The Word You’re Looking For: M-a-l-a-i-s-e

I submit the following for your consideration, and then I don’t intend to discuss this topic again.

Compare these pictures taken on Martha’s Vineyard yesterday: the adoring crowd waiting for a glimpse of the Won’s:

Preggo

Not preggo

Just picking up some fried seafood for lunch. And besides, nobody wears industrial spanx containment systems if they’re pregnant. So let’s just drop it.

We’re just buying some shrimp, guys, Ok? And a few beers. Coronas.

Beer frame courtesy of the Boston Herald

 

Having some shrimp at Nancy’s              Photo: Boston Herald

By now, I think you all know our track record on vacations - tragedy just seems to follow us like a little black grey cloud hanging over our heads: the Winter Holiday Underpants bomber in Detroit when we were in Hawaii, the death of the Liberal Lyin’ when we on the Rock last August. We’ve been holding our breath, waiting to see what was going to happen this time. Well, we found out yesterday: the economy is blowing up. That’s not good, in case you follow that sort of thing.

Here’s what happened yesterday:

There was a huge, unexpected  drop in new single-family home sales in July. The lowest since 1963. Wow! Big Guy had barely been born, unexpectedly, then... somewhere. Then we weighed in with a record drop of 27% in existing home sales, likewise unexpected. And then the unexpectedly bad news that durable-good orders for July, which analysts had predicted would grow by 3%, came in at only a tenth of that: 0.3%. As Hot Air reported, that’s the good news.  Excluding transportation, durable goods orders fell 3.8% last month.

But since we’re used to this type of crisis while we’re on vacay now, the team sprung into action. Big Guy ordered that today’s unemployment numbers come in 30,000 lower than last week’s (watch for next week’s number to be unexpectedly high as a result), he sent Joey B out to tell everyone again that the economy is going in the right direction (down?), and ordered an emergency conference call with his crack economics team.

Can you hear me now?

A conference call is like a round-table, only without the donuts. Which is to say, pointless. But I guess they all decided to get back together after vacation and get a plan together to fix the economy, which appears to be in a death spiral. So, that’s our plan, and we’re sticking with it.

I’m not sure what the plan will entail this time, and I do know that past performance doesn’t guarantee future results, butt I’m looking for another Trillion dollar stimulus bill. Because Paul Krugman said our whole problem is we didn’t blow enough money the first time. And he’s a Nobel Prize winning, brilliant economist, current writing columns for the NYT (now there’s an economic business model we could emulate). And if that doesn’t work, we’re going to fire our economic forecasters and get some new ones.

So don’t say we don’t have an economic plan: can you say Malaise?