The Chronicles Of Jessica

I'm not sure, but I think I heard something recently about how the economy is in pretty bad shape. Does anyone know anything about this?

Every time I turn around someone is crowing about the economy and how crappy it is. How many jobs lost, how many points the DOW fell, how unstable the housing market is. The news is filled with horror stories of little old couples who were getting ready to retire in four days only to have their life savings disintegrate in a badly diversified IRA and now they have to work as greeters at Walmart and they both have the hantavirus and the medicine is $126 a pill. Then they love to go out and shoot footage of long lines of people standing in the unemployment line looking somber and jobless. I get it - things are very very bad. There's no liquidity, or there's too much liquid or something's not flowing; anyway, we're screwed. But I still think this is the media's new way of putting the scare onto us, now that everyone's grown weary of the terrorist threat color-wheel thing we've been subjected to for the last 7 years. They like those kinds of stories because they like to stir up drama, that's what they do. If the economy weren't in the toilet they'd go back to freaking us out about killer bees and salmonella Skippy spread and alligators in the sewers. It's always going to be something.

I don't want to seem insensitive, but I don't get the economy. I think most people don't get the economy, and I think this is at the root of our recent problems. We had a bunch of dudes sitting on banking committees and oversight committees and boards and commissions and things, and they didn't exactly know what they were doing. They didn't really understand what a credit default swap was or what a mortgage securitization was, or if they did know what it was they didn't really understand how it all went together. They were kind of just pretending they had the full picture and going along with what they were told like it all made sense, kind of like I do when Paul is explaining the electoral college.

The economic crisis hasn't really affected me, because I have no money and I've never had any money. But I can see how it would be really upsetting and disturbing to people who had a lot of money and now have a lot less. I'm no Adam Smith, but I put together a handy analogy to help me: I imagine I have a lot of candy, and then all of a sudden I have much less candy, like less than half, and then I'd be saying, "Hey where's my frickin' candy? When am I getting it back?" and the system would be all, "We're not sure, it kind of went away, it might be back or it might not, just hang tight" and I'd be all, "But that's my candy, it's always been mine! You never told me this could happen! What the hell's going on!?!?!" but by then no one's listening because like half of America has lost all their candy too.

But if I had lost a bunch of money in a recent economic downturn, you can bet I would not be pleased by all these ads on television acknowledging how shitty the economy is. Travelocity, Chevron, Hyundai, etc. "We know times are tough. We're here for you. If you get canned you can bring the Hyundai back just please for the love of God buy a car!!!" Stop feeling my pain, corporations. It's extremely disingenuous. You don't care about me, you care about selling hotel rooms and gasoline and overpriced Korean sedans (although I must say that I rode all over West Africa in a Hyundai minivan and the worst that ever happened to the thing was a flat tire and those roads were ridiculously treacherous. They could really not even accurately be described as roads, they were more like well-worn pathways with a little bit of asphalt sprinkled around. Anyway - that was some quality Korean engineering at work there.)

Maybe I'm just crabby because I'm sick. I caught a very bad cold from a baby a week and a half ago and it shows no sign of going away. The baby recovered in like 48 hours; meanwhile I've got Bozo hair and a nose you could guide sea vessels by. Not to mention I sound like the lady villain in The Goonies. If the corporations really want to help me, maybe they could start with lowering the frickin' price of Tylenol Cold Multi-Symptom Daytime Rapid Release Gels (SEVERE). In the last 10 days I've spent enough on that stuff to rejuvenate the entire economy all by my damn self.