Buddy, Can You Spare Me A Top-Hat?

Whenever Financial Doom & Gloom (FDG) fills the 24/7 news cycle, my cardiologist forbids me to listen to crackpots like Jim Cramer at CNBC. He frowns on Tom Keene, my wonky calculus-drivenguru at Bloomberg News. I’m permitted a small dose of Lisa Abramowicz on fixed income securities, a small dose of warmth like a nip of Calvados on a cold winter night. Everything else is too risky for my heart arrhythmia.

Since I want to quote the teachable moments, I’ll call my cardiologist Dr. C. I’ll translate his clinical discourse into parlance I can understand.

“Stop listening to that shit!” Dr. C says. “Take a deep breath. Count your blessings and live your life.”

Cardiologists learn to say that in medical school. “Live your life.”

Today, Blessing #1 is the inaccessibility of window ledges at my house. I won’t climb out on one because I haven’t removed the storm windows yet. I’d have to smash the glass if I were serious about the ledge. You won’t need to talk me off it.

During the FDG in 2008, also known as the Little Big One, I worked in a basement office at the university. No worry about ledges there. I didn’t even have a window.

Blessing #2 is this historic photograph taken in the midst of the Big One on March 4, 1933. It documents President Herbert Hoover riding in an open car with President-Elect Franklin Roosevelt. Eleanor sits between them.

They’re taking the short ride from the White House to the Capitol for FDR’s inauguration. It symbolizes the peaceful transfer of power at a genuinely scary time. The two men hate each other. Hoover’s glower hints at that. FDR’s jaunty upturned jaw feigns insouciance. Eleanor probably thinks, “Men will be men. At least they’re not fighting about who gets the front seat.”

I am specially blessed by their top-hats. They remind me of the plutocrat in the Monopoly game. I think the TV pundits and politicians opining about the latest FD&G should be required to wear top-hats. It would put their blather about moral hazards and woke capitalism in perspective.

Then there is Donald Trump. He never met a moral hazard he wouldn’t exploit. If he didn’t find one, he’d invent it. He said something like this yesterday:  “The economy is so bad we’re having a Great Depression.” In other words, grab your wallets and look for a ledge.

Excuse me, but a leader who won’t show up for the inauguration of the next leader doesn’t get a bully pulpit anymore. And he doesn’t deserve a top-hat.