Dec 18, 2013

When I was rich

For a glimmering moment around mid-morning I was a stock market mogul. My net worth soared by $7.53 as traders speculated that Ben and the Feds would keep on printing $85 billion* brand new Federal Reserve Cartoons  a month.

Then speculators of contrary opinion took over, and erased every cent of the gain on my eye-dropper full of a little ETF, a leveraged bond fund which is "interest sensitive." It pays a humongus dividend, but the price of the stock itself  goes up and down as often as Bill Clinton's shorts. Up when the market thinks Ben will keep printing free FRCs, down when it worries that he may cut back a little.

Fortunately, this doesn't signal complete financial disaster here at Camp Jiggleview, because The Commandant, yours truly, has just received a bonanza from the federal government led by President Obama.

He informed me that I have done such a wonderful job of retiring -- that is, becoming a lazy tax-sucking parisitical slob -- that I am to be awarded a raise in my monthly salary. It comes to $19 net, after allowing for deducts to Medicare. You've probably heard of Medicare. It's a gift from cuddly ol' Lyndon Johnson allowing me to be sick for free.  "Y'all just go ahead and stay in that hospital a while longer, Jim. We gone send the bill to your kids."

We had no money then --1965 -- either. We were financing a lot bullets to kill wogs -- mostly, but not exclusively, Vietnamese --  and on wonderful urban utopias such as Cabrini Green in President Obama's neighborhood.

Someone asked how we would pay for all that plus Jim's doctor bills. Lyndon said, "Why Hell, boy, we ain't actually gonna pay with real money or nothin'. We gone find a bunch of smart (ethnic slur deleted) boys who went to Harvard and Yale and them places and learned how to make make up money just by saying so. Y'all quit frettin'." 

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Hey! You in the back. Stop singing whle I'm talking, dammit! Besides, you got it wrong. The song goes "Marching to Pretoria. Not Weimaria."

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*More, actually. The 85 billion is just what they admit to.

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