They’re killing pigs in Egypt. Hundreds of thousands of them. Is there any indication that killing all those pigs will stop swine flu? No. At this writing there has yet to be a reported case of it there, by the way.

They closed a school in Chicago because one kid there came down with the sniffles. Also absentees were up a little bit higher than normal. You can just see the administration of the establishment sitting around and discussing the insurance implications of an apparent lack of attention to the matter. There is no punishment for joining a panic. There is harsh retribution for refusing to do so.

For a while in our corporation I have been among those who really didn’t want to see a mass e-mail go out to all our employees telling them all the good things we’re doing to avoid the ostensible pandemic. I’ve seen such memos from others. It informs the corporate body that everything is being done to sanitize their phones. It instructs people on how to wash their hands. It tells them that if they sneeze, they should try not to do it on other people. And if they are sick, they are to stay home.

The subliminal message, of course, is that they shouldn’t panic. I always love that message. A guy stands in the middle of a mass evacuation as Godzilla comes in from the seashore, snagging electrical wires as he goes, and screams over the trampling mob, “DON’T PANIC!!”… thereby ensuring its immediate onset. 

So that’s where we are today. The World Health Organization is screaming DON’T PANIC! and governments around the world are yelling DON’T PANIC! and corporations, schools and churches are bound to do the same.

If I hear somebody tell me not to panic one more time, I may just panic. I feel kind of guilty I haven’t done so already.

In fact, my assistant sneezed about twenty minutes ago. Do I look all right to you?

Word comes today that GM (GM) has offered the Government a majority stake in the Company as part of its restructuring plan.  This was both expected and widely reported. What is less well known, however, is the creation of a new line of GM cars that has been designed, in large part, to sell the concept of Federal ownership to lawmakers. This blog has been leaked a highly confidential draft of this plan, and it is my pleasure to share the bare outlines with you today. New cars now being prepped for the assembly line of the new General Motors include:

The Senator: Heavy in the beam, with a brilliant white canopy, this limousine sucks up gas and oil like a tank but is expected to come with a lot of attractive perks and, if well-maintained, a long life-span.

The Congressman: Long and low-to-the-ground, this slightly cheesy but attractive sedan has a tendency to blow a lot of exhaust and is clearly meant to be traded in for a new model every couple of years.

The House Republican: A lot tougher than it appears given its light weight and manoeuverability, and capable of converting from a conservative brougham into a revolutionary coupe in the wink of an eye.

The Lobbyist: Small, fast, and very expensive, this car is designed to outlive many of its owners.

The Timmy Gee: This classy, two-door vehicle comes only in gray and is equipped with a set of well-disguised flame throwers that extinguish any extraneous life forms in their path when fully activated. Most reliable when fully garaged in an affluent suburb.

The SEC Cruiser: An SUV that only operates in rescue mode, and even then only when jump started by another more powerful vehicle.

The Barackmobile: The ultimate luxury car in the GM line. How it will operate is still shrouded in mystery, but the firm has put all its hopes into it and believes that, in the end, it just might be the answer to its current difficulties.

1. Economics is a bunch of bushwah. Now we know it. Economists are obviously not only behind the curve on what has occured, they are in many cases the cause of it. It is not a science. It is not even an art. At best, it’s a craft, like pottery. As things improve, we can expect a bunch to begin operating pretty much as usual, though. Why shouldn’t they? It’s a living.

2. Wherever there’s money around, there will be crooks. Many of these crooks are well-dressed. Often they are at the top of whatever game they are bilking. Next time this all happens, people will once again be surprised that the guy who ran the exchange is the person who also managed the Ponzi scheme.

3. The Law is a ass. I believe it was Mr. Bumble in Oliver Twist who said it, but recognition of the unique aspect of the legal profession goes back to Shakespeare and beyond. Virtually all of the regulators and legislators who were supposed to be monitoring the finance industry were certainly lawyers, as were the lawmakers who were asleep at the switch until they could be assured of airtime on cable on the subject.

4. In God We Trust. All others pay cash. Every panic in history has been precipitated by the same stupid sequence of events. In Rome, for instance, a huge panic not that dissimilar to ours happened when some rich bankers underwrote a bunch of ships that were sent to the east. The ships foundered. The banks had over-extended themselves. They ran out of cash. People freaked out. In 1837, following another crash a few decades earlier, the banks once again forgot about the whole debt/equity thing and doled out huge amounts of money in western real estate. The market went bust. The banks went boom. The economy went into the tank for 10 years. A few years ago, my own corporation almost went belly up after its Financial Services Division lent a bunch of dough to a sleazy real estate outfit in New Orleans that just didn’t pay us back. Now we have this, and everybody asks, “How could all these smart people lend out so much stupid money?” Because that’s what they do to MAKE stupid money, Sparky. As soon as nobody is looking they’ll do so again.

5. The rich are not like other people. They’re not smarter. They’re not happier. They just know how the game is played and, for the most part, what to do to stay there. Sometimes everybody forgets that the whole thing is designed to keep the powerful in power and the rich in their McMansions, and the People are sold the idea that everybody can have their Baby Benz. And for a while, everybody sort of gets high on the idea that capitalism is a populist enterprise. It’s not. It’s for just a few lucky souls and manipulative hedgers and, really, the rest of us should really just buckle down behind our plows and keep our pennies in that coffee can by the window ledge. We’ll forget that, of course, as soon as the markets simmer down. Then the Ralph Kramden side of us will once again emerge from the closet where it’s been whimpering for the last 18 months, and we’ll all be back in the hunt for the next mystery appetizer.

6. The press is the running dog of the system. Of course there are exceptions. But in general the media covers the winners and puts a nice shine on their helmets. What you read is what they get. Now that there are fewer reporters than ever, and more blogspit in the machine, everything will only get worse in this regard. Right now, even at the height of our troubles, the food chain goes from security analyst and quote monkey straight to the wires and blogs and directly to you. And you read it and think whatever occupies your brain pan for the most recent five minutes.

7. Be careful who you insult while they’re on their way down. They will either rise up one last time, like Carrie’s dirt-encrusted fist from the grave, and pull you down with them, or they will meet you as they are on the way back up and chew your head off now that they can. Those in need of proof on this subject need only consider two short words: John Thain.

8. Nothing lasts forever. Not good times, and not bad times, either. And nobody knows when whatever train we’re on will arrive at the next station. Not nobody. Anybody who tells you they do is smoking something. You can either ask for some of what they’ve got or ignore them entirely, depending on how you’re feeling or what day of the week it might happen to be.

9. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Even when nobody else is picking up the check. Later on, when that starts again? Even moreso.

You’ll have to excuse me, but I’m very upset. I just got the morning mail, and there, dropped on my desk, was that letter I’ve been expecting. It was postmarked Washington, D.C., with a return address from Mr. Timothy Geithner. I knew immediately what it was. It was the results from my stress test.

“Greetings!” it began. “We have just concluded the battery of exercises that quantified your financial status, the totality of which make up the document commonly known as your ’stress test.’ We are sorry to inform you that your grade on the aforementioned examination rounded up to a 61 on a scale of 100. As you may know, that is a failing grade in any school and it is our duty to therefore inform you that remedial action will need to be taken.”

At that point I sat down on my least comfortable chair and thought about things. This was scary. I had failed my stress test! What would happen now?

“It is clear from the results of your test,” the letter continued, “that you still suffer from a variety of conditions that, if they continue, will in fact stress your economic and personal infrastructure to the breaking point, to wit:

• You still owe quite a bit of money on your home;
• Your family-related costs are out of control;
• Your income is stagnant, with a potential downside of 10%-20% year-over-year in ‘09;
• Your dog continues to cost as much as a Scion XB annually, expense that continues to escalate and shows no signs of amelioration in the near term.
• Your tax position would choke a moose;
• You continue to spend money as if you had more.

“For these and other reasons, you have failed to achieve a passing grade. Please report to…” and then it gave an address in Washington, and a date, and so on and so forth, your obedient humble servant, etc., etc., signed T. Geithner.

So that’s it. On May 12, I have to see Mr. Geithner and receive the counseling session that is mandatory for all those who have failed to pass muster. And then I will receive my punishment for having disgraced myself in such a fiduciary fashion. I wonder… should I take it in cash or certified check?

I was perusing today’s gallery of top performing Fortune 500 stocks on CNNMoney.  Some are well-known, like Wal-Mart (WMT), McDonald’s (MCD) and the repository of their activity, Waste Management (WMI). Others, like C.H. Robinson Worldwide (CHRW), which is a logistics provider, are less intuitive.  But scanning the 24 bear baiters, I realized they all had one thing in common.

I don’t own any of them.

Not W.R. Berkley (WRB), the insurance holding company, not Darden Restaurants (DRI), which brings families together over steaming plates of shrimp and/or fettucine alfredo at the Red Lobster or the Olive Garden. Not a share of either. Not even Pulte Homes (PHM), which builds, obviously, homes. I could have bought some at some point, I suppose. But I didn’t.

There are two ways to look at this. One is that I’m stupid and should have somebody providing me with sound, reliable investment guidance. While this is quite possibly true, I believe it ignores the real, underlying phenomenon at work here, one that is backed up with ample evidence.

These 24 companies are doing well for the simple reason that I am not invested in them. That’s the cause that has produced this happy effect in each and every one of them.

Let’s look at the record. In the early 1990s, I invested in a number of tech companies that had been doing very well indeed. Immediately thereafter, they all went into the tank. I’m not talking weeks later. I’m talking hours later. Like, I bought a stock and that afternoon it lost 10% of its value. The next day another 15%.  By the end of that week, down 55% and falling. My broker, as they will, usually told me to hang on until the next upturn, which then did not arrive, ever. On several occasions, the upturn did come, though, but only after I sold the stock. And I’m not talking about weeks after, either. Again, hours. Like, I would sell and within minutes the security would experience a significant and inexplicable bounce.

But it wasn’t inexplicable to me. It was me. I did it.

About 10 years ago, I decided it would be smart to stop messing around with high-risk, fast-growth companies and go with conservative, blue-chip firms that had produced value year in and year out. You know the companies. I’m not going to mention them. I don’t want to hurt them. They employ many nice people and I have nothing against them. True, I lost money with every single one. But that’s not their fault. I’m sure they wondered why their stocks were down. Now they know. It was me. Many are still languishing at fractions of the value at which I bought them. That’s because  I still hold them. The ones I sold at a loss are doing better now.

Most recently, I purchased Google (GOOG) at $700. You know how that’s doing. Analysts are still a bit flummoxed as to why this great company is now trading at a less dramatic multiple than before. Some ascribe the decline to the challenged advertising market. Others cite the economy. It’s none of those things. I think we can now be relatively confident about the true reason. It’s me.

So as I look at this list of companies that are facing the recession and achieving uncommon success, I come to one conclusion. As tempting as a call to my broker would be, I will refrain. I have incredible destructive power within my grasp, and I have to use it judiciously. This recovery that’s in the wind is a delicate thing and I’m not one of those guys who’s looking for ways to kill it.

Today Yahoo (YHOO) reported its earnings, which beat street estimates. As far as earnings go, they were pretty typical of today, actually better than some. They had earnings, for example. More than people thought they would, actually. 

On the other hand, profits were down from last year as revenue fell in the first quarter. Of course it did. Whose didn’t? As quarters go, the first was a stinker. Nobody has anything very good to say about it. I guess the best thing is that it’s over, and that the second quarter doesn’t seem to be quite so bad. Like, we’re still a very sick person, but the guy at the foot of the bed isn’t chanting in Latin anymore, at least right now. Maybe he’s just on a smoke break, but that’s something.

The thing that caught my eye was the way the company linked its earnings news to an announcement. Again, this is nothing new. Companies often tie their earnings calls into exciting new developments that just might keep analysts entertained and delighted while they’re peering at their GAAP situation.  So to delight Wall Street, the firm also announced that they would be cutting 5% of its workforce.

It’s a pretty dramatic example of why companies do these kinds of things. They make a choice. They can think about their employees, who are beaten about the head and ears every day with bad news and already are quivering like jellyfish about their jobs. If they do, they accomplish their headcount reductions swiftly and quietly, and then go about their business — because the real reason for the cutbacks has nothing to do with bellicose statements but is an actual attempt to control margins. Or they can listen to the PR people who are listening to the Finance and IR guys and make ostentatious displays of sanguinary intent to show their general seriosity to the Street. 

“We have bad news and good news,” they state in their statement. “The bad news is that we’re pretty much in the same boat as everybody else. The good news is that we’re going to be firing more people.”

I don’t know who this stuff plays to. It must play to somebody, because a lot of people are doing it. I can tell you one thing. It doesn’t play with me. When the bullet with my name on it is dispatched, I want it right in the back of the head, preferably while I’m at an expensive lunch being paid for by somebody else. Any pertinent announcements can be made when I’m no longer around to hear them.

With new times come new job-related ailments. As the Federal government looks at a wide variety of new regulatory initiatives, it’s possible that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration should be investigating the real dangers that afflict us as we go about our daily duties. A partial list of contemporary disorders would have to include the following:

Bluetooth Ache: Occurs when the subject’s aural cavity grows completely around the electronic earpiece. May result in erroneous involuntary incarceration or institutionalization when subject is apprehended while seemingly talking to him or herself.

Personal Zoning Outage: With decline in available headcount, individual travel — sometimes in Coach class! — has led to a group of business people whose time away from the office in strange locations and indifferent lodging now exceeds 100 days per year.  Individuals have complained of cramping, dizziness after only three cocktails, and complete and utter confusion upon waking in darkened hotel rooms. Athlete’s Foot acquired in alien exercise facilities has also been reported.

The Shorts: Most intelligent money now having left the Market, the field has been ceded to those whose entire economic world view is based on wagering against things. Entire companies are now suffering from the condition, as perfectly good operations are devalued and their operating atmosphere poisoned by negative ions.  The only existing treatment right now seems to be the elapsing of time until the effects have worn off; many entities will die before the air clears.

Plasticosis: A painful condition in which an executive’s formerly robust and reliable expense account first molders and then withers altogether, producing hunger, sadness and, in some cases, career death. In severe cases, this may lead to the associated disorder known as…

Oenophile Dysfunction: Very common in Northern California, this debilitating disease afflicts those whose minds were previously occupied with incessant thoughts of wine and, to a lesser extent, single malt scotch. With corporate largesse at at all time low, sufferers are now condemned to order mid-shelf wines by the glass.

Water on the Options: Also knows as Black-Scholes Disease. Once mighty stock options have now been under water for so long that they are in danger of being soaked beyond recognition. Affected employees are still dragging them around as if they were worth something.

Earning Disabilities: Flat is the new up. Up is the new flat. Earnings Per Share have been reported, but not found. When the situation will be ameliorated is anybody’s guess.

Titular Stenosis: Until recently, titles automatically grew and ripened as a matter of course, turning associates into managers, managers into directors, directors into vice presidents and so on. That process is no longer assured, and titles often remain in pupal stage for years at a time.

TARPal Funnel Syndrome:  This tragic condition affects mostly financial institutions. It is characterized by a severe backup of accreted Federal funding, which finds its way through the front door and then is never seen again except in the form of retention bonuses for senior officers who are not actually retained.

Penal Implants: A growing number of formerly respected business people are now headed for incarceration. This leads to a host of related complaints that range from the acute to the chronic, depending on the nature of the scheme for which they are being punished since people started enforcing the laws that pertain to rich people. 

The China Syndrome: Suddenly, Americans are forced to operate on a playing field that is no longer tilted in their favor. Unable to market poisonous toys and toothpastes, laboring under onerous clean-air and clean-water regulations, trembling in the shadow of a free press, those who rely on our economic system are beginning to feel a certain malaise, attended by significant anxiety and feelings of insecurity and depression. 

Sources at OSHA refuse to confirm reports that they are reviewing these and other maladies.  Until some action is taken, however, the prognosis for all of us who work in this polluted environment is not particularly good.  Insurance companies, quite naturally, are taking a dim view of these developments and plan to be unavailable for comment until the recession is over or the world comes to an end, whichever comes first.

I’ve been thinking a lot since yesterday about United Airlines’ plan to charge plus-sized people more for their flights from now on. It upset me so much that I went out and had a 2000 calorie dinner.

I’m not fat, you know, but I do have big bones. What if some anorexic flight attendant decides that the line between fat and burly no longer exists? I don’t need two seats, unless they shrink their size again. And who’s saying they won’t? I remember when you could sit in a coach seat and recline it a bit and be almost comfortable. Now there’s a deathmatch fight for any available armrest, the space allotted to you is a vertical coffin, and the angle of recline is about 5 degrees or a quarter of an inch. Even that is too much, since the way they’re spaced front-to-back has shrunk, too. Last month there was a guy in the seat in front of me eating a large bag of salami practically in my lap. He didn’t even offer me any.

At the same time, relatively slender people have rights, too. I was riding on a Southwest flight not long ago. I had purchased the Business Select option, where for $15 dollars or so you can board earlier than the rest of the crowd. So I got on and selected the front row, aisle seat. Another guy got on and took the window. Right as the door was closing, some behemoth, maybe 6′3″, 320 pounds puffed onto the plane, looked at us and said, “Is this seat taken?” He then plopped his 1/6th of a ton between us and fell promptly asleep. It was not a comfortable flight. He snored, too.

The bottom line on our bottoms is this: As a nation, we’re getting fatter even as the space assigned to us on airplanes is getting smaller and smaller — as their margins shrink too. What is to be done? We’re not going to be getting thinner, I don’t think. Airplanes aren’t going to be getting any more widebodied to deal with our wide bodies, either.

Here’s my suggestion: Coach-level service, larger seats, 150% pricing. That is, create a section of the airplane that has bigger seats, but not as nice as Business or First, serve no food, offer no amenities, kill the footrests, even. All you’re offering is more butt space as your butt heads into space. Some have to be there. Others may choose to be. The price is way less than Business but way more than coach. It’s a middle ground that recognizes the Airlines’ need to make a profit, large people’s need to fly, and the normal-sized individual’s right to some level of comfort in this world.

Premium Coach is a step in the right direction. But it’s not quite good enough, not for folks with really big bones.

People have been telling me that I should cheer up. So I went online today and don’t you know, I found three great reasons to do so. 

First there’s the stunning news that JPMorgan Chase is going to earn $2.1 billion in the first quarter. I seem to remember all kinds of bad news coming out of that firm only five minutes ago, with bad bonuses and big, steaming bailouts and now here they are back on their feet again and doing fine. Can total recovery of the entire finance sector be far behind? 

Then there’s the unexpectedly terrific news that initial jobless claims careened downward by 53,000 over last month’s number, bringing those who were decruited during that time to only about 610,000. That’s way less than everybody expected. I bet that means the total number of jobless now filing for unemployment to dip below 6,000,000 really soon! While that may upset a lot of the nice people on Wall Street who feast on the concept of managing headcount, a few less jobless sucking hose water might actually help the economy, right? 

Finally, there’s the news that Martha Stewart’s new contract gives her a bump from $900,000 per year to a base of $2,000,000. She also got a retention bonus of $3 million. I think that’s a very encouraging sign. The last time Martha was doing well, so were we. Think about that for a minute. 

There are a lot of idiots out there who see every glass as half empty. Me, I’m the kind of idiot who sees it as half full. In this case, it’s full of a nice, frosty mojito served with Martha’s very own mulled mint. Bottoms up!

1. I am sick of… 

a. Rotten bankers
b. Stinking pirates
c. Posturing bureaucrats
d. Winter

2. I can certainly do without any additional advice or comments from… 

a. Economists
b. Regulators without entertaining facial hair
c. Former heads of corporations who are now in the tank
d. My mother

3. I’m very bored with…

a. Paul Krugman
b. Drunken celebrities
c. Sober celebrities, unless they’re naked
d. Artisan cheese

4. A day without ___________ is a day without sunshine. 

a. Glen Beck
b. Barney Frank
c. Another fabulous Chapter 11
d. 8 oz. of vodka

5. Please wake me when…

a. There’s some good news for me personally. 
b. Wall Street melts down into a small pile of phlegm. No, wait! It already has!  

c. There’s something to watch on TV.
d. All of the above.

Score yourself however you like.

I’m sitting in Oakland Airport waiting to board my plane. It’s Tuesday morning. I’m trying to think while I write this, but I can’t. Know why? Because there’s a television, bolted to the ceiling, nattering about some frickin’ nonsense in which I have absolutely no interest. To my left is a guy talking to somebody on his cell phone. To my right is a girl playing a game on her cell phone. I don’t know what game it is. All I know is that it goes beep beep beep while she’s at it. Her face shows the preternatural calm of a sheep munching on a clot of loam in the middle of an open field. 

On the way here, I stopped to get gas. On top of the gas pump, there was a TV. On the TV, there was a commercial. It was a commercial for the commercial potential of televisions on top of gas pumps. There was no way to escape it, because the automatic clip thing on the pump handle had been removed. So I had to pump gas and watch a commercial about how people like to watch commercials while they’re pumping gas. 

When I get to the office, I will ride an elevator up to my floor. In the elevator, there will be a television. On the television, there will be news. I don’t know about you, but the way things are going, I actually spend a fair amount of time these days avoiding the news, since very often the news you see during the day consists of people blasting hot lava over the news. Exclusive! Breaking! On stories that are neither exclusive nor breaking. A guy pouring oil on the public from the top of the Tower of Babel is not exclusive or breaking. Britt’s saucy new video isn’t either. But there it is. In your face. When I went to Vegas last month, they had narrated video in the elevators there, too, except that it wasn’t news, it was a commercial for the lobster in butter sauce they serve at the buffet. I didn’t want that, either. 

They’re boarding. In a few minutes, they will tell us to turn off our electronic implements and we will settle into the last quiet place in the western world: airspace. It’s a short flight, so there will be no movie. I hope it’s not too boring. Of course, they do have a very respectable in-flight magazine with a lot of interesting ads.

Today come reports that the gloom and doom peddlers are still at it, looking a gift market in the mouth. The S&P is showing a heartbeat lately. But wait a minute, they say. We’re not out of this yet. This is merely a pleasant meadow we’re skipping through on the way to the next abyss.

As always, they have numbers to back up whatever it is they’re dispensing. That should not surprise us. Economist types always have numbers. They had plenty of numbers while they were running the market up. Now they have all kinds of numbers while they’re trying like hell to drive it down.

The current crop of numbers pertains to retail sales. Sure, the banks look like they may be doing better… but retail sales have fallen and apparently can’t get up. Retail sales drive the economy. So of course the market’s dead cat bounce is a mere bagatelle, an island in the midst of troubled waters that is itself sinking into the Sargasso Sea of despond.

I’m going to use a little economics now on those who continue to cry the blues. Don’t worry, you don’t have to be stupid-smart to get it.

Fact 1: The banks are doing better. Part of this is that they’re not giving away feckless money anymore, at least for now. But another big factor is that America, which was on a spending spree for a long time, has taken a deep breath and started saving more. Remember when all of Punditry opined that we need to save more? Well, we are. Good for us, right? You might think so. Instead, they’re all creepy about it, because…

Fact 2: Since people are saving more… guess what. They are spending less! Duh. Since they are spending less, retail is down from the nosebleed heights of the last several years. We’re still spending, of course. Wal-Mart (WMT) is still up, although perhaps not as much as was expected by the expectorators. But we’re not spending like drunken sailors anymore. We’ve come ashore.

Conclusion: If savings is up, spending is down. Wow! What an insight!

I’m going to tell you a little story and then take off for the weekend. I know a guy who works in a company that has a small debt problem. They have debt and debt is not popular these days. So he talks to a trader friend of his and asks, “Why is our stock so low?” And the trader says, “Well, you have this debt problem that will pop up in 2012 and you have to solve it immediately.” And my friend says, “Well, what if we issued some bonds now? That would solve the debt problem.” And the traders says, “No, that would solve it, of course, but then everybody would criticize you for doing it at this time.”

Moral of the story? You just can’t win with some people. Knowing that, my feeling is that it might now make sense, as the showers of April turn to the flowers of May, to stop listening to certain gusts of the idiot wind and take a nice walk with more pleasant company.

Dear God… you know I’m trying to keep my mood up. Just yesterday I announced that the time had come for a new sense of optimism, that the sprouting of the crocuses (croci?) should be attended by an appropriate reawakening of hope.

Yesterday afternoon in New York City, the wind picked up and the temperature dropped into the high 30s. People at the office just looked at each other and shook their heads. In the elevator, folks coming in from lunch shivered, chuckled darkly, and said, “Wow. Aren’t you sick of this?” I don’t think they were just talking about the weather.

Today the sun must have risen, but you’d never know it. The sky is dark and unfriendly. The analysts continue to issue company-killing reports filled with bleak assumptions and the odd occasional misplacement of a decimal point or two. And fifteen minutes ago, it started snowing. Yep. A nice, juicy mixture of snow and sleet. People throughout my floor simply stood by the windows, looking very, very sad. “I’m so ready for spring,” said somebody to nobody in particular. All we could do was sigh.

We’re trying to turn the corner, Lord. But between Your perpetual winter and the harbingers of daily gloom on our computer screens, it gets tough sometimes. I know you’re busy with a lot of problems in the universe. But would a little warmth and sunshine on our sector be too much to ask? Or at least could you turn a couple of security analysts into pillars of salt? That would be something!

Okay, I hear you. You’re sick of the bad vibes. You want to get your collective head out of the community toilet. Stuff you’re tired of hearing about: bailouts, stinky hedge fund shenanigans, executive compensation, retention bonuses for guys who weren’t retained, criminal excesses by shady Wall Street buttheads, economic prognostications offered by those who didn’t prognosticate anything when it needed to be prognosticated.

You’re ready to move on. The innate optimism of the American spirit is beginning to bubble bigtime within your breast. Enough of this gloom and doom! It’s time to have a burger, down a couple of brewskies, hit the new ground running.

You’re not stupid, of course. You see the unemployment rate. You see the sales figures for the first quarter. You know that if you look, there is dismal swamp as far as the eye can see. But maybe not. Not for those who see just beyond that grim horizon. Over that rim, there is dawn, the kind of light that only those who look can perceive.

Proof of this fact comes in a new poll from CBS News and the New York Times. The Times reports that:

“… the number of people who said they thought the country was headed in the right direction jumped from 15 percent in mid-January, just before Mr. Obama took office, to 39 percent today, while the number who said it was headed in the wrong direction dropped to 53 percent from 79 percent. That is the highest percentage of Americans who said the country was headed in the right direction since 42 percent said so in February 2005…”

This tiny new embryo of optimism is fragile. A vast majority of people are still worried about their jobs and are cutting expenses back as much as possible. That’s just common sense.

But you know how it is. One of our national characteristics is a certain kind of creative Attention Deficit Disorder. We can’t stay any one way for very long. And we’ve been in the dumps for quite some time now.

Disregarding stupidity and evil for a moment, a huge element of what got us here is pure psychology and decay in attitude. Repair that, ladies and gentleman, and the rest will surely follow. And you know. Even if it doesn’t, getting there just might be a whole lot more fun.

Oh, goody! Look at my package… so big and shiny! The New York Times and Wall Street Journal just put me in the top 50 big earners of the year in their annual blockbuster overviews of executive compensation.  They say I made more than $50 million last year! Hooray!

Except wait a minute. Hm. I’m looking at my bank account and it doesn’t look so hot. If I’m so rich, how come I don’t have a whole lot more money? Not that I’m poor or anything. But there’s no question I’m going to have to keep working if I want to keep all the moving pieces in place.

How the frig did they calculate my number? Let’s see…

Well, first there’s my actual salary. $200,000 isn’t chump change. I’m not complaining. But I haven’t had a raise in that department in three years, because they “took care of me” on all the other front. And how! What generosity!

Except, you know, then there’s the whole thing about my bonus, which is less than half of what it was last year.  That’s okay. I get why.  Business was terrible. Of course, it was terrible for everybody. And our stock was down. Of course, so was everybody’s. And I didn’t give out a bunch of sub-prime mortgage loans. Nor did we get any government bailouts. But there you have it.  It is, as they say, what it is.

So far it all adds up to about $7 million. I know it sounds like a lot. And it is! I know it is. But it’s not more than $50 million, is it? I mean, my background is in Marketing, but even I know there’s a decimal point missing there somewhere.

I guess they must be counting the stock I received at its face value. I wonder why. True, when it was issued to me it was worth about $20 million. That was at the beginning of ‘08. It doesn’t fully vest for another three or four years. That means two things are true. 1) They’re worthless to me now, even if they retained their value, and 2) They’re worth a lot less than the number they put into the chart even if I could sell them, which I can’t, not for a really long time. So that’s $20 million they say I have that I don’t have.

Now, a bunch of stock DID vest last January, so that’s in there. Except it’s valued at what it was worth then. That not what it’s worth anymore, not by a long shot. What’s interesting is that I had to pay taxes on the original amount, and they didn’t withhold enough back then, you know how that is. So I owe additional tax on a fictional amount of money that I can’t cash in because the stock is really too low to sell.

And then there’s my stock options. I’m looking at their calculations and they say my options are worth $30 million. Right now, they’re worth nothing, even if they were vested, which of course they’re not.

I find that vaguely mysterious. Who made up these rules? Mr. Black? Mr. Scholes? I can understand that if I exercised some of them, and got the cash, that would be income… but right now all they are is paper. If they ever go above water, every shareholder of the corporation will be dancing in the aisles. But that could take years. 

So let’s add it up. The papers say I made more than $50 million. I’m looking at a little more than $7 million, before taxes. And everybody hates me.

There’s only one solution for it, I think. I gotta get fired. That won’t take too much doing, the way things are going! I guess that proves there’s a silver lining to every dark cloud, huh? In the meantime, I wonder where I’m having lunch… Thank God I still have my plastic. As things stand, I really need it.

On April 1, Tim Geithner, speaking from the big G20 love fest, told Katie Couric that he would certainly consider replacing the CEOs of any bailed-out entity that the administration felt wasn’t performing up to snuff. I don’t think there’s anybody out there who doesn’t think that’s a good idea. You take the money. You do the job. If you don’t, so long Charley, right? Right. 

This will undoubtedly leave a huge CEO gap in a number of large institutions. In many cases, the government will probably try to fill the void with an executive who has been on the corporate scene before, as they did at General Motors. There’s certainly a rationale for that. The anointed one knows the company in question. He has some experience in the trenches. At the same time, isn’t that individual likely to be as much part of the problem as the solution? The Who said it: “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.” Is that what we’re really after?

I submit that there are many qualified individuals from outside each of these banks, car companies, insurance behemoths and other corporate states that are now at least partially owned by We, the People. I believe I am one of them. 

Following are my qualifications to be a New Bailout CEO: 

• I have many nice suits and would not need government help to acquire any before ascending to my new post; 
• I have lost some hair over the years and now am required, on bad days, to do a moderate comb-over; 
• I don’t really understand a lot about the economy, relying on others for their wisdom, and would therefore not put up any resistance to virtually any plan that Mr. Geithner, Mr. Ratner or Mr. Ed, for that matter, might have in mind; 
• I can read a Teleprompter very well, and will not go off-point, ever, no matter what; 
• I can still button my jacket when I sit down, which is more than I can say about a lot of these guys; 
• I believe that Business can come back and am willing to say so; 
• I have Adult Attention Deficit Disorder, which is clearly a qualification for haute executive status; 
• I am a big fan of Mr. Obama and all his guys; 
• I don’t mind taking a Town Car to appointments and have been doing so for many years, and would by no means insist on a stretch limo like some of these other bozos; 
• I fly commercial all the time and would promise to continue to do so; 
• I’m good at a cocktail party; 
• I like to delegate the important stuff. 

Of course, the compensation would have to make sense. I know the limits, which have been well-publicized. But what’s the upside?

Our President is having a bit of a tough time at the economic summit in Europe right now.  He’s talking stimulus while Germany and France, those solid allies in a crisis, are hammering him with the demand for extensive regulation of hedge funds and other financial institutions, particularly those that operate in their sphere. As in, you know, multi-national corporations. Like the kind that recognize no national borders. That are, in a sense, countries unto themselves. Corporate nation states, in other words. They want to regulate them. 

How dare they! Obnoxious Europeans! Where do they get off telling American business entities what to do? Our guy should just tell them to shove off! Allez oop! Auf wiedersehn! 

On the other hand. Una momento, s’il vous plait? 

While it is obnoxious to have these pissant little countries telling us what to do, you have to wonder, if you take a minute between your call from London and your teleconference with Berlin right before you get on the plane for Tokyo, whether there might be a micro-pfennig of reason in what they’re talking about. I mean, we’re big capitalists all of us, for sure, since every other economic system that’s been tried has failed, unlike ours, right? Um. Well, let’s leave that be for a second. Anyway, we don’t like government of any kind sticking its big nez into Business. That’s bad Business. We don’t like it when Timmy the Gee tries to do it, and we CERTAINLY aren’t going to like it if a bunch of foreigners start poking their weltanschauungs into our operations. 

At the same time, come on, ladies and gentlemen. The large companies that caused the worldwide collapse of global capitalism, at least at this horrendous point in time, recognize no national boundaries. They have gleaned the benefits of a wide world market, reaping vast harvests wherever they went, except possibly in countries that do not pay their bills or that insist on paying them in vodka. When our corporations plied the seas like responsible merchant vessels that was one thing. But it’s pretty obvious that quite a few of them, particularly the ones that shape the markets themselves, have been operating more like a cross between cruise ships registered in Liberia and privateers that recognize no national laws but those of the sea on which they float. 

It just may be that, you know, if we want to operate in the world theater, we might have to obey some of the world’s laws and regulations. Just possibly, is what I’m saying. Unless we can get out of it in some way. Good luck, Mr. Obama. Win one for the team, will ya?