HAPPY HOLIDAYS, ANYONE?

Merry Chrismuskkah[i]! Fantastic Festivus! Super Saturnalia! Yippie for Yule! Have a Blow-Out Boxing Day!

The last two posts have been somewhat dour. Maybe very dour. One post indicted American Exceptionalism, the force that put the 1980 Olympic Hockey team on every Wheaties box. The upcoming posts will be less caustic, but no less troubling. The US trade and budget deficits loom as THE economic issue for the rest of this decade. And perhaps beyond.

Yesterday’s post on a new accounting rule, GASB No. 45, reminded cities and municipal bondholders that the Godzilla of unfunded retiree health benefits will soon stride ashore onto their municipal beaches. Healthcare costs are stealth saboteurs of the American economy.

Not much of the Christmas spirit, eh? Shift Gears. Hold on.

HO, HO, HO, WE STILL GOT LOTS OF TOYS TO SELL

So let’s have some fun today. One of the requirements of writing for the Web’s preeminent economics, finance and investment blog is an encyclopedic knowledge of cartoon history. The other requirement is having a sense of irony that could overwrite a season of Sienfeld episodes. Or make Ambrose Bierce wince.

IT IS BART’S UBER-NEMESIS, FORMER KRUSTY THE KLOWN SIDEMAN, “SIDESHOW BOB”, ON A DUCATI. (More commas per line of text, guaranteed.)

The pictures that bookend this blog post are from last Sunday’s episode of The Simpsons. The Author has been a Simpson’s fan since the show debuted in 1990[ii]. He believes that he owned the first Simpson’s T-shirt in LaPorte, Indiana, but those statistics are no longer maintained.

The Simpsons were in Italy in this episode. The episode featured Sideshow Bob. The pictures show Sideshow Bob and a Smurf Blue Ducati Superbike. Like the Author’s bike, only in blue, a color Ducati does not make. And in a cartoon. And being ridden by a fictional character. But kind of like the Author’s Ducati Superbike. In a versimilitudinous way. (Cool word, eh?)

Sideshow Bob was the original sideman on the Krusty the Klown show. (Krusty the Klown has a television show on the Simpsons show.) By way of analogy, Sideshow Bob would be Cookie the Clown to Bozo on the Bozo show. But Sideshow Bob is a loathsome, venal and envious sort. Kind of like Trent Lott, without the ridiculous hair.

In an early episode of the long-running Simpsons show, Sideshow Bob dressed up in a Krusty the Klown costume and robbed a convenience show in an attempt to frame Krusty. The robbery was caught on the store’s security camera. After Krusty was sent up for the robbery, Bob intended to take over Krusty’s show.

The ever-intrepid and loyal Bart noted that the robber in the store video COULD NOT have been Krusty. Krusty has small feet and the faux Krusty robbing the store had size 22 landing gear for feet. So Bart exposed the fraud, Krusty was spared, and Sideshow Bob was jailed. It was from this incident that Sideshow Bob has sworn vengeance on Bart.

IN OTHER DUCATI NEWS…

It is no secret, or should be no secret, that Europe, and nearly all of the rest of the world, lead the US in anti-pollution efforts. This is especially true for carbon dioxide pollution, greenhouse gases. The Bush administration abandoned the agreed-upon Kyoto protocols and in fact ordered its “negotiators” to walk out on a session of the current climate change talks in Montreal.

Ducati, the Italian manufacturer of high-performance motorcycles, recently won a European Union award for reducing energy consumption at its Bologna plant. It won the Italian trophy for reducing electricity consumption by 15.6 %, saving 32 tons of carbon dioxide from being released into the atmosphere. One of the conditions of the competition was the savings be incurred by no-cost (human behavior) means.

The Author did a web search for any similar types of energy saving competition in the US and found none. They could be out there, however. 15.6% savings just from human behavioral changes (turning off lights and turning down the heat) is substantial. And the Author, as an investment and finance writer, must point out that these savings reduce the overhead expenses for Ducati. So it is good financial and economic news for the Italian motorcycle maker.

Tomorrow, back to finance, investments and economics. BTW, the mild New Mexico winter allowed the Author to ride his Ducati last Saturday and may permit some riding this weekend.

THERE IS ONLY WHAT WE KNOW AND WHAT WE DO NOT YET KNOW IN THE DESERT OF THE REAL!



[i] Chrismukkah combines Christmas and Chanukah, just as many mixed Jewish-Gentile families combine their lives. And many Jews celebrate Christmas in a secular way just as most American Christians celebrate Christmas in both a secular civic way-Rudolph, buying presents, decorating, parties and potlucks, and in a spiritual way-attending church or mass, giving prayers, and other spiritually related activities. In fact, the Author should probably just put all four feet and snout into this “War on Christmas” fundraising trough the rightwing christian Theocrats have manufactured to clog the right-wing airways and raise money to promote their political agenda. Why not? His blog could use the hits.
[ii] The show appeared earlier as a segment on “The Tracy Ulman Show”. But the series aired in January of 1990.