Subprime Steak

Several people told me they were salivating in advance for my "inevitable" response to the latest dead horse's assnalysis of financial markets by Elizabeth Spiers. Sorry to disappoint but 1) I don't know shit about financial markets other than the rich get richer, poor get fucked, people write vague songs about it, some wear patches, we buy, sell, shit, repeat, nothing changes, etc. 2) I'm not sure I can pretend to care, like all the times before, even for a joke and 3) a mutual friend once said "it's like kicking the burnt remains of a puppy from an airplane crash."

Fine, but I'm an anomie activist so I'm biting. What do we have for starters?

My friend Dana, a former real estate investment banker who got out of investment banking comfortably before subprime mortgages hit the fan, has a personal inflation index. It's pegged entirely to the price of filet mignon at the Palm Too, his favorite steak house on the East Side of Manhattan. If the filet mignon is reasonable, all is right with the world. If it seems unduly expensive, Dana gets worried that inflation is spinning out of control. So a couple of months ago he returned from a month in Paris to find that the price of pricey steak had jumped to $38, up from $36. To hear him tell it, not since the Last Supper has an evening meal emanated so pervasive a sense of impending doom.

Fuckin' Christ is right. The rest is a whole bunch of nothing, at least that's what people in the know tell me, but she manages to work in a book plug and circles back to the steak dinner with enough regurgitation to make these ladies look fat and grabby.

Sorry folks, Felix Salmon I am not. Hell, I'm not even Brian Van who could wax this rack with more grace than I am capable of producing.

But check this, if Balk's rapidly impending last words are not "Spiers was right!" then I guess "I'm coming, Elizabeth!" works too.