Something About the Economy/Veritas:Any Day Now

The Ylog Interim // Extra

SOMETHING ABOUT THE ECONOMY

Treasury Secretary Paulson says hundreds of billions of dollars are needed to resolve U.S. financial crisis. – CNN 19 September 2008

For some reason I torture myself with news from the outside world. I shouldn’t do it. The whole purpose of this website, its reason for being, has been to explore my truth; that’s the veritas I’ve been going for in case you haven’t guessed. In the absence of some overarching and defining Veritas (with apologies to the Large Hadron Collider and "God") I continue to work on my personal truth.

But, hell, “hundreds of billions of dollars” that’s my taxpayer money and that affects my ability to buy stuff. Books and pens and nice paper, tra-la, the stuff that I use in seeking my truth. Yes, God damn it, I need a pen that costs 500 dollars to seek my truth. Be quiet.

Now. I’ll say something about the vaunted marketplace (hey! another overarching and defining truth, yea!) in just a sec but first some rudimentary calculations.

“Hundreds of Billions…” that Paulson guy said. That’s more than one-hundred billion (I know about plurals) and it’s probably more than two-hundred billion ( I know about guessing.) Let’s assume, conservatively—the only time that word has been used on my website—three-hundred billion dollars to “resolve U.S. financial crisis,” which, we all know, means bail out Wall Street.

Now other than the news that leaks into my household, like the "CNN Alert" or whatever they call it, I pride myself on not doing any research and just generally not knowing too damn much about anything at all, no hard facts about the outside world.

Still. I seem to have collected, accidentally, a fact about our population. Aren’t there around 275 million souls in the U.S.? Is that right? That’s what I remember. And haven’t we agreed that that Paulson dude mentioned hundreds of billions of dollars “to resolve the U.S. financial crisis” and probably meant around three-hundred billion? Or so. To bail out Wall Street?

So let’s divide three-hundred billion by 275 million to get a figure that approximates what each of us will be required to kick in to bail out Wall Street. My god! What big numbers! I’m so very confused. But isn’t that the same as dividing 300,000 by 275? I think it is. If you remember your basic math about knocking off zeroes.

And full disclosure here. What I remember about math calculations is from an arithmetic class at a high school in Alabama where I was dropping pencils on the floor and bending over so that I could explore the territory of Jenny Reynolds’ underwear when I was supposed to be learning basic math, so this calculation might be off by about eight-thousand pencils.

Where was I? OK. I get $1090.90 as the quotient—dividend, divisor, quotient. The bailout amount, divided by number of U.S. souls, equals individual soul’s tab. Double that amount for our household (two souls). $2181.80

God damn it.

By the way, “economy” is from the Greek for “management of household.” That’s interesting, isn’t it? My household, little apartment home. My really extraordinary wife and somewhat extraordinary cats.

God damn it.

I just checked my wallet. I have nine dollars. I just checked my personal checking account. I have $24.93.

God damn it.

So obviously, given the evidence of such pauperdom, I know little about money; but I do know something about language.

God damn it.

Marketplace. Let’s repeat that word. It’s the marketplace that’s supposed to be—oh, we’ve already said this—the defining truth of our economy. Right? Rush and Bill and the dick-heads of Fox? Isn’t the marketplace supposed to adjust things? Life-things? Take the fuck care of us? That's what we've been told.

But it looks like something has gone (think child’s voice) tewwibly wong in de mahkit plays, huh? De playpen of Wall Stweet. Innut dat wight? Huh? (forget child’s voice) OK and aren’t we adults going to have to go in now and clean up the god damn playpen? Where the god damn boys (yes, boys) have been dicking around for so many years and having so much fun at our expense? In other words, why is it "marketplace" while the boys are having their fun and it's "taxpayer" when the fun's over?

God damn it.

All right, you knew all this.

God damn it.

But let me add my $33.93 worth ($9 plus $24.93—remembering my troubles with basic math, thanks to Jenny Reynolds’ underwear—and offer this long-anticipated summation.

Okay, friends, here’s what makes me really sad. After all this screwing, I don't think that anything will change in Washington. Nothing. Barack. John. Oh, help me Jesus, Sarah. Nothing will change.

God damn it.

We’ve lost it, and we’re screwed. To the barricades! With my belated thanks to the NRA.

—Britt Leach

Note well: Today, 20 September 2008, I read (another god damn News Alert) that now the figure for the god damn bail-out is SEVEN-HUNDRED BILLION. So we divide 700,000 by 275 and get 2545.45 for each individual in this country and 5090.90 for the dwellers in my apartment home. WE RENT! Unspeakable. No more updates.

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