Dear Marjorie,
I’m back to my morning routine–up at 6, read the papers while wife and children sleep, then assume my place at the Actual Breakfast Table (which this morning meant scurrying around the kitchen to feed our children a nutritious breakfast of lemonade and Lucky Charms–I really must get to the supermarket today).
Is the economy headed for trouble? Today’s Wall Street Journal says no, but today’s Washington Post says Maybe. In the past, my policy has been to believe the Journal and pretty much ignore everyone else when it comes to the “whither the economy” question; after all, the Journal every day devotes a significant chunk of a whole page (page 2) to the interpretation of abstruse economic data, and has gotten pretty good at it. But James Cramer, the alarmingly prolific Wall Street macher and journalist, said in the inaugural issue of Brill’s Content that the guy to watch on Fed coverage (and, presumably, similarly abstruse economic-data stories) is the Post’s John M. Berry. So lately I’ve been trying to pay attention. Today Berry has a page-one story in the Post that passes along the dismaying opinion of analysts that “job creation will slow, the unemployment rate will rise and interest rates may decline. A slower economy also could further restrain growth in corporate profits, which have already been easing off a double-digit pace.” The analysts aren’t using the r-word, though, which is a relief to a guy like me whose curiosity about the unemployment rate is not exactly academic. (Magazines and, especially, newspapers, are extremely sensitive to recessions, because when bad times hit retailers slash advertising budgets right away.)
Berry’s piece also addresses something I’ve been worrying about ever since reading an excellent article in the Washington Monthly a year or so ago by Joseph Nocera about how American society has become too reliant on the stock market to do the economy’s heavy lifting. If corporate profits tank, stock prices will probably tank, and if stock prices tank spending will really tank because much of the brisk household spending of recent months has been fueled by rising stock prices.
But on to sunnier topics.
Am I callous for not caring about the Secret Service’s worry that Ken Starr is endangering the safety of Presidents by making their Secret Service agents testify about them? It seems to me there’s a social contract that goes along with Secret Service protection: We, the people of the United States, will go to extraordinary lengths to protect you, the president, from would-be assassins. You, the President of the United States, will in turn refrain from doing anything in the Secret Service’s presence that might lead to your indictment or impeachment. If you must engage in such shenanigans, understand that the Secret Service agent will drop a dime on you. If that’s unacceptable to you, then confine your misbehavior to moments when the Secret Service isn’t within listening or viewing distance–but also know at such moments that your physical protection will be compromised.
Administering Tough Love to the Oval Office,
Tim
PS Forgot to mention the most important thing in today’s paper: the show times for Out of Sight, which you promised you’d sneak off with me to see this afternoon. (I don’t intend to be a bum for long, but while I am a bum I want to get the most out of it.) It’s at 1:20 at the Wisconsin Ave. Cineplex Odious. That leaves us plenty of time to get get back and file more Breakfast Table dispatches about the size and appeal of Jennifer Lopez’s butt. (I didn’t start this; Salon ran a piece a few days ago arguing that Lopez is giving mainstream whitebread America a new and welcome appreciation for the virtues of Big Ethnic Butts.
