Here Comes More Snow!

Snowmageddon has paralyzed the nation's capitol. Once again, the feds announced that only 'emergency workers' had to report to work. And once again, we wondered about all the rest. As near as we could tell, the pumps still worked when we went to fill up our pick-up truck. The coffee tasted the same. Plumbers still plumbed. Bakers still baked. Economists still pretended to know what they were talking about.

All the things that mattered continued...without the intrusion of federal employees.

And here comes more snow! No kidding. Now we have a storm warning for this afternoon. Ten to twenty inches of new snow are forecast.

The highway crews are beaten. They've been piling up snow since Friday. Many have worked around the clock. This new weather forecast must be depressing to them. They must feel like Custer's troops when scouts reported that more Sioux warriors had arrived.

We spent the weekend digging out our driveway. We had only begun when a young man with a heavy Spanish accent came up to us.

"You want some help?"

"How much would you charge?"

"One hundred dollars."

"Hmmm....well, thanks...but I'll do it myself."

Actually, we didn't do it ourselves. Daughter Sophia and son Edward lent a hand. Between the three of us, we did the work in about 3 hours. It was fun. Besides, what else did we have to do? We were snowed in.

As we were working, we noticed other Latin Americans walking up and down the street with snow shovels on their shoulders. After 3 hours, your editor felt his muscles ache. These guys must have done it all day long...Saturday and Sunday.

In this area, the Latinos seem to do all the housework, the roadwork, gardening, landscaping and much of the construction. They truck, they bus, they tote and lift. They're everywhere. They don't seem to mind hard work. And they are enterprising - like real Americans! This weekend, they hustled. And each one of them probably made $500 to $1,000. In cash.

By 6PM yesterday, Baltimore had an eerie feeling to it. The sky was clear. The park in front of our office was covered with snow. No car moved. No human being either.

What had happened? There was something unearthly about it... So quiet. So dead. Had zombies taken over?

Life imitates art. There are so many movies about zombies. Maybe now, zombies really are taking over. They don't foam at the mouth. They don't eat human flesh in public. But many of our fellow Americans are exhibiting some very strange behavior.

Mr. Timothy Geithner, for example. We're not saying he's a zombie. We're not accusing him. We just don't know. All we know is that he's saying remarkable things. For example, he told the nation that the US bond rating was safe. The Wall Street Journal went on to report that he said we would 'never' lose it.

Huh? Of course, US bonds will lose their triple-A rating. The only serious question is when.

Zombies will say the damndest things, won't they?

Regards,

Bill Bonner
for The Daily Reckoning Australia

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