This week we passed by a certain milestone for a modest little community like ours. We posted our 10,000th comment. It came from Laurel, of Santa Barbara, California, whose observation on that day was typical of the kind of thing that has made this blogspace such an addictive experience for me. Here is our 10,000th comment, rich with personal anecdote and interesting observation from someplace that is Not Here:

I live in a tourist town, santa barbara, ca. I have been watching the stores close for a few years now and the staff in the remaining ones becoming more harried. I see the workers taking on so much more and thankful to boot, that they still have a job. They are tired though. I also could swear I see new workers in the grocery store and banks, and they appear to be more qualified. Maybe I am imagining this, that employers are merging, hiring and keeping only the best. I don’t know what to think of this but everyone is nicer to each other.

Small business owners have usually sunk all that they have in their business and watching them lose everything, their hopes and dreams, everything, is reason enough to spend whatever it takes. So, if people are saving just in case, think again and spend a little, tip more, and drop the “were doomed” attitude and see what Bing sees; we can, we will, and we are going to make it.

on a personal note, i lost my job in epidemiology, but found out i could make the same teaching high school science and demand is high for females teaching math, statistics and physics. i recently had a legal matter, so i had to refinance for cash. The refinancing rate actually saved me more money then I lost. (I thought of Bing’s article when i calculated the new mortgage rate and realized my luck.)

Thanks Bing, you made my life a little better by pointing out to look for the cracks of light!

Thank you, Laurel. And thanks to all of you, first time commenters, long-time bloviators, story-tellers, complainers, philosophers, cranks and wisenheimers, for making this space what it is, whatever it is. You’ve given me your thoughts on airline travel, recession, depression, incessant solicitations from Chase, the triumphs of Apple and, sometimes, Microsoft, Bernanke, Paulson, Madoff and other great symbols of high finance up to and including Mike the Headless Chicken and Alan Greenspan.

Right now it’s pretty unclear what the future holds. I hope, frankly, that it starts surprising us in a completely different way pretty soon. But either way, if it does or if it doesn’t, I’ll keep showing up if you do. And who knows. I may have a few surprises coming soon myself.

And Laurel? Send me an email to bingblog@gmail.com with your info. I’ll send you something nice.

It’s the last day I’ll be spending at the office this year. Always a funny feeling. Another year is gone. A new calendar must be cracked open. I feel like I should clean up, but there’s really nothing to get rid of. One day I guess I’ll leave this place for real, and perhaps it will feel a little bit like this, only moreso. This time around, I’m luckier than some. I get to come back and see how things work out for another cycle.

I won’t say a lot about 2008. I suppose there were many good things about it, although it’s hard to remember them now, what with all the Spitzers and Blagojeviches and Madoffs and Greenspans and Paulsons and Bernankes and assorted Wall Street miscreants, the bailouts and the purges and the blown hedges and wilted WaMus and all that. The list of losers grows so long that it’s hard to remember who we were mad at last month, last week, yesterday.

You kind of want to hope that 2009 will be different, and maybe it will be. We’ll have a new president. The markets will have to return to some kind of normalcy after a long period of disease. Like, creditors will have to start giving people credit again at some point, right? The debt folks will have to do what they do for a living, more responsibly, we hope. Car makers will have to figure out a way to sell some cars, which probably means somebody will start advertising again. Life will find a way.

The general feeling I get is that we’re all pretty glad to get out of 2008 with at least a portion of our skins on. Nobody I know is sad to see the old year go. That twinkle in the common eye might not be tears of sadness or rage. It might be a glimmer of hope.

Thanks to all of you who come here to browse, get excited, feel outrage or occasional amusement. I love to read what you write. I am very happy to publish the lot of you, as long as you keep it relatively clean and marginally on-point. One thing I do know about the year to come. I look forward to hanging with all of you as we chew over – and occasionally spit out – the events of this world as they unfold.

Now I guess I’ll just lock up and get out of here. I’ll see you when I see you, guys.

At this point, any optimism or upbeat thinking would be in the category of whistling past the graveyard, one where all the corpses have awakened and are bearing down on passers-by.

Looking at the events of the past few days, the question emerges: What kind of senior manager would you like to see in the corner office in the event of complete, life-destroying liquefaction? We’ve had a chance to see a number of styles on view: Paulson, Bernanke, the Congressmen attempting to satisfy Wall Street and Main Street concurrently, Obama, McCain, Bush… not to mention the host of gray-suited Commissars lining up from a variety of hobbled financial institutions to get a good pull at the bailout teat.

So… which kind of manager do you believe is best suited to confront such challenging seas and steer the corporate state back to some relatively safe port? Let’s choose:

Would you like a boss who gets very excited and angry, screams at people, and indulges in dramatic displays of bad temper? Or would you like a boss who is calm, thoughtful and spends a lot of time listening?

Would you like a boss who, when things grow dark, is full of threats and imprecations, scaring employees with vague prognostications of doom? Or a guy who puts his head down, studies the situation, and tries to see all the angles until he or she is convinced of what’s best for the greatest number of people possible?

Would you like a boss who hops all over the place like a Mexican jumping bean, hiding at times, then emerging with rage at people, cancelling appointments, rescheduling long-standing commitments, always trying to be all places at once? Or someone who seems to reside in the center of a hurricane, a safe place where people can go to give opinion, get counsel, and eventually direct orders? Whose strategic and moral center does not shift with the demands of the moment, even when they are, at least for the moment, insurmountable?

Would you like a boss whose ultimate solution seems to gravitate always toward the dynamic expression of his personal ego? Who picks odd moments to rush in like the cavalry, superceding line operators who have been working hard to attend to the details, who view their own exercise of Self as an important element of success? Or the guy who not only leads, but has respect for the management structure he seeks to guide?

Do you prefer a boss who surrounds himself with sycophants and attendants who defer all power and glory to their master? Or one who prefers to operate as the center of a nexus of smart people, all dedicated not so much to his person but to the strategic goals of the organization?

How about a boss who works each crisis for the greatest possible strategic advantage against the competition? Who employs a ton of PR tricks to manage the situation? Who seems often to make decisions based on how they will position him in the press and the public eye? Is that the kind of boss you like to work for? Some people do. Guys like that have actually run the world for several millennia, in fact.

I’ve worked for all kinds of bosses. And like I said: we’ve had a good look at the current crop in both the public and the private sector. An old senior officer of mine once said, and I think it’s generally true, that you can’t choose your boss. But let’s just say that in certain very important cases, you could. Which kind of boss would you choose?

If there’s one thing the Street hates, it’s uncertainty. Like most of my neurotic friends, its mood swings inappropriately high on the slightest whiff of good news, and zooms to depressing depths at the merest suspicion of impending bad karma. Given the paucity of the former and the plethora of the latter, it’s been a crazy ride lately, with trips to the moon closely followed by extended visits to the sewage system that runs beneath corporate capitalism on an all-to regular basis.

Like Mr. Paulson and Mr. Bernanke, I would like to do whatever I can to help restore confidence and solidity to the marketplace. In support of that effort, I hereby offer a few thoughts on what, even at this challenging juncture, is not in any sort of doubt:

• An individual in danger of losing his or her mortgage will be worse off, in the end, than the majority of executives working in the institution holding that mortgage;
• While investment banks may change their stripes, investment bankers will not;
• The bailout will most dramatically benefit those who created the crisis in the first place;
• The new levels of oversight and regulation that are implemented will have the greatest impact on those firms which require it least;
• All the excesses and depredations foisted upon our poor economy will be back very soon, because it’s simply too boring to do business or make obscene amounts of money by playing things straight;
• An extremely small number of highly fungible executives will be punished for their actions; they will later emerge from prison to become philanthropists;
• An entire graduating class of pundits, senior managers, hedge fund speculators and debunked risk-management geniuses will be jettisoned from the body of the system; they will appear almost immediately in the financial media playing the part of experts who can explain whys, wherefores and potential future courses of action;
• Wall Street will survive;
• Main Street will suffer;
• The rich will probably have to wait a while to get richer;
• The poor need suffer under no such limitation to achieve their customary status.

When the Soviet Union fell, all the Eastern European countries had to reconstitute their governments. Former communist bureaucrats had to scramble, since the whole philosophical and operating infrastructure under which they had professionally and personally prospered had been yanked away. Today there are entirely new institutions governing those nations, and in many cases the same bureaucrats who prospered under the old regime are still running the game from new offices, with new titles, new letterhead, new committees to chair. I have no doubt as we transition our economy to a new more equity-based model, the former scions of the now-discredited system will once again rise to the apex of power under a brand new flag.

It’s not only cream that rises to the top.

I just spent a few minutes on a variety of websites. I’m not going to single them out, not because they’re not good (of course they are, they’re quite deft and professional and excellent in every way).

They just made me want to kill myself.

Now, as lachrymose as I may be at times, this is a solution to life’s problems that has rarely occurred to me since I was out of college and stopped reading Kafka for laughs. But I believe it would now be easy to make the case that this is the worst things have been since the Depression of the 1930s. Looking at the news, it’s possible to come to the conclusion that any light anybody sees at the end of this tunnel is an oncoming train.

The last time this happened to our economy, the public had one great solution to the challenge of keeping the national spirits up: stupid movies. This explains the entertainments that were popular between 1929 and World War II. Screwball comedies. Musicals featuring concentric circles of feathered women dancing, swimming. Horse operas.

The Internet now faces a similar opportunity which, if not taken at its crest, may lead to the demise of the medium. This is most true, I think, of financial websites, which may, if they are not careful, assume the role of the cranky old uncle at the wake who sits in a chair in the corner and refuses to get drunk with the rest of the mourners.

The job here is quite clear: to amuse as well as inform, and to give people something to think about while we all wait out this suicidal swoon brought about, in large part, by the same people who still control the message issued by the markets. Lehman Brothers (LEH), for instance, recently wrote down a staggering amount as a testament to its lack of overall comprehension in advance of current events. Yet Monday, when its analyst wrote down the entire media sector, Wall Street jumped off the ledge along with him. Go figure.

But the hell with that. That’s not going to change. What we can change is the agenda of what we’re putting into our heads. Do we need to hear about more layoffs? More writedowns? More end-of-the-world scenarios? I think not!

Instead, let’s consider the following:

• Summertime brings with it great weather and a chance to relax… except for those who have to stay at home with a bunch of screaming kids and can’t go on that vacation away from it all because of the price of fuel driving the cost of travel through the roof…

No, wait. That’s not right. Sorry. Let’s start over.

• There has never been a better time to buy an automobile! Prices are way down, incentives are up, and some companies are even paying for two years of free gasoline in order to get you into the showroom… because… well… hm.

Okay, then. Let’s try this:

• The marketplace now offers a host of fabulously-priced securities that are quite literally trading at a fraction of their true value. If you believe in the system, and that this old economy of ours will come roaring back very soon, now is absolutely the time to pick up all those terrific properties that are hopefully trading at all time lows.
• Homes, too, are now available that were once out of reach, as more and more people are forced to default on their mortgages and surrender their family abodes to the harsh gavel of foreclosure.
• And puppies are still so darned cute!

See? That wasn’t so hard, was it?

As any reader of this space may be able to tell by now, I’m a big fan of bailouts. Some believe that the markets should go through the pain of what they have wrought on themselves in order to come out the other side cleaner, stronger, faster. Not me. If there’s an easy way out, I’m for it.

I liked it years ago, when they bailed out Chrysler. And when the S&Ls needed help? That was a terrific one, wasn’t it? Countrywide (CFC)? Same deal! Why not? And when BenCo moved to… I’m not sure “help” is the right word… whatever they did to Bear Stearns (BSC), I was all for it, too.

Coming up, if and when Fannie Mae (FNM) and Freddie Mac (FRE) sink to their pretty knees under the weight of all those loan guarantees, I’ll be right there to support the first trillion dollar bailout ever! A new record — until the next one.

The tsunami of assistance being offered to institutions large and small is always explicated in the same terms: This is the way that the larger eco-system can make sure that smaller fry aren’t destroyed when the big fish get caught in the net of destruction. By helping the large, we are protecting the small. Right. I get that.

Destruction is never the best option, even if comfortable and sometimes nasty people prescribe it for the good of the system. If stuff can be saved with money, well, that’s what money is for, I think. This is possibly why, when I’m personally depressed, I always help my emotional infrastructure with the expenditure of disposable income. This in turn improves the economy and creates the need for new mercantile establishments, like the Container Store, to contain my effluvia. Money may not be able to buy happiness permanently, but as a short term solution to all kinds of problems it really can’t be beat.

This emphasis on top-down help, however, does have its limits if you look at it hard enough. Why are the big always propped up when the small are allowed to get flushed into the drink? Those who raise such questions are often accused of naivete, which is to be distinguished from the outright stupidity that smart people seem to have suffered while creating our current debacle. The risk managers, hedge fund moguls, debt-mongers and analysts may have been the idiots who got us into this. But they don’t stop giving advice, and they’re not naive enough to think that helping little folks can do anything to protect their packages.

This is why it’s refreshing to see someone who has some success in the financial arena articulate what to many might seem a simple, naive and hopelessly humanistic idea. Enter George Soros, cited in the May 15 edition of the New York Review of Books.  Here’s what the always opinionated and controversial Mr. Soros had to say when Ms. Woodruff asked him how long the housing crisis was going to last:

“Well, it depends on when the authorities wake up, because you need to reduce the number of foreclosures. You need to keep as many people as possible in their houses so that they don’t come onto the market. You need to arrest the decline in house prices, but you also need to prevent human suffering and social disruption because it’s going to be very, very severe. Certain communities are already hurting and it’s going to get a lot worse. So action will have to be taken, but I don’t think it’s going to happen during this administration.”

Wow. Preventing suffering. Keeping people in their homes. Trying to work from the bottom up to save the system from the mistakes of its proprietors?

Nah. Not this gang.

Let’s just bail out another big loser, shall we?

I woke up yesterday morning and found myself paralyzed. I lay in bed and couldn’t move. I didn’t even know what I was worried about, I was so worried. Eventually, I got myself up, shaved with trembling hands, and made my way to the office. I got to my desk and read the headlines. Then I really couldn’t move.

 A steely hand wrapped its skeletal fingers around my windpipe and would not let go. “Eek,” I said, since it was the only thing that would emerge from my ratcheted esophagus.

All day yesterday I sat here in a cold sweat. Now I figure, what the hey. I can’t be like this forever. Perhaps if I articulate what’s got me so freaky-deaky, it will pass. Or not. Either way, it’ll be better than this emotional and professional rictus.

Here’s my list:

1. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. I never really even knew how important Fannie and Freddie were, but their collapse, or even, like, if they got a cold, would possibly force the Federal Government to lose its credit rating. Think about that for a minute. No, on second thought, don’t.
2. The Bank of America: (BOA) Earnings were down. More losses are being reserved against. Deeply disquieting.
3. Other banks. We all saw what happened to Bear Stearns (BS) in two or three days. Once the whispering campaign got started, their goose was cooked. Now every day I hear from the newspapers and the online writers and the bloggers and the guys getting soup across the street and nobody has a single thing to say except, “What’s up with that billion/trillion/gazillion dollar bailout?!” How long before we all make it happen?
4. Saturated fat: Up until recently, I was pretty much saturated with fat. Now I’m less saturated, but I’m not completely unsaturated yet and I get a sense that if I don’t get there soon I may not have much longer to try. I got some ideas from Michael Pollan’s excellent book, In Defense of Food, which basically says we should “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” It’s sort of working, except I’m still working out whether vodka can be considered a food. What do you think?
5. Global warming: I don’t worry about it as much as I used to, because I have replaced 20% of my concern in this area with anxiety about Freddie and Fannie. I only have just so much capacity to freak out and then even I run out of resources.
6. Google (GOOG): I feel a little bit better now that their earnings were so impressive. But consider. If Google stops being the outer skin of the balloon, what else do we have to be inflated about? Things that have sort of gone by the wayside as a source of hysteria include: alternative energy sources, recombinant DNA therapy, cloning, robots, nanotech. We all need something to believe in, future-wise. What’s that gonna be?
7. Ben Bernanke: What’s he do for fun? What’s it like to be Ben? When you have a glass of wine at a party and Maria Bartiromo says, “How ya doin’?” do you have to think, “What will the impact be of my statement to Maria here, when all I’m really trying to do is get a smile out of her?”
8. China: Forget all the dubious stuff now under scrutiny from the nation, its army, arms dealers and toothpaste and heparin manufacturers. How about the reaction of the Chinese themselves to people and organizations that express opposition or even mild criticism of their various ventures? Boycotts! Censure! No more business for you! Sure, that’s their right, but a worldwide economic war between China and its allies and everybody else would be something to keep us all up at night.
9. The dollar: I can say no more.
10. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac again. The article raises the specter of a trillion dollar buyout, which might drive the credit rating of our nation itself down a notch or even two. The pundits in the posting do say that such a thing is unlikely. But if it’s so unlikely, why mention it? Why scare everybody? When one knows the power of even the slightest negative wind to move markets and crash enormous battleships of enterprise? Why bring it up? Why put a headline on it? Why publish it at the top of the page?

You know what? When bad stuff happens, let me know. Until then, I’m going to try to remember some things: It’s spring. We’re alive. And bonds are still doing okay. I think.

Word comes from Megan in Chicago, one of our most valued and assiduous correspondents, that this humble blog has been blocked by the IT police of her company. Megan writes:

I can tell you one thing that is going the wrong way. Bing’s Blog page has been officially blocked at work with a code of “Social Networking”… Stanley baby – can you pull a few strings and help the numb nuts in IT understand that I need this site in my daily work life? How can I possibly put in a full 10 hours without a spoonful of delicious irony! I’ve explained that this is a very useful site which quite often covers business related topics. I’ve stated my case that while the site is not essential to doing my job, it does help me do my job better. They’ve claimed that they will review and let me know – *sigh*. I’ll miss you sweetheart…

I’ll miss you, too, Megan! It’s all so unfair! A social network? Us? Could that be? Every day we have as serious a discussion of current business-related events as the facts warrant! Sure, a lot of the time we focus on the ridiculous and outrageous, but that’s a direct effect of the times in which we live, right? Just look at the following issues we’ve dealt with in recent months:

• Guys who play golf and bridge while their city-states are flailing, and are then super-compensated upon their departure;
• The collapse of huge banking institutions that stupidly gave loans to people who couldn’t repay them when belts tightened even one teeny notch;
• The most aggressive Fed in living memory, moving dynamically to do who knows what?;
• Utter confusion on the part of experts and pundits of all stripes, and a general sense of incapacity and weirdness from all over;
• The usual insanity pertaining to mergers, acqusitions, divestitures and other organizational hooey in organizations from Apple and AOL to Yahoo and whatever companies that start with the letter Z you can think of;
• Intense activity in the digital arena, including the geometric growth of online retail while brick and mortar stumbled;
• The worst performance by the airlines industry since Howard Hughes attempted to commercialize the Spruce Goose;
• Other (your peeve here).

We’ve covered these terrific business trends and stories just like a responsible information source should, with aplomb, sagacity and no little amount of sang froid. We’ve also looked extensively at your bulls**t jobs and crazy bosses, and even occasionally offered some advice in our Ask Bing sector. And if, in so doing, we have also attracted a witty, savvy, saucy, snazzy, slightly snarky group that get together with some regularity to comment on the general situation? Does that make us a social network worthy of blockage? Well! All I can say is…

Thanks for the promotion, IT dudes! Now come on! Free the blog! Lift the blockade! Let freedom ring!

Could you lower the interest rates some more? We’d like there to be more money in the system so we can borrow it. Also, the private capital and hedge fund guys could use some easy money, too. How else can they keep on generating wave upon wave of unnecessary, destructive acquisitions and divestitures?

Could you give all of us a break on our existing mortgages, too? Like, if we can’t pay our monthly nut, could you do it for us?

Could you make it easier for us all to get more mortgages after we default on the ones that those mean and stupid bankers gave us a few years back, when they were trying to make a quick buck by fooling us into taking big loans we eventually couldn’t repay?

Could you do something about the dollar, too? Those mean Japanese and Europeans have currencies that are getting more and more expensive against our own. This makes it very difficult to buy their goods and services at the kind of prices to which we had become accustomed. Like, many of us can’t afford two weeks in the south of France anymore. And England is no bargain, either. There must be something you can do.

Could you also see about the price of gasoline? I know you work very closely with Mr. Bush. His family has tremendous contacts in the oil-producing part of the world. Perhaps you could put a word in with him and he could speak to them about easing things up a bit. Pretty soon it’s going to cost nearly $100 to fill up my SUV. That hurts! After all, it only gets 8 miles per gallon. Maybe you could spare a couple of thousand for each of us, so we could turn our cars into hybrids! How about that idea?

Speaking of cars, people are now buying way fewer of them this year, partly due to the fact that car companies have been advertising less because they’re strapped for cash. It’s a vicious circle! They don’t advertise… they don’t sell cars… they make less money… they choke off their marketing and advertising budgets even more… you can see where it’s going. Perhaps if you provided $10,000 to any American who wanted to use it to buy a car? And subsidized the advertising budgets of auto makers at the same time. A key driver of the economy would immediately perk up and thank you bigtime!

Could you at the same time give us all a few thousand dollars to spend at Wal-Mart, J.C. Penney and other retailers who are right now having a tough time, too? Helping the big chains that motor our mall-based economy is just as important as helping the big banks you seem so concerned about. How about a $10 trillion bail out for retail?

Mr. Bernanke, you have all the money in the world and apparently the will to wrestle this darn situation of ours to the ground. These are just a few suggestions. I’m sure others could come up with more. You don’t even need to think out of the box. You own the box. Expand it! Dress it up! Make something happen!

Just a look at the front page of cnnmoney today is enough to give even the strong of stomach the extreme willies. Next to a headline that says, “Wall Street Braces for Ugly Day,” and video featuring a scary dude warning about the dangers of inflation, is a deck of headlines. At this writing, here they are…

• Income, spending higher than expected
• Mortgage mess socks ex-Goldman stars
• MBIA says more writedowns ahead
• Wilbur Ross bets on bond insurer Assured
• Dollar sinks further/Oil hits $103
• The 10 best cars – Consumer Reports
• Toyota’s unknown business partners
• Banks could see $600B hit from credit crunch
• 3 steps for living well in retirement
• How Sony won the high-def DVD war
• Don’t panic: That IRS letter is good news
• Furniture company – or hedge fund?

Aside from the interesting tease that a letter from the IRS is good news, there’s not a lot to feel good about here, unless you’re Sony (SNE) and right now popping champagne corks over its victory in the high-def DVD wars.

Of course, winning the format battle for who will provide the DVDs of the future is very good news… unless you think that maybe in five or ten years nobody will be watching DVDs anymore.  I just upgraded my Apple TV (APPL) and up popped a huge menu of movies I might actually want to see, in both regular format and HD.

Wow, I thought. There goes Netflix (NFLX). There goes DVDs. There, in fact, goes everybody but Apple unless somebody hurries up and figures out an alternative to Planet Steve. My new MacBook Air is functioning really well, by the way. I can’t say what I’m really going to need it for, of course, but as King Lear said when questioned about the size of his staff, “Oh! Question not the need!”

Anyhow, just look at those headlines. And they were actually updated nine minutes before I copied them into this blog. When I woke up and looked at them, they were even worse.

I’m expecting to wake up sometime soon and see a headline in the stack that says, “World ends with both bang and whimper. Bernanke soothes investors with indications of additional rate cuts.”

When I was a whining schoolboy with his satchel and shining morning face, creeping like snail unwillingly to school, I used to love Fridays because I looked forward to freedom from the tedium of class, to watching cartoons over the weekend, to dressing the way I wanted to and not combing my hair. I got nervous on Sunday nights, knowing that I would have to put my game face on the next morning, and that always hurts.

Today Friday feels different. I like it, sure. The weekend will be fine, I have no doubt. But I yearn for this day, I dream of its arrival, because I know that when it is done there is probably no more that the week can do to us. Or at least that tomorrow we really don’t have to pay very close attention.

Not paying attention right now may be a key strategy for survival in the next 18 months or so. Or paying attention to something completely different. I’m thinking of getting serious about my bird-watching, how about you?

Yesterday, the Dow ended up with its face in the mashed potatoes again.  It’s ironic that while the nation is engaged in the most hopeful, positive political campaign in decades, the financial markets are hawking up phlegm and getting ready for the Big One.

Good news comes in the form of rumors that the Fed, bless its expanding little heart, is once again considering rate cuts. By next year at this time, I believe it’s quite possible that the rate will fall through zero and go out the other side. At that point, the Fed will actually be paying banks to lend money. Lenders will then pass along that increased cash flow to borrowers.

There is some precedence for this idea. Several years ago, one could go to buy a car and get either zero financing or cash back on that transaction. The model would work very much like that, according to Newt Farlurnst, an quantum economist formerly with a major New York hedge fund who is now working at Arby’s in Terra Linda, California.

“There is no structural reason why interest rates should always be expressed in positive integers,” says Farlurnst, who received his doctorate in string theory in an alternate universe that intersects with our own only at certain key academic locations. “With interest rates breaking through the event horizon at zero, they enter into a region governed by completely separate economic laws than the ones that are messing up our global financial system. This can only be an improvement.”

Rumors are that Mr. Bernanke is now considering this, along with other proposals now on the table to halt the advancing recession that is either not happening, already started, or soon to be over. 

It is believed that the chairman is growing increasingly frustrated with having to reduce interest rates every week, since each decision involves hundreds of hours of meeting time, endless boring discussion and the incessant requirement to look at spreadsheets, all the while knowing that his final decision — to keep the air in the balloon by reducing rates — is actually never in doubt.

“Bernanke may just want to take an end run around the whole thing and get to negative interest rates right away,” says a source of mine who is about as trustworthy as any of the prognosticators now working the beat. “At that juncture, the gloves are off, the banks are incented to give everybody money in bucketloads, the economy takes off like a rocket. Everybody will be lining up to take on debt. It’ll be a lot better than getting a free toaster, even.”

It may be asked asked what the economy will do when those in charge of our money, having given all of it away for negative return, run out of it.

“Don’t worry,” says my source. “They can print more.”   

It struck me, after my tale of the cute little piggies yesterday, how grateful some of you were in your comments for a nice upbeat story in which nobody got hurt. A welcome change from the gloom and doom was the general drift.

When you think about it, this should be no surprise. I think people are sick of all the negative stuff that washes over us every day, from the coming recession which may already be here to the pending inflation that is possibly coming along with it to the massive write downs sweeping throught the banking industry to the fact that more people seem to care about Britney Spears than about the War in Iraq. 

We want to hear some good news now and then, feel that world is a bright and hopeful place, not a bottomless sump pump of murk and schweck.

The good news is that there is good news — so much I can hardly contain it all. Let me give you some in case you need it.

Chairman Bernanke has just indicated that he intends to do whatever he can to stimulate the economy without making the same mistakes as his predecessors. I have no idea how he will do this, but then I’m not expected to. My job and yours is to feel a warm glow about his intentions and then take that jolly mood into our investment decisions. You know how much the fate of the market is determined by emotional factors. This could be just the lift we all need!

Sure, stocks have been taken a beating. But anybody with even a modest little portfolio of bonds is feeling all right. Shouldn’t the gutless conservatives like me who hate to gamble with our savings have a day in the sun now and then?

Think about our political process. It’s going great guns. There hasn’t been so much genuine fervor on both sides of the aisle in years. Young people are energized and enthused and voting their hearts and minds as never before. That’s terrific for our nation. Plus, for those with an eye on local economies, this ferment — not only the candidates but also on the issues — will pump millions of dollars of advertising into the marketplace as voters fight over the wisdom of casino gambling, for instance, as well as who should be the CEO of the world’s most powerful multi-national corporation.

And okay, it’s true that the housing market is in the privy. This has of course stuck a finger in the eye of a lot of dumb entities that loaned money to people who had more dreams than cash to pay for them. Bad? Not completely. First, it’s good when large institutions are punished for greed and stupidity, and their leaders are forced to depart in ignominy. Our entire ethical system is built on the concept of appropriately public disgrace, from the days of colonial Williamsburg, when they put miscreants into the stockade, to today, when TMZ, CNN and Gawker do the job.

Better still, a depressed housing market means that people who DO have a little bit of cash can now afford to move into that dream home whose price was formerly jacked up to ridiculous heights by the idiotic inflation of the market by morons weilding cheap debt. Last year, in my little California community, people were expecting to get $1.5 million dollars for a two-bedroom, one-bathroom cottage with no property. Now these little bungalows sit there with their real estate signs hanging dementedly from one hook for months. Then they go off-sale entirely. When they return, I’ll bet they’re one step closer to people who might actually be able to purchase them with a little more equity.

A few days ago, Apple (AAPL) announced a whole host of new stuff, including tons of movies to be available on demand, a free upgrade of some kind for my Apple TV, and a new skinny-Minnie laptop that sounds super boffo keen. Every year, one of my happiest events is my bi-annual purchase of something I didn’t have before and didn’t know I needed until it was invented. Can’t wait for these, either! Thanks, Uncle Steve!

Beyond that? Consider this: every downside has an upside for somebody. When stocks fall, Warren Buffet does a little dance. For him, because he’s so smart, the moderation of prices represents a chance to invest in companies who are suddenly unappreciated for what they do. I hope he’s looking at mine. Hey! Mr. Buffet! Over here!

Let’s try to keep our heads about ourselves. As a wise man by the name of Chauncey Gardiner once observed, there will be growth in the spring. Until then, bundle up and try to enjoy the cold. I hear it’s good for the circulation.