A Ship’s Smoke on the Horizon

[Daveparts]

A Ship’s Smoke on the Horizon
By David Glenn Cox


The lost and stranded are always grasping for survival, it is human nature. Ernest Shackleton, lost in the Antarctic in 1914, gave his men a speech promising them only survival. And to emphasize the point he tore a single page from the Bible, a page that promised salvation, and threw down the rest of the book into the snow. Banished were any other ideas, only certain salvation was to be contemplated. It was a masterstroke of leadership, acknowledging the almighty but making the point that their survival was in their hands alone.


Many times it is that survival depends on the single-minded decision to survive, to refuse to give up, whatever the odds. Otherwise, the group becomes leaderless and rudderless, drifting on a sea of doom and crossing over the river Styx. Entering into the horrors of the Donner Party.


The other course is madness, the lost and the stranded and those unable to handle the stress of the situation exit through the doorways of their minds marked, "Do Not Enter." The relics of the lost Franklin expedition were found in the Canadian North. Fearing disease, they left a warm ship in the Canadian winter and began a thousand-mile hike through the virgin forests, hauling a 1000-pound lifeboat behind them just in case they needed to cross water. And,inside the boat were the essentials that they thought they might need, including a full-sized writing desk, just in case they needed to write a letter.


Research has shown that the Franklin expedition was probably driven to madness by the lead solder in their canned food. But madness is madness, isn’t it?


The economic facts and figures are released in dribs and drabs and each day the stock market revels in its salvation or runs, madly raving, to its impending doom. They are lost and so are all of us. For, in their madness, they have lost comprehension. Wal-Mart stores show a slight increase in same-store sales year to year and it is greeted as salvation, we are all saved, rejoice, rejoice! The week before, Microsoft announces its plans to buy Yahoo and the market celebrates New Years in February. All is well, we are saved! We are saved!


But, forgotten this week is that Yahoo rejected their offer. No matter, let the party continue unabated. Home foreclosures up by 90% over last January, the economy is slipping into a morass of stagflation and I really hate that word because it is no different than the rapist calling the victim his date. Producer price index shows inflation at 7.4 % annually, the price of a barrel of oil reaches its long predicted plateau of $100.00 a barrel. How does the market respond? By going up three hundred points.


Its madness, not unlike the last days in the Fuehrer bunker, surrounded by Russian guns pounding in the background. Their fate sealed as their doom approached, they threw parties, they smoked and drank, all the things that the Fuehrer disapproved of. They played American Jazz records and danced into the night ignoring the thud of artillery and banishing thoughts of the deaths of thousands just blocks away. No doubt it was madness, they were doomed but were celebrating the end, the dropping of the other shoe.


In junior lifesaving they taught us the importance of never letting a drowning person take you down with them. They are panicked and frantic with fear. They will grab for you and push you under, taking you with them, drowning you both. I think about this only because it is my firm belief that the European Central banks took junior lifesaving as well. They have poured in millions trying to prop up the dollar, for their own self-interest and ours. They can’t sell $40,000 Volkswagen’s as economy cars and if the car wasn’t 40% Mexican content, it would be $50,000. The dollar's value starts to erode as they begin to let go for their own salvation, hitting an all time low today of $1.51 to a Euro a 17% decline ytd.


But, to their horror the US bond market, in shambles, begins to celebrate with a Conga line. "Oh, chill out, we’ll fix it later," Billionaire Warren Buffet offers to step in with a rescue plan, he will start his own bond insurance company and buy up all the good bonds that he can. Hallelujah, Hallelujah! Leaving behind billions in bad bonds, his offer is a snowmobile ride. He is offering to abandon those pulling the boat through the woods to enrich himself and to let the others freeze in the snow.


Jack Welsh, former chairman of GE, announced that, "During the last few weeks the Democratic candidates have begun to use NAFTA as a political football. Everyone knows, even the congressional budget office agrees, that NAFTA has created more jobs than were lost." Apparently Jack thinks that Hollywood is going to do a remake of the film "Clueless" and so he auditions for the lead. Mr. Jack? I’ll trade you this whole great big pile of shiny dimes for that dirty old crumpled stack of hundred dollar bills, deal?


GE’s jet engine division is doing well, China is buying airliners and there is a five year wait to purchase corporate jets, so how can you imply the economy is suffering? How many jets will China buy after they have all they need? How many GE MRI machines will China buy after they have all they need? There’s a party going on in the Fuehrer bunker but its end is inevitable. Even General George "little toot toot" Bush has stepped into the fray. When asked about the affect of the Iraq war on the American economy he says, "I think it has helped the economy."

Sure it has. $496,885,238,875 has stimulated the economy and that figure doesn’t even include headstones, caskets or funerals. George is telling you he’s burned all the antique furniture in the fireplace but managed to save the firewood. It’s just more madness. The Federal Reserve has cut interest rates in an attempt to rescue banks drowning in a sea of bad loans. How do the banks respond? By raising mortgage interest rates and credit card interest rates. Bankers apparently never took junior lifesaving class. Tossed a lifejacket, they use it to try and strangle their rescuer. More madness


Shackleton gathered his officers around him; they analyzed their supplies and pondered the nearest point of rescue. They would travel north on an ice flow, preparing two open boats for immediate launch when spring came. Then they traveled across open ocean to Elephant Island. There, with the strongest men in the better of the two boats, they would strike out for South Georgia Island.


After two weeks in a leaking boat, they had traveled 800 miles over open ocean to reach an island five miles wide. But the current would carry them past the island, they could not reach the whaling camp on the other side. Shackleton ordered the boat beached on the rocky shore and announced that they would climb over the mountains to reach the whaling camp.


Several weeks later the men on Elephant Island were all rescued. Some lost fingers and toes to frostbite but Shackleton had kept his promise to them, they had all survived. Unbeknownst to him, a crewmember had picked up the Bible, thinking it bad luck to leave it behind. But they had a plan, the leadership decided unequivocally that all would be rescued or none would be rescued. There was no advantage to be gained, no profiteering. The suffering was shared equally and all worked toward the common goal because of it.

But today, instead of intestinal fortitude we get intestinal spewing; instead of courage we get carnage; instead of leadership, salesmanship.

They start each day on the beach, scanning the horizon, certain that a ship's smoke will signal thier rescue. Instead of building a boat, they wait for one.

[NMDemDist2]

1. excellent. K&N n/t

[Elidor]

2. Very nice

Worth a kick.