Chickens coming home to roost
posted in Economy, Fashion, Livestock and Pets |Le Petit Coop, c’est fini! Woot! The silkies are in their new home; Fluff is out of the bathtub in the downstairs bathroom (yay!) and Puff is out of her jail cell in the garage.
We are regularly getting three eggs a day.
I am planning for OmegaDotter to fund our retirement with the proceeds from egg sales.
(Hah. I just looked at the returns for my Fidelity 2020 investment fund, and it’s off 25% since the beginning of the year. We’re gonna need those egg sales.)
Speaking of finances (dontcha love that segue?), the score is currently: Lehman Brothers filed bankruptcy. The Dow Jones dropped 504 points. Lynch America is going strong. Reserve has frozen a money market fund for seven days (this has only happened once before). AIG is currently begging the U.S. government for an $80 billion “bridge loan”; otherwise it will file for bankruptcy tomorrow, sayeth the press. Just FYI, AIG is a trillion dollar business. (Whoa, breaking news: Wall Street Journal says AIG is going to get that loan and be put under government control…”The Federal Reserve is considering an $85 billion rescue for embattled American International Group that could leave the government in control of the firm, according to people familiar with the matter, though the structure of a deal remains unclear.”) The Russian stock market was closed after it plunged 17% in a day.
Let’s look back on those days of yore, when the savings and loan crisis cost the U.S. $500 billion dollars. Remember those?
Let’s talk about the Glass-Steagall Act. This was enacted in 1933, established the FDIC, and forbade banks from providing investment services, in an attempt to keep banks from speculation that would drive them to bankruptcy. Phil Gramm (currently a senior financial advisor for the McCain campaign) sponsored the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in 1998, which fully repealed Glass-Steagall. President Clinton signed it into law, so it was a non-partisan clusterfuck. And now we have Lynch America, Lehman Brothers in bankruptcy, and a $1 trillion dollar company dangling by a thread. Oh, well.
Some other chickens that have come home to roost are my various jeans purchases.
Alas, I must have measured incorrectly; all of them are too big. The custom Lands End jeans fit the best, but they are still too big. I am sufficiently pleased with the shape of the fit to try again, fiddling with the measurements and changing from a waist-high rise to a mid-rise pant. We shall see. The Gap jeans were way too big and I am returning them. I think I will find a local seamstress and have the Nordstrom black jeans taken in.
I have truly been tied to the computer these past few days, watching the financial services sector go kablooie. Things have been happening at an incredibly rapid pace. I don’t know whether to be fascinated or appalled or both…
