I for one am already starting to miss the seemingly endless onslaught of warmongering shenanigans coming out of North Korea's barely post-pubescent leader and his crack team of 60-year old generals wielding, nay, BRANDISHING MOST VIGOROUSLY technology that looks like it came straight out of the mid-1990's. Basically when Korea's biggest ally China came out and publicly suggested that Kim Jong Un cut it out with all the "I'm gonna nuke anything that moves" routine, it took a big bite out of Kim's ability to threaten us. Go figure, China appreciates us buying all their crap and we appreciate them lending all that money right back to us via massive bond purchases. Yaaaaay synergy.
But in the meantime our domestic situation has kept everyone on their toes. Between the Boston marathon bombings (and subsequent lockdown/manhunt), the Texas fertilizer plant explosion, Ricin suddenly making a comeback as a fun expression of political dissatisfaction AND Futurama being cancelled by Comedy Central, it's been one nightmare after the next.
Thankfully, a new hero seems to be rising from the darkness. And by darkness, I mean Aurora Borealis. And by hero I mean Canada. Their law enforcement has thwarted an Al Qaeda attack aimed at derailing a train. Sooooooo Canada, for one brief and shining moment, looks more badass than America. Way to go guys. We're getting shown up by Canada. Big, sarcastic pat on the back for us. In our defense, it was a train that ran between Montreal and New York. But still. They did all the work.
Friggin' maple syrup eating, overly polite, hockey playing, can't-pronounce-the-word-'about'-correctly Canadians. With your dumb hats.
The fabled fourth horseman of the apocalypse AKA the sequester has been around for over a month and I have yet to sell my kidneys online or start a meth lab out of my garage like most Floridians do for extra money. The geniuses who put the bill together made it into more of a progressive downward slide into austerity as opposed to a sledgehammer to the dome of spending cuts and tax hikes. So in its full effect this situation would be ugly, but right now it's more of a glorified slap on the wrist. Congress inevitably has the power to pull the plug on the whole operation should things get too uncomfortable for the voters that give them their jobs. So no need to worry. If Americans know how to do anything, they know how to avoid their real problems by simply acting like they don’t exist (re: obesity, poverty, immigration, national budget, entitlement programs, any social issue whatsoever that has a dissenting Bible passage, etc.)
The Federal Reserve governors are one-by-one breaking ranks from their previously unanimous support of the ultra-loose monetary policy that has entrenched itself as our new norm since the 2008 collapse. While one of the hallmarks of Ben Bernanke's reign has been a solemn guarantee of continued rock bottom rates for months (if not years) to come, the sentiment that our economic fuse may have once again been thoroughly lit is gaining a lot of justifiable momentum. The job market has been slowly but steadily improving. Home prices (the holy grail of all real estate indicators) has caught tread (albeit with a choppy grip). I even saw a lemonade stand that was able to accept debit cards via an iPad app. That's gotta count for something.
What does all of this mean to us common folk down here at the ground level? The low rate party may be coming to an end. Everyone with even the flimsiest grasp on economics knows that the game we are presently playing with ri-donk-ulously low interest rates is not a romance that is built to last. And though the intoxicating scent of all that freshly printed money gets us feeling all happy and gooey inside, our elected officials are going to have to cut us off early purely to mitigate the unavoidable hangover. It's for our own good, but we'll probably still be pretty pissed off about it when it happens.
The Associated Press Twitter feed was hacked and falsely posted about two explosions at the White House and Obama being injured. Stocks took a sharp dive and had an almost immediate comeback, which leads me to ask who the hell actually pays legitimate attention to Twitter anymore??? Seriously, George Takei and Will Ferrell's feeds are pretty great, but that's about it.
Gold prices suffered a noteworthy whack in recent weeks. I mention this for two reasons:
1) Because gold is a bellwether of international fear in the economies that investors would otherwise be investing in (hence its value drop is indicative of a growing confidence in the global economic recovery which I interpret to be an encouraging reaction from the open market) and
2) Because I remember the Glenn Beck commercials pushing gold and I SO BADLY want to get in his face and ask "Where is your 'faith in gold' now, you tubby douche?"
France has legalized gay marriage and adoption (as if France somehow needed to reaffirm how gay it is). Not that I'm against that in any way, I just think it's funny.
