I am trying to get my head wrapped around the figure of 50,000 people losing their jobs at Citibank. Isn't that, like, a whole shitload of people? And this is the bank that was going to buy Wachovia a couple of weeks ago. Are any of these bastards solvent?

I also have been wondering why nobody has been talking about the price gouging and oil futures speculation that had us all bent over the oil barrel just a couple of months ago. It is like everybody instantly forgets how wrongly screwed we were all getting for a time. People who blamed speculators were called kooks, but obviously something unseemly was afoot. Now gas is so damn cheap I just leave my truck running all the time. Gas is as cheap as I can remember, I paid $1.82 a gallon yesterday and have heard of $1.50 gas around, which is wild. How is possible that prices were almost three bucks a gallon more and it was just market fluctuations? I don't believe it at all.

If I was really paranoid I would see it as a last gasp to run up prices by financiers and other shitbags who knew the extent of the rottenness at the core of the system, all before the whole system finally hit the skids and toppled down.

Oh wait, I am really paranoid.