I WISH I HAD WRITTEN THIS...

Pres. Fredo has been spouting all sorts of optimistic talk about the economy and my reaction to that was it's probably better for "confidence" if he didn't say a damn thing. Now, I know it's his job to say something but he has botched so many things that few take him seriously. Thanx to Calculated Risk, I learned that Gail Collins of the NYT had pretty much the same reaction.

George W. Bush showed up on TV Friday morning to reassure the nation. What could possibly be worse?

Everybody knows that anything our president says is very likely wrong, and certainly won’t happen. If he announced: “I’m sending government agents to Spokane to arrest the looters,” we would expect that the officials would get lost, nobody would be arrested, and the looters probably never existed in the first place.

So hearts sunk throughout the nation when Bush appeared at a Chamber of Commerce gathering to say that the economy would recover.

“America is the most attractive destination for investors around the globe. America is the home of the most talented and enterprising and creative workers in the world,” said the president, who also insisted that “democratic capitalism remains the greatest system ever devised.”

Which translates into: all the money is going to Asia, nobody will ever get a job again and Karl Marx was right after all.