The yokels are restless

Are the hinterlanders growing restless? Are the dirt-under-their-nails types beginning to feel something is amiss? Are Cracker Barrel aficionados morphing into justice junkies? Is the American yokeltariot developing an overweening sense of "fairness"?

Don't they know anything? Like, for instance, that if AIG weren't paying off the the greedy suckers wealth creating investors who put their money with Bernie Madoff, the global credit markets would be at risk! In the name of all that's holy, let Kathy Fuld shop in peace without all this unseemly squawking about ill gotten gains and giving back bonuses. She IS the consumer economy at this point.

But try telling that to some morally inflamed newspaper editor in Dubuque. It's sad and hopeless: like trying to explain quantum physics to an abalone.

After sampling an extensive selection, our favorite outraged dispatch from Outer Fly-Over Country hails is this headline from the Central Maine Morning Sentinel: "Tell us where our money went or give it back" -- isn't that a riot? [Oops -- note to self: let's avoid that word -Ed.]

Let's motor -- to Motor City!

Only eighteen grand for a house! An average house! That's really good. It means we can find some dumpier-than-average place for ten Gs or so.

Even I can afford that -- assuming there's no down payment and that they don't go sniffing around looking to verify my income or anything.

Plus, crime is really low because there's "nothing left to steal," so mom'll be comfortable with it. (Looking at mom's latest brokerage statement, I should say: mom'll be comfortable there.)

Is that my turnip soup burning or do I smell a Detroit renaissance?

Oh, that's rich!

Hello. Welcome to the new America. And welcome to this blog. TNWQ offers a place where we can embrace and celebrate our new welfare class--a.k.a. the titans of finance. You hippies will probably want to point out that rich people have been getting welfare for a long time. And that's probably true, but shut up because we don't care.

After all, this is a new golden age of the phenomenon. Now there is no laundering. We schlubby tax payers are directly funding dividends and year end bonuses to Managing Directors at Goldman Sachs. And -- unlike, say, the Swiss--nobody cares!

So we hope to record some highlights here. Think of this blog as being like those commemorative Super Bowl videos that all of us buy (it's not just me, right?). It's a place where you can see gauzy shots of several years' worth of your income disappearing into the pocket of some fratty young bond trader with a nasty sniffle. Anyway, it'll be fun!