Poor America
Blame our financial woes on poor spellers, like the intellectual charity case in the White House.
Here we are, ignorant peasants in our mud huts at the base of the volcano of finance, begging the gods to spare us as the ground shakes beneath our feet and economists examine the entrails of pigeons and the shamans of the Federal Reserve fling handfuls of sacred powder into the steaming crater. We live with a system rejiggered by Republicans — freedom from regulation, but when the manure hits the ventilator, the Feds step in with a few hundred billion to rescue the players — and nobody can tell us ignorant savages how rough the upheaval might be. Nobody knows.
Meanwhile, there were rumors of spring but then it snowed 9 inches here on the windswept tundra so there were no crocuses for us on the way to Easter, just snow and ice, and we went to celebrate the risen Lord with a certain dread of slipping and falling. You fall on ice, you could hit your head and suddenly your command of English is gone. This happens.
The fear of disaster does not slow us down much, however. We are cockeyed American optimists. We go to the Good Shepherd Home to take Uncle Gene his lily and we see old people slip-sliding along with their walkers, enduring the extreme tedium of decrepitude, and we honestly don’t expect this to ever happen to us. We expect to continue singing and tap-dancing right up to The End and the roll of the credits.
The Puritans I am descended from were not cockeyed optimists. That was one reason they came to Minnesota. Living here is like being in a difficult marriage, a true test of one’s mettle, and the reality is that spring is going to be a little late again and love is not all you need and to dream the impossible dream and fight the unbeatable foe does not exempt you from the laws of physics when your car hits glare ice.
We used to have a potluck culture in Minnesota — the sharing of food as a way of life, you do your best for me, I do my best for you. But it easily breaks down: If some folks bring homemade pies and others bring a gallon of factory-made potato salad, forget it, the potluck is over. If other people don’t care to make something good, then why should we? And so Aunt Elsie’s excellent fried chicken passes from the scene and we settle for a Barrel O’ Breasts from KFC and meanwhile standards slip in the public schools and bankers hand out high-risk mortgages.
I know a woman who at age 34 inherited a potful of cash and found a financial advisor who seemed smart enough until one day, referring to a partner in the firm, he said, “Me and him think you should stick with stocks.”
“Should I accept financial advice from someone who uses Me as a subject?” she asked me.
No.
And now I am wondering if the upheaval in finance may not be the result of the raging epidemic of poor spelling we see all around us. A college graduate just sent me an e-mail asking about a band that “one” a contest, wishing she had been “their” to see it. Misspelling drives me nuts. You young people learned spelling by the Close Enough method. As long as we know what you mean, you think it’s OK. And nobody corrects you. And you go along on your merry way, and the dark clouds of Error build up in the rain forest and the ground shakes.
People accuse us liberals of permissiveness — no no no no no. We liberals are oppressive, not permissive, working day and night to take your guns away and make you apply for a permit every time you spit. In my heart, I belong to the Correctness Party, the party of good spellers, of people who pay attention to details. The Current Occupant is not one of us. He is not a man who puts pen to paper with any confidence. Intellectually he has been a charity case all his life. He is one of those men who are lucky that their fathers were born before they were.
I vote to send him up to talk to the volcano. Let him climb up to the crater in his loincloth and crouch in the billowing steam and tell the volcano to stop shaking and stay there until it does. Him and Greenspan could do it together.
Garrison Keillor’s “A Prairie Home Companion” can be heard Saturday nights on public radio stations across the country.
© 2008 by Garrison Keillor
LOL! I love Garrison Keillor.
>>Intellectually he has been a charity case all his life.
finacially, socially, militarily, morally
Garisen Keeler is a speling eleetest.
When banks started looking (literally) like the corner butcher shop or used car lots with handmade, gaudy fluorescent colored signs on the windows, I knew things were getting a little “strange”.
Garrison___Great article!!! People need to realize how our language has become dumbed down and careless. Not too many years ago, people took pride in their correct use of language and speech, also good penmanship instead of unreadable scrawling.
We take great pride in our educational system and think always throwing more money at it will fix everything. However, a little diagramming sentences might help a bit also. Another great development is text-messaging, which just means to get the idea across with a minimum of letters. Computers and calculators tend to give the impression the answer is correct, while a misplaced decimal point or extra zero can be far off, and without a basic sense of mathematics, can be missed.
Our fantastic progress in this country comes with a price, and we need to recognize the pitfalls that lie ahead because of it.
You are as brilliant and relevant as you ever were in the 1980’s. Great read, Mr. Keillor.
“A college graduate just sent me an e-mail asking about a band that “one” a contest, wishing she had been “their” to see it.”
We here in the Yoonited Statez of Merica are some of the best edjakated peepul in the wurld. Nope we ain’t ignert!
One would think that nationalizing from the 1980’s forward the curriculum used at the Lake Wobegon School District (where, we recall, “all the children were above average”) would have since fixed the spelling problem for a whole American generation. I guess Ronald Reagan must have missed putting that on his “to do” list way back then.
The economy is indeed bad, and in ways that hurts people like me who are trying to do the “right” thing — save rather than go into debt. Our CD retirement nest egg (about the size of a quail egg) was paying 4.65 percent interest five months ago, but when we added money this time it is paying 2.90 percent.
The frighteningly young bank officer who “rolled over” our account suggested we talk to the financial adviser who might find other “investment options” that might pay more. Not bloody likely. Those are the guys who spouted party line lies to all the folks who are now being required to pay the piper. Besides, if someone knows how to make money turn into more money, why would they be working at a day job instead of magically making their own money grow?
Next time the CD matures I’m seriously considering buying a small safe and putting such savings as I have into gold coins, but the banks will probably collapse before it gets to that, causing my savings to “disappear” like what happened in the early 30s.
Still, as G.K. says, people are optimists. There are pregnant people and new building s going up all over the place, just as if there was going to be a future.
The Decider may not be able to spell but I am so relieved we have our first MBA president during these troubled times. I remember Him a couple years ago touting the success of his grand plan: The Ownership (owership) Society. More ‘merikins than ever before “owned” their homes thanks to his leadership on the economy. Wow!
Thanks, Paranoid Pessimist, for reminding us about the assault (mostly on older conservatives) that is embodied in the Bush pressure on Bernanke to lower interest rates paid to individuals on insured bank savings—when they should have been holding steady at the 5.25 of a few months ago or even going upward to fight inflation.
The problem America has with interest rates is all in the corporate “middle”, and stems from lack of regulation and erroneous repeal of usery laws. When banks have been borrowing from you at 4.65% to loan on credit cards at 24.65%, there is no real solution in reducing your part to 2.90% and lowering the credit card rates to 22.90%. We’d be far better off limiting the top end but not the bottom.
And some would say, yeah, and if you limit the top end, the easy credit on cards would “dry up.” Yes, it would somewhat, and many people now accessing that easy credit and digging themselves into hopeless debt holes from buying stuff they don’t need would be spared years of subsequent grief.
I do know that a big ship on “wrong track” can only turn very slowly, but we’re decades (since Reagan) overdue.
Loved the article. Since a friend introduced me to the guy she’d listened to for years, I’ve been a big fan of yours, Garrison Keillor.
We think speech and spelling are so bad now, wait until every one begins using that language as the norm!
gin - everyone thinks bush’s “ownership society” meant he wanted us all to own our own homes. What he meant was “You have a problem? It’s yours. You own it - you fix it.”
Since last August, the financial billionaire brainiacs that have demolished our economy have been given a $800 Billion (and rising) bailout.
I am not a financial brainiac, or a billionaire, but if we had given every homeowner in the country that money instead, the majority of us would have been debt free. Mortgages and loans of all kinds would have been paid, incomes freed up to “buy, buy buy”, the American way.
Instead, we gave more of our money (that really isn’t ours, but China’s and Saudi Arabia’s that they “loaned” us, cuz the US is insolvent)to these brainiacs who already stole all of our money, looted the Treasury, and stole everything not nailed down in this country.
WTF?!!? Wake up people! We need a good old fashioned economic boycott. Don’t pay your taxes, don’t pay any mortgages or loans. NOTHING will change until we turn off the money spigot to these evil, evil people.
Ralph Nader, you were a “consumer” advocate of old. Where are the people stepping up to organize an economic boycott of this inhumane system? Proper spelling is not going to save us from this.
As a side question, how many of the founding citizens of this country (ya know, the ones who were part of the invasion that stole the hemisphere from the native peoples) could spell? I suspect not many of them.
Great article.
I am embarrassed with my own grammar and spelling skills or more precisely the lack of such skills. When i ”passed” the eight grade I quit school. I was bored and disillusioned with what was being ”taught” to me.
Now at the age of 54 years, having been a voracious reader for all of that time , I can not believe the level of incompetence displayed by ”educated” peoples in basic language and communications.. it now seems that to , too and two are interchangeable.
Some even go so far as to use, there , their and they’re depending on which way the wind is blowing.
However, I do not gloat ever my very limited ability to construct a coherent sentence.
Instead I try to glean the meaning of some poorly constructed , misspelled sentence for the ideas being communicated by these authors, via the ”tools” that were supplied to these ‘’state certified as passing the grade”, authors of said constructs.
There can be a fine line sometimes between popular usage and “correct” usage; it’s perfectly normal for language to lose some of its perfection in the hands of the average person, and I don’t have a problem with that. That is, after all, how you get linguistic “evolution”. But seeing “there” and “its” and such misused makes one cringe, regardless.
Of course, this is nothing Orwell didn’t say half a century ago in “Politics And The English Language”, that sloppy usage correlates with sloppy thinking. Which, I suppose, is partially why he was so cynical about the future.
I think it’s a bit of an over-statement to suggest that the financial meltdown is “the result of the raging epidemic of poor spelling”, but I think the two are linked. We’re in a anti-intellectual phase of American culture yet again, complete with our own 21st Century nativist “Know-Nothing”s. We’ll grow out of it - only question, though, is how much damage the cretins will do before that happens.
wilmoor, actually I think what Bush really meant was “we own you”.
I think the misuse of words, including spelling (although I am also guilty of typos), reflects the lack of quality education in this country. I have never pointed out errors of usage to any one, but using “rein” instead of “reign” is an example. My Russian partner was shocked to find upon arrival here that his Russian high school education was equivalent to a two year community college degree here. He also observed that Americans his age were remarkably immature compared to Russians. He was right. I was impressed at how mature he was for his age, but of course, I was measuring him by American standards. We have a long way to go here.
kathyodat
I can not believe the level of incompetence displayed by ”educated” peoples in basic language and communications
Just remember - just ’cause someone has a PhD or a MD doesn’t mean they can’t be a gullible dumbass.
Johnnychuck, I agree with you that critical thinking isn’t limited to accurate spellers, or even to people who use the right words to express themselves. But generally critical thinking is a learned skill, and along with it usually comes other learned skills, such as proper use of language.
However, a rule for me is to beware of too much generalizing.
kathyodat
@WTF
I too am amazed that no one seems to see the scam.
the big money players screwed everything up, made billions doing it, and now run to the US gov. to bail them out, when the whole ”house of cards” comes crashing down
What happened to letting the ”Free Market” sort itself out?
Guess that is only applicable when it is the ”little guys” losing big
Corporate welfare.. but take responsibility for yourself if you do not have a ”logo” on wall street or the stock exchange.
Makes you want to throttle someone
@Kathyodat
Yes , I stand corrected..
I generally try not to generalize..
lol say that five times quickly
I dink derfor eyeyam.
totaljoke__I disagree with your statement that probably not many of the founding fathers could spell correctly. In reading the papers of that period, it appears they were well versed in the language skills, although a little flowery.
pere uber__You are correct that many well educated people seem to lack common sense, however that may be a partly inherited trait, and is no excuse for the use of sloppy language.
A good example of the grammer problem is our President, who convinced me not to vote for him by his atrocious use of the language. It seemed there was something amiss when an MBA Graduate from an Ivy League college could not converse in proper terms.
It may not be the fault of younger generations, as they have been raised to be materialistic consumers and try to keep up with all of the new inventions. However, it is possible for anyone, rich or poor, to develope decent grammar and spelling skills that will help them all of their life.
Garrison Keillor must have been the spawn of William F. Buckley Jr. and Tallulah Bankhead–what an unctuous and condescending snob.
daniel david, ronald reagan was the one who invented appointing incompetents to oppose the departments they were appointed to head. george w. bush made it into an art form.
poet, garrison keillor just knows how to spell, read and write. did you never care whether you made sense in our native language? i came to this article because i needed something a little lighter than normal headline fare. and i found it here.
It was politely said of Bush The Elder that ‘…deep down, he’s shallow.’
But we can’t say the same thing about Bush The Younger: He lacks anything even resembling a ‘deep down.’
On Bush’s Ownership Society: Gee, when he came up with the ‘ownership society’ baloney, I thought Bush meant that those who owned the most when he first took the oath to be president, those were the owners that mattered. I thought maybe the top three percent of wealth owners were the ones who got to own his ownership society. It never occurred to me that Bush cared about home ownership for people who didn’t already own a home when he stole his first presidential election.
I don’t think it is possible but, gee, maybe I am dumber than Bush?!
We privatize the profits and nationalize the risks. We’re Wall Street! (Some restrictions apply.)
Dream of the Stern Bear
A bear of sorts was
resting on it’s fleshy parts
asleep on yonder stern
while a tide of money is for nothing
came washing up their tidy loss
Some didn’t have to ‘eat their cake’
for being on the make is good for heavens sake!
A short term gain merely a bit of long term pain
So please indulge your self
be a serf for surfeit
so you don’t forfeit
the heady dream of the well to do
Do to others like they did to you
don’t forget to rip off labor too
Lever every step along the way
drown them so they won’t have any say
and give thanks to TINA
since there is no other way
Paranoid Pessimist-If you’re lucky enough to have over $100,000 in savings it’s a good idea to split your account. Either a separate one for your wife or separate banks. The government is not likely to cover you over the $100,000 FDIC commitment per account in the event of bank failure.
What the financial titans have done is a version of Three Card Monte, a version of the old shell game.
Keillor is right on target. Yes, he uses spelling but more importantly he brings common sense and common decency into the discussion. With his humor, he respects the wise, uneducated and despises the educated dunces, especially the educated, privileged, arrogant ones.
George W. Bush was born on third base and when there was a wild pitch he scored and said he hit a home run.
Einstein said that we cannot solve the problems that confront us with the same level of thinking that brought on the problems.
The greed and poverty of spirit that inhabits the Current Occupants of the Executive branch have gotten faster to the rocks of the rapids we’re traveling on than could have been imagined when Bush stole the 2000 election.
It’s long overdue that Americans wise up. If not linguistically, than at least in horizons and clear vision.
Those rocks are coming up fast. Many Americans found them from birth, some more recently.
As Martin Luther King Jr. said, “We’re in the same boat now”. Well at least those without accounts in the Caymans and elsewhere or who live off the interest of their wealth.
I volunteer Dick Cheney to go up to the volcano. He’ll probably come back and say the volcano accepted the sacrifice of Bush and Greenspan. As Shakespeare might say, “It would be a good start.”
(PS-For those keeping score, there were two typos and two misspellings before spell checking. Three misspellings with this PS. The sentence fragment is there to annoy you.)
Garrison Keillor must have been the spawn of William F. Buckley Jr. and Tallulah Bankhead–what an unctuous and condescending snob.
I disagree. My mom is a grammarian of the highest order. If I begin a sentence with “Me and a friend….” she will hastily correct me by saying, “No, it’s ‘a friend and I….’”
There is nothing at all wrong with demanding correct grammar, spelling and punctuation in this society in which we live. There is nothing wrong with demanding higher standards of our leaders. There is nothing wrong with holding greedy investment bankers to account for their misdeeds.
I am, and always will be, a big fan of Garrison Keillor. He’s always spot-on when it comes to social commentary and observation of humanity. Thank you, Mr. Keillor, for yet another insightful commentary on what’s wrong with our society today.
There is nothing at all wrong with demanding correct grammar, spelling and punctuation in this society in which we live.
I’d reiterate - just a personal opinion here - that punctuation and grammar are iffy things sometimes; you’re just annoying people if you’re complaining about whether or not a split infinitive is permissible or double negatives or whether or not punctuation goes inside quotation marks. Spelling less so; I’m not going to bitch about someone misspelling “champagne” or some such. Confusing “there” and “their”, though, should be grounds for waterboarding (JOKING, JOKING!).
I’d argue it’s much more important to have a love for and respect for clear, concise writing than it is to insist on adhering to nit-picky rules. That said, all the adherence to correct grammar, spelling and punctuation isn’t going to be worth much if it’s used to lie, cheat and steal.
Kernel, you misread. I did not say “founding fathers” (how sexist) but founding citizens. A lot of whom were pirates, religious fanatics, capitalistic predators and criminals that seized land from the people already inhabiting this hemisphere. The founding fathers were mostly rich white elite males too, by the birth of this nation, they had already “got theirs”.
What I was trying to suggest is that proper spelling, literacy, or lack of it has nothing to do with the rapaciousness of an individual. I am sure most of the soldiers that killed the natives were not literate at all, while the monarchies leading them probably were rich and highly educated families. Greed has very few socio-economic limiters. I would have to agree with kathyodat that generalizations tend to get us all in trouble, including me.
Greg R March-you honestly believe FDIC will cover any more than pennies on the dollar if anything at all? That’s a big mistake right there. If someone has over $100,000 dollars in savings right now, I think that puts you solidly in elite territory anyway. (And I mean real cash, not funny money like CDOs, stocks, etc.)
Seeing a misspelled word or hearing someone using poor grammar is like nails on a blackboard to me. What’s happened to our schools that so many students can’t spell?
As for the Current Occupier, he’s saving me money on my electric bill because every time he shows up on TV, I turn the thing off.
Yes, but notice that these same Small Soap Dishes can spell words like, “huge!”, “sweet”, and the latest apparent rage of faux-intellectual writing, “Having said that,…”/”That being said,…”/”That having been said,…”.
Garrison - for many reasons: thank you. My pet peeves are (a) the use and overuse of “actually” and (b) the use of “guy” to address everyone - including the 52% of us who are not guys. I wish I had Toni Morrison’s article on “The Pause” so I could quote how she expresses her feelings on using the word “guy” to address females … she’s far more eloquent than I.
Thank you Garrison and here’s to the grammar elite.
Juliann
In one of my posts further up here the point I was trying to make about the future of our language was concerning the current text messaging craze. Imagine how that’s going to affect speech and spelling.
Pere Ubu wrote “I’d argue it’s much more important to have a love for and respect for clear, concise writing than it is to insist on adhering to nit-picky rules.”
Hay, weight juzt won minute, their is wright and their is rong.
Something I’ve noticed in reading hundreds of threads a week is that people confuse “lose” with “loose”. That’s very common these days. Thanks, Woebegoneboy.
I just have a few things to say. TURN OFF YOUR TELEVISION!!!!!! GET UP OFF OF YOUR FAT ASSES!!!!!! PARTICIPATE IN YOUR CHILDREN’S LIVES!!!!!! GO BACK TO SCHOOL EVEN IF YOU ARE FIFTY!!!!!! SPEND TIME WORKING IN YOUR COMMUNITIES!!!!!! and last but not least!!! STOP LIVING VICARIOUSLY!!!!!!
mr. keillor, although i listen to you weekly, it is so difficult to have your articles appear so infrequently here. not quite withdrawal pains, but thanks for the fix anyway!
It’s good to laugh about the mess we’re in …
… too bad it’s not funny.
“He is one of those men who are lucky that their fathers were born before they were.”
Genius.
Daniel David March 28th, 2008 12:43 pm
“One would think that nationalizing from the 1980’s forward the curriculum used at the Lake Wobegon School District (where, we recall, “all the children were above average”) would have since fixed the spelling problem for a whole American generation. I guess Ronald Reagan must have missed putting that on his “to do” list way back then.”
As did Bush Sr., Bill Clinton, and Bush Jr.
Lobo Gris
#
magikpowerwoman March 28th, 2008 9:02 pm
“Something I’ve noticed in reading hundreds of threads a week is that people confuse “lose” with “loose”. That’s very common these days. Thanks, Woebegoneboy.”
That is one that always gets to me too.
Lobo Gris
Economic boycott…..sounds good. How about all of us workers just stopping work for a couple days - or a week - or a month? Except for situations absolutely demanding personnel, such as healthcare, all of us could just say, “heck, we’re not working for you today”. That would expose the “independently wealthy” (those living off capital and not a paycheck) for what they really are: absolutely dependent on the working class.
Little did we know that the state of Texas was a terrorist training camp all along.
The savings and loans, Enron….. A think tank. A how to training ground for our current clowns.
How long? Not long; because you reap what you sow and the great arc of justice is coming for them too. Long live the volcano.
Hukt on fonix wurkt fir me!
Great article.
You a funny man Keelor.
Lynne “Sticklers Unite!” Truss’ “Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation” is an informative and good-humored essay on why punctuation matters, and why “sticklers” are not necessarily prissy, anal snobs. It’s an oversimplification, but Truss makes the central point that punctuation and grammar have meaning, and was developed for practical purposes– to increase and enhance clarity and sense, not just to feed snotty, rigid superegos. And punctuation and usage evolve– so, there are always terms that inhabit an ambiguous domain that eludes the simple dichotomy of right or wrong.
(I also recommend her “Talk to the Hand”.)
And although someone above got in ahead of me, I continue to be astonished at the prevalence of writers who spell “lose” as “loose”; until blogs and comments forums became popular, I had no idea that such a simple word was subject to this confusion of spelling.
“… were developed for practical purposes.”
Shit, I knew I was going to miss something using this crappy, one-time, sudden-death editing feature.
Go Amerka! Git the terrsts before they become nukular! Sport the trupes!
Should’ve been “Him and me, think . . .”
Rihgt?
Some great posts here.
I used to think phonetic spelling should be the norm, and ‘correct, received usage’ perhaps little better than pandering to pedantry, really. However, I’ve changed my mind. It’s not that there are not extremely intelligent people whose spelling is poor, (notably, with more wisdom, in addition, than the temperamentally academic, generally speaking), but it is helpful generally, I now think, to maintain certain fussily academic standards with regard to spelling and grammar - as part of a kind of unitary intellectual armoury, rather than for its own sake. Pretty much in line with Garrison’s point.
Having said that, it is even more important, in my view, to recognise that academic erudition is, per se, not synonymous with virtue, still less with wisdom. Though it’s not in anybody’s interests, of course, to have a person not in possession of a considerable wordly intelligence, in a position of great power over others. Though, occasionally, an autodidact who wasn’t the best speller could still excel in such positions. We have had some very astute trade-union leaders.
totaljoke, this is brilliant:
“Since last August, the financial billionaire brainiacs that have demolished our economy have been given a $800 Billion (and rising) bailout.
I am not a financial brainiac, or a billionaire, but if we had given every homeowner in the country that money instead, the majority of us would have been debt free. Mortgages and loans of all kinds would have been paid, incomes freed up to “buy, buy buy”, the American way.”
As one financial commentator murmured in passing, Scandinavian governments deliver substantial benefits to their population and the country at large, but have high rates of taxation…. which “would not be politically unacceptable in this country”…!!!!
Not disputing your point re spelling, Kernel, but you misspelt “grammar”. It can happen to anyone, and frequently does. I often find I’ve misused “their”, when checking my posts, and wonder how many slip through. Unfortunately, the authors of any screed are the worst people for checking their own material.
Kathyodat, it’s they pesky commie lefty gummints agin:
“My Russian partner was shocked to find upon arrival here that his Russian high school education was equivalent to a two year community college degree here. He also observed that Americans his age were remarkably immature compared to Russians. He was right. I was impressed at how mature he was for his age, but of course, I was measuring him by American standards. We have a long way to go here.”
“My Russian partner was shocked to find upon arrival here that his Russian high school education was equivalent to a two year community college degree here. He also observed that Americans his age were remarkably immature compared to Russians. He was right. I was impressed at how mature he was for his age, but of course, I was measuring him by American standards. We have a long way to go here.”
Kathyodat, didn’t you know, Socialism in all its forms was ALL bad? The sedition of the Scandinavians takes your breath away. A Trojan horse in the midst of our corporatist capitalism-run-amok.
Ah i may be up my ass.. but i always thought that because the nucleus of the atom being split was the basis for the bomb.. that it was a nucle er bomb? ..and some how nucleer doesn’t look right..just because the last part is spelled as clear doesn’t follow it would be pronounced that way.. as pronouncing it new clear makes no sense how can clear be new?
One of Creator’s little blessings is having the, Attila the Hen Spell Checker, following someone else around.
As GK noted, “fuzzy” spelling is a product of “fuzzy” thought processes. How can an author of any post be convincing (or respected) if s(he) hasn’t even developed a basic command of the English language?
On another topic, some here seem to be dedicated to “following the rules” when, in fact, the new rules are that are NO RULES! Those who talk of where to reinvest $100,000 have no grasp of reality. When the shit hits the fan, the FDIC won’t be able to create enough money to bail out savers. My thought? If I had money to (re)invest, I’d put it into military-style weapons and ammunition.
It used to be I didn’t appreciate Garrison Keillor’s humor. I’ve learned a thing or two over the years. And, fortunately, acquired an appreciation for his sharp, droll wit. And, he makes great sense!
“…learned spelling by the Close Enough method..”
Maybe one of Garrison’s points is that the “Close Enough” method applies to subprime mortgages as well. Even if you do not really qualify, it is close enough. We get our commissions and points, the seller gets to move up and the whole pyramid scheme can continue…until it collapses.
thanks for this post.i’d forgotten how good a writer you really are.