LONELYPOND PRESENTS

What to title this one? Yes, I’ve been affected too — parts of Gayle’s 401K lost 40+% of their value and my brother just got laid off from his construction job. Fortunately, I moved a large % of the 401K into boring bonds before the financial crisis broke, but now we are back to investing in the mutual funds purchasing American and European stocks — the theory being here’s the opportunity to buy in cheap — and we came to this conclusion without needing the stern lecture from Mr. Warren “Snowball” Buffet. It’s really the only conclusion to come to — do you have faith in the system or no. It seems to me from my perusal of the Financial Times and The Economist that the bulk of the world’s finances seem to be run by people unable to maintain their course or keep their lunch down in the face of bumpy weather — it’s sad, greed induced ethical crisis turns into crisis of confidence turns into genuine world shaking hoard your gold under the mattress apocalypse and all a person can think is, have bankers and stockbrokers ever really earned their pay?

James Altucher turns out a serious column to hearten those of us still taking a chance on capitalism.

The most cheerful thing so far about all of this is that Gayle took the news that the French Finance Minister has replaced the conductor of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in the newspaper photo subjects that catch my eye category fairly well. She did frown at my offering to send Ms. Lagarde the French flag I inadvertently pastelled (and yes, it is possible to inadvertently pastel the French flag and if you’re really interested, I’ll tell you how.)