(Whoops, upside down! Sorry.)I'm sooo frickin' excited. Containing it is nearly impossible. See, a few days ago I was watching the stock market crash with detached amusement. Mostly because I'd dumped our last stock holdings the summer of July '06 just before going on vacation.
I did that because, being a natural born pessimist, I didn't want to worry about the market collapsing while at the beach, costing us thousands more than I'd budgeted for during our little foray to the Oregon coast. In other words, I wanted a vacation free from the worries of the real world and its irrationally exuberant economics.
But that was way back in July '06 and after returning from vacation, I watched as everyone who stayed in the market got richer, got fatter as I got more bitter. The huge market sell-off I expected never came. The market went up, up, up.
You know how difficult it is seeing friends "move on" to new cars, bigger houses with triple garages and built in vacuums as housing values soar along with the stock market as you sit there in crumbling suburbs left over from the 70's, fuming, growing bitter, earning 5% on a couple CD's as friends are making 10, 15, 20% or more?
Now - and suddenly - some sense of sobering rationality is returning to us all. The endless well Bush has been draining to finance his hubris everywhere is running dry and, oh shit (!), it's promising to ruin his presidential "legacy." (Note his last year in office promise last week to the Palestinians and Jews to return to "seriously" effect a solution there (after 7 years of doing nothing?!) It's as if Bush is suddenly realizing he may be leaving office and his two terms have given people nothing but misery. Now he wants to save himself from his image as global asshole.
Mind you, I'm not gloating as my friend's still in the market watch their savings grow smaller and smaller weekly. Hell, if we'd stayed in the market back in '06 we'd still be ahead of where we are today. No, as with all things financial, I'm now worrying about the security of our supposedly federally insured CD's should Bush's economics come home to roost with the sobering reality it deserves!
But as a result of today's news, I'm drooling at the prospect of what I'm going to do with the $300 Bush is planning to give me to save the nation from recession. (News: we're already in a fuckin' recession folks or, maybe worse, on the doorstep of a full blown depression!.)
While the $300 Bush is planning to give me to save the U.S. from economic meltdown is burning a hole in my pocket, I don't know whether to go out and buy two 4 gigabyte iPod nanos, 9.06 shares of Microsoft, or just fill up my gas tank . Anyone else been dreaming what they're going to do with their's?
6 comments:
wow 300 WHOLE frigging dollars...Oh gee what to spend it on first.....FOOD or Heat ????oh what should I piss that pittance on????
great post...
( you really have friends that moved up ? really ? we have friends that are like me...we are having a race to the Bottem....)
I was thinking it would be nice to give all my $ to the hospital & Doctors to pick up the $2100 that not one, but TWO deluxe insurance policies failed to cover.
I now realize what was deluxe about it was the price of the policy, not the medical coverage.
Or I could just go wild like Enigma & pay my utility bill. Woo Hoo!!!
It's just too damned exciting.
I already left Enigma a snarky remark about the $300 at watergate summer, so I'll just say here that I'm having bad feelings about those FDIC CD's & MMF's too.
Sometime back in Jul-Aug, I was researching setting up a Swiss bank acct. One of the factors to consider was which currency you want your acct held in. The usual choice is Euros or British lbs. I decided we should definitely do this, get money out of the US just in case, so we would take a CD maturing in November & do it in Dec. HAHAHAH, timing is everything! As you know, the US-Dollar started tanking in Sept-Oct, so now there is NO WAY we would do this because the exchange rate would cause us to lose money. If only we had paid the penalty to cash in that CD in Aug, we could've been feeling pretty good about now. As it is, we are feeling bushwhacked.
As far as CD money in FDIC banks, well I won't say it's impossible, but if those start defaulting, there will be wholesale panic & economic meltdown on a scale that will destroy the last vestiges of our economy.
Well, deep in my heart I know it's all our faults. CONSUMER SPENDING is down. It was a lackluster christmas season for American business because we let them down. We just didn't buy enough shit.
Maybe that's because we're "spent"?
I mean, what more can we do? We long ago abandoned saving as a virtue, opting for consumption in its place. Hell, we bought houses and other shit we couldn't really afford. Loan sharks extended us the CREDIT to do it. The government helped us stay in the game by changing bankruptcy laws so we couldn't just quit. We charged the two fuckin' wars Bush sold us that we couldn't afford and now we're gonna be buying the aftermath of that for years to come.
So, sure, the future looks a little messy.
But this morning I'm reading the $300 we're dreaming about may be nothing compared to what Bush wants to give us - $800! Woo Hoo!
Even though Fran is trying to throw water on my firy excitement here, I'm going to still spend idle moments contemplating how I'll use my new found wealth, despite my electric bill going up 10%, water bill up to build flood control, Time Warner trying a pilot program to charge internet customers based how much they use the web, etc., etc., et.al.
Hell, and we here in El Paso have 30,000 more army troops coming to our community to save us! That will expand our local tax base. (But why does it seem to never grow it enough to pay for the new schools, roads, and services demanded by new residents pouring into town?) (It kinda gives GROWTH--another of those wonderful economic terms captitalism MUST have to surivive--[like CONSUMER SPENDING, CONSUMPTION and PROFITS, etc. a bad taint]).
But, no, I will not be deterred from the delirium of my gift from our government, whatever it may be. And while it seems like little to save this sinking ship of a capitalist economy, a reminder: president Bush also plans TAX BREAKS FOR BUSINESS. Yay!!
So be thankful. "Bidness" will likely be our real savior in this revival of our dead souls. (Either that, or our ultimate executioner because no matter how hard they whip us, they just can't get another mile outta us dead horse consumers.)
And d.k., reading your comment, it all comes down to timing, doesn't it? (I've always been pretty bad at that.) You harken the lyrics of a Billy Joel song, i.e., "and we shall go down together, yes, we shall all go down together!"
But look at the bright side of it, maybe we'll run into each other beneath a a freeway overpass someday - our new communal homes!
You asked about hope earlier. I'm full of hope today that the $300 or $800 will allow me to fill up the gas tank later this spring and get out and travel a bit. It's when traveling that I put all of this crazyness behind me and let my inner child come out. Kind of like going to the Oregon coast and looking for whales makes us feel closer to nature and wonder about the meaning of it all. So, you can't see the whales? I see them every time whether they're there or not. See, Dada, I have hope and optimism residing deep inside of me still. So, IRS or the federal agency responsible hurry up and send the money, don't make up some bs formula that will make me wait until 2009 to get it -- oh, hell, see how quickly reality can set in and set me back with the current state of affairs.
eprof: It sounds like an excellent plan for that windfall Bush/congress will send us, whatever the amount. (IF and WHEN you get it.)
Sadly, reading of your plans, I am reluctant to remind Fran (Fran, are you listening?), this gift to us all will not have the intended effect of saving the nation from economic ruin if you "waste" it on something like paying down your medical bills.
You must go out spend it on "real" shit; buy things; material things! So remodel, move to a bigger house, buy a car. Put those folks in Michigan back to work! Paying off your debts does absolutely nothing to save the nation.
You must go out and max out those credit cards, create new debts! It's your patriotic duty as an American. Only then will we be free from the burden of our economic worries.
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