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Back To Work

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July 8, 2008

As 4th of July weekend drew to a close on my home world Sunday night, I was harshly reminded of our nation’s true economic condition.  I’ve seen Sunday nights in Chicago, when you could find more people walking around in 8-degree weather, with a good wind.  As Independence Day weekend wound down, Michigan Avenue saw few pedestrians except for some street hustlers and that rare, lost tourist  —  the “meal ticket” for most street hustlers.  In any previous year, there would have been a line in front of the Underground Wonderbar by now – people waiting to see authentic Chicago blues.  It was midnight.  Everyone wanted to get back to work.  The tourists just wanted to make sure they got back on their sold-out flights, lest they face a re-booking penalty.  These conditions, suitcase restrictions and new, invasive scanning technologies defined the summer travel experience for 2008.  Those who could afford it, seemed more than ready to go home.  Those who couldn’t were more than ready to get back to work.

Monday morning gave us some forced exuberance about the fate of the equities markets.  I saw a guy on TV practically dancing, while being interviewed on an exchange floor in New York because the Dow Jones industrial average was up “almost 100 points”.  (Those of us who could read the little numbers for ourselves saw an increase of 72 points.)  We were supposed to believe the “bottom” had passed and we were to immediately contact our brokers with some “buy” orders.  At my hotel’s check-out time, as I prepared for the return flight to my present-day existence, the Dow had crapped out to 120 points less than the previous close, only to regain 63 of those points by the close of Monday’s trading.  Another would-be firework had fizzled out.

Those with jobs had all the more reason to get back to work.  They were lucky to have jobs in this economy.  Those working in the financial sector were damned lucky.  Those with control over their retirement money seemed ready to give up and go back to the Acme Hopeless Crapshot Fund.  Misleading information from prognosticators and market analysts had inflicted significant damage to their portfolios this past year.  The best tip for investors seemed to be that old maxim from “The X-Files”:  Trust No One.

The evening news gave us the anticipated campaign invective, although the Fox News failed to provide me with the conspiracy theory that thirsted for validation.  As the Associated Press reported earlier in the day:

The airplane carrying Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama made a precautionary landing in St. Louis on Monday after the crew had a problem keeping the nose up on takeoff from Chicago.

The plane, an MD-80 Midwest charter, struggled to keep the nose at the necessary angle, as it left for Charlotte, N.C., the pilot said. Later, Midwest Airlines said the problem developed because an emergency slide located in the tail cone of the plane deployed in flight and never threatened the safety of the flight. The National Transportation Safety Board said it planned to investigate the incident.

I was hoping that Fox News would tell us that the plane had been chartered from Vince Foster Memorial Airlines.  I was hoping (and I continue to hope) for a tie to the Hillary Clinton campaign (or at least someone for whose antics the Clinton campaign is attempting to establish “plausible deniability”).  What good are the Fox News people when you are counting on them to do what they do best and they come up empty?

I was reminded of the remark (or should I say: possible self-fulfilling prophecy) made by disgruntled Clinton supporter Carmella Lewis to Hillary herself, as quoted by Maureen Dowd in the June 29 New York Times:  “You’re going to be the next President.”  Ms. Lewis went on to tell the Times: “But I have a gut feeling,” … “that something’s going to happen so that she becomes the nominee.”

Fox had all the ingredients for a wonderful conspiracy story here but they completely dropped the ball on all of us conspiracy fans.  Could it have been because Hillary Clinton’s recently-unemployed advisor, Howard Wolfson, found a job at Fox News?