the elevator pitch

Solving the financial crisis requires drastic measures. That’s why the Elevator Pitch is advocating the extreme and unthinkable: Giving Hawaii to China in exchange for reducing a large portion of the debt the United States owes to the world’s most populous country.

Don’t laugh. We’re not the Weekly World News.

It’s a solution to the crisis that our team of editors and business professionals thinks likely to work. The benefit will be broad and multinational. Not only can the U.S. stop turning its currency into Monopoly money, it can react to the coming hyperinflation that’s sure to occur if it continues to print and dole out cash in a feverish attempt to stop the listing.

Yes, Hawaii is strategically important. But the truth is the U.S. will be reduced to a force that can only maintain influence when it threatens to unleash its arsenal. Other than that apocalyptic scenario, it will do as China demands if it continues to let that nation be its banker. China would be able to dictate what it wants or demand change – just as the U.S. has done to other nations in developing countries for so long.

According to U.S. government data, Hawaii’s population is approximately 1.3 million and its per-capita GDP rate is about $38,000, placing it 16th among the 50 states in that economic category and below the national per-capita GDP rate of $45,800. The state is 10,931 square miles and 80 percent of its land is government owned.

Saying aloha to that piece of paradise is brutal and today seemingly ridiculous. To get out of debt, though, individuals need to sell off assets. So do nations. With that mindset, peddling Hawaii makes sense. It is geographically close to China, a deal for it could be done without borders being erected and continental maps redrawn. Current residents could be given five years or so to relocate to the mainland before the property officially changes hands.

The details can be figured out. What we know is just about everyone on the planet continues to vex and harangue for a solution to the doom of what appears to be a protracted economic recession that will certainly lead to bloodletting across the world. Other solutions are complex and multi-layered. This proposal is one (giant) step. If you believe the worst-case scenarios (and we’re starting to based on analysis), then you can understand that the United States is on the precipice of calamity. Should the holiday shopping season be as dismal as predicted, top retailers will start to close stores in the first quarter of 2009, subsequently the malls they anchor will be vacated, hundreds of thousands more people will be out of work, the government will not be able to print money endlessly, it will not be in position to support all of those unemployment claims, and some of the masses of jobless people will turn to crime once their savings are depleted and the government checks stop coming.

It’s a nightmare. But one that seems more likely to become reality with each day the credit crisis prolongs. Getting out of debt is a painful, sobering process, but it is the surest way for individual Americans to regain leverage in life. Their government can set an example by taking an extreme, audacious step toward freeing up cash for its own uses by removing much of the $2.5 trillion it reportedly owes China.

For China, acquiring U.S. territory is a coup that punctuates its stature as the 21st century’s superpower and the vital force of influence in Asia. It can neutralize intervention from the west in matters it considers internal, such as its fractious relationship with Taiwan.

What the U.S. gains by sacrificing Hawaii is the long-sought-for bottom to the financial crisis. It is a severe punishment for reckless policy and behavior, but it offers a new beginning and that is what the country desperately needs: A way to cut and run from the debacle caused by its insane debt.