Econ Saturday

De-Compressing (or Decomposing?)

Chesterton once said that a rich person has to be smart enough to earn all that money and dumb enough to want it. Wise men through the ages–from Socrates to Russell Kirk–eschewed the money-grubbing life as antithetical to the life of the mind. I’m guessing Sertillanges cites freedom from crushing business concerns as a pre-condition to the intellectual life (though I couldn’t confirm it).

And I know why: when you’re pressed at the office and constantly thinking about career things, you go dull.

That’s how I felt Friday evening when I sat down to write this post. I started scrolling through my normal cyber-stops in search of economic news. I got nothing. Nothing interested me. Nothing made me laugh. Everything hit my head with a thud. I found the cool picture that I inserted at the top of this post (here), but that’s it.

And it followed two grueling weeks at the office: 12-hour days (starting at 6:00 in the morning), followed by little league games with my sons. The result: obsession with business issues, with no time in the evening to unwind with a good book of higher wisdom. And even if I’d had the time, it wouldn’t have mattered. I was too spent at the end of the work day to do anything productive. I was better off at the baseball diamond, spending time with my boys.

Today, I worked only half a day, but it didn’t make a difference. Eight hours after I’d started to de-compress, I was still dull. The immediate future holds promise of good books and beer, so I’m really hoping it sharpens my mind. But right now, I feel like I’m just coming off a nasty hangover . . . and I haven’t drank a beer in two weeks.

Heck, maybe that’s the problem. I’ll soon find out.

Slow posting days blowing ahead (even slower than what we suffered through these past couple of days). Beer with me.

Happy summer.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, June 20th, 2009 at 1:56 am . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “Econ Saturday”

1. unchie kun Says:
   June 21st, 2009 at 6:50 pm

   More evidence of the completion of the encirclement. The worm has now turned and the Neo-Feudal Casino Gulag Plantation Economy has just made a giant leap forward!

   Next will be a full frontal attack on Gold, Oil, Silver and other commodities. It is the only place that the informed slaves thought they could hide. Watch as the horrifying future unfolds as these last places of safety face a massacre of mind numbing declines at a speed of decline that will horrify those who thought they were covering all bases.

   It will be truly an event that will shock to the core all that have not hedged. Look for this decline to occur at the same time that failed treasury auction takes place as the FR offloads deep storage and custodial paper in rapid succession.

2. cnb Says:
   June 22nd, 2009 at 10:12 am

   I have no idea what “unchie kun” is saying, but I hope your punishing schedule relents sometime soon.

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