Signs of the economic apocalypse you may have missed

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Yeah, yeah -- your 401k is a joke, the market's been in free-fall, lay-offs are all around us. But did you miss the following signs we are truly in an economic apocalypse?
  • NetZero is running ads asking if you really need broadband after all. Use dial-up and save $300 a year! Give up broadband for dial-up? Dial-up??

  • Billboards are appearing in the area advertising cut-rate cremation services for only $399.95. The funeral industry never advertises on pricing. Until now.

  • Finally, the Dallas Morning News, ran the following on their editorial page this morning:

    If this brutal year on Wall Street (and, in turn, on Main Street) taught us anything, it's that our economic model is seriously flawed. Among the myths that didn't survive the year: Markets can be trusted to regulate themselves. Investment banking is the goose that can be counted on to lay golden eggs. You can't lose by investing in housing. Subprime mortgages are risky, but if they fail, the damage can be contained. Economists are reliable forecasters. If you want top-flight performance, you have to pay CEOs like princes.

    Special notice should be paid to the most iconoclastic lesson of all: Alan Greenspan is not divine. The former Federal Reserve chairman was once considered the wisest of the economic wise men, a miracle worker whose judgment was sacrosanct. The economic collapse took him from god to goat.

If the DMN, cheerleader for the right and bastion of conservativism that it is, has been reduced to questioning all that is Holy, surely the world as we know it is coming to an end.

Comments

Browncoat Libertarian said…
Sorry, but to say "markets can't regulate themselves" is more socialist brainwashing from the press. MOST markets regulate themselves just fine, SOME markets do need oversight, but not overkill.

More irresponsible journalism from our comrades in the press.
7:01 PM
Dr Ralph said…
Browncoat: regardless of my muddled take on things, the scary thing here is that the Dallas Morning News would be reduced to saying such a thing in the first place. Sort of like hearing an evangelical preacher praying to the Devil.

My own opinion of the DMN can best be expressed by quoting S.J. Perelman, who quipped during a train trip west, "I asked the porter to get me a newspaper and unfortunately the poor man, hard of hearing, brought me the Los Angeles Times."

The only two things the DMN has going for it are that it has two and a half pages of comics and, as bad as it is, it isn't the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
12:30 AM
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