Common Sense Economics

It all started when I read the AP online story about how Greece, now bankrupt from insane fiscal policy, is such a basket case that the story was synopsized as “European leaders on Thursday offered moral support for Greece – but no money – as they sought to calm speculation that the Greek debt crisis may spread to other vulnerable countries and damage the euro currency.”

Such outrageous, laughable, childlike stupidity like that always makes me laugh and laugh uncontrollably, my voice rising hysterically as each unfolding layer of the now impossibly ludicrous situation adds a new humor to the total, expanding, absurdity! Hahaha! “Damage the euro currency”! Hahaha! Perfect!

Calmed only by taking deep breaths and long, desperate swallows from a bottle of lousy tequila (“Cheap tequila-like product with a delicate kerosene aftertaste!”), I am soon just about drunk enough, and angry enough, to fire off some really testy letters to various heads of state (I already wrote the beginning: “Dear various heads of state: You European trash are all a bunch of freaking morons, which I prove by merely pointing out that you actually believed the sublime theory – based on a crackpot theory and despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary – that a single monetary policy for 19 or so independent nations, while each half-witted socialist nation could have its own ridiculous fiscal policy, could possibly, possibly work! Hahaha! That is me laughing at you!”).

Before I could finish my outline, incorporating the Austrian school of economics, common sense, a few insults about the collective intelligence of such Euro-dorks and some invitations for them to come over to my house so I could slap some sense into their thick heads, I realized that I may be too hasty in my condemnation! This could be –Eureka! – the answer to my problem!

The thing I did not tell you about, or tell my wife about, either, is that I have been summoned to a meeting next week with my boss, the CEO and several members of the board of directors about how my stupid little corner of the business is doing so badly, while everybody else’s business segment around here is doing okay, or at least in line with industry averages.

Naturally, feeling the blade of the guillotine nicking at my throat, I have been busily working a little overtime in preparation for the dreaded meeting, and I have put together a terrific PowerPoint presentation showing how my dismal performance statistics are not my fault, but instead all stem from the fact that all my employees are a bunch of slackers and morons, and my customers are all such dullards and halfwits that they don’t even know what in the hell what they really want, and are always sending stuff back to us, demanding refunds just because they think something is the wrong size, or the wrong color, or it’s bent, or it’s broken, or all I sent them was an empty box, or some other stupid, nit-picking reason that has nothing to do with me.

My Big Mogambo Plan (BMP) had been to work on a way to cleverly insinuate in the presentation, so subtly that it has “plausible deniability”, that my stupid boss is the one who is actually at fault, always demanding, for example, that I, “Get to work on time and not three hours late!” and “Wake up!”

The obvious solution would be to fire her and all her little toady friends, who all hate me and are always squealing on me, (“He’s taking a nap in the janitor’s closet again!”), and then everything would be fine and we’d soon be rolling in money and customers!

Now, thanks to the European Union, I can stop all of that, just as in the Greek debacle, everything will be fine, fine, fine if the company just “stamps out speculation” that my huge losses, and the expected ruinous lawsuits from disgruntled customers, will be a “bad thing”, and that all they need do (to make it into a “good thing”) is to merely reassure people that such massive, hemorrhaging losses stemming from my obvious incompetence and “couldn’t care less” blasé attitude “will not damage the company”, and that the CEO, the board of directors and the entire staff of the company must demand – demand! – that my little embarrassing, loss-addled department, as the EU demands of Greece, “get its fiscal house in order”, which I will solemnly promise to do.

But I know I am lying, they know I am lying, everybody knows I am lying, they aren’t going to cramp down on “speculators”, they aren’t going to lift a finger to help me, and everybody knows that firing me immediately would be the smartest move.

So while my future as an employee is probably limited, I am soothed that gold, silver and oil will see me through the next half century, which is longer than my expected life span, unless we get some big advance in the technology of putting people’s brains into robots, creating a super-powerful cyborg, where I could shoot laser beams out of my eyes so that things explode in flames, and then I could go to Washington, DC and tear the Federal Reserve to the ground with my bare, metallic hands, and nobody could stop me, as even the puny missiles and cannons of the mighty American armed forces would bounce off me – Ping! Ding! Sproing! – and I would be, at long last, (taa-daa!) The Mighty Mogambo (TMM), a hero foretold to bring blessed adherence to the Constitution of the United States and the sanity of the gold standard to my beloved America, shoving down the throats of a loathsome, bankrupting, socialist Congress and the vast majority of the university economists who are scumbag neo-Keynesian econometric trash who currently hold sway, toiling at taxpayer expense to justify such loathsome stupidities as these, but who wouldn’t have a prayer against a rampaging cyborg with laser beams shooting out of his eyes! Hahaha! Zzzzzt!

In the meantime, I will continue to accumulate gold, silver and oil like a crazy person possessed by demons and pursued by an angry wife, a phrase designed to indicate frenzied single-mindedness and sheer panic, and I will continue to encourage you to do so, too. To do otherwise, says the TMM, is, indeed, folly.