Mr. Manners pointed out to me bright and early yesterday morning that I'd soy sauce on both boobs of my jacket. Great. So I spent the day with my jacket pulled across myself, straight jacket style, all day at work. Fanfuckingtastic.

The financial world continues it's implosion with great abandon. While we've been THE SKY IS FALLING THE SKY IS FALLING the rest of the world has been quietly addressing their own issues (Germany arranging bank loans for it's second largest mortgage lender, the U.K. bailing out a bank or two, Ireland, Spain, several banks in Asia, Austraila, etc.). The world is not (as much as the rest of you would like to pretend) entirely immune from financial woes. And not, I think, because you are dependent upon the dollar. Those countries were also known for nuttily inflated property values as well (c'mon...a 950 square foot toilet in Paris is not worth one million euros....and I don't give a shit, if you'll pardon the pun, if it IS in Paris!). So something of this sort was bound to happen eventually.

The question remains....how bad will this become?

Will we all lose our jobs? Will there be rampant unemployment? I don't mean seventies style unemployment, with gas lines, increases in welfare, food stamps, and public assistance....and it isn't like Atlanta itself isn't already eerily facing signs of some of the same fiscal woes it faced then. I remember being a child when Atlanta couldn't pay some of it's bills, and the city would turn off alternating lights on the highway to save money. Or gas lines...remember gas lines? Georgia is going to be short on revenue (if we are closing state parks, we don't have any money).

A small part of me (let's call this the doomsday scenario) wonders if when this all shakes out there will continue to be a middle class. We are, after all, a class that only came to be with the spawning of the industrial age - the birth of the machine gave rise to the concept of leisure time. Without leisure time, there is no middle class - we all become laborers. If white collar jobs become incredibly scarce because regulation becomes very restrictive in banking, investing, insurance, mortgages and healthcare (some of the primary employers in the United States), where will the jobs then be found for these displaced workers? Will Americans become global workers or will they remain here?

If they remain here, will we be plunged into economic chaos (where oranges for Christmas are once again a treat?)?

I don't have much confidence in the people we have elected to be our leaders. I do not have any confidence in the traders and investors who so much as fart and drop my 401K's value by 25% in a given second. I have even less faith in those purportedly highly educated, highly paid pundits, analysts and talking heads that provide the voice of America today. I think they've gotten it all wrong as they attempt to steer us through the darkness.

But history is what makes fools of us all.