Hape cracked open his portfolio to reveal a sleek laptop, which he opened to Danny’s dismay and started the presentation. This was his ace in the hole. He’d helped put this thing together, and it not only briskly revealed the technological superiority of the FlexTelligence E line, but broke the news that Head had bought no less than three super-high-profile endorsers away from rivals : Gil Fisher, Ainsley Chong, and the apparently unbeatable Ricky Phil Stiller. Stiller was widely expected to sweep the Grand Slam this year on the strength of his terrifying serve and shrewdly evil baseline play. It was commonly speculated that his endorsement of the “Claymore” model racket had been the only thing keeping the Prince corporation alive.
The presentation video was fast-paced, well-produced, and hard-hitting, saving the Stiller endorsement for last and introducing a flashy new model co-designed with Stiller – the “Big Brain”. That epithet was one commonly applied to Stiller early in his career, when his primary method of winning matches was making fools out of aggressive opponents by exploiting their positions with his surgical shots from the baseline. Since, he had developed a high-velocity first service to match his better opponents, but the name stuck. Hape could never shake a vague unease with this title and Head’s adoption thereof, however – he felt that it was mildly anti-Jewish. There were plenty of cerebral players out there – wasn’t this sobriquet a way to shove Stiller into that old “Jews are smart but lack brawn” box?
Danny, who generally loathed presentations, found himself quite engaged by this one, and the news of new endorsements softened his heart a bit toward Head. Hape, who was watching Dracula’s face like a poker player throughout the presentation, began to notice the details of Danny’s appearance. His close-cropped blond hair amplified his ruddy complexion to an almost alarming degree, and his left ear had no lobe to speak of. The faint shininess of skin around his neck suggested corrected scarring and made Hape suspect that Danny had been in a bad auto or industrial accident. His white Ping golf shirt was pressed, but had a small red stain on the left shoulder blade that Hape surmised Danny had missed, given the meticulous condition of Danny’s Nikes and the impeccably creased pleated khakis he sported. Hape imagined how the stain might have gotten there unnoticed : did the offspring of Dracula sneak up with a Crayola marker? Unintentional dribble of Kool-Aid from a hoisted toddler’s lip? Shirt taken from irregular stock? Hape realized with a twinge of regret that he would never know the answer. (37,973)
Markets are panicking, Greeks are rioting, Hungarians are having conniptions, and the rest of the over-leveraged world is finally asking the question: when is it going to be my turn?
Meanwhile, the economics enthusiasts here at Latewire/InflationHell, as well as some of the actual experts have been notably silent. You may be wondering why that is (or you may be wondering how water-activated growable sponge animals work, but we're not going there so shut up). I think even some of the more famous soothsayers (who we plagiarize unabashedly) have been a little quiet lately on the bad reports (only today did Peter Schiff release something about it).
The reason why is that... well... what's there to say? The writers here as well as other believers in Austrian Economics have put enormous effort into writing essays, books, lectures, and even publishing educational videos on history and governmental fiscal figures. We explained why 2+2 does not equal 5, no matter how much the Fed says it does. We told you things were unsustainable, we told you the how and the why. You'll notice that some other economists/financial "experts" who were predicting a continued rally or recovery are either scared speechless or rationalizing/modifying their statements.
It dawned on me today, after a long night of heavy drinking, that there is one thing we should probably be reporting at this point.:
We told you so.
But don't worry, this is only the beginning. This is just the tip of the debt-crises iceberg.
Yes, we realize that these numbers are wacky partially out of fear and panic, and they'll wax and wane for a while as the changes set in. We also realize that it is extremely early in the decline, and that these "bumps in the road" are unpredictable in the temporal sense. Rest assured though, soon enough the people of these countries will finally realize how leveraged they are, that their standard of living has been a lie, and that now they and their children are going to pay for their mistakes with compounding interest for a very, very long time. At that point, you wont have to come to our website to view images like these, you can just look out your front window.
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Markets are panicking, Greeks are rioting, Hungarians are having conniptions, and the rest of the over-leveraged world is finally asking the question: when is it going to be my turn?
