What makes the Eternal Optimist happy? Contrary to popular myth, EO leads a blessed and happy life.
Nevertheless, this is a legitimate question, because EO can be cranky sometimes, especially when people are being evil or spending his money.
In no particular order, some happy making things:
Mrs. EO. Say no more.
The EO children. Wonderful! They argue and make each other laugh and tell very funny stories and talk fast and furious. Hilarious when they are all together. I know how much they make me happy by how much I miss them now that the older ones are grown up and far away. The ones still with me console me with their kind hearts.
Mass. I converted in 2003. I am still amazed and moved.
Music. Buckwheat Zydeco, Alison Krauss, Bruce Springsteen, Bela Fleck, Dylan, Steely Dan, Beethoven, Talking Heads, Mozart, Hillsongs, Graceland, Marc Knopfler, Little Feat, The Band, Fanny J. Crosby, St. Thomas Aquinas . . . okay, okay.
Chimay Blue. Delicious Belgian ale made by Trappist monks. EO has one (possibly two) on the weekend, along with the next item.
One H. Upmann cigar.
Riding The Bike. Definitely before the Chimay and H. Upmann, on Saturdays. EO got a nice bike awhile back. Makes me happy being out for a long time peddling hard.
"Lord of the Rings."
The books of Isaiah, Psalms, John and Hebrews.
Watching the Masters. I could really do without the jacket ceremony at the end, though. It's always uncomfortably weird.
Watching Barcelona play soccer. My dream is watching them play Real Madrid at Camp Nou. Good luck with that.
Almost anything by P.J. O'Rourke.
"What Maisie Knew," by Henry James.
"Groundhog Day." Over and over.
Dennis Miller.
Chris Farley, RIP.
"On Bullshit," by Harry G. Frankfurt. A marvelous book of philosophy analyzing the difference between lying and pure . . . well, no need to wallow in it.
"The Quiet Man." With all the nieces and nephews gathered around on St. Patrick's Day. All of them mouthing the lines. Of course everyone's favorite is the fight scene.
"Stuart Saves His Family." There are so many scenes in this movie that are pure genius, but I particularly cherish the intervention.
Spaghetti and Pesto. I think my work here is done. I am HUNGRY!
Friday, May 20, 2011
Sunday, May 15, 2011
MIRACLES, PART II
Long ago and far away (more than 20 years ago now) Eternal Optimist was very unhappy. He worked for a very large business in a very big city and hardly ever saw his wife and 3 small children awake. He left in the morning when it was dark and came home in the evening when it was very dark. He kissed them all as they slept.
The business started having some financial problems. Instead of dealing with them honestly, the business started laying off newly hired people, telling them that they were inadequate and had to be let go. These folks thought their lives had ended, and came to talk with EO, oftentimes in tears.
EO, though safe from being let go, decided he'd had enough of the large business. Mrs. EO had taken him earlier that year to the Emergency Room with symptoms of a heart attack. Four hours later the doctors concluded EO had an ulcer that was duplicating heart attack symptoms. They gave him some ulcer medicine and it worked.
EO and Mrs. EO had been praying a lot. He and Mrs. EO had been having a difficult time, growing further and further apart. Both kept coming to the same conclusion: EO should just quit his job with the big firm. Quit, without a new job. Quit, and move to a lovely town in the South that had suddenly come to our attention for a variety of reasons, all of which boiled down to God's leading.
So EO obeyed God, not knowing where this was heading. A number of friends inquired about the medication he was taking, wondering if it should be changed, perhaps to something that would regulate his brain chemicals. Effective December 31, 20 + years ago, EO quit his well-paying job.
Not long after quitting his job, EO was forced by his financial circumstances to obtain peanut butter and government cheese from his church, an experience that made him soft-hearted toward unemployed people who need food. While EO was able to earn enough income, here and there, to pay the mortgage, food was tight.
Mr. and Mrs. EO put their house up for sale, on their own, in the worst housing slump in a generation, and sold it for their list price, in three weeks, to the first person who had looked at it. The buyer's appraisal came back $25,000 short. The buyer's mom put up the $25,000. The deal went through.
By March EO and Mrs. EO, with 3 children, had closed on the house and moved to the South. Still with no job. We paid off all our debts, paid 6 months advance rent to secure a 3 bedroom townhouse, and bought a used car for cash. We had no debt, no income, some clothes and a $5,000 Mitsubishi.
For 6 months EO and the fam lived off the money from the sale of the house. During that time EO became acquainted with his wife and children, an acquaintance he has kept up these last 20 years.
The week EO came to the last of his money, his present employer called and asked Mrs. EO if EO would like to start the coming Monday. Mrs. EO yelled "yes!!" and so EO got dressed in a suit and went to work that Monday. He is still happily employed at the same job, doing what he loves with wonderful people.
EO's present job is a much better fit than his last one, and EO learned something lasting about trusting God, even when He asks you to jump off a cliff. This made dealing with fear much easier as life came along.
Mrs. EO is still married to EO. Both of them have gotten much older, but are still very much in love.
There. That's at least 3 miracles: house sold, new job in the nick of time, and a long, happy marriage.
So if you need a miracle, just pray for one. No matter how scary it all seems, God makes it turn out right in the end.
The business started having some financial problems. Instead of dealing with them honestly, the business started laying off newly hired people, telling them that they were inadequate and had to be let go. These folks thought their lives had ended, and came to talk with EO, oftentimes in tears.
EO, though safe from being let go, decided he'd had enough of the large business. Mrs. EO had taken him earlier that year to the Emergency Room with symptoms of a heart attack. Four hours later the doctors concluded EO had an ulcer that was duplicating heart attack symptoms. They gave him some ulcer medicine and it worked.
EO and Mrs. EO had been praying a lot. He and Mrs. EO had been having a difficult time, growing further and further apart. Both kept coming to the same conclusion: EO should just quit his job with the big firm. Quit, without a new job. Quit, and move to a lovely town in the South that had suddenly come to our attention for a variety of reasons, all of which boiled down to God's leading.
So EO obeyed God, not knowing where this was heading. A number of friends inquired about the medication he was taking, wondering if it should be changed, perhaps to something that would regulate his brain chemicals. Effective December 31, 20 + years ago, EO quit his well-paying job.
Not long after quitting his job, EO was forced by his financial circumstances to obtain peanut butter and government cheese from his church, an experience that made him soft-hearted toward unemployed people who need food. While EO was able to earn enough income, here and there, to pay the mortgage, food was tight.
Mr. and Mrs. EO put their house up for sale, on their own, in the worst housing slump in a generation, and sold it for their list price, in three weeks, to the first person who had looked at it. The buyer's appraisal came back $25,000 short. The buyer's mom put up the $25,000. The deal went through.
By March EO and Mrs. EO, with 3 children, had closed on the house and moved to the South. Still with no job. We paid off all our debts, paid 6 months advance rent to secure a 3 bedroom townhouse, and bought a used car for cash. We had no debt, no income, some clothes and a $5,000 Mitsubishi.
For 6 months EO and the fam lived off the money from the sale of the house. During that time EO became acquainted with his wife and children, an acquaintance he has kept up these last 20 years.
The week EO came to the last of his money, his present employer called and asked Mrs. EO if EO would like to start the coming Monday. Mrs. EO yelled "yes!!" and so EO got dressed in a suit and went to work that Monday. He is still happily employed at the same job, doing what he loves with wonderful people.
EO's present job is a much better fit than his last one, and EO learned something lasting about trusting God, even when He asks you to jump off a cliff. This made dealing with fear much easier as life came along.
Mrs. EO is still married to EO. Both of them have gotten much older, but are still very much in love.
There. That's at least 3 miracles: house sold, new job in the nick of time, and a long, happy marriage.
So if you need a miracle, just pray for one. No matter how scary it all seems, God makes it turn out right in the end.
Sunday, May 8, 2011
GOT MIRACLES?
Miracles happen all the time. They just don't get reported in the papers. Miracles mostly happen to very poor people who pray for them. These are people who can't afford the New York Times and probably wouldn't be able to read it, even if they could afford it.
So miracles normally don't happen to NYT readers, and they don't happen to the rich and powerful people that NYT readers prefer to read about. Miracles happen to people who ask for them, and to people who need them. These two qualifiers exclude most NYT readers.
Read here about a paralyzed man who was healed at Lourdes and just finished a 1,000 mile walk.
C.S. Lewis wrote a book on miracles. It's quite wonderful. It is helpfully called "Miracles."
There is an excellent series of monographs on miracles titled "Matthew," "Mark," "Luke," "John," and "Acts." I've read them in a collection called "The Bible." Fine stuff. You can even read them online, for free.
Here's a book by a physician examining about 1,400 medical miracles documented by the Vatican over the years. I haven't read it, but it looks interesting.
Miracles have a strange effect. They induce both belief and mockery, transformation and vituperation. Normally the poor, desperate people who ask for miracles have their lives changed, and the rich, educated people around them insult them. Read the Gospel of John, chapter 9.
Some stories don't change.
Here's a tip: if you want to meet God, ask Him for a miracle. Not in a grumpy, "show me your stuff" way. Just ask because you need one, and are admitting it to Him. Don't worry, He'll only give you one if it's good for you.
BTW, I'm not talking about "easy-cheesy, give me a billion dollars" miracles. For the most part, being wealthy is even more problematic for your soul than poverty. It is very similar to starving and drinking a lot of booze to cover the pain. You actually need food when you are starving (i.e., God), not booze (i.e., lots of money).
Thing is, if you get a miracle, you've got big changes coming your way. Some of your friends are not going to like you anymore, and will probably treat you shabbily.
You'll get over it, though, and make some new friends. I've included some Facebook shots of people in the "miracle" crowd. There are lots of them, and they are lovely people. You'll enjoy the good company.
St. Francis of Assisi
Image Credit
So miracles normally don't happen to NYT readers, and they don't happen to the rich and powerful people that NYT readers prefer to read about. Miracles happen to people who ask for them, and to people who need them. These two qualifiers exclude most NYT readers.
Read here about a paralyzed man who was healed at Lourdes and just finished a 1,000 mile walk.
C.S. Lewis wrote a book on miracles. It's quite wonderful. It is helpfully called "Miracles."
There is an excellent series of monographs on miracles titled "Matthew," "Mark," "Luke," "John," and "Acts." I've read them in a collection called "The Bible." Fine stuff. You can even read them online, for free.
Here's a book by a physician examining about 1,400 medical miracles documented by the Vatican over the years. I haven't read it, but it looks interesting.
Miracles have a strange effect. They induce both belief and mockery, transformation and vituperation. Normally the poor, desperate people who ask for miracles have their lives changed, and the rich, educated people around them insult them. Read the Gospel of John, chapter 9.
Some stories don't change.
Here's a tip: if you want to meet God, ask Him for a miracle. Not in a grumpy, "show me your stuff" way. Just ask because you need one, and are admitting it to Him. Don't worry, He'll only give you one if it's good for you.
BTW, I'm not talking about "easy-cheesy, give me a billion dollars" miracles. For the most part, being wealthy is even more problematic for your soul than poverty. It is very similar to starving and drinking a lot of booze to cover the pain. You actually need food when you are starving (i.e., God), not booze (i.e., lots of money).
Thing is, if you get a miracle, you've got big changes coming your way. Some of your friends are not going to like you anymore, and will probably treat you shabbily.
You'll get over it, though, and make some new friends. I've included some Facebook shots of people in the "miracle" crowd. There are lots of them, and they are lovely people. You'll enjoy the good company.
St. Francis of AssisiImage Credit
Maybe readers could comment on miracles they've witnessed. That would be nice. Next post I'll tell about one that happened to me.
Saturday, May 7, 2011
USSASSINATION
I see the news started calling Osama "Usama" the other day, at approximately the same hour our Chief Executive had Osama assassinated. Or is that Ussassinated?
Does this mean we were hunting the wrong guy the whole time and we finally got him because we figured out how to spell his name? DO NOT TELL ME he was in our phone book and we just missed him because we were looking under “O.”
Maybe this means that all Arabic names that start in "O" have to be be changed to "U" now? Have we just missed that until now?Or is it a rule just for historically awful people? Udolf Hitler? Useph Stalin? Uttila the Hun? Is that how it’s going to be?
The alternate spelling, Usama, has been around for a long time. I don’t understand why we just picked up on it the weekend we had him whacked. As far as I know there is no International Court of Foreign Name Spellings that decides these things. There is no "right" way to spell it, except in Arabic. Just pick a spelling and stick with it. Same with Gadhafi/Qaddafi/Khadafhi.
And what is it with UBL? Is this the cutesy future of villain-hood? UBL sounds like some sad sack emo band, or maybe an internet acronym. I prefer my evil people with three names, the good old American way. Lee Harvey Oswald. James Earl Ray. John Wilkes Booth. Osama Bin Laden.
That’s all I’m talking about.
Sunday, April 24, 2011
BURNING DOWN THE HOUSE
I thought the "Obama House" binge deficit-frat-party would only last the weekend, and we could start cleaning up Monday and get back to work, but it's Wednesday, the party has only gotten bigger, and the neighbors just called the police.
Bluto.
Image credit.
Obama and the frat-house Dems say the neighbors are fascists anyway, extremists, conservatives, all of them. Party on!
Benny "Big Times" Bernake, the banker, is stumbling around with an empty bottle of QE2 in his hand, singing "Louie-Louie" at the top of his lungs, while Barry Obama, chief party planner, is already working on the next party in 2012. Who knew Benny was such an awesome party guy?
Benny Big Times, Wearing Party Wig
But even though the government's got debt sloshing down its snorkel right now, we're all better off, ain't we? Got more money now, right? With all that stimulus money giving us fiscal goose-bumps?
Well, no, actually. Not at all. Not even close.
Since the Great Campaigner has already begun his 2012 election march, let us ask the question "are we better off now than before President Obama got into office?"
Here is "Hope and Change," by the numbers, 2008-2011 (an article in NRO supplied the figures):
gasoline - $1.83 per gallon to almost $4
oil - $41 per barrel to over $90
gold - $853 per ounce to $1,500
corn - $3.56 per bushel to $6.33
sugar - $13.37 per pound to $35.39
median household income - declined by $300, to under $50,000
food-stamp recipients - 32 million to 43 million
people officially in poverty - up 10 percent (to 44 million)
long-term unemployed - up from 2.6 million to 6.4 million.
News flash: 6.5% unemployment in October, 2008; 8.9% unemployment, March of 2011. Obama promised it would plummet to 8% in 2010, after it spiked up to over 10% in 2009. Yup. Down to 8% in 2010. Promised.
Wrong.
Total U.S. debt in 2008 was $10 trillion. Total U.S. debt in March, 2011 was over $14 trillion. Badda-bing.
U.S. debt as a percentage of gross national product? It's gone from less than 70% to over 100% in 2.5 years. Here's a neat "hockey stick" picture:
Annual government deficits have tripled since 2008. Here's a picture comparing Bush II and Obama deficits:
Printing cheap dollars with low-interest debt to "stimulate" the economy has blown up commodities. More money is chasing the same amount of commodities. So the price of commodities in dollars goes way up. That's inflation.
The Fed and the Treasury have done this because it avoids deflation. Deflation has you dealing with your fiscal problems right now, like rehab. Deflation gets Presidents "de-elected." People feel terrible when they are drying out. Cranky. And we can't have that.
We've used cheap money to solve our economic woes for 2 decades. We've just pushed one bubble forward into another, bigger one. Clinton and Alan Greenspan did it to get out of one bubble (savings and loan) and into the dot.com bubble. Bush II did it - dot.com bubble to sub-prime bubble. Right now Obama and Bernake are pushing the bubble from the sub-prime collapse straight into a bigger one: government debt.
Once the government debt bubble bursts we are at the end of the bubble pushing party. No one will take our funny money anymore. We'll have to figure out some other way to be irresponsible.
Economics is frustrating. How about all those foreign policy successes? Yeah, buddy:
Afghanistan? We are in a stand-still there.
Iraq? We won, as Bush insisted we would, and just as Obama predicted we could not.
Egypt? First do one thing, then another. Then do the first thing.
Libya? Please can't somebody else handle this.
Syria? Let Hassad gun down funeral mourners.
Israel? Go ballistic when they build some houses.
Iran? Remain comatose while Prime Minister Aminadab'lldooya, supporter of all Anti-American terrorism everywhere, builds a nuclear bomb.
China? Apologize for how nutty Arizona is. Ignore Chinese gulags. Keep borrowing their money.
Palestine? Pretend the corrupt government is not composed of terrorists.
There was the Monroe Doctrine, then the Bush Doctrine. Now, the Obama Doctrine:
You know what? Never mind foreign policy. That's frustrating, too.
How about campaign music? What is the Obama 2012 theme song going to be?
It's easy: "Burning Down The House," by the Talking Heads. (Click the link to watch.)
Bluto.Image credit.
Obama and the frat-house Dems say the neighbors are fascists anyway, extremists, conservatives, all of them. Party on!
Benny "Big Times" Bernake, the banker, is stumbling around with an empty bottle of QE2 in his hand, singing "Louie-Louie" at the top of his lungs, while Barry Obama, chief party planner, is already working on the next party in 2012. Who knew Benny was such an awesome party guy?
Benny Big Times, Wearing Party WigWell, no, actually. Not at all. Not even close.
Since the Great Campaigner has already begun his 2012 election march, let us ask the question "are we better off now than before President Obama got into office?"
Here is "Hope and Change," by the numbers, 2008-2011 (an article in NRO supplied the figures):
gasoline - $1.83 per gallon to almost $4
oil - $41 per barrel to over $90
gold - $853 per ounce to $1,500
corn - $3.56 per bushel to $6.33
sugar - $13.37 per pound to $35.39
median household income - declined by $300, to under $50,000
food-stamp recipients - 32 million to 43 million
people officially in poverty - up 10 percent (to 44 million)
long-term unemployed - up from 2.6 million to 6.4 million.
News flash: 6.5% unemployment in October, 2008; 8.9% unemployment, March of 2011. Obama promised it would plummet to 8% in 2010, after it spiked up to over 10% in 2009. Yup. Down to 8% in 2010. Promised.
Wrong.
Total U.S. debt in 2008 was $10 trillion. Total U.S. debt in March, 2011 was over $14 trillion. Badda-bing.
U.S. debt as a percentage of gross national product? It's gone from less than 70% to over 100% in 2.5 years. Here's a neat "hockey stick" picture:
Annual government deficits have tripled since 2008. Here's a picture comparing Bush II and Obama deficits:
Printing cheap dollars with low-interest debt to "stimulate" the economy has blown up commodities. More money is chasing the same amount of commodities. So the price of commodities in dollars goes way up. That's inflation.
The Fed and the Treasury have done this because it avoids deflation. Deflation has you dealing with your fiscal problems right now, like rehab. Deflation gets Presidents "de-elected." People feel terrible when they are drying out. Cranky. And we can't have that.
We've used cheap money to solve our economic woes for 2 decades. We've just pushed one bubble forward into another, bigger one. Clinton and Alan Greenspan did it to get out of one bubble (savings and loan) and into the dot.com bubble. Bush II did it - dot.com bubble to sub-prime bubble. Right now Obama and Bernake are pushing the bubble from the sub-prime collapse straight into a bigger one: government debt.
Once the government debt bubble bursts we are at the end of the bubble pushing party. No one will take our funny money anymore. We'll have to figure out some other way to be irresponsible.
Economics is frustrating. How about all those foreign policy successes? Yeah, buddy:
Afghanistan? We are in a stand-still there.
Iraq? We won, as Bush insisted we would, and just as Obama predicted we could not.
Egypt? First do one thing, then another. Then do the first thing.
Libya? Please can't somebody else handle this.
Syria? Let Hassad gun down funeral mourners.
Israel? Go ballistic when they build some houses.
Iran? Remain comatose while Prime Minister Aminadab'lldooya, supporter of all Anti-American terrorism everywhere, builds a nuclear bomb.
China? Apologize for how nutty Arizona is. Ignore Chinese gulags. Keep borrowing their money.
Palestine? Pretend the corrupt government is not composed of terrorists.
There was the Monroe Doctrine, then the Bush Doctrine. Now, the Obama Doctrine:
"If We Drive Slow Enough No One Will Notice We Are High."
You know what? Never mind foreign policy. That's frustrating, too.
How about campaign music? What is the Obama 2012 theme song going to be?
It's easy: "Burning Down The House," by the Talking Heads. (Click the link to watch.)
Watch out you might get what you're after. . .
Hold tight wait till the party's over.
Hold tight we're in for nasty weather.
There has got to be a way.
BURNING DOWN THE HOUSE.
Hold tight wait till the party's over.
Hold tight we're in for nasty weather.
There has got to be a way.
BURNING DOWN THE HOUSE.
Obama II Campaign Haiku:
Hope and change blossomed
in the sunshine of your smile -
now only ashes.
in the sunshine of your smile -
now only ashes.
Saturday, April 16, 2011
SPENDALOT
Camelot.Photo credit.
Older liberals wax nostalgic about Camelot, the magical time in the early '60s when Jack and Jackie were in charge, and the first wave of Baby Boomers were in high school.
Right now we Baby Boomers are hitting our entitlement prime like a runaway big-rig with the driver on meth. We are set to soak Social Security and Medicare fabulously, having recently had a practice run scoring a $14 trillion national debt.
FYI to future generations: We BBs couldn't care less about you. We've killed 48 million of our own children so far through an elective procedure we like to call "family planning." You think we are going to go all soft over distant descendants?
In our sunset years we need a magical government, though, like the Camelot of our youth. I say we call the present Administration Spendalot, and make do.
As King of Spendalot, call him KOS, President Obama made clear in his recent speech that we BBs are gung-ho for more debt. Gordon Gecko said "Greed is Good;" KOS, who is more nuanced and well spoken, says "Debt is Desirable." For instance, KOS recently thundered Progressive doom on Republicans for having the temerity to propose changing "Medicare as we know it."
Now "Medicare as we know it" is going broke. So says Spendalot's chief Medicare actuary. I know that's a heck of a thing to say, but it's really not even arguable.
Since I am sure KOS is not in favor of our entitlement programs going broke, the plan seems to be relatively simple: borrow more, or "Tax the Rich."
Either that or raise magic unicorns that crap million dollar bills. Which I am sure evolutionary biologists are working on right now, funded by a federal grant. To pay for our current 1.6 trillion dollar annual deficit, the unicorns will have to crap exactly 1.6 million of those million dollar bills every year. So they better get busy.
Now "taxing the rich" is a doofy charade, as I am sure the crowd in Spendalot is fully aware. The rich are almost universally in business. That's how they got rich. Businesses do one of two things with new taxes: they avoid them or they pass them on to consumers.
Which would be us.
So "Tax the Rich" does one of two things: it makes lawyers and accountants a ton of money helping the wealthy avoid the new taxes, or it burdens the middle class and the poor with higher commodity prices.
"Tax the Rich" comforts people who want to believe there is an easy way out of the current mess that doesn't involve reforming entitlements and drastically cutting the federal budget. Like all the best lies (e.g., Garden of Eden) it tells people what they want to hear. The best lies don't depend on being particularly credible. They depend on people's desire to escape the truth.
Tax The Rich.Photo credit.
Getting out of this mess through taxation is laughable. Spendalot currently spends 50% more than it gets in taxes. So is the plan to hike tax revenues by 50%? Because unless it is, the new taxes are like putting a dam half-way across a river. A lot of trouble and a complete waste of time.
Photo credit.The flip side of the new, brutal, binary world we BBs have created is to cut government spending by 1/3. But that ain't happening, not in Spendalot. Not while KOS is around.
As for the option "let's just keep doing what we're doing," which has been the BB mantra for three decades, what we are doing right now with entitlements is a Ponzi scheme. We make exorbitant promises to "investors," (taxpayers) and then pay off the first investors with money received from the latest investors, all the while fully aware that the promises can't be kept because we don't have the income stream to keep them.
Eventually this mess, like all Ponzi schemes, will dissolve in a sudden and massive collapse. Think Bernie Madoff, but with 100 million victims instead of 100 thousand. The pool of money from the latest "investors" dries up, and is no longer adequate to pay the exorbitant promises made to the first "investors." The first investors scream, and the last investors scream even louder.
Since they are not going to cut spending, I urge the folks in Spendalot to jam tax increases through like we did with Obamacare. My advice is to refuse to call the taxes "taxes," just as we finessed that little problem with Obamacare's mandatory health insurance. Call the taxes "investments." The tax fairies in Spendalot can require taxpayers to fork over "investments" worth 50% of whatever their federal tax bill is each year, and voila, problem solved!
The "investment" gets paid to a new firm, called the "Bank Of America's Future." BOAF will be just like Fannie Mae, but without all the failure and corruption and such. BOAF will lend all its money to the Federal government, after making a sizable donation to the 2012 Spendalot reelection campaign.
In return for their "investments," taxpayers will receive official "Shares in America's Future," which can be sold whenever the budget gets balanced. Which will be at the exact moment hell freezes over.
Once you get the hang of the compelled "investment" idea, the possibilities are endless. Which they will need to be to pay for all the BBs waddling up to the entitlement trough over the next 25 years, as the pool of available worker drones paying taxes into the programs grows smaller and smaller.
If only we could develop a derivative that would allow me to sell the federal government short right now, I could make a fortune. Ah me. Where is Wall Street when you really need it?
Friday, April 1, 2011
FIVE TSUNAMIS
The current estimate for cleaning up the tsunami disaster in Japan is $300 billion.
Our current year's deficit is $1.6 trillion.
That means my government of "Hope and Change" here in fat 'Merica is, during this 12 month period, borrowing 5 times as much as Japan will spend to clean up after one of the most devastating natural disasters of the last century.
Since the numbers are getting so silly, think of this year's deficit as 5 Tsunamis. It's April Fool's day today, so we've completed one-quarter of our year. That means we've accumulated 1.25 Tsunamis of debt so far this year. Right here in 'Merica.
This is the deficit that the Obama Administration refuses to take seriously. The budget proposed by the administration will result in $9.5 trillion more in deficits in the next 10 years. Think of that as 31 more Tsunamis of debt.
At least, that's what the Congressional Budget Office says. Their estimates of budget consequences are usually not as ridiculous as the White House's, but nevertheless they usually fall far short of sad reality.
So think of $9.5 trillion as the lowest reasonable estimate of how much the federal debt will increase. The debt currently tops $14 trillion.
14 trillion is about 46 Tsunamis of total debt. Add 31 Tsunamis and we get 77 Tsunamis of debt.
And right now all the news is about a nuclear power plant in Japan that did not go Chernobyl?
I want to be in the final fight scene in Seven Samurai. Give me a sword and some rice and I will die in the mud and the rain killing bandits come to steal our crops.
Our current year's deficit is $1.6 trillion.
That means my government of "Hope and Change" here in fat 'Merica is, during this 12 month period, borrowing 5 times as much as Japan will spend to clean up after one of the most devastating natural disasters of the last century.
Since the numbers are getting so silly, think of this year's deficit as 5 Tsunamis. It's April Fool's day today, so we've completed one-quarter of our year. That means we've accumulated 1.25 Tsunamis of debt so far this year. Right here in 'Merica.
This is the deficit that the Obama Administration refuses to take seriously. The budget proposed by the administration will result in $9.5 trillion more in deficits in the next 10 years. Think of that as 31 more Tsunamis of debt.
At least, that's what the Congressional Budget Office says. Their estimates of budget consequences are usually not as ridiculous as the White House's, but nevertheless they usually fall far short of sad reality.
So think of $9.5 trillion as the lowest reasonable estimate of how much the federal debt will increase. The debt currently tops $14 trillion.
14 trillion is about 46 Tsunamis of total debt. Add 31 Tsunamis and we get 77 Tsunamis of debt.
And right now all the news is about a nuclear power plant in Japan that did not go Chernobyl?
I want to be in the final fight scene in Seven Samurai. Give me a sword and some rice and I will die in the mud and the rain killing bandits come to steal our crops.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)