2008 Year in Review

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We Live in InterestingTimes

Sweaty, wrestling scholars have yet to establish whether it’s a Chinese, Arabian or American curse; nonetheless somebody once said, “May you live in interesting times.” And sure as God made the larva of the coddling moth eager to worm its way into the core of little green apples, we are knee-deep in the middle of one of those “interesting times.” Any more interesting and psychiatrists will start franchising electro-shock therapy treatments at shopping mall kiosks. The good news is Congress rewrote their $700 billion bailout bill and turned it into an $800 billion rescue plan. Totally different. Now it’s a rescue plan. Instead of a bailout bill. Sounds much friendlier. Besides, what’s $100 billion amongst friends? The bad news is they still haven’t done anything about it, which is surprising in the same way that discovering that the development of webbed fingers makes picking up dimes difficult, not to mention hair management.

What’s frustrating for us normal citizens who do not hold a doctorate in weekly misplacing the Gross National Product of Ecuador, is having absolutely no idea of what’s going on. And neither can anyone explain what this monetary CPR will or won’t do, or exactly who is going to end up with all that cash, or where they’re going to put it, and whether they’ll need countersunk hinges for the steel vault doors set over their newly dug underground bunkers to hide it all.

We have many questions. Such as who are we helping out: Wall St. or Main St.? Will I still be able to afford premium cable? Is this a Band-Aid or a full-body containment suit? Can displaced homeowners pack future CEO Golden Parachutes? And finally, and most importantly, is Nancy Pelosi’s face capable of any expression at all?

Twenty-five hundred dollars for every man, woman and child in America to help out broke stockbrokers just seems so, what do you call it, wrong. For all we know, Henry Paulson’s big bailout blueprint is to head straight to Vegas: “900 billion on red.” And that’s another thing. When everybody in America knows the name of the secretary of the treasury, that’s not good.

First the Sec Treas called it the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Then it was rejected as the Bailout Bill and embraced as the Rescue Package. Now it’s the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008. Glad they threw that date in on the end so that we’ll be able to distinguish it from the Emergency Economic Stabilization Acts of 2009, 2010 & 2010A.

The fact that this Bailout to Nowhere is growing faster than time-lapse bamboo may be prompting some members to pass it quickly before it swamps DC in paper and debt. In less than a week, it bulked up from 3 pages to 102 to 451 pages and is swallowing buckets of steroid-ed earmarks as we speak. Rumors have it that one of its newer provisions loosens accounting rules for Wall St. HEY! Isn’t that what got us into this mess in the first place?

Being largely a crisis of confidence over our foundering Ship of State, it is more comforting than polar bear fur against a naked buttock knowing George Bush is steady at the helm. He actually said out loud in front of people holding microphones “we’re working hard on economic turmoil.” Thanks George, Mission Accomplished. Finally gets one thing right, and it's economic turmoil. I ask you now: What are the odds?

by Will Durst, Syndicated Columnist
October 5, 2008