Yesterday, Detroit, the city that throughout most of the twentieth century symbolized American industrial strength and economic power, filed for bankruptcy, becoming the nation's largest public sector knocked to the ground by the weight of a multi-billion-dollar debt!
In a bizarro turn of events, right after these news came through, the stock market has closed for the day reaching new record highs! Apparently the investors rallied (again!) on account of the second-quarter paper gains published by a few US giants. One of them was Morgan Stanley, by the way - the company that doesn't produce anything, but their investment banking division (the one that does IPOs) did amazing!
Yet, the major bit of information that pushed stocks to the record levels came from the Labor Department reporting "a drop in weekly claims for unemployment benefits," which was readily misread by the "investing community" as a "signal of a healthier economy." This proves once again that this "community" consists entirely of the blind and the stupid unable to comprehend the simple truth that a drop in unemployment payouts doesn't mean that the unemployed miraculously became employed. What it actually signifies (assuming the numbers are not fucked with) is that a bunch of people has exhausted their unemployment benefits and now will move onto Welfare.
Of course, our Federal Reserve chairman, Ben Bernanke, played his role in furthering the stock market craze, by testifying in Congress that the inflation is not high enough yet to either curb the Fed's $85 billion-a-month bond stimulus program (financed by the Chinese loans and our taxes), or raise the closed-to-zero interest rates. What the fuck are you talking about, Bernanke? In the past 12 months my personal cost of living has increased by 15% in every single category: residential expenses, utilities, transportation, food - everything went up!
Is it just me, or the world has gone completely bananas? I don't think it's me. I think the world is populated by the Bizarros now. And, as the fearless leader of Sealab 2021 said, "I hate the Bizarros."