Chiffon Pies Are Slow Pies

It's been a busy August for you pie maker, and a lot of interesting, non-pie related business needed attending. That's not to say he had forgotten about this effort, but it seemed that by the time he could get around to writing about something, someone had already written it, and odds were good it was available to the right of this text.

However, tonight your pie maker is attempting his first chiffon pie, and an important component of this process is allowing things too cool and set between steps. Given that your pie maker tries to practice at least some of what he professes, the kitchen is kept at roughly 10F (5C) hotter than the "standard" kitchen in Ken's book, and so cooling takes a bit longer.

Fortunately, this creates some blogging time. Before the watermelon juice starts to thicken around it's gelatin (should be tasty when it's done), there's some time to describe your pie maker's take on recent events.

First of all, the nearly unescapable news of the last month has been the precipitous drop in global equity prices. Apparently fearful of another recession in the US and Europe, investors have been selling stock shares and either parking the money as cash or buying US debt, or buying gold and other commidities on the assumption that Forex or futures contract offer safety "if things get bad." The political response has been lukewarm at best for the simple reason that the central question facing the leaders of those economies have to choose who gets screwed in the Great Unwinding (I'm sure someone's used that already), and every constituency with a tax break or subsidy is doing their best to preserve it. We've seen this before, I really think so.

By allowing the government to become the backstop for financial losses, it is inevitable that the firms that should have failed will instead tax the public coffers until the public can no longer keep its promises. Whether or not the failure to provide this backstop would have resulted in a larger loss of tax income because the prosperity of debt-fueled growth, public or private, is by nature temporary is a question for a different time. Your pie maker never expects to be able to afford a comfortable retirement, and is largely resigned to the fact that he belongs to one of the more easily targeted demographics in the coming realignment. Fortunately, he can also make chiffon pies now, so it should be easier to enjoy a slower pace of life.

It's a poetic weekend

Triple A rating
Three days before a default
Makes sense to someone

In fairness, it's medium term (10-20yrs) debts that pose an economic problem for the US, so in normal times a AAA bond rating would be appropriate. Over the long run, AA+ is probably the most appropriate given the state of economic growth and "Alternative Fiscal Scenarios," but downgrading T-bills is almost as explosive as finding white, black, red and pale horses to ride through global financial capitals.

More Haiku

Does the TEA Party
Belong to the GOP
Or the TFG?

To give credit where it is due, the TEA Party movement didn't get bought off with cheap social wedge issues the way your pie maker expected. Bully for them. Your pie maker grew up expecting something to see entitlements gutted before he was likely to retire, and now they are! Hopefully the rest of the government continues to function.

In other news, someone looking for a government he could drown in a bathtub should probably catch a flight to Mogadishu to see what it actually looks like.

Time for fiance haiku again

This effort began right about the time of the TARP vote and quickly descended from mildly insightful commentary to cheesy narrative (with romantic subplots!) explanations of things to questionable Haiku about finance.

As of July 28th, 2011, every worthwhile thing about the state of markets and the US debt ceiling that could be written has been written, often at great length. Even Simon Johnson is getting a bit repetitive because, frankly, we ran out of new things to discuss sometime in June.

So, this time around the crisis block, your pie maker will skip the analysis and stories of how we got here and go straight to the poetry.

On Congress Today
Markets wait with baited breath
Or was that a yawn?