What Are We — Stupid?
The Dow has hit yet another magic number — 25,000. The stock market’s blowing up faster than President Gag’s waistline (mine, too).
We’ve been down this path before. Many times. And it always ends the same way. With a pop.
No, not of a Champagne bottle but of a balloon that’s been blown up far out of proportion.
Today’s swelling Dow is straining the limits of economic laws and reason. Smarter people — you’d think — would call out Whoa! Hold on now! but they’re not because they’re too busy making big scratch on the sucker’s game that is a irrationally fattened stock market.
It reminds me of the way Mobsters think. They invariably get nabbed and thrown into the joint, usually nearing the ends of their lives. So why do they continue carrying on with their nefarious ways? Because they’re too seduced by the lure of the quick buck they make extorting, providing vice, taking over unions, peddling dangerous dope, and other criminal pastimes they’re involved in. They figure, Man, this money so good I can’t stop now! I’m smart enough to always stay a step ahead of the law. And while I’m at it, I’m getting rich and so are my family and my friends.
And, sure enough, they drive fancy cars, travel the world, their wives wear mink, their sons and daughters sport glittery jewelry…, but then one day the indictment comes down. Their former pals are hauled before the Grand Jury and they sing like divas. They’re tried, convicted, and slammed into prison. And their wives and sons and daughters cry real tears because, on the main, they’d rather have their daddy-o’s back than have all the Mercedes and furs and Rolexes in the world.
They’ve spent their lives rolling the dice and when the lucky run suddenly ceases, they’re left with nothing.
All those brokers and speculators and investors who are giddy that president Gag has erased so many rules and regs, making the stock market obese, are on yet another fabulously lucky run. Huzzah! They can’t stop now! They’re all rolling in dough.
The last time this kind of balloon popped was barely ten years ago. Ten freaking years, people! We all remember the Great Recession. Most of us are still suffering from the effects of it. Yet — woohoo! — this holy land’s jumping right back on that growing balloon, blithely hoping for it to carry us to unimaginable riches.
It’s going to pop. Once that happens, we’ll be suffering unimaginable hardships. And with a dick-waving, bellicose, narcissistic, uninformed lunkhead in charge of our holy land, who knows how he’ll react to the Chinese and Russian oligarchs who’ve sunk their rubles and yuan into our market and who’ll be saying, teeth bared, Hey, where’s our money?
BTW: We know how he’ll react to plain old Americans who’ll be suffering under yet another recession or even depression. Stop crying, he’ll say. Stop being losers!
You won’t have to cup your hand behind your ear, awaiting the pop. You’ll hear it. Believe me, you’ll hear it.
▼
The Answers
Oh, those questions I pose in the headline and subhead up above? The answers are…, oh, hell, you know the answers as well as I do.
▼
Talk, Talk, Talk
Adrian Matejka On Big Talk.
Stand by for links to yesterday’s premier of Big Talk as a stand-alone program on WFHB. My guest was new Indiana poet laureate Adrian Matejka. The thing went remarkably well, if I do say so myself. And lemme tell you a secret: I had a little tear in my eye as I listened to yesterday’s first show. I’ve been working toward this moment for a good four years now.
I’ll be posting the podcast of the show soon. Right now, the WFHB brain trust and I are working on details to get the thing up online. I’ll let you know just as soon as it’s available.
Meantime, tune in every Thursday at 5:30pm, immediately following the Daily Local News, for the new half-hour-long Big Talk.
▲