The stupid raises me from the dead

I am such a bad person. I've neglected the blog for--what?--two weeks. It's not that I haven't had any good ideas for posts. I've had awesome ideas. It's just that I get involved with writing the book or looking for work or worrying about my uninsured health (the other night I woke up in the dark hours and my foggy mind decided I had testicular cancer. After realizing a good vet could "fix" the problem for a hundred dollars, I went back to sleep). But, hey, I've spent the last three days obsessing about a certain old map that might get two paragraphs in the book. It's time to take a break. Let's get stupid.

What is the essence of public stupidity? There are two possible paths to public stupid. First, obviously, is to be wrong. But, not merely wrong, not holding an opinion that I disagree with--No! Type one public stupidity means being absolutely, factually wrong. Paul Revere did not ride to warn the British off. Raped women can get pregnant. There is no significant disagreement among climate scientists on the reality of human caused climate change. The founders did not conceive the United States as a Christian nation. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. The second form of public stupidity is saying something so face-palmingly offensive or impolitic that your friends rush to deny they even know you. Today we have type two stupid.*

I'm not sure if you remember, but way back in the fall of 2008--which is, like, 5000 years in reality TV watcher attention span years and 2000 internet years--an unregulated investment market almost destroyed the global economy. Pensions for millions of Americans near or past retirement age evaporated. The economies of several South European countries collapsed. Millions of Americans lost their jobs and, therefore, their homes. In an attempt to stop the crash, the Bush administration committed the taxpayers of the US to 700 million dollars to bail out some of those responsible. The investment house AIG was one of the lucky survivors. A few months later, they gave the people most responsible 165 million in bonuses. In the face of an outraged public, AIG's PR flaks explained that they needed to pay those bonuses to retain the best and the brightest because the investment community was so robust that their competitors were lining up to steal the people who made trillions of dollars of the global economy evaporate.

Now, you would think that, if you were one of the companies who was responsible for the near collapse of Western Civilization; if you only survived because you were bailed out by billions of dollars from the American taxpayers; that you only survived to get that bailout because you lasted a few days beyond your competitors before admitting that you had also destroyed the wealth of your smallest, most vulnerable investors; that you might try not to remind everyone about those days. You or I might behave in that manner, but not so AIG CEO Bob Benmosche. His painful memories are not of the tens of millions of Americans whose futures were destroyed. His empathy is not for those who lost their homes, pensions, or retirement accounts. No. His empathy and outrage are for those brave, noble top level employees who destroyed the economy and faced criticism. Yes, some of these people had to face the horrors of bad publicity and mean words while collecting bonuses bigger than the mortgages of many people who lost their homes.

That brings us to yesterday. The current CEO of AIG, Bob Benmosche, remembers the horror of those days:

Now you have these bright young people who had nothing to do with [the bad investments that almost destroyed the global economy] ... They understand the derivatives very well...
they understand the complexity. ... 

And if they are so blameless, they must have been completely ignored by senior management.

They're all scared. They [made] good livings. They probably lived beyond their means. ... They aren't going to stay there for nothing.

Because, with half of our competitors wiped out, there's a worker's market bidding for their talent.

The uproar over bonuses "was intended to stir public anger, to get everybody out there with their pitch forks and their hangman nooses, and all that–sort of like what we did in the Deep South [decades ago]. And I think it was just as bad and just as wrong."

Yeah! Having some people say bad words about you is "just as bad and just as wrong" as being dragged through the streets, beaten, hung, and set on fire. America would owe those poor lynching victims a major apology if they were still alive.

Wait, they are still alive? And, they're richer than before? But the bad words, the bad words, no amount of taxpayer money can make up for that. Can it? I don't know. Ask the 47 percent.

* If anyone has a recommendation for type three public stupid, put it in the comments here or on Facebook. Hell, if you can find me on Twitter (@archymck), use that, too.

Bloomberg defends the banks

New York mayor and former Republican Michael Bloomberg has said some surprisingly sane and occasionally even progressive things over the last couple years. But the Occupy Wall Street protests have brought out his old self. I suppose it's not surprising since he did make most of his fortune from investing. Appearing on a local radio show, he had this to say about the protests:

The protesters are protesting against people who make $40-50,000 a year and are struggling to make ends meet. That’s the bottom line. Those are the people that work on Wall Street or on the finance sector.

This is a complete mischaracterization of the protests. The protests are not against mid-level employees. They are against bank presidents and top level executives, the ones who make policies for the banks. They are against the biggest people at the investment houses, the ones who make millions from inventing "financial products," irresponsibly throwing millions and billions of our dollars around, and who still get million dollar bonuses when everything goes south. When people say "banker," they do not mean the cashier at their local branch.

We need the banks, if the banks don’t go out and make loans we will not come out of our economy problems, we will not have jobs.

We need banks. I can agree with that, but I don't think many, if any, of the protesters are saying let's abolish all banks.

I think we spend much too much time worrying about how we got into problems as to how we go forward.

Why is it that only white collar and well connected criminals get this blanket pardon when they destroy other people's lives? You never hear other crimes treated that way. "I think we spend much too much time worrying about who murdered whom. The important thing is talk about how to prevent murder as we go forward." I have a better idea. Let's investigate. If crimes were committed, we put the criminals on trial and send them to jail. We test out that old deterrent theory of harsh punishment. Saying no one will ever be prosecuted sure hasn't helped prevent crime.

Also we always tend to blame the wrong people. We blame the banks. They were part of it, but so were Freddie Mac and Frannie Mae and Congress.

Yes, Congress does deserve a lot of the blame for the collapse. But their responsibility lies in deregulating the financial sector and not performing any over site on Wall Street.

There might be some legitimate reasons for criticizing the Wall Street protesters, but their choice of target is not one of them.

History was not his best subject

Rep. Tom Graves of Georgia was elected to Congress last year with support from local Tea Party groups, the Club for Growth, and disgraced former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Like most Tea Partiers, Graves is a bit history challenged. Yesterday, while being interviewed by Contessa Brewer, he said this:

BREWER: They've had the lowest tax rates under the Bush-era tax cuts in years. How come we haven't seen massive job growth?

GRAVES: Well, what we've seen is massive job loss that began in about 2008, and I believe that was under Barack Obama.

BREWER: One. 2001.

GRAVES: No, not two — the job losses began in late two thousand and —

BREWER: Yes, sir. The numbers support what I'm saying.

Graves believes Obama was president in 2008. Most people with properly functioning memories or an elementary school knowledge of history or civics will know that George W. Bush was president in 2008. However, he is correct in saying there were massive job losses that year. As to when the job losses began, they're actually both right--in their ways. Bush presided over two recessions, one at each end of his presidency. Bush began his presidency with massive job losses and ended his presidency with even more massive job losses. In between, the Bush "recovery" didn't produce enough jobs to keep up with growth in the population. Let's look at some numbers.

Just so our conservative friends don't cry foul, let me lay out a few conservative assumptions. I'll crunch my numbers according to their rules. First, only private sector jobs count. Government jobs are not real jobs. Those pay checks brought home by soldiers, sailors, teachers, politicians, and civil servants aren't real pay checks. And government employees can't lose their jobs, because they never had "real" jobs to start with. Second, presidents are responsible for every jot and tittle of the economy from the day they take office. If Obama can't blame Bush for the recession at the beginning of his presidency, Bush can't blame Clinton for the recession at the beginning of his presidency. That's only fair. Because presidential terms begin in Late January, I'll give January 2001 to Clinton and January 2009 to Bush.

After Bush became president, the private sector lost jobs for sixteen straight months (Feb. '01 to May '02), a total of 2.82 million jobs, one of which was mine. Over the next fourteen months (June '02 to July '03), only three months showed private sector job gains and the rest showed losses, a net loss of another 583 thousand. That's a total of 3.403 million jobs lost in his first two and a half years in office. Following that catastrophic beginning, the private sector gained jobs for forty-eight consecutive months, had one bad month (Aug. '07), and five more good months, for a total of 7.379 million new jobs. The economy lost jobs for the remaining twelve months of the Bush presidency (4.629 million)--once again, my job was among them--finishing up his presidency 653 thousand in the red.

At some point in June '05, the economy had replaced the 3.403 million private sector jobs lost during Bush's first two and a half years. However, by then 5.537 new workers had entered the labor force. Some of those people got jobs that don't count with the government, but most of them were hoping, but unable, to enter the private sector. During the rest of the Bush recovery, the private sector put on 3.976 new jobs. During that time, the labor force grew by another 4.822 million. During the last year of the Bush presidency, while the economy hemorrhaged 4.629 million private sector jobs, the labor force grew by 561 thousand. The final count is that the Bush years lost over a half million private sector jobs, while the labor force grew by over ten million.

That sounds like massive job losses to me. These losses and failure to keep up with population growth happened while the Bush tax cuts were being made and were in effect. It's Republican and conservative dogma that putting more wealth into the hands of the already wealthy--in the form of tax cuts--will result in them investing in ways that will benefit all Americans. The rich will create jobs and the benefits of making them richer will trickle down onto all of us.

Since Rep. Graves wanted to talk about job losses under Obama, let's talk about them. The single worst month for private sector job losses (841 thousand) was January 2009, the last month that Bush was in charge. As soon as Obama took over, the losses slowed. There were still huge losses, but they got smaller and smaller until March 2010 when the private sector created more jobs than it shed. One million eight-hundred thousand new jobs have been created since then. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the labor force actually decreased during Obama's first two years in office, by 180 thousand. Almost nine million private sector jobs were lost during 2008-09.

Total employment is far below what it was when Clinton turned his record budget surplus over to Bush. The labor pool has increased by almost ten million in that time. Even with big tax cuts and loopholes for the rich and for large corporations, the private sector hasn't been able to absorb all of these people who are able and want to work. The public sector had absorbed some of those people, but Republican majorities in state houses and the House of Representatives are trying to lay off as many of those people as possible. Of course, according to the conservative assumptions I laid out above, none of those people had "real" jobs to start with and the the it's Obama's fault they aren't bringing home paychecks any more. Those same conservatives tell us that the only reason those millions aren't bringing home pay checks is that they're all lazy, drug-addicted hobos. But that's a topic for another post.

Sources for figures:
Private sector job creation and losses.
Total civilian labor force.

They said, please crawl away and die quietly

Currently, it takes a laid off worker over 55 five weeks longer to find a new job--if they find one at all--than it does someone under 55. Many experts tell us we should just get used to the fact we will never work again. That's nice for those securely employed experts to say. They don't tell us how to keep our homes or even how to live if we never work again. I'm 54 and unemployed.

Need a new irony meter

Ben Stein says the unemployed are "people who have overbearing and unpleasant personalities and/or who do not know how to do a day’s work." I suppose it's hardly news any more that a wealthy, white Republican feels the need to bash the unemployed as lazy, but Ben Stein manages to add layer upon layer of irony to the mix. This is Ben Stein saying other people have unpleasant personalities. This is Ben Stein, who once worked for Nixon, saying other people have unpleasant personalities. This is also the same Ben Stein, who regularly points out how smart he is, apparently claiming that the number of unpleasant or lazy people in the country has suddenly tripled leading to their being fired.

I really hate these people

Another rich scumbag with job security and insurance bashes the unemployed. Brian Kimeade on Fox and friends says "Maybe the unemployment benefits [expiring] will get people to sober up and take some of [the jobs being offered]." Just for the record, Brian, there are currently five unemployed workers for every job opening in the United States. If you weren't such a stone-hearted ideologue you might take that into consideration and stop being such a class warrior.

Update: What is with these people? Now Tom Coburn is making up a job fair in order to slime the unemployed.

A useful graphic

Soon after the inauguration, Republicans thought they had a winner in calling the current economic mess "the Obama Recession." A year ago you'd have to be as deluded as Glenn Beck to believe such revisionist nonsense, but Obama seems to have brought out the inner Glenn Beck in millions of people, turning our national political discourse into a freakshow of conspiracy nuts on parade. In most areas, it's almost impossible to penetrate their alternate reality bubble, but it is possible to make some quick rebuttals of the "Obama Recession" lie. Here's one.


Steve Benen made the original chart and I only added the arrow and lower labels. The chart shows job losses over the last ten months. Admittedly, the fact that there have been hundreds of thousands of losses every month for the last year is pretty depressing, but there has been a very clear and easy to understand change in the momentum. Things are crappy and continuing to get crappier, but it's easy to see that things could stop getting crappier pretty soon and even start getting less crappy in the foreseeable future. So, print this out on a notecard (do they still make notecards?) and keep it on hand so that the next time your right-wing neighbor or brother-in-law starts ranting about how Obama is destroying the economy and the stimulus has been a failure, you can whip this out and smack them around with a real fact.

Remember, facts are our friends.

Eat the rich

The federal income tax was enacted by constitutional amendment in 1913 at the peak of the progressive era. It was enacted to meet several goals. The first goal was simply to raise money to cover government expenditures, such as the cost of building a larger navy. The second goal was finding a better source of revenue. Tariffs and consumption taxes, for a variety of reasons, were not meeting the needs of government. The third goal, and the most idealistic of the three, was to reduce income inequality. For over a decade, populist farmers and laborers had been demanding an end to the concentration of wealth into the hands of banking and corporate elites. In part, it was the popularity of the social engineering aspects of an income tax among farmers and laborers that made it possible for thirty six state legislatures to pass bills in favor of an income tax. Did it work?

In a word, yes. There is a chart floating around the blogosphere today showing the increase in income inequality over the last thirty years. The chart comes from an update of a paper by Emmanuel Saez, an economist at Berkeley. Since 1978, the amount of the national income controlled the top ten percent of the population has risen from thirty-four percent to fifty percent. the rise in the wealth of the top one percent and the top one one-hundredth of a percent has risen even faster. Saez's chart for income share of the top ten percent is in black below. I've added the top tax rate in red.

The match isn't perfect because things other than the federal income tax influence the distribution of wealth. There are other taxes that the red line doesn't show including state income taxes. In boom times, the middle classes do well. The lowest percentiles will have a larger share of the national income during times of low unemployment. In addition, how that top bracket is applied has changed over the years. But in general, the trend is clear; if equality is our goal, the progressive income tax is a proven success.

The next desperadoes?

Historically, one characteristic of bad economic times has been the rise of desperadoes as populist folk heroes. In 1959, the historian Eric Hobsbawm identified the social bandit or noble bandit as a major historical and literary archetype. This style of tale, about the bandit as a trickster, defier of authority, and defender of the common people, can be found all over the world, going back through Robin Hood into the earliest known literature. In historical literature, noble bandit escapades are often apocryphally attributed to real people. One Jesse James legend has him giving some of his loot to a widow to pay her mortgage and then robbing the landlord to get it back. Nineteenth century European nationalist movements regularly appropriated noble bandit folklore as evidence of a primitive national consciousness. In other cases, the bandits themselves worked to live up to the social bandit stereotype. During the depression, Charles Arthur "Pretty Boy" Floyd was adored by some because, when he robbed banks, he burned the mortgage records. The Australian bandit Ned Kelly did the same.

This leads me to wonder if we're in for another round of the same. Millions of people are losing their jobs. Hundreds of thousands are losing their jobs. Tens of millions are struggling to keep up payments on credit card balances with usurious interest rates. Meanwhile, wealthy conservative pundits sneer that we have no one to blame for our troubles but ourselves and that we are clearly morally deficient for letting ourselves get into this state. Our Congress has shown itself much more eager to bail out a small number of white collar bankers and stock traders than they are millions of blue collar laborers. The time seems ripe for some serious economic populism.

Banks no longer keep records of mortgages and loan balances on paper or in file cabinets; they keep them in computers. The Pretty Boy Floyd method won't help anyone this time around. However, among the millions losing their job are tens of thousands of tech workers and bank employees. Will the next round of noble bandits be hackers nursing a grudge? I'm not encouraging anyone to fry the databases of their credit card issuers--as Nixon said, that would be wrong--but I doubt as if anyone is waiting for my permission. And, even if the noble hackers don't appear, we can be assured that hell will be raised in the next few years.

Math is not his strong suit

After setting himself up for some heavy duty criticism by trying to block Obama's plans for economic stimulus and infrastructure repair, Sen. Mitch McConnell is suddenly Mr. Bipartisanship. Or at least he's learned the word and likes to throw it around a lot. Appearing on This Week with George Stephanopoulos says we need to go slow on this, we need to examine things from every angle, and the Democrats have to listen to the concerns of the Republicans and let them "be a part of the process." Let's set aside for a moment the irony of any Republican who's been in congress over he last sixteen years championing the rights of the minority or demanding that we go slow on emergency legislation. McConnell's justification for giving him some concessions isn't even mathematically correct. He begins with:

Look, I think everyone knows that half the American public is represented by a Republican senator.

And, just to make sure we catch that talking point, he repeats it later.

Do we want to do it with essentially no hearings, no input, for example, in the Senate from Republican senators who represent half of the American population?

Let's do the math on that one. There are forty one Republicans in the Senate (not counting Joe Lieberman). Forty one out of a hundred is--um, divide... move the decimal two places..okay--forty one percent. According to the Census Bureau, the population of the fifty states on July 1, 2008 was 281 million (with Puerto Rico, DC, and the Pacific territories the total population was 305 million). Fourteen states with a total population of about seventy four million are represented by two Republican senators each. Thirteen states with a total population of seventy nine million have only one Republican senator each. That means about one hundred fourteen million people are represented by Republicans. One hundred fourteen into two hundred eighty one is roughly forty percent. Forty percent (or even forty one) is not half.

The generous conclusion is that McConnell is just plain stupid. The more realistic conclusion is that he's disingenuous and trying to mislead us. It probably won't do any good to point out his double standard over the rights of the minority when Republicans are in charge versus the rights of the minority when Democrats are in charge. Sadly, crying hypocrisy over the slightest boo-boo has become so much in vogue over the years, that no one pays attention to genuine hypocrisy anymore. It's probably best just to call him stupid and be done with it. We would rather win on the issues, but winning because we make the other side look ridiculous is still winning, and getting the job done is more important than accumulating debating points.

Punditing is fun

The Dow jumped 500 points today. The financial pundits say it's a vote of confidence in the Obama cabinet. That goes directly against the narrative that bloviators like Hannity and Linbaugh are pushing--that every fall in the market is a direct result of Obama getting elected. But, anyone can play this game. I think the fall yesterday was a response to Bush's last minute attempts to gut environmental regulations. If it goes up on Monday, that will because of confidence in Obama's ability to pull us out of the recession. If it goes down, that will be a response to Palin's indifference to turkey suffering. Feel free to add your own interpretations of the market in the comments.

Explain this to me

For two weeks, the financial world has been telling us they need a bailout. Without it life as we know it will cease. When the bailout was delayed last week, the Dow Jones suffered its largest single day drop (measured in points) in its entire history. Today, on anticipation of the bailout passing, the market was up three hundred points. Then the House passed the bill and rushed it over to the president for his signature. And the stock market dropped five hundred points! I don't get it.

Bailout fallout

The bailout bill just failed and the stock market dropped 600 almost 800 points. Boehner and the Republicans are saying they voted against the bill because Pelosi hurt their feelings. I'm not sure whether the bill was good or bad, but I do know a stock market crash is not good.

Update: The final count on the Dow Jones is possible the biggest single day drop in history.

Earlier today, the McCain team was pushing the narrative that he personally saved the deal by pararchuting in last week. Now he's he's stamping his well-shod feet and shouting that Obama personally ruined the deal.

The House Republicans are sticking by their statement that they threw the deal because Pelosi hurt their iddle widdle feelings. Presumably, that means they were ready to vote for the bill on its merits until Pelosi said something mean. That's quite an amazing thing to admit. We always suspected that they were a bunch of drama queens who cared more about having their egos massaged than about doing what they think is best for America. But it's something else to hear it from their own mouths. Mind you, these are the same manly men who claim they are the only thing standing between us and total victory by the terrorists, immigrants, homosexuals, rap musicians, and Putin.

While it's true that they more likely changed their minds and scuttled the deal that John McCain personally negotiated because they thought running against the deal might be a way to save their pathetic jobs in November, it doesn't change the fact that claiming to be a bunch thin-skinned crybabies is really an amazing thing to announce in public. An not something that inspires confidence.

McCain can't do two things at once

John McCain has been taking a drubbing in the campaign lately and now he wants to call time out.

John McCain said he and Democratic rival Barack Obama should suspend their presidential campaigns and delay Friday's scheduled debate to work with lawmakers on a plan for addressing the financial-markets crisis.

McCain said the Bush administration's proposal to rescue struggling financial companies and unlock credit markets won't pass Congress in its current form.

He said he will return to Washington tomorrow to join congressional deliberations, and won't participate in the debate unless there is a resolution by then.

I'm sure some in McCain's campaign think a time out is a good idea as it can be used to slow the momentum of his decline. The economic crisis provides perfect cover for this maneuver. The McCain campaigners want their guy to be seen rushing back to take charge of this important issue. They want him to be seen as caring more about what's good for America than about campaigning for president. I'm sure many will take his actions at face value and be impressed by them. Not me. I don't believe a word of it.

First, McCain is largely responsible for this mess. During his twenty-six years in congress he has been a tireless voice for deregulation, doing a way with the structure of laws and oversight that pulled us out of the depression in the thirties and prevented a repeat of those horrible events for over seventy years. That structure has been good for American workers, consumers, and retirees, but opposed by speculators who make huge profits by exploiting short-sighted gains and running away before they have to pay the consequences. Led by his advisor Phil "Whiners" Gramm, the Republicans finally succeeded in undoing the work of the New Deal Under Reagan and the Gingrich-DeLay congresses. After that, it was just a matter of time before things collapsed. Many economists and responsible, civic minded businessmen like Warren Buffett warned that this was coming, but people like McCain mocked them as "nay-sayers" and encouraged the builders of our economic house of cards. As one of the architects of this mess, McCain is one of the last people we should look to as a leader in fixing the problem.

Secondly, despite his sneering dismissal of Obama's patriotism, it is McCain who cares more about getting elected than anything else. It is McCain who has racked up a higher absentee rate over the last two years than anyone in the Senate. While Obama warned of the coming crisis and offered solutions, McCain travelled the election circuit proudly bragging about his record of fighting regulation, confessing his ignorance on economic matters, and promising more and longer wars for the next generation to fight.

Finally, why should he be allowed to opt out of the election process now? What better time for the American people to hear what he has to offer, to make him explain why we should trust him?

This call for a time out should fill us with doubt and fear. When the president is called on to deal with one crisis, America's other problems and enemies don't patiently wait until he finishes, has a nap, and is ready for them. Today, Kim Jong Il, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the next hurricane aren't going to wait until we're done with this problem before causing trouble. Their manners won't get any better during a McCain administration. If McCain doesn't have the energy, attention span, or ability to do more than one thing at once, McCain doesn't have what it takes to be president. Period.

Now that I own an insurance company

The US, better known as you and me, just bought an 80% majority of the insurance giant American International Group Inc., better known as AIG. I'll leave conservatives to fret over this socialist takeover of private industry, I'm concerned about how our company has been run. Now that we are the majority stakeholders I expect we will have most of the seats on the company's board of directors and executive compensation committee. From those positions, I think we should fire all of the current management above the department head level and institute a stockholder's lawsuit against those former executives and board members who have so badly mismanaged our company. Besides suing them to return all pay and compensation received during their disastrous tenures, I think we should ask for sizable punitive damages to make an example of them. And, since we are now a socialist dictatorship like Denmark, where's my damn socialized medicine?

Oil prices

Oil jumped to a new high today on fears of war with Iran and general jitteriness. Blah, blah, blah. A new record. Blah, blah, blah.

The Associated Press phrase it this way:

Oil prices have shot up more than $10 to a new record above $138 a barrel after a Morgan Stanley analyst predicted prices could hit $150 by the Fourth of July. Traders were also rattled by rising tensions in the Middle East.

Prices went up on the news that prices were going to go up. I'm reading that to mean market speculators drove the price up. A few days back, George Soros warned of a market bubble. This means three factors are driving up the price of crude. China and India are bidding against us for a limited amount of production, the dollar has plunged on the international markets and doesn't buy as much, and speculators are rushing to get in on what appears to be an easy investment. Does anyone have a feeling for how much each of those factors contributes to the price? If the speculation bubble burst, would the price of gas at the pump drop enough for people return to their old habits and go buy a new Hummer? As is, the silver lining to this all is that people are finally taking energy serious and making changes in their consuming habits for the first time in a generation.

Consumer complaints

I drive across the state at least once a month to check on my mother. This gives me a chance to check out the gas prices in a large number of markets. The price has gone up nine or ten cents over the last week and is now over four dollars in every part of Washington state that I visit. The cheapest station in Seattle managed to keep its lowest octane fuel at 3.99 for a while, but even they finally gave in. Diesel is over five in some places I visit. How are things where you live?

I'm not gloating

Remember when we were young and the hordes of Right Blogistan would make a great ruckus in celebration of the decline of Old Europe every time the Euro hit a new low compared to the dollar? Those were good times in Right Blogistan. Every day, so far this week, oil, gold, and the Euro have hit record highs compared to the dollar. Right Blogistan is not a joyous place these days. Oh, some of their friends on Wall Street a moment or two of cheer earlier this week when Elliot Spitzer resigned in shame. But that passed quickly as the class that gave us the CEO presidency went back to watching the fruits of the Bush boom get soft and mushy and produce clouds of fruit flies. Unfortunately,none of my investments are in oil, gold, or the Euro. I keep my investments in Mason jars, buried in the yard.