Festival of Insanity

When the sun shines up here in Portland in August, we do know how to get down as they say. We have a local festival paying homage to real Italians and wantabes like me. I'm not Italian, but I always felt I should have been; with all the raping and pillaging going on in the last few thousand years there's a chance. In a sign of how weird things get up here in the summer there's this. I was sitting in Pioneer Square eating my Potabello Mushrooms in Linguine, listening to the Italian Music, when several young teenage girls walked up to me and stated they were on a scavenger hunt. One of them then breathlessly asked me for my underwear. I declined and they promptly went to another man and asked him. The last I saw of them they were on their men's underwear quest. I lost sight of them since I was laughing so hard I nearly choked on my linguine. Does this type of thing happen to other people I wonder? And why couldn't she have been older and look like Rachael Welch?

So you see I do think of something besides economics, especially in August. Of course, there is a lot of economic thinking to be done these dog days of summer. Our economic summer is like August 1939 slowly heading towards September First and the outbreak of World War Two. Even the mainstream whore press is whining about the economy. It seems the non Social Security Surplus, the one politicians like Condit planned to spend, has shrunk from $122 billion to six hundred million dollars. Go back through my essays and you will find one with my acid comments on the budget surplus fantasy. The budget surplus never existed at all. It was used during the Clinton term as a smoke grenade to hide the corruption. Now the Lesbian Left, my term for the liberal elite, will use it to hinder Bushocio, his boondoggle missile shield and tax and spending plans. Pretty cute I'd say. Infighting amongst the Imperial factions battling over the meager droppings of a destroyed and debased America. The budget surplus has never existed in thirty years. Gold-eagle.com readers should understand it's being used in the no holds street brawl called Washington, DC. I see Washington, DC wants to put cameras everywhere like Tampa. I'd vote for one in Congressman Condit's apartment and then play the tape next to the new CBS "transsexual situation comedy" coming this fall. I'm losing my eyesight, hearing and ever more of my patience as I get older, but they can have my underwear when they pull it off my rigor mortis butt.

The rest of the summer economic news is suitably grim. Continued job layoffs, corporate profits in free fall; you know, the list of the usual suspects. Only it has been over a year since the economy was admitted to have any problems at all; nearly 18 months since the NASDAQ began its high tech death march. If you assume like I do, that this all began to show up in March 2000- then some facts become plain. First, Mr. Magoo and his FED clowns, the New York Bank Cabal gang as I like to call them have failed. Mr. Magoo has an interest rate fetish. He seems to think they matter. From March 2000 to March 2001 retail sales only matched the official inflation rate of 3%. The key to understanding current economic reality is this: if it's taken nearly 18 months for the economy to get to the point where the mainstream press admits there is a problem, but no recession; then, how many months will take to get out of it? 12, 18, 24, 36? If you look at the figures you see that once 2001 started things went off the cliff. Why else do you think Mr. Magoo cut interest rates seven times this year? The man was terrified and in a panic to prevent precisely what is now happening. We are seeing a global slowdown which will be worse because of high debt and credit loads, collapsing corporate earnings and profits. No rocket science there my friends. Many states are in financial trouble. The economic system is failing.

Even a fool can see.