Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Boing boing

Another dead cat bounced off the Wall Street pavement overnight. Quite a large one this time (five per cent), but one can only assume that gravity will take effect, if not tonight then one night in the near future.

Meanwhile, the page count in the New Yorker continues to shrink, as the biggest economic contraction since the last one proceeds apace. The magazine survived the [First] Great Depression and we can only hope it has the reserves, and stamina, to survive whatever this one winds up being called. Of special interest in the recent "Anniversary" issue is George Packer's report from the real-estate wastelands of Florida, in which he gives both an insight into the human face of the collapse, and how Florida seems to have been its Ground Zero. (I still have trouble fathoming how a fall in real estate prices in one State of the Union could have such far-reaching international effects, but what do I know?)

What I do know, or at least what it looks like, is that the United States economy is so fucked they are going to have to find a new word for "fucked".