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Survival

By Reid Collins on 2.16.09 @ 6:06AM

There's more bad recession news tonight.

"First thing you do is unload all the guns in the house."

Uncle Pundit is discoursing on how to survive the recession.

Why, Uncle? What's that got to do with it?

"'Cause you don't know how depressed you're gonna get. Remember, I lived through the '30's. Some guys I knew didn't. It got to be tough as a night landing on a carrier."

But they say it'll all be over soon. All we gotta do is spend about a trillion dollars. They already voted it.

"Voted it, or printed it? They just gonna find it on Mars or some other planet? No, someday, somebody's gotta pay it back. Somebody like you or your kids."

Well, they say unemployment is about 7 percent, going on 8.

"That is a percentage figure. All kinds of ways of figuring them numbers. Know what it was in the late '30's, going into the war? About 17 percent, little more."

What's the war got to do with it? Which war?

"Little tussle we called World War Two. Bad as it was, it saved our hides, economy-wise. Trouble is, there's nobody egging on another war like that. Next one, if it comes, will be so quick you won't know it happened. But listen. After the guns, what you want to do is find some good music…the old stuff, with lyrics, words, that make sense. Turn off the TV and listen. Find some better stuff, sonatas, classics. Sit back. Listen, and let it calm you."

No TV?

"Nope. That's part of what got us into this mess. Dozens of channels, each one trying to outdo the rest with There's more bad news tonight... As if the ratings depend on whose got the worst news about the economy."

Who does?

"Hard to say. That NBC outfit that does market news, CNBC, had a good documentary about what did us in. Documentary told of a pizza delivery guy selling mortgages on the side makin' 22 grand a month.The Wall Street guys would slice these worthless mortgages up into chunks and sell 'em around the world. Guys would violate every law up to and including the second law of thermodynamics."

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About the Author

Reid Collins is a former CBS and CNN news correspondent.

Letter to the Editor View all comments (9) | Leave a comment

Kitty| 2.16.09 @ 6:30AM

"First thing you do is unload all the guns in the house."

Don't worry, BO will do that for you. He can't be having any independent-minded people who are also armed, now can he.

...

Melvin| 2.16.09 @ 7:31AM

How was is that Communism enslaved millions of people without nary a revolt. It was easy the Soviet Union kept their people illiterate.
Simply put, a ignorant man doesn't question the state he only knows how to follow and fear it.
A literate man will question authority, therefore he becomes a threat to the state.

David Govett| 2.16.09 @ 2:13PM

The ascendancy of Obama and the liberal hordes is not the worst possible outcome. Not by a damn sight. Should their policies deepen the misery of recession among Americans, a people unaccustomed to poverty, they will divert the American republic down a dark and dangerous path inimical to freedom. The republic might be at stake, folks.

Pat| 2.16.09 @ 3:29PM

"House of Cards" - CNBC ran a medium good 2 hour special on how we got into this credit market mess. One of many amusing but depressing examples cited was a Lebanese immigrant who sold cars, then got into the mortgage origination racket and started making $5 million a month peddling mortgages, to Wall St., which were so risky they weren't sound enough to be labeled sub-prime, bought himself a million dollar Ferrari Enzo, bankrolled his own Hollywood movie. An American success story but one without nobility, without inspiration, without even a happy, tear jerking ending.

Our wise ones point to greed as the culprit, unbridled greed - as if by re-discovering this human weakness we are somehow guaranteed hope and redemption. For a country with the best political system in the world, one that Churchill said was better than all the rest, our so-called system fell flat on its witless face. The "rest", those systems Churchill scorned, must be really bad if our system is held up as some kind of shining example.

A system that can't effectively deal with a basic human motivation like greed isn't much of a system. A political system that will rob us to pay for the fundamental mistakes of others is one we'd wish on our enemy. Sure, the Lebanese mortgage pirate was greedy, manipulative, irresponsible, but he won't suffer for it - you will, I will, a lot of innocent taxpayers will because "we're all in this together". And loading or unloading our guns won't matter, we can't change our worthless system, all that any of us can do is complain about it and then pay up - it's our magnificent Churchillian system holding the loaded gun.

Alan Brooks| 2.16.09 @ 8:00PM

Daphne "i will have a psychedelic gleam in my eye at all times" Kenward has the answer to our funk:

go to Woodstock next August for the 40th anniversary.

Jim Turner| 2.16.09 @ 8:22PM

re: "...the Soviet Union kept their people illiterate.
Simply put, a ignorant man doesn't question the state he only knows how to follow and fear it." - They've just about accomplished that here too in the government schools!

A Balrog of Morgoth| 2.17.09 @ 3:23AM

Melvin,

No revolts other than the Russian Civil War, you mean. And I must disagree with the notion that Russians were kept illiterate. Au contraire, literacy was promoted...and channelled to serve the party.

Move INTO THE FUTURE| 2.17.09 @ 7:42AM

Step out of your BOX, and look towards a new technological age, of developement and progress.
Any one can shoot a MUSLIM, invest the money you use for bullets to creat JOBS in your country.

Use the money to create clean energy, and educate your people. New forms of transport cut back on pollution for a cleaner and healthier society, that invest less in mass murder and more in developement.