Covering Their Positions

In his article that I mentioned yesterday, George Soros did good in its opening statement, till he typed its last three words, "covered their positions."

Speaking of "covering positions" is the most Wall Streetish stock marketish kind of jargon, and you would think that in this time of monster bailouts of big banks and other high finance institutions, that world has been so discredited that G. Soros would want to use some other kind of lingo.

But it does furnish the opportunity to say that now AIG, bankers, the Detroit auto tycoons and the rest are struggling mightily to cover their something elses, which have expanded exponentially and in the last few months have hung out in such quantity and in such plain sight that these execs have had to resort to asking for and then even arrogantly demanding enormous help from the American taxpayers in the form of cold cash to allow them to make up for this failure of their trousers and their intestines, lest their excesses gush over and smother everybody.

But I have to wonder.

Despite all the outcries you read, my sense of things is that generally the spirit, in this country at least, is still business as usual, and there is no sort of hysteria at work as yet.

To switch metaphors then, I like to liken the U.S. in all its aspects, including the economy, to an oil tanker that is so oversized that it can't easily -- or maybe even at all -- change direction, slow down, or stop. In fact it can't even fully sink, because the waters under it are so shallow.

The laws of physics, and of national inertia facilitated by size, geographical variety, a common language, non-existent memory, and sports insanity, dictate that.