BOOM CITY PROGNOSTICATION
Now I know there are a lot of economic indices the government uses to track the ups and downs of this recession we’re in, everything from unemployment figures to manufacturing exports to consumer confidence statistics to balance of trade ratios. If nothing else, it creates employment for unemployed economists and down-on-their-luck statisticians so I guess it’s a small step forward toward ending the current recession.
Down here on the collateralized and leveraged South End, we got our own tried and true methodologies, tested over many years and virtually foolproof, which, if you know many of us South Enders, is a priority if not a Must. What we do is sort of skip the Dow Jones rise or fall and just get right to the Meat of the Matter. Forget adjusting for inflation or what the euro is doing against the dollar —- it’s just fiscal mumbo jumbo and if the Smart Boyz were so damn smart, why are we in a recession in the first place? Which, if you stop and think about it —like we do — you just answered the question.
Our economic analysis is pretty straightforward. What we do once a year on the 4th of July is grab a few adult beverages, a cooler full is best, and head down to any convenient bulkhead toward dark. We sit there and watch the neighbors’ firework displays. And Whidbey’s. And Mukilteo’s. All those bombs bursting in air. This year the neighbors spent the approximate GDP of Slovenia and Slovakia combined, way more than last year and far more than the couple of previous ones. You got money — discretionary income — to blow on spinning bees and kamikaze komets and screaming banshees or magnum bangums, don’t tell us what the price of gas at the pump is or how many housing starts this month or what the bankruptcy filings or bank defaults are. We can see with our own two eyes and hear with our own two ears the economic recovery in full kaleidoscopic Technicolor view.
Three years ago these poor waterfront patriots were reduced to pathetic hand held sparklers and shot a few fizzy Roman Candles. It was a sordid show of pessimistic patriotism, even by South End standards. This year, Whoo-EEE, the gated communities cleaned out Boom City and the Chapel Fireworks Stand too. Blew em off well into July 5th. It looked like Baghdad that first aerial saturation bombing back in the days when America had more money than it knew what to do with. You want to know if the recession is really over — take a whiff of the cordite wafting up your bluff. That’s the smell of new money, buddy.
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