Warmth Redux

Just a short while ago, heating oil and gasoline were at all-time high prices. Everyone started to panic. But this was just a tease. Now prices of both are way down. So everyone should be happy, right? Would that it could be so easy.

We discovered that our entire economy is a house of cards. All it took was the antics by greedy money lenders, clueless borrowers and asleep at the wheel regulators. In their stupor, they bumped into the bottom cards and the whole tenuous superstructure came crashing down.

You lose your job. Time to dip into your savings. But wait! Those savings in stocks and mutual funds are worth half what they were in January. The value of your house has dropped, so a home equity loan isn't worth much if you are lucky enough to have any equity at all, but on the other hand is anyone lending anything?

A massive amount of value has disappeared from all sectors of the economy with astounding alacrity. Where did it all go? If you peek around the corner of the now empty hen house, with scattered feathers blowing around, what do we see? Is that an unbelievably fat fox licking its chops? What happened to that guy you hired to watch the hens? Is he over in the shade of that apple tree, sleeping soundly?

Hey! You! Sleeping on the job? Looked what happened while you dozed!

But boss, it weren't me, it was that gosh-darn rooster - I got so tuckered out tryin' to find it to git it back in its pen, I plum fell asleep!

You blithering idiot! It never left the pen! What's that in your pocket? A hip flask? I hope that isn't whiskey you were drinking!

Uh... no... sheep dip...

Sheep dip? I'll give you sheep dip! After you leave the house, it reeks of liquor and smoke, and then I find you drunk and lying in the gutter again! Ha!

But boss! It's only because of my poor mother...

Your poor mother? The wealthy heiress who disowned you because you're a no good bum?

Uh, I mean my poor children...

You don't have any children!

Uh, I mean... uh... I...

And they lived happily ever after.

The Latest but not Greatest

I accepted a job in October working for some employer who has a contract with a major biotech company to update their batch records. All well and good, but after the PM got back from vacation, things started to get a bit messed up. Soon I was working on an on-call basis, which ended up being 8 hours for a week. Then the other shoe dropped, me being the other shoe, dropped from the project, very abruptly. Budget issues. Budget issues. Budget issues.

Guess what, I have budget issues too. Can I drop my mortgage payment? Can I drop my electric bill? Can I drop my health insurance premiums required by law?

Now it seems we have been in an economic depression for a year. And does anyone wonder what happens when you leave the fox to guard the chickens?

OK, so we got trouble, right here in River City, but what about Mumbai? Could it be that some psychopaths are trying to start a war between India and Pakistan with the intended result of the government in Pakistan being brought down and the military thrown into disarray so the psychopaths can hope to take over?

There are way too many psychopaths running around. Be they from Pakistan or Wall St., there are too many.