UBS writes off 19 billion dollars while Deutsche Bank expects a 4 billion dollar Subprime hit. And the Dow Jones closed up yesterday 391.47. Don't you feel better just reading that? I hope so because I have NO idea what it means. It was in a wire service story I saw, and nearing my 56th birthday I realize I'm supposed to be hep to this jive. Except I'm someone who keeps a shooter in his change holder because you never know when a hot game of marbles will break out and, like American Express, you never want to leave home without.... your shooter, Jeannie or otherwise.
The thing I came away with in all of this Financial Fandango is this might be the moment to take your credit card company aside and say, 'no hard feelings, but I'm writing off my balance to you. Appreciate the kindness.' I have one card in particular, in comparison to UBS, the write-down (or is it write down? Is there a hyphen and do you get charged for punctuation like that? Where would we find out about this? Never mind) is so small as to be non-existent. Heck, you can't really even see the balance. From space. When it's dark. And you have your eyes closed. If I can get the Secretary of the Treasury on the phone, 'Hello, Mr Paulsen! Loved you with Tommy and Dickie! Not sure about this gig with Jr. and Dick. Oh, you mean the letter o in your last name...wow, it does make a difference, actually, Good point. Well, nice talking to you, Sir....."
But I digress. Big business is able to walk away from messes it creates. Uncle Sam, on behalf of all of us, has been mooching money for years, promising to pay us back on Tuesday for a hamburger today, and can now pay just about no one back. Not a problem when you can have the power to print more money. And here we are, you and me, left holding opposite ends of the same bag. I'd like to think when all of this gets sorted out, and the markets are back in harmony with the Moon's Seventh House and Jupiter ascending (or something), then Peace will guide the planets and Love will steer the stars. Or not (the summer of love wasn't nearly all it's cracked up to be. Take my word for it, I was there. Lots of drugs, lots of awkward stumbleround with people whose gaze you had trouble meeting the following morning and boxcars of empty rhetoric about things it turns out we didn't know anything about. Go figure.).
Einstein postulated matter can neither be created nor destroyed and from the way we've been going for years it may as well be true of wealth and money. A decade ago we had the 'dot com' bubble and its subsequent bursting, and before that (and since, come to think of it), the real estate boom and bust and boom (and bust) again. Everything old is new. We had Prohibition and now we have a ban on hand-held cellphones in cars. Might be better to allow wet bars where the GPS system is, for all the attention being paid. And meanwhile, in Vapor World, fortunes are made and lost with the click of a mouse and in Downtown Terra Firma we drive to market in cars whose gas costs us a buck more a gallon than it did last year at this time to buy things with money we don't have. Are you happy, now? Didn't you see what the Dow Jones closed at? What's NOT to love!?
-bill kenny
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