trickle up economics
Add comment November 17th, 2008
Archive for November, 2008
rocky horror stock market show
Add comment November 17th, 2008
Like maybe a few of you, I’ve been watching the stock market. It looks like a jumping bean on steroids and meth both. Thousand point jumps, kamikaze dives. It’s like a horror movie where the dead keep getting back up and killed again.
The zombies, of course, are all those folks who preached unbridled capitalism. You remember them. The people who wanted to privatize Social Security. Why make a puny couple of percentage points interest when we could make some serious money in the Market? Why put the brakes on a wild ride to riches? Bubble? No sir, that was a balloon sailing to Eldorado, streets paved with gold…..
They’ll be back! They’ll dig up out of the hasty grave we threw them in and kicked dirt over. They’ll knock on our door some midnight dreary when our own fiscal wounds have started to heal and the memory of this nightmare has faded. They’ll be at the door grinning blood and money, offering impossible returns, easy loans, fast bucks.
Me. I’m resharpening my wooden stakes. I’m hanging credit cards wrapped in garlic by the porch. I’m looking for silver bullets, not silver linings.
So when the rollercoaster levels out and you know the extent of the damage finally, don’t let your guard down, don’t call your broker, don’t assume the worst is over. It isn’t. They’re clawing their way above ground even now.
And here’s a tip: when dawn finally comes and the ghouls in Brooks Brother suits slink back to their coffins, check your MasterCards. From now on, Leave Home Without It.
election cycles
Add comment November 17th, 2008
I been watching this election now for – oh, I don’t know, 2 years, maybe 3, maybe more. McCain was practically a kid when this gauntlet started and Obama was barely born. It’s getting to the point where you campaign longer than you serve — especially if you’re a one termer. Basically we’re running an election all the time, no respite for the weak or the tired or the terminally bored. Personally I think these campaigns must be subsidized by the news media, something to take our minds off the economy or the wars, see who slips up or makes the worst gaffe or dies of old age.
I’m gonna die of old age before we get to November and I got 3 to 1 odds John McCain will end up in a nursing home before the final results are in — and if we get another Florida recount debacle, McCain could end up being our first president over 100 years old.
I don’t even want to get started on the cost of these national sports events. If we’re trying to promote democracy to the rest of the world, well, all I can say is we probably convinced them they’ll never afford it. I mean, given the choice of feeding your nation or providing limited health care or electing a President, take your pick. But you only get One…..
religion and state
Add comment November 17th, 2008
We got ourselves a little chapel down at the South End. It’s non-denominational, which means, I guess, they haven’t got money either. Every Sunday they ring the bell they took from the old schoolhouse and call the flock to pasture. My cronies in the South End String Band don’t attend real regular. Like most musicians, getting up by 10 a.m. isn’t natural for em, but I notice most religions must feel like it’s important to make hard working folks like us get out of bed early.
If I was a Preacher, I’d figure let the congregation sleep in, come on down when they’re all rested up and alert. But it isn’t my show and the church probably has got its own reasons.
You talk about separation of church and state, we used to vote at the chapel. Nobody seemed to care back then, but still, it isn’t like we were Pilgrims, and finally some atheistic pinko commie liberal pervert must’ve took offense so we started voting down at the Fire Hall, more secular I guess.
We hear a lot of commotion from up north aways about prayer in schools and religion getting mixed into government and on and on, pretty heated up stuff. People take their religion fairly serious, I’ve noticed, and other people’s they’d like to take somewhere else.
I’m as religious as the next fella. I want to go to heaven but I’m not in any particular hurry to die, which makes me think deep down all of us are hedging our bets. Life’s a gamble, but only a fool likes to draw to an inside straight ….