The March 9, 2009
PinFeed Almanack
Get Serious

  Lacking anything like credentials, and flaunting a history of faulty judgment, 
  the body politic proclaims, "We are all economists now!"  
  
  Real economists are hearing faint echoes of the Great Depression, but there is 
  a lot of disagreement over how to handle a financial neutron bomb:  we don't 
  even know if we're dead yet.  Looking at the leading economic indicators has 
  been unusually frustrating, because each piece of good news, like declining oil 
  prices, which normally boosts production, is blasted by awful statistics, like 
  the February job losses.  Throw in meretricious ideological arguments like the 
  need for tax cuts and spending restraint, and leadership looks idiotic.  
  
  This opens the door for the amateur experts:  my opinion is just as good as 
  yours, since nobody knows anything.  Which is not true, but it offers plenty of 
  Colbert's truthiness.  Call it the New Egalitarianism.
  
  Here are The Almanack's trailing indicators.  We will know we have hit bottom 
  when:
  
    - greedy investors don't have anything left to invest;
  
    - cynical bankers don't have any sheep left to fleece;
  
    - all the millionaires we would like to lynch have been convicted;
  
    - GM goes bankrupt; Daimler-Benz goes bankrupt; Toyota can't sell a Lexus;
  
    - Cartier can't sell illegible $30,000 wristwatches;
  
    - Wal-Mart can't sell salad-shooters;
  
    - a middle-class income can cover a Manhattan rent;
  
    - the sailors who don't like the captain stop hoping that the ship will sink.
  
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  roosadane@aol.com:
     good and to the point!
  
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