to India.