Spend and Purge

There are a couple (beyond the other dozens) of interesting facets of this arrangement called 'stimulus package' that absolutely no one that i've heard (read: 'official') have even touched on in what we call the mass media...the propaganda that informs the sleeping masses...
First off, the majority of the american dollar currency is wysiwyg: paper. By some estimates the matching gold in federal reserve is as much (or as little) as .04 on the dollar. That's our dollar having a real value of four cents. Interesting. So really it's like writing checks and thinking everything is fine...as long as we have checks in the checkbook, there must be money in the account. There may be a flaw to that logic. Maybe, i'm no expert.
The second, perhaps more contemporary aspect is that China is largely floating our economy (giving us our fix, as it were) and has been for some time. Europeans, by contrast (and admitted, this is simulacrum on my part, not empirical), pay for Chinese imports on quite a different scale: what we might purchase at wally-world for three bucks may run eight bucks or more in France or England et al. The whys are complex to be sure, but you get the sensation of a looming shadow stretching ever so slowly toward you on the prairie, don't ya?
Hey, I'm thrilled to get a few hundred bucks. We have little choice but to play by the rules, and honestly, I'm basically okay with that. I really do strive to 'be the change' Gandhi spoke of, and if I have little say in the parameters, so be it: the stage is set as we walk on. Sure, let's improvise a bit and everything else we do, and even when the sandbags are falling from the eaves, let's laugh and love and cry and live our lives to the absolute fullest we can. Anything else is truly and in every sense a waste of time.

Enough of that crap, on to the contest, champ:

Currently, 10 EUR will get you 15 USD, the Canadian buck is stronger than the dead president's club by a bit, and ten pounds weighs in at almost twenty dollars US.

How many draconian electoral votes is your state worth in electing the next wealthy, well-connected politician?

a) happen to think the electoral college is actually a brilliant and invaluable tool of democracy; I give my response over to whomever is elected to speak for me by my state representatives.

b) 2. No, 5. 6 at most, I'm pretty sure. No fewer than 1.

c) Crude barrels hit an historical high of just over a hundred bucks two days ago, can't afford to heat my home or drive my car, but at least I've got 437 electoral votes coming to me! What? What do you mean...?

d) I'll need my calculator to find the general population divisible by the square of a quotient deducted from pi, provided Pythagoras wasn't full of shit on this one like that other stuff.

As always, good luck. Prizes will be awarded in the form of a different piece of paper we'll call a 'check' sometime in May.