The Way We Live Now: gettin' high. It's Thursday. You ain't got no job. You ain't got no subsidies. You ain't got no deflation policy. You ain't got no rising home prices. You don't pay taxes. What you gotta do?

Chris Tucker owes $11 million in unpaid taxes. Well, that's just fantastic. Ever since he went Christian or whatever, you don't hear too much about him.

And keeping busy is very important in our current economic "situation." Whether it's not paying taxes, or paying a $75 million fine to make your bank's subprime mortgage-related fuckery go away, or just subtly signaling via oblique public statements that your concerns about deflation could be growing enough to cause a shift in monetary policy, you have to have a hobby these days.

Sitting around the house doing nothing will just eat you alive.

Why don't you try being a little more like Exxon? They just nearly doubled their second quarter profit, to $7.56 billion. You never do things like that. With you, it's always "Selling my home at current market prices would financially devastate me," or "This job subsidy program I'm in is reminiscent of nothing so much as the Great Depression." With Exxon it's more like "The fact that the greatest environmental disaster in history was perpetrated by one of our biggest rivals sure has helped to contribute to our better-than-expected earnings per share."

It's all about PMA: Positive Mental Attitude. As well as HEM: Having Enough Money. As Wilhelm Röpke was fond of saying, "You got knocked the fuck out, man! Gimme my goddamn money. Payback's a motherfucker."