The feast of the Epiphany has come and gone. The three kings have followed the star, presented their gifts, genuflected before the new-born king and Christmas trees are now hauled to the curbside in 2010 Anno Domini to become mulch for spring flowers. The tulips will surely come, but the green shoots of economic recovery in these United States still appear vulnerable to a longer-than-expected cold spell.
We are normally an optimistic sort, intent on keeping our summer tan from fading too much, prone to basking in a winter sun when it happens to show its face to ours, but the news makes us dither. The experts, who apparently still have jobs, tell us that the economy needs to generate 100,000 jobs a month just to keep up with the newly employable that these United States produce. However, the Labor Department said another 85,000 jobs were lost last month, and they weren’t all place kickers who failed at crucial moments.
Who in his right mind would become a kicker rather than a right guard? Anonymity in the maelstrom of the trenches surely must be superior to the glare of the spotlight and shanking it wide right as time expires. How many fans miss the pulling guard missing his block and watch the skinny kid stub his toe on a field goal try?
Advice to the jobless: eat many sirloin steaks, milk shakes and performance-enhancing drugs, learn how to zone block and switch schools when a coach leaves after one year (see Lane Kiffin). Oh, this sporting life!
Monetary policy has been loosened to the point of pushing on a string. Fiscal policy has unleashed God knows how many billions, much of it to the royalists doing God’s work on Wall Street. Money borrowed from China has been thrown at the house and car-buying markets, which, ominously, appear ready to dry up when the dough does.
The virtuous cycle is unapparent. The hope was that incentives would jump-start hiring. The job-making engine has failed to turn over. Demand in the aughts proved illusory, driven by cheap credit and the housing bubble. Look for a double-dip recession unless the “guv’ment” (as Huck Finn’s pap put it) gets with the program and puts us directly to work and not rely on giving Goldman Sachs and the like 100 cents on the dollar for what were essentially defaulted insurance policies.
Just as the wildcat formation has brought new life to the staid world of football orthodoxy, it seems that a new New Deal is called for.
Latest NFL picks are coming up. Still cogitating.
No comments:
Post a Comment