I am not sure but, I think I am beginning to see a pattern.

And then there is the budget and that little nagging deficit. How could that have happened with the brain trust that visits 1600 Pennsylvania Ave most days of the week? The last I heard, but it is hard to keep up on the gossip and still work for a living, they forgot to plan for a drop in tax revenues, around 36%, in their contingency figures. Fortunately, most of us now know what a Trillion dollars is (see my column of 2-20-09)

and won't have to take much time figuring out "we are in deep wanugus"! What happens if the World Bank is correct and the recovery isn't coming that quickly? While we're busy considering what's happening, what ever happened to all those shovel ready jobs? It seems to me if they were ready, why is the unemployment rate heading up instead of down? I thought all of that stimulus money was put out to create jobs. Were they just kidding?

Finally, does anybody know whether they ever changed the no uptick rule back to the uptick rule? Now that was a humdinger of a idea. While we were busy ruining our financial system, we could have become more European and changed sides of the street for our traffic direction just to see what other type of havoc that could have caused.

Soon, in a month or so, we are going to get the half time statistics on our burgeoning deficit and probably some new slogans. I can visualize YES, WE COULD HAVE as the lead slogan, followed by TAXES ARE YOUR FRIEND (unless you have to pay them)! But we are only just beginning. As bad as the deficit may be this year and next year, it is the following years that have economists' " innards in an uproar." We may be able to cut the deficit in half, in theory, by some date in the future, but that half may be bigger than the deficit we are facing now! Stating the obvious in a more understandable way, it would be akin to burning down your house to get rid of the termites! But that doesn't mean our leaders are prepared to chuck it in and call it a day. They are already preparing the slogans for 2012: When nighttime turns to morning and you can see the light, you'll realize we still just need another term to get it right! Or how about Elect experience, we've seen what novices can do! I wonder if that can be translated into Chinese?

I will close with the thought that inflation will be on the horizon in the future and those without any inflationary protection should be looking at buying houses at this time. Not only are the prices low, the financing is low as well and with projected rampant inflation, this could be the best time you ever will have seen to stake out your future.