learnandteachonline.com

David Ignatius came up with one of those chocolate-and-peanut-butter ideas in his Washington Post column today.

After giving us a little lesson in Keynesian economics (the post-Depression guy against whom the Milton Friedman forces revolted), Ignatius wonders whether the bailout payback might be channeled to specific initiatives for the national good:

A truly Keynesian rescue plan should do more than bail out foolish investors. How might the pieces fit into a larger design? Well, if the taxpayers are going to acquire a stake in the nation's largest insurance company, perhaps that company can be the cornerstone of a new system of universal private health coverage. If the taxpayers are going to acquire $700 billion in real estate assets, perhaps the eventual profits can fund new investments in infrastructure or energy technology.

What a "neat idea," as Oliver North famously said about another pairing of disparate ideas -- Iran-Contra arms for hostages.

Odious and criminal though it was, the idea of paying for a pet project using funds from an unrelated source was a pretty creative out-of-the-box notion, you have to admit.

What else might the proceeds of the sold-off assets pay for? Maybe Obama's proposed $150 billion investment in the auto industry to retool for hybrid, electric or natural gas-powered cars. We'll recoup more than that from the $700 billion investment, so add on a national retraining program to help former assembly workers learn new info tech skills. Help us old liberal arts types add a second bachelor's degree to become science teachers or nurses, and retool that system to let us teach part-time with full healthcare benefits after retirement, since we know we'll never be able to retire anyway. If nurses, and math and science teachers are so valued, well, then value them with some of that dough we're fronting.

Mark Cuban had another neat idea. The Dallas Mavericks and HDNet owner -- and lucky guy who made out from the sale of Broadcast.com -- was interviewed by Greta Van Susteren on Fox News last night about the bailout.

Citing the need for transparency in administering the bailout, he suggested putting all the details online so we, the investors, can see what's going on.

Cuban mentions the power of social media, but let's not just talk about what's happening to our investment. Why not put the whole schmeer online, financials included? And in mashable, not just viewable form -- in open data files, the way the Census Bureau provides raw data files so any demographer can download them and crunch away? Let some brainy finance post-doc or underemployed economist fire up SPSS and discover patterns of over- or undervaluing that the official watchdogs might choose to miss.

After all, we're the customers of this particular ambitious investment scheme this time. Let it all be open. Heck, it's all such an unknowable gambit anyway. Let's go with the neat ideas.