Blowing Bubbles, Blowing Smoke and Saving Social Secuirty

Dear George,

Where Jesus walked on water, our economy walks on bubbles. This shows that both God and greed generate miracles.

Our current meltdown in nothing more than an economy transitioning between bubbles. As long as the Fed’s printing presses work overtime, we will have enough liquidity to inflate the next bubble that comes down the pike. The credit crunch simply shows that fear is the only emotion that can trump greed. But, fear not fear, for as soon as the next bubble begins to rise in the east like the Star of Bethlehem, greed will return and send fear packing.

This brings me to the point of this letter. It is axiomatic that the more liquidity that is available, the more a bubble can be pumped up. Liquidity is to a bubble what steroids are to professional sports.

Ever since you took office, your minions have been circling a sea of liquidity like vultures circling a rotting carcass. I am speaking, or course, of the Social Security Trust Fund. The billions of dollars that sit in that fund that would better serve America if Wall Street were allowed to burn it in its Furnace of Financial Fantasy.

You have already found that a direct frontal assault on the fund won’t work. You’ve got too many senior citizens out there who have turned into dependent leeches that are depriving Wall Street of its liquidity fix.

This means we need a long-term approach that will finance future bubbles after the next generation of bubbles pop.

The solution to this problem is simple: reposition smoking.

Begin your campaign with a major policy speech before the American Medical Association. Reaffirm your administration's commitment to a healthy American public, and announce a major administration initiative to combat the ravages of smoking. The first shot fired in this campaign will be to convene a blue ribbon panel of scientists who will be charged with the mission of determining exactly why cigarettes cause the health problems they do. Load the panel with those scientists who deny evolution and global warming.

Six months later, they issue a report that says, in essence, “Silly us! All this time we thought tobacco was the problem. Now it turns out that the real problem is the cigarette paper, which contains a major carcinogenic, and we’ve figured out how to eliminate it.

We have also discovered, much to our surprise, that tobacco is a health benefit. After all, tobacco is an herb and everyone knows that herbs are good for you. But there’s more! We’ve also discovered that you maximize tobacco’s health benefits if smoking is started before the onset of puberty.”

Then you move to step two, a major campaign whose slogan is, “A Butt Can in Every Classroom.” We’ve got to get those little tykes puffing away. Elementary school smoking must become the wave of the future.

The goal is simple: once we get the average life expectancy down to 52.3 years, Wall Street owns the Trust Fund and can generate so many bubbles that the NYSE will look like the old Laurence Welk Show.

Start to work now, and by the time you leave office in 2016, Wall Street will be singing your praises and your legacy will be secure.[1]

Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones


[1] It’s a lazy day. This is a revised version of a letter I posted years ago. --cw