CNBC Smackdown

Gutsay? Gut Say? What, like farting?

I am constantly amazed by the number of people who think they have actually earned whatever wealth they have all by themselves. Even more amazing to me is the belief people have that because wealth has somehow come their way that this condition is miraculously supposed to become permanent. Is there any field outside of economics that the perpetual growth of an entity, taking in more and more and more and never releasing anything, is considered healthy?

My recommendation for Mr. Santelli is that he takes a few minutes out of his oh-so-busy day and read John Donne’s Meditation XVII. Afterward maybe somebody with a drop of humanity could explain it to the self-centered loudmouthed SOB and his imaginary “cross section of America” sitting at their computers pretending they’re doing something more significant than playing slot machines:

“No man is an island, entire of itself;
every man is a piece of the continent,
a part of the main.

Any man’s death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind;
and therefore never send to know
for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

Martini Time, MST

@redmanlaw: My initial martini time is over, however, I plan a second round about the time of Stinque after dark, are you with me? I has stress, I has sad, I need decompression and companionship.

@Dave H: Is there any field outside of economics that the perpetual growth of an entity, taking in more and more and more and never releasing anything, is considered healthy

Thank you Dave H. I can’t begin to say how much I repeat this mantra over and over and never seem to find a minimally worthy response. Usually it’s silence, because people seem to be unable to conceive of any other economic model.

The almost universal dogma of perpetual growth seems to be taboo for both the “left” and the “right”. That must stop. Anyway, it will be stopped fairly soon.

@Dave H: I’ve written to Paul Krugman, latest King of Economics, posing the simple question: “How is infinite economic growth sustainable on a finite resource such as the Earth?”

Needless to say, there has been no response.

The usual suspects may respond that human labor is an infinite resource, endlessly value-adding to the ever-scarcer raw materials that it fashions into high-tech solutions for all of our problems. I think we all know how that goes.

Or perhaps money (abstract representation of resources) grows on trees. Certainly seems so, these days. Amazing that we can conjure trillions of dollars for Wall Street bailouts and dubious stimulus injections (not to mention wars of choice that have nothing to do with “defense”), but we still can’t conjure up, for instance, universal health care, something most of the other industrialized nations have long enjoyed as a patrimony, or social contract.

@Promnight: Disappeared for a while to read Paleontology in New Mexico and play my guitar for a while. With the distortion box and gain up high and hacking away at dissonant notes I found a riff that sounded like the screaming of lost souls. I actually scared myself. Fucking thing is a Ouija board.