I am getting pretty regular electronic mail from people & orgs who do not like, as I do not like, any notion of "giving any money to rich assholes." Yes, certainly. But many of these same people work at or attend universities or community colleges or technical schools, where the majority of students (or their parents) need loans to make tuition, and the loans began crunching last year (see Time Magazine) and now will only get worse, if you believe the Parade O' Experts. If there are fewer (or less affordable) loans, there will be fewer students. And so the untenured instructors are fucked again. Of course they are.

I am not usually such a pessimist, but my mother was a government loan officer in a former life and if not for a full-time hourly job all through college in addition to Staffords and Pells, I would be working at one of those burger joints that as of this week cannot get credit to buy the new cappucino machinery.

Our retirement pennies (such that we have not already withdrawn early to pay for a poetry habit) have decades to bounce back I guess. (And we'll probably be broiled crispy by then anyway, those of us who are not raptured before then.)

I sure hope people don't stop purchasing designer consumer goods from a certain ginormous department store chain via the internets. Hopefully the landlords will let us stay on for free. Or the banks, when the seize the landlords' homes because we cannot pay their mortgages for them. Or the government, when they seize the banks. Or us, when we seize the government.