Ask yourself: What would cheeses do?

There is a little-known glut that could really clog up the American economy: Cheese.

The American cheese market is saturated. There are billions of pounds of cheese waiting to be put on a cracker or be made into a sandwich. Here's how bad it is: According to an article in The Wall Street Journal, the average American would have to eat an extra three pounds of cheese this year – in addition to the average of 36 pounds per year – to wipe out the cheese imbalance.

This glut is based on several issues, including a record for cheese production in the U.S. But most important was a decision to blockade (more like cheese block-ade, am I right?) Russia a couple of years ago after its incursion into Ukraine. That led to more and more cheese being backed up (not the first time "back up" and "cheese" have been used in the same sentence).

Ultimately, we have a situation where "American cheese" is more than a type. It's a description of the location of the world's cheese supply.

Again, this came after the European Union decided to punish Russia, so here's some irony: The cheese surplus happened because of a military move. Who do we look to as a neutral party in such situations? The same answer as to whom we look as a provider of great cheese: The Swiss, am I right?

Is that ironic or conspiratorial? Or a desperate attempt to get a cheese pun in a column?

American commercial freezers at the end of March (the most recent month for which statistics are available, since it takes cheese a long time to work through the system, am I right?) had nearly 1.2 billion pounds of cheese.

That's a lot of cheese, Jack. (Keep track of my cheese puns. There are more to come.)

For dairy farmers, it's a mixed blessing. Their product is moving (always nice for cheese), but demand can't keep up with record supplies, so prices dropped – they are off nearly 40 percent over the past two years.

You may think it's nacho (!) problem, but it is.

As we play out the string (!), it's obvious that there are ultimately some significant problems: We can't let cheese bind up our (economic and food) system. We need to keep things moving or else they'll get all stopped up – which is never good.

This has shredded (brilliant!) the industry, which is not gouda (OK. I'll stop).

But at least there is some good news: In the past decade, we've seen the housing bubble burst and experienced the worst recession since the Great Depression. Contrasted with that, the great cheese glut of 2016 is manageable.

Finally, a crisis in America that doesn't require us to tighten our belts – in fact, we're asked to do the opposite. It's time to eat an extra three pounds of cheese over the next year.

Easy enough, right? And a year from now, after we've wiped out the cheese glut, let's get together and have a picture taken.

We can look at the camera and say . . . .

Brad Stanhope is a former Daily Republic editor. Reach him at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.