‘U.S. Trade Deficit Startles Markets.’ Now, we’ve understood the U.S. trade deficit for a while. Are the markets small children that are easily startled? The next day, they’ll get an unemployment number and go, ‘Oh, I don’t know why we were startled and lost 200 points yesterday; today, we realized the shirt on the chair wasn’t a monster, so we’re going to put 300 points back on the Dow because we’re fucking 5 years old.’
Jon Stewart, scanning the front page of the Washington Post. This simple insight is more than I’ve ever seen mustered from, say, NPR’s Marketplace, a program ostensibly entirely directed at helping people grasp this stuff. If only there were more Mountaintops around.
Lemkin 