Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Of Wicker Loans and Burning Cash

Even our modern financial druids are making sacrifices these days. Don't let anyone tell you different.

Wicker Man

The Wicker Man was a large wicker statue of a human used by the ancient Druids (priests of Celtic paganism) for human sacrifice by burning it in effigy...

Caesar writes that though the Druids generally used thieves and criminals, as they pleased the gods more, they sometimes used innocent men when no delinquents could be found.


S&P cuts ratings of major U.S. mortgage insurers

"The key drivers of the increase in loss-cost assumptions are the increase in our assumption for peak unemployment and the sharp rise in delinquent loans," S&P said.

Wicker loans! Sacrifice the delinquents!

Burning Man

Burning Man is an annual event held in the Black Rock Desert, in Northern Nevada. It takes its name from the ritual burning of a large wooden effigy on Saturday evening.

Alcoa Continues to Burn Cash in 1Q

Unless the aluminum market turns dramatically or the firm closes more cash-burning facilities, the possibility of further liquidity challenges persists.

Burning cash! The gods must be appeased!

Why aren't we just attaching the "cash-burning facilities" directly to the cash-printing facilities? That would cut out all the middlemen (workers). Just think of the productivity miracle.


Struggling US towns print their own currency

The idea, borrowed from the Depression era when the currencies were known as "scrip", is designed to boost local spending and keep money circulating within the community.

You know it is bad when we are borrowing from the Depression era.

4 comments:

Rob Dawg said...

Wicca Man. "The Wicker Man" was a movie. And that means Wiccans so leave we Druids out of it. ;-)

Stagflationary Mark said...

Rob Dawg,

Wicca man! Of course! It all makes sense now!

Wicca
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicca

Common tools in the Wiccan practice include a special set of magical tools.

Bernanke: Fed to use 'all its tools'
http://money.cnn.com/2009/04/03/news/economy/bernanke_speech.reut/index.htm?section=money_latest

Rob Dawg said...

Don't mess with us Druids. ;-)

We're still pissed that you sacrificed one of our trees just to deify one of these recent prophets some 2000 years ago.

BTW I highly recommend the original movie. M Night Shaliman meets Monty Python.

Stagflationary Mark said...

Rob Dawg,

Conspiracy Theory

Sacrificing a tree just to deify a man doesn't make much sense. I will grant you that. However...

What if the world was actually running low on tree oil 2000 years ago?

What if we had it on good authority that the tree was harboring weapons of mass destruction?

What if intelligence agencies reported that the tree might even be operating terrorist "splinter" cells?

Hey, just a theory!