President Obama has outlined his strategy for gracefully ending the black mood of depression his presidency has plunged the country into without admitting he had anything to do with it. “It’s like we do in Chicago,” Rahm Emanuel said. “Money cures everything, and it will cure this. When things look darkest, that is when we in Chicago shine, for in the dark is when we are most graceful. The President has informed the Treasury that the printing presses will melt if need be, for he is determined to see everyone in this country has an organically grown chicken in every pot and a plug-in hybrid car in every garage.” Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, at an informal press conference with several radical Muslim groups, laughed at the suggestion that the United States was abandoning its principles. “This Administration,” Mr. Gibbs quipped, “will never abandon its principals. Get it?  Principals. With an “a”. Or its teachers, either. What’s with you guys? I know you’re laughing, I can see your beards move.”

 

But it isn’t funny. The money spent so far is so mind bogglingly staggering, that I wonder if there was ever any real money involved at all. A thousand years ago the Chinese invented paper money. The notes were actually printed on silk, but the effect was the same. Money was no longer something valuable in itself, like a gold or silver coin, but a promissory note that said when presented to the proper authority it would be redeemed for the value stated on its face. The Chinese had invented the illusion of money, and nothing’s been the same since.

 

 

It isn’t paranoid to say

That what we see’s disturbing

When markets start to act this way

It means something’s perturbing

The way free markets operate

When all is hokey dokey

But when the pols don’t play it straight

They should be in the pokey

They’re not, of course, and I should state

The tycoon money lenders

And others who facilitate

The Congress’s big spenders

Should join the crooks in durance vile

Their names be changed to numbers

But that will only happen while

We’re dreaming in our slumbers

The Congress votes a pork fed bill

Without a thought or worry

Most people didn’t care, but still

Some wondered what’s the hurry

I think the Congress knew full well

That what they did was harmful

They gave to friends, but what the hell

Who took it by the armful

But here’s the problem, if we look

It really wasn’t euros

But just some numbers in a book

A-sitting in some bureaus

Until somewhere someplace some time

Someone needs some Jacksons

And writes a check or drops a dime

And initiates some actions

And somewhere a computer coughs

And numbers change direction

And offs are ons and ons are offs

In infinite collection

The point is no one ever sees

The actual pound or dollar

They might as well be wind in trees

A-blowing down a holler

There never was no dough to keep

It’s all a sham and mirrors

For some of us are just the sheep

While others are the shearers