The Financial Fine Print

Today's blog is titled after Michelle Leder's book by the same name. I love this book. It essentially acquiesces to the fact that the financial statements of corporations are fiction, and then documents exactly where one goes to find out as much of the truth regarding a company's true worth as is humanly possible.

One doesn't want to be ripped off.

Which brings me to the subject of Bush's speech. As I listened, I thought to myself that as a nation, we hadn't done our job. We hadn't read the fine print. For example, did we really believe that invading Iraq would be a one time charge on our country's books? Bush had done a fine job of hiding this, most notably by firing Lawrence Lindsay who had the audacity to declare a pricetag of one hundred billion dollars for any incursion. But in his speech, Bush announced he was going to congress to ask for eighty seven billion. And then he turned to the Europeans.

Do we honestly believe that Europe will come to our financial rescue, given our record of "freedom fries" and other such vituperative nonsense at what turns out to have been Europe's perspicacity? THEY didn't get fooled. THEY saw the fine print.

No. We believe Bush. We trust him no matter what happens to be buried in the pages and pages of footnotes. Take the road map to peace. For whatever reason, Bush decided that after having just won a war in order to secure democracy, now he was going to win peace in the Middle East. In the footnotes are things like the Capitol police being called by the Republican membership of the Ways and Means committee to restrain the Democrats. Then there's Homeland Security called in to bring back errant Texas Democrats. Then there's the war in Afghanistan. Finally, there's the complete anarchy we've brung to Iraq itself. Nothing in the footnotes about peace at all. It's not even a product endorsed by the Bush administration let alone manufactured by the Bush administration. But by gum, if Bush says there's going to be peace, we believe him.

The unfortunate thing is that I have no choice but to invest in the government of the United States. It's not like I can sell my stock. Nor can my children sell their stock. Which, of course, is the saddest part about not doing our homework. By the time Bush becomes the Ken Lay of World Politics, there's not much we can do besides hit our heads and say "doh!"

What we forget, and this is in really tiny itty bitty letters in the footnotes, is that it's our children who take care of us when we're old. If we screw them over by naively taking Bush at face value, we might as well off ourselves now. The future will not be pretty.

9-7-03