On Debt and My Oddball Childhood.

A few of my oddball tendencies can be explained away by the fact that my Dad was an accountant who wanted to teach his children fiscal responsibility. He literally had us investing our allowances when we were eight: there was the shorter-term investment where you could get your money out of the Bank of Dad anytime you wanted but for every week you left it in there you got an extra dime and there was the longer investment where he kept your allowance for a month but at the end of the month you got a fifty cent return on your dollar. When I started earning babysitting money he taught me how to write a budget and how to fill in a general journal. And by the time I was in high school I could read and discuss (always important to my Dad) a company's financial statements. If I had the time, I think that I could be a fairly competent financial adviser.

So, I understand that liabilities aren't necessarily a bad thing; sometimes you have to borrow money to make money--every once in awhile the interest on notes from the Bank of Mom was significantly lower than the interest paid out by the Bank of Dad and so it only made sense to borrow money from BoM to invest with BoD. (I did mention that they were both accountants, didn't I?) But when John Henry tells the Daily Mirror's football section: "The New York Yankees are $3.5 billion in debt..." it makes my head spin just a little bit.

I don't know how he would be privy to that information or if he's just making up numbers to impress his new English peeps but 3,500,000,000 is a very big number. I understand how they can carry that much debt but it's still an astounding amount.