The Clusterfuck Nation Chronicle

Commentary on the Flux of Events

The Sunday New York Times business section was brimming with speculation that America has now seen the "bottom of the downturn" and that the insane Friday stock market rally of the past week (just as the highest monthly unemployment rise in 21 years was announced) indicated the markets' ineffable foreknowledge of a new boom coming next spring.

I appreciate cheerfulness and optimism as much as the next guy, but it's a little disturbing to see America's newspaper of record appear so completely out-of-touch with reality.

If they had been reading their own newspaper the past couple of weeks, the Timespeople would have discovered that the bottom fell out of the airline industry, that nobody needs to buy a new computer, that credit card defaults are now at the eight percent level, that nobody has a clue who perpetrated the Anthrax outbreak (with the implication that it could happen again any moment -- only next time it might be smallpox), that government at every level from the village fire department to the White House is facing security expenditures of such magnitude that Monopoly money may have to become our official currency, that all the might of the US Airforce cannot discommode a raggedy gang of third-world bandits, and that almost nothing but positive thinking stands between our nation's addiction to imported oil and the doomed decadant kingdom of Saudi Arabia that has been our main supplier.

This is something much worse than garden-variety denial.