Retarded Person Has Economic Theory
One of the Festivus Miracles of American Journalism is that theWall Street Journalis such a very good newspaper despite the daily presence of its editorial pages, which are run by a couple of brain-damaged wingnuts who would be unwelcome on AM talk radio, as callers. Today, one of these comical editors has typed up a wonderful economic theory about the current global recession which was caused by unmitigated over-leveraging of fanciful mortgage-based securities whose existence was encouraged by artificially cheap and unscrutinized credit and the resulting collapse of those securities' values and the resulting credit crunch combined with the deeply intertwined decline of the real estate, construction, mortgage, investment and commodity markets, which was the primary and undisputed cause of the halt in consumer spending which has unarguably created a feedback loop of unemployment, debt default, foreclosures and negative economic activity all over the planet Earth: This was allactuallycaused by somebody not saying "Merry Christmas" at the mall!
Here are the relevant (?) words of this tragic (yet well-compensated) fool, Daniel Henninger, the "deputy editor of The Wall Street Journal 's editorial page," about the Financial Crisis:
This year we celebrate the desacralized "holidays" amid what is for many unprecedented economic ruin -- fortunes halved, jobs lost, homes foreclosed. People wonder, What happened? One man's theory: A nation whose people can't say "Merry Christmas" is a nation capable of ruining its own economy.
Oh. My. God. Really? "One had better explain that," Henninger adds. Sadly, his "explanation" is some indecipherable nonsense about how working-class evangelicals -- you know, the ones who all just lost their houses because they're too dumb and poor, and are going to the emergency rooms so TAXPAYERS can pick up the tab for their basic medical treatment, etc.? -- are the Moral Ballast of our Nation, and if only we were all ignorant bitters who can't take care of ourselves, the Economy would be strong. What?
It has been my view that the steady secularizing and insistent effort at dereligioning America has been dangerous. That danger flashed red in the fall into subprime personal behavior by borrowers and bankers, who after all are just people. Northerners and atheists who vilify Southern evangelicals are throwing out nurturers of useful virtue with the bathwater of obnoxious political opinions.
And ... let's see, check word count, long enough! Save & Send & Let's get the fuck out of here and down to Happy Hour, Amen. Maybe, some day, theWSJeditorial pages won't be the most reliable font of hilarious weirdness in America, but today is not that day.
Mad Max and the Meltdown [Wall Street Journal]