According to Mr. Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general at the Treasury Department, there are dark clouds on the financial horizon. That’s right, the brilliant people from the past administration and the current one have only kicked the can down the road. They’ve given the taxpayer a few chips to play the roulette wheel of life. Only the odds are against the taxpayer and the stakes are higher than the kids’ tuition money.
Mr. Barofsky’s report warned that the government “has done more than simply support the mortgage market, in many ways it has become the mortgage market, with the taxpayer shouldering the risk that had once been borne by the private investor.”
You guessed it, Mr. and Mrs. Taxpayer. You bailed out the banks and the mortgage companies all at the siren call of “we have to do something.” Really? It would have been better to take the hit and learn the lesson. If you buy junk you’re stuck with it. Now the lesson is, buy all the junk you want, the government will give you gold for it. Absolute balderdash. Sure, there might have been a depression or some severely tough times. Still, economic laws are much like the laws of physics. You deny them at your peril.
And these fools, the government that is, want to run healthcare? And decide how much college should cost? And regulate emissions? And decide what kind of jobs are good? And on and on and on. If there’s an adult in Washington, please stand up. We can’t see or hear you. It’s time to close romper room and install people who understand reality.
The Bent Page 
Getting Spacey
I ambled through several bookstores last evening. My how things have changed. Over the past couple of years I did notice a thinning of the ranks of books on the shelves, an increase in general merchandise, and the ever present smell of coffee. However, last night the point hit home hard. There are fewer books than ever in some of the major chain stores I visited. More space is dedicated to presenting electronic readers to the typically paper-book-buying public. In one location, fully 20% of the floor space was occupied by long counters with only two or three of the devices on display. That’s a lot of real estate that used to be filled with examples of the printed word.
Electronic readers are on the march, and rightly so. They offer instant purchases on the fly, without having to spend time going to and from the bookstore. They have the ability to increase the size of the text, contain an internal dictionary, and are lighter than traditionally published works. Furthermore, the ability to tote many large volumes within a single unit is wonderful for people who are reading several different tomes at one time.
At the same time, I’m sad to see bookstores waning. I’ve always thought of a trip to the bookstore as an adventure, a mission to find treasure or discover a secret. Searching with an electronic unit is more akin to checking airline fares than spelunking through the cave of the book master. But these are romantic notions from a previous age. Todays new readers seem unaffected by such quaint ideas. Price and selection count above all and the bricks and mortar stores can’t compete with digital inventory in the sky.
Long live the book! In whatever form. Read, it’s good for you.
- Commentary
on October 12, 2010 at 10:55 am Leave a CommentTags: Books, bookstore, Commentary, digital reader, idea, Kindle, nook, random, reading, thoughts, Writing