492 Next Post Facto

492 Next Post?  Facto

This posting has been going on for a little over three years.  But it's actually an extension of a project started at Bloomberg Radio in March of 2000, which means it's really something like nine years old in its present form, or close thereto.

If we can rely on the statistics, readership -- or at least visitorship has grown exponentially in recent years and now is all the way up to small.  Small is beautiful.  And I feel as if I know each of you personally.  In point of fact, I probably DO know most, if not all of you personally.  But that doesn't stop me from (a) continuing or (b) thanking you for being here.

Here's hoping the new White House can fix the last eight years of wrongdoing, negligence, malfeasance, misfeasance.  This is a reasonable New Year's wish.  Here are some that are not so: that GM and Chrysler should survive, that Gov. Blago of Illinois will go to jail, that the Jewish faith should recognize the existence of Hell, if only for co-coreligionist  Bernie Madoff, that the Christian faith should recognize that there are others of equal sincerity out there, that some high profile leaders in the middle east should recognize that there's more to life than explosives, that the people who keep yamming about the joys of free market capitalism be forced to live under it, and the same for the twelve remaining doctrinaire Marxists.

Thank you for reading and for listening.

Next post will be Friday, 1/2/09.  And that's a fact-o.

Shrapnel:

--Hats off to MNSNBC's Rachel Maddow.  She picked up on that bank story the other day and took it one step ahead.  She wants her show to turn into a bank, a "very bad bank," that can win a federal bailout by filling out little more than the name, address and telephone number.

--Hats on to the rest of the media which did nothing much with the bank story. Hats on is the opposite of hats off.  Especially to what passes for the business press these days when business is a real story.

--The Irish rock star Bono and his investment group are buying a big chunk of the business behind the Palm Pilot, which ain't doing all that well.  Great idea, Bono.  If you can revive that outfit, you can offset some of the losses you're bound to take eventually, for your investment in the publishers of Forbes Magazine.

I'm Wes Richards.  My opinions are my own, but you're welcome to them. (sm)

(C) WJR 2008