How... Interesting

The last couple days have certainly been... entertaining? enlightening? enraging? Anyway, on the one-year anniversary of its all-time, record-high close, the Dow closed at 8,579.19 for a loss of 39.4% in one year. GM and Ford closed at $4.76/share and $2.08/share respectively. The Wilshire 5000, an index that covers essentially every stock traded in the US, has lost $8.33 trillion in value in one year. That's a lot of retirement dollars to have evaporate in a mere twelve months.

The good news is that some people continue to innovate. Some even manage to create things more substantial than the latest Facebook app. I can't help but wonder what $700 billion spent on developing that sort of technology (or this sort) would do for our economy.

But despair is a sin. Never forget that.

Meanwhile, in the more mundane world of cafe jobs, things are progressing towards opening the place to the public. We have served a few random souls who happened to wander in and see if we were open. Saturday, we will be open, but not advertising the fact in any way. The hope is that business will be slow enough to allow some of the kinks to get worked out before the full-blown opening next week. A great plan as long as we can manage to rustle up people willing to spend enough cash to cover our paychecks next week.

But despair is a sin. Never forget that.