Thursday
Deluge Just Getting Started?
Boy, the market boomed yesterday. What caused it? I guess it depends on your perspective. Maybe you think the governments have now coordinated a plan to save the world economy, so the market will improve with the improving world economy. If so, you're naive and deserve the leviathan government you have. Maybe you think other people think the governments have now coordinated a plan to save the world economy, so the market will go up and you want to ride it. If so, you're shrewd. Maybe you think the governments have now coordinated a plan to inflate all countries out of debt and anyone who is holding cash is screwed, so you want money in something, anything, including equities. If so, you're Ron Paul:
Rather than calming markets, these arrangements should indicate just how frightened governments around the world are about the European financial crisis. Central banks are grasping at straws, hoping that flooding the world with money created out of thin air will somehow resolve a crisis caused by uncontrolled government spending and irresponsible debt issuance. Congress should not permit this type of open-ended commitment on the part of the Fed, a commitment which could easily run into the trillions of dollars. These dollar swaps are purely inflationary and will harm American consumers as much as any form of quantitative easing.
Old Jokes. New Forms.
One television reviewer thinks TV sitcoms have run out of gags. He says all the jokes are merely re-canned versions of five different jokes that have been on TV since the days of I Love Lucy. It's possibly one of the most-entertaining TV pieces of the year (not that I read too many such articles, but of those I've read, this one is the best). Excerpt:
Things were different in 1972, when “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” began Season 3 with Mary's discovery that the man who held her job before her was paid substantially more than she gets.
In a wonderfully drawn scene, she haltingly tries to confront her boss (Ed Asner's Lou Grant) about this, stuttering, stammering, and then finally getting it out: “I would like to know why the last associate producer before me made $50 a week more than I do.” Lou barely registers the question. “Oh, because he was a man,” he says matter-of-factly. . . .
If sitcoms are merely rehashing the same five categories of jokes, they're also just shuffling the same handful of situations. Family with precocious kids. Workplace full of kooks. The young and hip being young and hip. You might think that the been-there-done-that thing isn't an issue for viewers in a younger demographic, but thanks to Nick at Nite and such, it is; they too have seen all those shows we cranky geezers grew up on.
And so here at the End of Comedy, there's nothing left to do but embrace a recycling ethic: shuffle the various well-established pieces around and hope someone chuckles.
