Strictly come spending...

After the U.S. markets closed yesterday I turned the BBC Live News on to see what they had to say about it all.  Well...they were much like my dear friends on the matter - they were on the glass half-full side and discussing "Strictly Come Dancing" and John Sergeant's departure.  In that moment, I decided I do love the BBC.  The truth of the matter is, if they had put economists on to discuss the markets it would likely have been just as meaningless as the SCD debate (Yes - acronyms seem necessary when dealing with an economics blog).  MissMarketCrash loves economists, but, truly, what they say today makes little difference when we are on a high speed trip down the whirlpool and things are changing by the second. But, non-the-less, I'd rather see a sexy economist than talk about Strictly Come Dancing.  Oh dear -- do not run away dear readers....read on, I am indeed capable of escapism...

Now that there is not much left in the way of a reliable reality, I look at my children as if they could be Charlie, from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  Not to win a golden ticket, but, more importantly, to be sheltered from the gloom and doom surrounding us.  I remember most clearly the message of the movie was about being able to shape your own version of reality - that how the world was was to a large degree shaped by how you perceived it.  Now that is heavy philosophy 101 stuff but it was more or less a light-hearted song about candy which conveyed it to me at a young age: 

"If you want to view paradise

Simply look around and view it.

Anything you want to do, do it.

Want to change the world?

There's nothing to it."

After I got over a very lengthy childhood crush on Jean Wilder I grew up and umm...that little song was embedded in me.  It was no doubt an American thing which has been post-modernly translated into Nike's "Just do it" ad campaign.

Now how to keep the next generation on the sunny-side can-do side of the street?  The economists should curb talking to the government and go straight to Hollywood for some reality-shaping.  But I think that is what Hitler did.