Everything You Wanted To Know About Poverty, But Were Afraid To Ask

People jumping out of windows, shooting themselves through the head, poisoning their children because they can't afford them - it's the stuff of great cinema, but do we really want to live this way?

Let's be calm.

"We are setting out a clear road map to restore profitability and enable us to focus on maximizing the Value of Citi," it said in a statement with the earnings.

Sounds pretty cut-and-dry, huh? Road maps.

What Citi needs, apparently, is a belt-clip GPS - not something that's awkward to open and impossible to fold. But then, maybe that's why they couldn't see the road - the map was in their faces.

The earnings: "Citigroup capped a devastating 2008 by announcing Friday that it would split into two entities and that it had posted an $8.29 billion loss for the fourth quarter," reported the New York Times in the same story. Uh, this in fact, was the news, not, the uh, road map.

"Peter Dixon, an economist at Commerzbank in London, said the decision to split the the financial giant was 'an indication that the era of big financials is at an end for now."

Hey Ma! Come to the radio! The era of big financials is at an end! For now!

Mr. Dixon would make a knock-down grim reaper. "My presence at your door is an indication that the era of you and all you've known is at an end for now." Have hope. It's for now.

Unfortunately, this stuff is getting easier to find. Corporate-release dessication devices like 'road maps' and 'indications' aren't keeping up with the juice that keeps bursting out of the bodies. Nurse, sponge. Bigger sponge - elsewhere in the article, Merrill Lynch loses $15.3 billion in the same quarter.



My recommendation is that we put the guy who landed the Airbus in the Hudson River in charge of the economy. He's got demonstrable skills at high altitudes, when you're double-birded and your engines go quiet.



I'm sure Mr. Sullenberger III uses road maps for toilet paper - after he's memorized them. Obama, make the call. The financial services sector can't park company jets in open fields. Readers, the lines are open.

A friend is facing cancer. He's been told by the doctors that it's beat, but, he's looked out that same window that Mr. Sullenberger III's passengers did, and listened to the wind whistle as the Bronx glided towards them. My friend's gainfully employed - no worries there - but in an understandable and perverse twist of perspective, he has no patience for his job. The little things, the 'mini-crises' as he calls them, that constitute people's and professions' sense of importance on a daily basis. As I understand it, it's basically b*llsh*t when you're sick from the cure, and it's too soon to be happy you're alive.

I thought to myself, would I rather be facing unemployment or cancer? Was that as easy to answer as it appeared? Cancer - your life is being taken away from you. Unemployment, your life is yours to lose. You look at family and friends like you've put them on the wrong flight.

My apologies to my friend. After this short callow moment, my prayers go out to him, and his wife and daughter. I am happy for their new health.

Thank you for listening, ma'am.