The Peregrin Falcon

Thank goodness my holiday is over and I don’t have to travel any more.

While spending some quality time with my family this year, my brother told me about a shirt his wife has.

“Nobody cares about your blog!” is the writing across the shirt.

At first, I laughed. After all, I am the nerdiest member of the family and this blog is partial proof.

However, this morning I had a curious thought. I know that no one or very few people read this blog, but exactly what is the blogosphere’s contents, and how small a speck am I?

As usual, I did a Google search to see what the all knowing internet would say.

According to Technorati in 2007 there were approximately 112 Million blogs they were tracking (We’ll assume they are all North American for the purposes of this post; even though we know they are not). Which equates to about 1/3 of the population of North America. Out of the 337 Million possible North American users, InternetWorldStats.com reports nearly 73% or 248 Million are active internet users.

That means that roughly 50% of all North American users have a blog. That also assumes each internet blogger only has one blog; which bloggers know isn’t even close to the facts.

So, exactly how many people don’t care about your blog? Assuming you have less than 1,000 lifetime visits so far; that would be approximately 247,999,0000 people who use the internet in North America.

Wow, that’s more that I would have expected. So I guess we could say for most of us,
“247 Million people don’t care about your blog!”

Good thing, I don’t think I could moderate that much hate mail.

Like the space-monkey zombies of Fincher’s “Fight Club” chanting “his name is Robert Paulson”; over the slain symbol of innocence, Congress and The President continue to put trust in the former Goldman Sachs Chief Operating Officer.

The collapse of the mortgage markets in recent months has become synonymous with corporate greed; and possibly criminal misleading of the public, namely by Barney Frank. The collapse of Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac can be laid squarely at the feet of Democrats who not only ran the companies into the ground, but they also blocked any regulation that might help matters in committee. This strategy was ingenious in the fact that it allowed the Dems to get the money, cause the problem, and sluff the blame on to Republicans. It also helped that there were Republicans greedy and stupid enough to benefit from the problem before considering the consequences.

However, the fix for the collapse is definitely the baby of Henry Paulson. As the United States Secretary of the Treasury, Paulson is solely responsible for the success or failure to prop up a economy that is weakened, or is it?

In a capitalist system, the market is supposed to be responsible for itself. When investment bankers, and mortgage brokers, and financial institutions make bad deals; they are supposed to feel the responsibility of their choices by either loosing money or going out of business altogether.

Well apparently, Henry Paulson did not get the message and proposed the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008. The “bailout” as it became known was supposed to fix the economy and restore goodness and decency to the land. Several billion dollars later, another industry has come to knock of the door of Secretary Paulson.

Now the auto industry wants their safety net too. After all, they weren’t the cause the failing credit markets; it was those evil mortgage and credit folks. So, with hats in hand and private jets in tow, the slow, sluggish, inefficient American car manufacturers cry for help.

Of course, they need to scale back the Autoworkers Union salaries; which to be fair is done by arbitration and would take agreement of the part of Union workers to sacrifice to save their own company. However, there are enough non-Union jobs at the big three to be cut back, and private jets to be sold, and golden parachutes to be cut away, and products to be made cheaper. In the end, the auto companies need to experience a lot more loss and be forced to sink or swim.

The alternative is that first we save the auto-makers, then we save the airlines (again), then we save the steel industry, and on and on and on until there is so many people saved that the tax burden is beyond any ability to pay and the nation careens in full-scale depression.

Don’t worry folks “His name is Henry Paulson….”