A Question of Balance: How Does An Investor Sit on a One-legged Stool?
Answer: Verrrrrry, Verrrrry Sloooowly!
In trying to solve the doggedly-intractable financial crisis, Our Savior of Last Resort(SOLR), President Obama, made a rare intellectual stumble on January 23rd as he tried to calm the trigger-happy global financial markets. Flexing his considerable brainware, he was trying to convince rational investors to perform the equivalent of an auto de fe, characterizing the the financial stimulus package as the first leg of a three-legged stool. He then used the bully pulpit asking the American public and the global financial markets to jump up onto this one-legged stool. Someone needs to play the prez that old favorite song by the Moody Blues from their immortal album: "A Question of Balance":
Sometime soon he promised would tell us all about the other two legs. I have long thought about the inherent instability and the metaphysical challenge of sitting on a one legged stool. Isn't it impossible? . No one in their right mind other than a few russian gymnasts could master this question of balance. Please come back to us all when we can see the three legged stool and assess its studiness and worthiness to "carry that load". But tonight at an dinner at the Waverly Restaurant we dined with well-know artist-man of science who gave me the ingenious and obvious solution I had never considered to this near-physical impossiblity. Only through the lens of an artist did the solution become aparent as to how to sit on a one-legged stool. The elegance and simplicity of his answer was stunning: just turn it upside down. Voila!!!! The answer and the problem wrapped into one. Oh SOLR please hear our prayers. Sitting on an upside down one-legged stool evokes the red-hot-poker-up-da-butt imagery drawn for the Marquis de Sade's "120 Days of Sodomy"
So show us ther other two legs, let us assess the sturdiness of the stool and maybe, just maybe we can take a load off of our minds and our feet and sit down on the stool of confidence.