Alvin Hall joins us from our London bureau to break it down for us and explain what it means for all of us.

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Will, thank you for agreeing to explain this to us.

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She's a senior citizen from Virginia, and we invited her to the White House because she wrote in to explain why it is so important for all of us to make sure that taxes don't go up on the middle class.

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And as far as the arguments that our colleagues on the other side of the aisle are making, I think it's important to explain to people that in order for us to balance the budget while exempting entitlements, no new revenues, you'd have to cut non-discretionary defense spending by 60 percent -- cut it by 60 percent.

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And the first chance the lawyers give you, best explain all this to us so we can parse it for Aunt Sadie.

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Underwriters, rating agencies, financial analysts and auditors all perform important roles in the financial system and serve us well, otherwise the service fees these institutions have generated for decades would be hard to explain.

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One would have been to explain to the American people that it was going to take a while for us to get out of this.

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Joining us to help explain what's going on is Dahlia Lithwick, legal analyst for the online magazine Slate and for DAY TO DAY, and a CrackBerry addict, I understand.

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The MPs also try to explain the difference between a commission and a convention, which is handy for those of us who sometimes confuse the two.

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