Wednesday, March 12, 2008

me and my nostradamus

In other news – LI’s estimate of a three trillion dollar recession is the same sum talked about in Martin Wolf’s new Financial Times column. We get to that sum in different ways – Roubini, who Wolf quotes, comes, as it were, from the grassroots up, estimating the fallout from an extreme estimate of mortgage failures, whereas LI came to it from the top down, taking the figure of the excess of consumer spending and borrowing over income over the last ten years. Well, my fine readers, there you go – whilst some might take this for amateurish wankery, others will find my figures to be eerily prescient. Why? Because every night, the ghost of Nostradamus visits me and whispers sweet apocalyptic nothings in to my ear.

It is the only way to do predictions, man. Oh, one other thing Nostradamus told me: Bear Stearns is toast. Or was it that he said all men will turn to toasteating as the Angel of Death, looking remarkably like Gloria Graham playing in a movie that prefigures Elliot Spitzer’s downfall, sounds the last trumpet? I couldn’t quite understand the lang d’oc he was muttering in.

3 comments:

  1. Just got a bill from my credit card company. I've been an extremely naughty boy. An unfair part of that $3 trillion is mine. I am up the creek.

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  2. Hey, Brian tell them that you have a call into the Fed, and they are sending you out a truckload of money any day now. And then shed a tear for someone who truly deserves it, Steven Schwartzman. According to the latest news reports:

    Talk about adding insult to injury. Not only have Steve Schwarzman's Blackstone shares plunged since its IPO, knocking billions off his net worth, but the firm has also cut his annual pay to less than $1 million per day.

    So here's a little ditty that goes out to poor Steven!

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  3. Aimie, It looks like I'm going to have to brush up on my langue d'oc skills! It turns out Nostradamas was saying Bear Stearns would like some toast, please, and some jam, and coffee - white, sugar - and could they please have maybe 200 billion dollars in taxpayer money, pretty please?

    This is obviously hard to say, enigmatically, and in verse. But such is the breakfast talk on Wall Street!

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