Good Morning, everyone, although it may not be morning still when this gets posted. We have some housekeeping chores on tap today. Yesterday was our usual shopping day and today is our laundry day. Though shopping is a weekly errand laundry is, perhaps, every two weeks. It takes that long for us to accumulate enough for full loads. It may get a little more frequent with the winter because our sweats are much more bulky than our jeans and tee shirts of summer. But today we also plan to sweep the carpets (oh, how we hate carpets. Much rather have smooth surfaces to dust mop) and dusting the book shelves. Anyone who follows this blog knows that we do housekeeping when the spirit moves us and we are thankful that it doesn't move us very often.

Boy, I am so glad that Wall Street bankers are on schedule to receive even larger bonuses than before the catastrophe of last fall when the Government had to step in and save their collective asses. And I am overjoyed that the Dow went up by almost 200 points yesterday. Yeah, that is just dripping with sarcasm because that isn't my reality. This reflects my reality and has for longer than I care to think. When I graduated from high school my classmates and I could expect to land jobs that either paid a living wage immediately or would in very short order. Now even a bachelor's or master's degree may not get you anything like that. I remember a friend from one of the institutions of higher learning I spent so much of the middle twenty years of my life attending looking at the job market some fifteen years ago. She described the offerings as a road to 'genteel poverty.' I find the memory ironic whenever anyone talks about education as the way out of our present predicament.

James Kunstler always provides a good read and this Clusterfuck Nation column is no exception. Periodically in this blog I talk about the diseconomies of scale which few economists want to write about. Banks, brokerage firms, and insurance companies are not the only institutions that fall into this category. Governments do also. For the last three years the discussions that dominated the news at this time of year has been 1) the State of Illinois pending deficit and 2) the budgetary shortfall for the City of Chicago. This year is no different and, though the deficits are larger than ever, the story is still the same. The off year election ads are hitting the airwaves and range from the mis-informative to the non-informative, from merely annoying to downright stupid. Just think--day after election day next November we should be seeing the first hats thrown into the 2012 Presidential races. I can hardly wait (heavy dose of sarcasm here).

Well, it hasn't been too bad so far. I got 3 bookcases and two dressers dusted. That is the bedroom. I haven't even touched the computer/sewing/craft room which has 5 more book cases. But I think I have done enough today. Tomorrow I will do the downstairs with its 4 bookcases, 2 media towers, tv and stand. I already have a fairly full plastic grocery bag of books to donate to the local library.

See you tomorrow.