The Way We Live Now: conflating a concatenation of concurrent consequential...things. Just circumstances, really. We accept responsibility for our mistakes. We pray never to repeat them. Then we run off and do whatever! Whooooo, good times!

It's settled: the financial crisis of 2008 and its subsequent and still-extant consequences were "avoidable, according to a federal inquiry. If people had decided to just buy government savings bonds instead of sinking their money into "shoddy mortgage lending, the excessive packaging and sale of loans to investors and risky bets on securities backed by the loans," then all of this wouldn't have happened.

Lesson learned! Everyone who works in finance is writing all of this down in their little pocket notebooks right this very minute, in a section called "Make Sure The Things You Do At Work Are Not These Things." To be extra sure they will read every single one of these news stories about the new fears of a double-dip recession. Every single one! We, as a nation, as a people, as a plutocracy, as a collection of empowered Haves and powerless Have Nots, are absolutely positively not going to repeat this avoidable fiasco again! In fact we are thankful that it was avoidable, because that means we can take concrete steps to head off any repetition of the irrational and reckless economic enthusiasm that led to....

The Dow touched 12,000 today! Highest mark since June of 08 baby! Woooooooooo, money's fucking flowing like a river, motherfuckers!

We know what we're doing this time.

[Photo: AP]