As we blunder around trying to figure out where to put what’s left of our money, the occasional irrational urge to invest in a stock bubbles up. Most of the time, I bat it down. Some products, however, speak to needs that are eternal and resistant to the vagaries of time and finance.

I was walking to work in midtown New York City this morning. I was late, and crossed the street at 57th a little before 10:00 AM. As I neared 56th going south on Fifth Avenue, I saw an enormous crowd wrapped around the block. They were waiting to get into Abercrombie & Fitch (ANF). I approached a security guard who was chewing gum and watching the orderly mob, which had lined up behind established barriers, from an adjacent corner with, I thought, an amused and dubious expression. I asked him what was up.

“Like this every day,” he said. “The put up pictures of big naked men and everybody wants to get inside first thing.”

“There’s no TV star inside?” I asked? “No celebrity? Nothing special?”

“Like this every day,” he said again. “Crazy people.”

Crazy, sure. Crazy about the same thing people have been crazy about in good times and bad, through wars, recessions, depressions, stagflations and other various wormholes in economic time. Whoever is selling the current iteration of that has nothing to worry about. They’re promising the kind of return for a reasonable investment that the whole world is looking for every day, come rain or come shine. No wonder people line up to wait for it to open. They’re aroused. 

I’d buy that for a dollar.

A few of today’s headlines:

• Mortgage applications are up 17%.
• New home sales are up 2.7%.
• Existing home sales jumped.
• Americans are saving more.
• Durable goods orders are up.
• A $50 billion bailout for distressed home buyers is near.
• Oil prices are under $70 per barrel, at least for now.
• Amy Winehouse is the hottest Halloween costume.
• Last night I went to a very expensive restaurant downtown and it was so full you couldn’t get a space at the bar.
• I still can’t afford a two-bedroom apartment.
• The dollar is up against the Euro.
• It’s not raining today.

I’m not saying that everything is hunky dory. Nor am I implying that any peachy keenness is at hand. But it’s hard to see the upside of looking only at the bleakest scenarios, even if that is the way to become a popular quote monkey in this environment. It’s possible, if you choose to do so, to look beyond the trees that are burning and see the big, green forest still standing, if that’s the way you want to roll.

I know. It’s counter-intuitive. Stupid, even. But as a working stance, it’s just as credible as any other. In an environment where nobody knows what’s up, down or sideways, where positions are increasingly arbitrary, the act of choosing one’s point of view becomes a statement in itself.  What’s yours?

Everybody hurts. The Hindenburg is imploding. We’re up, we’re down, we’re up, we’re down. And nobody knows what’s going on. Oh, the humanity!

As the machine creaks to earth spewing hot gas, those who rigged it up to blow continue to do their jobs to help it do so. When things looked good, they honked their horns and smashed their drums and marched down the Street like hopped-up tweakers at a perpetual Mardi Gras. The Dow at 36,000! There’s no downside in YOUR COMPANY HERE.

The street musicians, drunks and satyrs have awakened to the smell of a dark and rainy morning. So now they perform as required. The Dow at 5000! There’s no upside in YOUR COMPANY/SECTOR/ENTIRE ECONOMY HERE. 

The analysts do their part. They come to work every morning and have to do something between breakfast, lunch and drinks. So they write their reports on every company in their sectors. YOUR COMPANY HERE is down! Revenues are flat! Boy, do they stink! Of course, yes, they’re part of the larger market, and the economy is sort of in free fall and the bears are running through the street eating all life forms in their path… but YOUR COMPANY HERE must be singled out. Why? Because it’s their job to single out YOUR COMPANY HERE. If they didn’t, what would they do all day?

The business reporters fall in line as well. They come to work every morning and have to do something between muffins, burgers and beers. So they cover the analysts who write the reports on YOUR COMPANY HERE, and the graphics guys work up their charts, which all look like a snowboarder’s dream, and yes, they put in a paragraph somewhere in there about how YOUR COMPANY HERE is part of the larger market, part of its segment, part of the meltdown of global capitalism, but they wouldn’t be doing their jobs unless they took apart YOUR COMPANY HERE when it was time to do so. And don’t forget the headline writers. In an atmosphere where it’s too depressing to read the stories, this is their time to shine.

Finally there are, of course, the guys who finance the deals. They’re taking the bailout money and working working working to count it, stack it, sock it away for an even rainier day. So no credit from them, nohow. No credit, no deals. No deals? What’s there to talk about? YOUR COMPANY HERE.

So wherever you go, there you are. Nobody can say we’re not all working as hard as little beavers.  At this point, however, maybe we should ask ourselves a question: wouldn’t we all be a lot better off if a whole strata of the infrastructure of investment capital simply knocked it off for a couple of months and let the fumes clear? Chewing away at our jobs as usual doesn’t seem to be doing anybody any good.

Macbeth said it. Act 5, Scene 5, I think. “It is a tale told by an idiot; full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Most people think he was talking about Life. We know better. He was obviously talking about e-mail.

Take today, for instance. It’s only 8 AM and here’s what I have:

Some vendor I don’t know is asking me to upgrade a program I don’t own. An industry trade is sending me its daily morning newsletter. A magazine I don’t read is featuring its monthly lineup. The New York Times is sending me Today’s Headlines. Allposters.com tells me that for 48 hours only I can get up to 30% off on some posters I don’t want. Who gets posters? I don’t. Maybe one day a while ago I bought a poster for my kid. Now every day I get an offer about posters. I thought I spammed that. I guess I’ll do it again. Friggin’ Reunion.com won’t get off my back! There’s some guy in the Yukon Territory, I’m not making this up, who keeps searching my name. I don’t know anybody there, but he keeps searching me. And they keep telling me about it. When I try to exit their site, I get an error message! What a pain! I’ll send them to junk mail, too, except haven’t I already done that? Why do they keep coming back? Telecharge is offering me low-priced tickets to a show I don’t want to see… two newsletters I signed up for that have interesting stuff I’m not interested in… another newsletter! And another! News stories from all over. Gossip sites with their daily blab. Sales numbers! Hm. God. It’s rough out there and I don’t need a spreadsheet to tell me. More sales numbers. More news stories. Sales numbers. Request for approval on something I’ve already approved. A chain about nothingness on which I’m cc’d. Another of those. A self-congratulatory note masquerading as an attaboy. A blog. Another blog. And another. An ad pimping for an upcoming conference. And another. Who can afford to go to all these conferences in this economic environment? Oh look. Here’s a conference on the technology of conference calls. It’s in Park City, Utah! Gotta go to that, right? An ad from JetBlue. An ad from Restoration Hardware.

Finally I see there’s a draft of a document I need to read. At last! Content! Real, honest-to-God content! Except you know what? The guy’s assistant just dropped the hard copy on my desk fifteen minutes ago. So the purpose of the e-mail is unclear. Do I need an electronic document? In fact, why is any of this here? As far as I’m concerned, twenty years into the medium, legitimate uses for e-mail are limited to:

• making plans for meals, meetings, meetings over meals
• transmission of jokes and funny videos
• news alerts signifying the end of the world, which clearly is at hand
• orders from the boss
• information about upcoming parties
• data

Beyond that, I have a suggestion: We’re clearly into an era of downsizing. How about extending that trend to electronic transactions? I mean, tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in its petty pace, and all that. But does every last syllable of recorded time have to be documented?

The New York Times today reports that the Google guys have added another plane to their arsenal – a state-of-the-art, experimental fighter jet. From what I can make out, Google operates a shadow corporation dedicated to the acquisition and maintenence of the aircraft dedicated to the three potentates who run the enterprise.

Until now, they have had to make do with several passenger jets. They now can call a Bruckheimer-style fighting machine their very own as well. For training purposes only, apparently.

I find myself intrigued by this. Maybe it’s just that it’s a nice break from the news of the day. Maybe it’s the sense that as everybody gets super sober there are still a couple of crazy guys who still push the envelope out there. Or maybe it’s the thought that somewhere there’s a department in Mountain View that’s planning something… something BIG.

I bet he is. We’re all shocked. But the fact that he is shocked is perhaps the most shocking thing of all. “I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organizations… were such as that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity,” he said while being grilled by legislators who were shocked, shocked I tell you, that an unregulated financial marketplace would eventually be destroyed by their inattentiveness and its own inherent greed, stupidity and short-term thinking. 

If anybody was doing their jobs around here, we’d be in much better shape and a whole lot of people would be much less shocked. 

You know what? We pay a lot of people in this world to know what’s going on, so that even if we are shocked when stuff happens, they are not. We call them professionals. Being Unshocked is part of what they are supposed to be doing.

Like, when we go to the same dentist for 10 years, we don’t expect the guy to be shocked, shocked!… when we require braces to fix our bite. He was supposed to see it coming, am I right? I mean, that’s why HE’S the dentist and we are not. 

When we hire a guy to build us a house, we don’t expect the house to fall down. And when it does, we certainly don’t believe he’s going to show up and be shocked, shocked!… that the foundation was built on sand. He built it, didn’t he? 

When a hurricane winds up in the Gulf to wreak destruction on coastal towns nearby, we look to the guys in the little beanies and pocket protectors to tell us how bad it will be, and we don’t expect to wake up one morning to find the guy on the tube standing there with egg on his chin saying, “I’m shocked! There’s a tsunami coming in five minutes and there’s nothing we can do!” We fire that guy after it’s over. If we live. 

When Mr. Greenspan left office, he was carried out of Washington on a float. A host of vestal virgins strewed flowers at his feet and book publishers lined up to line his pocket. Now he looks tired and sad and shocked. And all the Congressmen looking to spin the bottle in the blame game, they’re shocked too. What a bunch of weenies. 

Is there anybody out there who’s NOT shocked? Maybe those are the guys we should be listening to at this point.

What do you think Arjun Murti has to say for himself right now? The Goldman Sachs analyst predicted a few months ago that oil would move to $200 per barrel in the next couple of years, and sent everybody into a tizzy. Perhaps the one upside of the recent economic cataclysm is that the price of crude has not done so, and is, in fact, plummeting down into the $60s at this point. So… what’s he got to say for himself? Looks like he might have been spectacularly wrong here. All that freaking out we did a few months ago based on his forecast might have been for naught. That’s aggravating.

What do any of the predictors, prognosticators, seers, sooth-sayers and other artists of that sort have to say for themselves in the wake of all the failed predictions, prognostications, visions and general collapses of sooth we’ve got going on right now?

Nothing. They just keep on prognosticating. Every morning my inbox is steaming with them. There’s an entire industry of such people out there and they haven’t stopped just because they’ve been wrong most of the time, or missed the walking forest of doom for one particular tree or another. They keep on running their models and honing their numbers just as if the subject they’re addressing is amenable to rational analysis.

It isn’t. I think all but the most demented MIT risk managers can now agree on that.

I’ve got a suggestion. How about we lobby for a new division within the Government Accountability Office, responsible for the oversight and public evaluation of analysts, pundits and opinion jockeys of all sorts? It could publish an ongoing list of statements and forecasts made by those anointed to do so, judge the size and grotesqueness of their errors, exaggerations and assorted musings, and hold occasional public events where particularly dramatic offenders are invited to speak about the precise financial and scientific metrics they utilized to acheive their discredited conclusions. Then we can put donkey-heads on them and ride them around the room on a chair.

It might not stop the madness. But it sure would be a whole lot more fun, and might actually help to keep us mindful of who we perhaps should be listening to in times of crisis, and we should probably ignore… a lot.

I was at a meeting the other day with a bunch of really rich dudes, and for the first time in my experience in such a venue, the talk moved to politics. Incredibly, the majority were Obama guys, a testament, I think, to the essentially conservative stance that the Democratic candidate has managed to establish in the last few months, particularly on economic issues, where he has been restrained, if not actually taciturn.

One of the senior raptors at the table disagreed, however, and somewhat loudly, too. “If you’re in business and you care about your business,” he said, pounding the table with an invisible shoe, “you have to vote for McCain. You’d be stupid not to.” Nobody likes a public fight over muffins and berries first thing in the morning, so the topic moved to more pleasant matters.

But I’ve been thinking about it ever since. Our economy delivered a surplus by the time Bill Clinton left office in 2001. Today, after eight years of W, the deficit has ballooned, the average income of middle class people has stagnated while the number of billionaires (until recently) has blossomed, and continued, radical deregulation has delivered us into the economic slime pit. And yet a lot of people in business have knees that jerk right when Presidential politics pops up.

Here’s what I think: history shows us that Democrats are probably as good (or bad) for business as Republicans. There is no question, however, that Republicans are way better for rich people. Democrats, on the other hand, sometimes do things that do not directly benefit rich people. At that point, rich people tend to conflate the two questions, which are:

• Who is better for business?
• Who is better for me?

At this point, they come to the conclusion that what is good for THEM is, ipso facto, good for business, transforming the famous statement made by Charles Wilson, the head of General Motors (GM), in 1952, that ”What’s good for General Motors is good for the country” into the much more personal “What’s good for me is good for business which is good for the country.”

At some times, this might be true. At others, it may be possible that what is good for rich people might not, in fact, be altogether good for the country. Or maybe it is. Don’t rich people need the majority of their fellow-countrymen to be solvent? To have money to invest in their hairbrained securities racket? Don’t rich people feel the negative impact of a collapse in the financial or real estate sectors? Don’t they need a functional populace to which they can trickle down?

Answering such questions for themselves might involve taking the long view, and sometimes coming to decisions that aren’t directly in their self-interest. At this point an image of a camel attempting to fit through the eye of a needle intrudes.

Just a little note after reading some of the news during the weekend. I’ve made a decision in regards to this election. I haven’t announced my endorsement yet, of course. But I do know one thing very clearly. 

I don’t care about Joe. 

Now, this is not to say I don’t care about ALL Joes. I still like Joe Moscowitz, who runs our Purchasing function. I’m okay about Joe Biden, too. Nothing wrong there, as far as I’m concerned. Good luck to him. And I don’t mind a cup of Joe now and then. But these generic Joes who are assuming such a high profile in the media at this point are really getting on my nerves. 

This goes for Joe Sixpack, first of all. It’s unclear to me whether Joe Sixpack got that name because he always HAS a sixpack that he’s willing to share with friends, which is sort of okay, or that he has recently drunk an entire sixpack or is about to, in which case I’m not quite sure. Either way, I don’t care about his opinions, other than which brand of brewsky he’s hauling around. My policy on this issue has always been rock solid: while some sixpacks appeal to me more than others, I’ll drink anything as long as it’s cold. I guess if Joe Sixpack has a view on this issue, I’ll listen to it. But on subjects like the economy or the War in Iraq, I’m less interested. In fact, I’m not. 

More recently, we’ve had a lot about Joe the Plumber. I thought for a while that this was some person named Joe Plummer, and I’m still sort of unclear about it. If my name was either Joe Plumber or Joe Plummer, I’d be annoyed at this point about all the jokes that were being told at my expense. The fact that the actual Joe the Plumber is bemused and confused by all the attention doesn’t mitigate the profound lack of interest I have in him, those who are covering him, and those who continue to observe him as if he’s some sort of scientific subject worthy of scrutiny. He’s not. I mean, maybe he was for about six minutes, but those minutes are over and if I never see another YouTube video on the guy it will be too soon. 

What’s next? Joe Mama? 

All this Joe stuff is preternaturally weird, as far as I’m concerned. It’s like, we’re on the Titanic, and there’s a huge iceberg in the mist up ahead, and all the guys in the radio room want to do is listen to Jazz on the shortwave from Luxembourg. Why don’t we all pay attention to the boat for a while?

I walked home last night from the office. All along the route, I passed the places I used to stop in for a drink. It’s been a month now since I had a nice, frosty martini, so cold that the ice chips float to the top and the sides of the glass bead up with condensation… or a brawny glass of Johnny Walker Black, sinuous and golden in a big bottomed glass… or even a festive balloon or two of rich, big-shouldered, blood-red Zin, oaky and spicy and redolent of cinnamon and chocolate…

I walked by these places but did not go in. I figure the time to start drinking again is when I don’t feel the inexorable pull to the cozy dimness that lies beyond their inviting portals. In other words, when I don’t need a drink is precisely the moment when I’ll feel okay having one.

When I reported my intentions a month ago, one very astute commentor told me two things that would happen. Both of them have indeed transpired. First, he informed me that people would be churlish about my decision to quit drinking for a while. This has indeed turned out to be true. Two nights ago, for instance, I went to a corporate event with my boss, one that was preceded, as they almost always are, at that hour, by cocktails. He got his usual. I got a cranberry and soda with lime. Odious thing. My drink of choice at the moment. The following conversation transpired:

“What’s up with you?” 

“Nothing. It’s been a month since I had a drink. I figured I’ve had a drink every day for the last 30 years. I can take a break.”

“You gotta be kidding me.”

He was peering at me as if seeing me in a slightly different way all of a sudden. In business, you never want anybody to see you a slightly different way unless you’ve planned the change of image beforehand. So I added, “We can still be friends, you know.” He took a thoughtful sip of his drink and regarded me narrowly over the rim of his glass. “Maybe!” he said at last.

It was a joke, of course. We’re still friends. But he’s right, too. Everything is a lot harder without liquor.  This brings me to the second part of my correspondent’s prediction: that stuff would look a whole lot weirder when you’re the only totally sober one in the room.  A few weeks ago, I went to a formal dinner. I won’t tell you who was there because one of them could be reading this. Very high nabob percentage. Lots of wattage in the room. Virtually no oxygen remaining for people with normal-sized heads.

By 10 p.m., everybody but me had sopped up a full flagon of wine. There was hugging among individuals who by no means would have hugged had they not be very well oiled. There was some singing by voices rarely raised in anything but anger. One graybeard leaned over and told me a personal tale so odiferously raunchy that I am praying he never recalls the person with whom he shared it. And I sat amid it all like the albatross at the wedding feast. Nobody but me cared that I wasn’t drunk. But I cared. Deeply. And yet I stayed the course.

Since then, I have realized that my current dry spell has made certain things impossible. I can no longer have dinners with boring or annoying people, for instance. This is a significant liability in business, perhaps a crippling one. I have to see if I can moderate this position, for professional reasons. If I can’t, it’s clear that I will have to either leave business or start drinking again. Boondoggles, sales functions and other social/business events, too, are pretty much out of the question. It’s not that I require a drink, that’s not it. It’s that the entire purpose of the thing is to get hammered and feel a whole bunch of stuff about the people you’re hanging with — love, jealousy, loyalty, hatred, inappropriate amusement. It’s a total bummer to be in a room with a bunch of swirling people and feel absolutely nothing. It’s a group experience and you’re not part of the group, because the glue that holds the human souls together in that space is everybody’s common and shared inebriation.

I’ll be back pretty soon, I guess. Right now, it’s more a matter of pride for me, a test of my will, than any physical requirement to maintain and abstain. But I’ll be honest with you: this isn’t an easy time to walk around in this condition. Look at the news. We may all be getting to a point where walking around sober is a lot more dangerous than the alternative.

When the Founders got together to establish this great Republic of ours, they had certain clear goals in mind. Here they are:

• form a more perfect Union,
• establish Justice,
• insure domestic Tranquility,
• provide for the common defense,
• promote the general Welfare,
• and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.

Throughout our history, this vision of what government should do has changed, grown and shrunk depending on the level of heart, spleen or brains any given generation of the ruling class has under their wigs, vests or pinstripes.

For instance, back in the 19th Century, “promoting the general welfare” might very well have meant keeping the poor locked up in houses especially designed to keep them off the streets, and to start children working at jobs that stunted their growth by the age of eight.

We don’t do that any more, pretty much. Since the 1930s, it’s been pretty much the common assumption among decent Americans that it’s better to provide a safety net for people, that no matter what philosophical universe you inhabit it’s not good for children to go to bed hungry or to have the poor parts of town burn down every ten years or so.

Same for old people. They tend to need more medical care than others, so Government provided a program to make sure that when they get sick they don’t have to wander around with a tin cup and cane pretending to be blind like they used to do.

Education, too. At some point a while back, it became clear that not everybody could afford to send their kids to private school, so somebody got the idea of creating schools that anybody could go to for free. We all pay for them, of course, some of us more willingly than others, in the form of taxes.

And forget about the whole “provide for the common defense” thing. The Government could probably provide every single one of us with a nice Z3 Roadster if we didn’t have to do that.

As society grows and changes, then, our idea of the proper role of Government — what it needs to do to protect the needy, the weak, the powerless, the downtrodden, the huddled masses and their friends — mutates and shifts along with it.

Today we can add another group to the list of those who require intercession by We the People: Big Banks that have mismanaged the deposits entrusted to them by their customers. Two hundred and fifty billion dollars to once-proud burghers like Citigroup (C), Goldman Sachs (GS), Bank of America (BAC) and JP Morgan Chase (JPM). It seems like a small price to pay to make sure that none of these banks go hungry, or are forced to spend a night on the streets begging for the price of a martini — which can go as high as $20 in many major cities.

Many of us complain about Government and how it’s gotten too big, or intrudes too much on the free markets that we love so much. Now many of those who have complained the loudest are breathing a sigh of relief that Uncle Sam has once again opened his heart and his pockets to them in their time of need.

They’re first right now in the big breadline.  Let’s hope they leave a few crumbs for the rest of those who need a bit of a hand now and then.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

… and then of course –

10.

If you can think of any others, don’t be shy — drop me a line!

I don’t have a lot of time this morning, and I’m getting pretty sick of all attempts to complexify this question, so I’ll lay it out for you right here.

Who’s to blame for this incredible mess? It’s really clear.

No, it’s not Wall Street. Wall Street is there to work within whatever rules there are to make people who invest in stocks and other instruments (and pay their broker fees) as much money as possible, with billions left over for Itself.

No, it’s not Greedy People. Captialism is all about rewarding the greedy. If Greedy were a crime, they’d have to set aside Kansas, Nebraska and the Dakotas to hold all the felons.

No, it’s not the Banks who pressured the Feds to change the rules, jobbed the system and did whatever they could to build double-digit growth into a machine set up to operate in the low single digits. They were playing by the rules they were allowed to set up for themselves, and, more importantly, by the demented rules of the Street.

And no, it’s not the fat cats who profited, or the weasels who sold the same bridge over and over again, or even the realtors who squeezed every last bit of juice out of the blood orange that was offered to them. These are all shallow, self-interested, slightly sleazy, ambitious, avaricious, mendacious forces that are DESIGNED to do what they did: Get away with whatever they could. Make the most money. Figure out rationalizations to make it all sound good. So you can’t blame the intellectual courtesans in academia, the press or the research departments of now defunct institutions who helped them do that either, no matter how tempting it is to do so.

It’s the guys who were supposed to watch this sorry bunch and prevent them from taking over the funny farm. They’re the ones to blame. How simple do I have to make it?

Guy #1’s job is to eat as many pies as he can before he dies. Guy #2 is hired to make sure that everybody gets his or her fair share and plays by the apple-pie rules. If Guy #1 and his pals get all the pies, he’s just doing his job. It’s Guy #2 who isn’t.

So I’m looking at Guy #2, who changed all the rules when Guy #1 asked him to. Who didn’t enforce the few, tattered rules that remained. Who, over the course of the last couple of decades, never learned the most simple two-letter word in the English language, one that translates pretty well into virtually any global tongue. That word is NO.

The system is built to reward the fast, the greedy, the sharp, the amoral. In a totally free market, it is they, unencumbered by restraint, who do what’s necessary to reach their objectives. That’s why we have laws and regulations and people to manage them — not to destroy freedom, but to make it possible in a world that is not set up to truly establish it.

I blame Guy #2. Isn’t it time we took him out behind the barn?

USA TODAY reportsthat this ferschlugginer economic crisis is hitting us where it really hurts: in our bodies. They say if you have your health you have everything. Now, thanks to all those idiot risk managers, bankers, real estate brokers, and assorted members of the $500 million exit-package club, we won’t even have that.

Since last year, when the spectre of all this nonsense began spoiling our lunch, polls reveal that:

• Irritability and anger is up 10% – some 60% of all respondents are more pissed off than they were last year;
• Fatigue is up 2%, with more than half staying awake long enough to report a problem;
• Sleeplessness is up 4%, which is a shame for all those fatigued people;
• Unhealthful eating is up 5%, and why not? We have to enjoy something, don’t we?
• Stress around relationships, family health problems, housing costs, personal health, job stability and of course money and the economy are also up, in some cases dramatically.

At the same time, the paper reports that 65% of all people now check their BlackBerry at least once an hour for their e-mail, with more than 40% dipping in every 30 minutes or less. I know what they’re talking about. It took me 20 minutes to write this and I checked my e-mail three times. Yes. I’m demented.

What do we do to manage this stress? As far as I can see, nothing fundamental is going to change any time soon, so management of the unacceptable, unpalatable and unpleasant becomes a crucial life issue.  Nothing seems to work very well – hence the climbing numbers in all negative categories – but solutions reportedly include:

• Listening to music
• Exercising
• Reading
• Sleeping
• Watching TV
• Drinking
• Smoking
• Going to religious services

It seems that more people go to their local church, synagogue, mosque or yurt (21%), than drink or smoke (18% and 16%, respectively). Of course, eating to reduce stress beats out all of those, at 34%. The effects of having a big sandwich with a couple or three frosty ones followed by a big, juicy Macanudo has yet to be ascertained. Want to join me?

Perhaps most interesting, in the end, is the fact that in spite of all the turmoil we are now experiencing on the macro scale, most Americans cite a thoroughly non-economic source as the top source of their stress. Can you guess what it is? Their spouse.

I find that kind of encouraging, don’t you?

I thought it would be interesting to ask you for your opinion on this fine post-bailout afternoon, as the Stock Market sinks not-too-slowly into the west. 

This morning I felt bored by the bailout. Now I’m just scared by it.

So I’m asking you: Why has everybody lost confidence in just about every security in every sector? I can think of a lot of reasons why people are nervous, but what’s the hot button that’s cooling everything off? Is it the news that the FDIC is now insuring accounts for up to $250,000, making our savings more, rather than less safe? Or don’t we believe in the FDIC anymore? That would be pretty horrible. But there’s no objective reason to think the worst on that, is there? Is it the $700 billion now available to make sure the banks where we have put those savings don’t completely tank? Is it indigestion? The backwash of all that anger and bitterness resolving down to a fine haze of fear? Or just America saying “Drop dead” to the entire idea of investing in stocks, at least for the moment?

What is it? Can you tell me? I guess it’s more than an academic exercise. It is sort of starting to feel like the end of the beginning of the end and the start of a whole new cycle of pain, isn’t it.

Or is the bluebird of happiness right around the corner, just waiting to fly up our noses?

Bailout? That was SO last week. The economy? Can’t we just declare a moratorium on the issue, like one of the candidates has suggested?

Sure we can. Now… Let’s see what else we can think about.

How about the beautiful Autumn colors? And how many people will now be enjoying them all the more because they have to walk, being no longer able to afford the price of a Sunday ride to the country? No, no. that’s not right.

How about the upcoming World Series? The Fall classic! We used to all hunker down as an entire nation and plug ourselves into it, game by game, just the way we sit around for hours now watching the red numbers go by at the bottom of the CNBC crawl… wait. Let’s start over.

How about all the sounds of the little children as they get themselves off to school? How fast they grow! Turn around and they’ll be marching off to college in no time, to the tune of $50,000 per year, money that was recently all-but assured in the low-risk money market fund that’s now down 20% year-to-year… good Lord. Hm.

How about the pleasures of the home? The feeling that we get as we gather around the hearth together for an evening, ma and pa quietly reading in their rockers, little Johnny and Jenny sprawled on the hook rug doing their homework, Alfalfa the old hound dog gnawing on the remains of a $30 t-bone. How we all scrimped and saved for that house! No, it’s not perfect. As the winter winds begin to head down from the north, you can feel the cold seep in from the windows, which need fixing again, could cost a couple thousand dollars there for sure, and the roof, well, let’s just hope it’s got another year or three in it, because that could be another $20,000 easy, which would be hard to bear since the Adjustable Rate Mortgage we took out in 1995 suddenly isn’t looking like such a good idea and there won’t be any raises for a good long time and, you know, it’s possible, things being what they are that there might not be any bonus coming in February… think about that. No bonus.

Just might have to sell the cow to make ends meet.

You see? It should be easy to stop thinking about the economy. Now if I could just stop thinking about money…

A few minutes ago, Congress passed the bailout, and the confused and psychotic market, which had been up for the day, started coming down. Right now it’s down 200 points from the day’s high.

Tell me if you can figure out this particular iteration of its dementia. I can’t. According to you guys, this bailout is being done exclusively to benefit all the morons, moneybags and slime-buckets who scuttle along on the bottom of our fiscal ecosystem. Now they get what is supposed to be their bailout and what happens? The market tanks.

Tell you what. Maybe we’ll all just agree from this point on in that the Street is not subject to rational understanding and leave it at that. I’ll tell you one thing. I don’t ever want to see another PowerPoint presentation on the subject of how the economy and the markets conform to certain rational metrics. Phooey.

It’s all a big crazy poker game, I think, and there are too many people at the table, without enough cards in the deck to go around, and those cards are marked, and the pot in the center of the table has a ton of markers in it instead of real cash, and most of the people who are playing are out of the minds, either drunk, or stoned, or just plain nuts. And there are no rules except those that are occasionally invoked by the house.

Most of the time, we don’t get a true look at the nature of this game. For the last couple of weeks, we actually have. Let’s not forget the lessons we’ve learned when the merchants of rationality once again raise their voices in harmonious chorus.

A couple of days ago, I was quite upset at what I perceived to be a wholesale disaster – the rejection of the bailout by a confused and vengeful House. A tsunami of comments poured in. Some of you agreed with me. A lot of you didn’t. This observation, from Steve in Charleston, West Virginia, was one of the most pointed and eloquent. “Sorry, Stanley,” he wrote, “but I’m not scared. Not even a little bit.” He went on:

Out here in the hinterlands where small business deals in cash rather than debt, local companies are not hurting. Banks are not folding. It’s harvest time and life is good. In fact, once the Schadenfreude at the demise of Wall Street has a chance to kick in, life couldn’t get much better.

There are quite a few of us out here who hate, loathe and despise everything that Wall Street has become, and we’re even less enthusiastic about Washington. The only politicians who apparently understand that are the ones who voted against the bailout. As far as we’re concerned, Wall Street can go to hell, and then maybe the rest of us can get to work on restoring this country to what it was before Wall Street slimed it.

There was much more of the same from a lot of people. Several things are clear from this. First, that many people’s hatred of the institutions that run our economy and our government is greater than their fear of societal collapse. Second, that public desire for vengeance at this time outstrips any empathy or concern they may have for the impact that this crisis may have on their fellow countrymen. Third, that a lot of folks believe that our economy can get along without the securities market and those who “manage” it. And that, finally, at this time in history, pretty much everybody has a solidified position on just about everything, and that any situations and facts that may intrude on their lives simply fortify their existing points of view.

So if you’re a Democrat, you feel the current crisis speaks to what the Republicans have done to us over the course of the last eight to thirty years. And if you’re a Republican, in spite of the fact that your party has been in power for a long time in all three branches of the Federal Government, you blame liberals, Democrats, oligarchs, and big-spending government hotshots for our dilemmas. If you believe that regulation is necessary to keep crooks and nitwits from running the show, you still believe that. If you think the “free markets” should operate, wherever those might be, you feel even more strongly that you are right.

So events do nothing to moderate or change anybody’s point of view. This is kind of depressing for all of us, I think. It’s hard when you see something dramatic happen and think “Aha!”… and then find that your adversaries are shaking the very same news in your face triumphantly and saying, “Oho!”

I, on the other hand, am a flexible fellow. I’ve been looking at my initial opinion and trying to decide where I was wrong. A lot of you are very persuasive.

See, I thought that a widespread panic leading to tens of thousands of job losses in the financial sector were bad for not just Wall Street, but the nation that has trillions of dollars invested there.

I thought that a banking system in free fall, draining the FDIC of all its resources and ultimately placing all our savings and checking accounts at risk, was detrimental to everybody, not just the fat cats who have screwed everything up.

I thought a limit on the executive compensation at firms applying for a bailout, and assistance for homeowners who might be forced to default on their mortgages, was good. I see a lot of you disagree. Many of you seem to have an image in your mind, when you hear the word “defaulting home owners,” of rapacious, greedy losers who never had any intention of paying off their mortgages. In fact, there’s just as much anger out there, it seems, against those people who got themselves in over their heads as there is against the aforementioned fat cats.

Anger, that’s the ticket. Everybody is very angry. Angry at Wall Street, of course. Who isn’t? Angry at banks and loan officers and those who took advantage of a system that recruited them as good credit risks when they weren’t. Angry at Bush. Angry at Paulson. Angry at Pelosi. Angry at Freddie and Fannie. Angry at the victims. Angry at the perps. 

They say anger can be cleansing. Maybe I should just relax and get with the program. In a couple of months, we can all wake up and see upon what beach this wave of ire has delivered us, and see how many innocent have been washed away with the guilty.