I have been watching a work crew start building a commercial building. My first thought is hoping they have their financing approved. Since approved financing is time limited, I suppose they needed to start the project before the approval expires lest they lose the claim on all those million of dollars. Planning for the future always contains the hope the future will mostly continue to resemble the present.
The gentleman operating the top of the line Volvo excavator is an artist. There is an old New Yorker cartoon with the punch line: Americans love to move dirt. So true. Trench, trench, backfill, infill, grade. The rebar and concrete guys are all supporting characters to the master excavator. With every three cubic yards of topsoil he transfers into the back of a truck or smoothes along the nascent foundation, I think these are the people that will get us through the coming economic disaster.
Paulson, Bernake, Cash n’ Carry, Thomas Donilon, Wendy Sherman, Franklin Raines, Jim Johnson, Tim Howard and all the rest of the best and brightest could all use some quality time on the labor farm. Chairman Mao inflicted a great deal of evil upon the life of this world but his insistence that intellectuals actually experience impoverished slave labor is one thought I know I should reject, but which still appeals to my sense of justice.
