OK, who feels economically stimulated? Raise your hands, please. Eeeyeww, put ’em back in your laps, you filthy bastards, they’re all sticky.
The notion of going further into debt — credit cards, auto loans, what have you — leaves me feeling fiscally flaccid, frankly. I just don’t think I can get it up for buying a bunch of crap, no matter how shiny it is, if it means that in six months when VeloNews gets sold to Condé Nasty and Bicycle Retailer becomes a quarterly online newsletter some repo’ man name of Guido is gonna kick in the door of my refrigerator box down by Fountain Creek and take it all back.
Maybe I can get a job running off thousand-dollar bills at the Denver Mint. That seems to be where all the action is these days:
Instead of trying to reduce overnight lending rates in the hope of influencing longer-term interest rates for things like mortgages, the Fed is directly subsidizing lower mortgage rates. It is doing so by printing unprecedented amounts of money, which would eventually create inflationary pressures if it were to continue unabated.
Oh, goody. Make that a bicycle box down by Shook’s Run.
Meanwhile, my buddy Matt reminds me that the bailout so far amounts to $24,000 for every man, woman and child in the United States, according to Bloomberg. That’s enough money to pay off half the mortgages in the country, conduct nine times the warfare we’ve already laid on Iraq and Afghanistan, and build a gold-plated escalator to the International Space Station.
OK, so I made that last part up. But it sounds about as sensible as propping up an elite class of paper-hangers so they can hose us all over again once we dummy up and resume buying shit on credit.
But enough about our crumbling economy. We’ve got a real crisis right here — cops rousting body Nazis from Santa Monica’s medians. Oh, the humanity.
Mad Blog Media 
I’m not sure what is more bizzare and dangerous, the Fed printing money a la the government of Zimbabwe, or the police rounding up exercise freaks while the hole in the national dike rapidly widens.
I think the whole country has gone totally and unapologetically to Hell. And where was Focus on the Family when this happened? Focussing on a few gay couples, undoubtedly. Must be those gay marriage advocates fault….watch out, here comes the brimstone.
Anyone remember the Bloom County series where Opus won a defense contract to work on Star Wars / SDI? He was going to take $20 bills, tape them together, and wrap them around the ethosphere in a big missile-catching net, claiming it was more cost effective than the crap they were trying.
Time to put governmental shenanigans on the back burner and focus on what’s important: making sure I don’t ruin dinner tomorrow.
First, for those great Americans who will be eating Thanksgiving dinner in the chow hall, please consider visiting the Holidays for Heroes website, hosted by the Red Cross.
http://www.redcross.org/email/saf/
Me, today I gotta trim the bird and make the stock, air dry the french bread for the stuffing, and make my world famous cranberry chutney.
http://tinyurl.com/6z3cme
And the most important part… sampling the wine so there are no surprises tomorrow!
Cheers!
Remember that Bloom County series where Opus won the defense contract to work on SDI? Our current financial wranglings make about as much sense.
Time to leave the financial and political shenanigans alone for a few days and focus on what’s important: trying not to ruin dinner tomorrow.
Today’s set aside for cubing the french bread for the stuffing, trimming the bird and making the stock, and making my world famous cranberry chutney.
http://tinyurl.com/6z3cme
And most importantly, sampling the wine so that there are no surprises tomorrow.
Cheers!