Fed Wanks

If you like semi-artificial excitement, this has been an excellent week to read the financial press carefully. The American central bank will pop off a quarter-point interest rate increase this afternoon, or it won't.

More expert words than we can count with a Cray have been expended on predicting one result or the other. Closer to the real world -- but in fact not very close at all -- more money than you and I could possibly imagine has been gambled.

As a public service I offer my own conclusion, to wit, I don't know how Janet Yellin will massage the Federal Funds Rate at 2 p.m. today, and I have arranged my investments accordingly by doing nothing.  The inaction is based partly on fear of being wrong and losing  capital, probably enough of my hard-won savings to pay for  a day or two of Janet's fresh-squeezed orange juice served by a smiling civil servant in a starched white jacket.

And also partly by general disgust that our official medium of exchange still has no objective value beyond the promises of politicians and the guesses of tea-leaf readers  who happen to work at the Federal Reserve building rather than on the carnival  midway.

A rose by any other name...

...but do you think Obama would have changed the name of a mountain named for a liberal Democrat? My inuitition says "no."

Puss 'n' Boots language

A while back I used the word "lovely" in a conversation among two or three close friends. One of them took me gently to task for girly-girl talk. No big deal, but I was reminded of it this morning.

Once in a while I go through a breakfast ritual. Eggs just right, coffee with real cream and sugar, well-buttered toast, a pancake and maple syrup.  And a book, good book, just weighty enough to engage my facilities but not so idea-packed as to overstrain those facilities so early in the day.

Today: Meriwether Lewis is speaking through his journal. Entertaining as I do the the most confident hope of succeeding in a voyage which had formed a darling project of mind for the last ten years...

"Darling?"

That sounds pretty puss 'n' bootsie, but considering the source, I'd be very reluctant to call the man on it. If there's a pantheon of tough guys in the American tradition, Lewis is in it.

(I use Puss 'n Boots as a substitute for you-know-what, a term midway along the scale of vulgarity and hence unsuitable for a family-oriented pessay. Wait. I mean essay.)

So, with the great  and brave explorer behind me,  I think I'll worry less about a drop or two of lilac water lacing my speech.

Don't you find that lovely?

Well, that didn't last long

The big rich became the poorer-yet in the last minutes of NYSE trading yesterday. My panel of experts blames it on the Chinese again. Until lunch time on Wall Street everything was giddy, then some spoil sport said he thought the Peking didn't invent new money fast enough. And down we go because still not liquid enough.

To make matters worse, no one was really biting the bait about Janet and the Feds cooling down on their (maybe) planned quarter-per cent rate hike next month. It was dangled from all the docks,  but her worm just floated there, ignored.

We're trying again this morning as the cheery stock thugs  bid the Dow up about 350 points. Who knows?

Actually, maybe Peter Schiff (he's one of Us) knows. I think that, informally over a nice martini, he would advise putting your investment money into blue steel and walnut.