'A married couple are at their weekly marriage therapist sessions and the man goes off on a rant about his wife's weight; how much she's 'ballooned' and 'mushroomed' and 'swelled'...
This is then followed by a lecture on all the things she needs to do to get thinner and ends with expression of concern since the wife seemed to have a little trouble walking the stairs to the office...
The wife then responds-- 'Of course I was out of breath.. His thick legs have atrophied so badly due to lack of exercise, I've become his personal cane!', then took a tissue and wiped the cake and icing off her husband's fatty face.
The joke wasn't 'ha ha' but it wasn't meant to be.. More observational humor about people being hypocritical. A super-fat man using exaggerating terms to describe his wife who probably at best is a few pounds overweight..
This situation just came to mind when we saw this AP header:
Cyprus Bailout Swells to $30 Billion -- "The cost of bailing out Cyprus has swollen to euro 23 billion ($30 billion), with the crisis-hit country having to take on the lion's share of the measures needed to avoid bankruptcy.."
Sure is a lot of $$ isn't it? Goodness how its 'swollen'.. like.. Billions.. with a 'B'.. Just a mind-boggling amount.. like, Wow!!
Now our Federal Reserve is spending or rather tossing away $85 Billion every single Month and Indefinitely to bailout something genuinely worthless-- the US stock market.
Two Million dollars every Minute based on a 30 day month so the genuinely clueless and by extension, the everyday Joe investor can see today's market open -- 14,824 and feel illusionary pride and confidence in this dead economy.
It will take the Fed 10.5 days counting weekends to reach and surpass that 'swollen' $30 billion that Cyprus needs to survive.
The difference being we suppose, in the US we aren't having to come up with most of that money by raiding private depositors' accounts, levying additional taxes, privatizations and a part-sale of the central bank's gold reserves as Cyprus must do...
Well, not yet anyways..
The $$ does have to get repaid at some point by us and more likely future generations.. But we're the reserve currency and our 'rug' is large enough that there's plenty of space to 'sweep' things under.
Actually now that we think on it, we do privatize in the US though its more on the state level. Many states sell their turnpikes, lottery and other economic assets to private companies in exchange for quick money.
Apex Correctional Facilities (fictitious name) houses 14,000 inmates altogether and uses that labor to build auto parts both big and small (radiators, spark plugs, etc). Apex secures contracts to supply these parts directly to car manufacturers and your local auto-parts store at low prices that undercut the competition but still secure heavy profits...
How?
Legally, one is not required to pay prisoners minimum wage for their labors while fulfilling their sentences.
Prisoners typically earn between $0.23 (23 cents) and $1.15 per hour, with the average federal prisoner making $.92 (92 cents) per hour. If extremely skilled, a prisoner will earn up to $7/hr. Inmates, however, keep only a fraction of their wages, as approximately 80% is withheld for restitution, to offset incarceration costs.
So you have what amounts to condoned slave labor on US soil. The Dream scenario for all businesses-- dirt cheap labor while saving on transportation costs by not having to depend on overseas labor to make the products to be sold...
Not only do these salaries dramatically undercut US wages, it contributes to a massive decline in available manufacturing jobs. So if anyone says the US lost its manufacturing base, you tell that person, 'No we didn't.. its still here.. Just got shifted to the prisons'.
But don't leave this post feeling all down and depressed... Look at the bright side -- The Dow has jumped another 38 pts to 14,862 since we started writing! Whoo-Hoo!
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