Can't make your mortgage payments? Try a double cheeseburger!

You may be familiar with the phrase "laugh to keep from crying," but this McDonald's ad seems curiously blasé about the national economic crisis, don't you think?



"The economy is in freefall! It's two dollars to every euro, the housing market is a wreck, we're headed for a recession... say, is that a one-dollar cheeseburger? Never mind!"

Obviously no one wants to be reminded by some random McDonald's ad of the sinking position of America in the world economy, but I don't know how smart the "Just kidding, everything's fine!" play is, even as a joke. The characters in this ad represent one of the key problems with American economics - the inability of people to see more than a few feet in front of them. "Well, if I can still get a cheeseburger for a dollar, things must not be that bad!" Or maybe McDonald's had costs of less than a dollar per cheeseburger to begin with (I certainly wouldn't be surprised), or maybe it's because they're a multinational corporation that makes billions of dollars a year. I'm not Alan Greenspan or anything, but I do know that I hate this commercial.