We had ambitions to write something about the latest economic news today, but that requires too much research and reasoning, the weather is too dismal to deal with the dismal science, and the date on the calendar makes it too easy to put off such serious matters until next year. New Year’s Eve is best spent at leisure, recuperating from the year past and readying oneself for the one ahead.
Some people celebrate the occasion by getting rip-roaring drunk, which might be useful for recuperating but is not conducive to readying. Others prefer a quiet and contemplative evening at home, but even their most thoughtful resolutions are usually long forgotten by the time the weight loss programs and smoking cessation drugs and health club membership ads have disappeared from the airwaves sometime in early February. Our preference is for something in between, with a couple of convivial libations along with a hearty repast in the company of few old friends before heading home to quiet and solitude to steel ourselves for the the coming months of cold and barren winter and whatever might come after that. A few inexplicably lucky folks will spend the day golfing on some publicly funded by otherwise private golf in warm and sunny Hawaii, but we’ll forgo our rants about that guy until another day.
Tomorrow is a day off for almost everyone, which is certainly worth celebrating, and we still have a few tweaks left on a novel that will be e-published any minute now and a few other important end-of-the-year chores to attend to, so we’ll leave the macro-economics and the rest of that big picture stuff until next week. Whatever plans you might have for the rest of the day, we thank you for spending a moment of it here and hope the rest goes even better.
Happy New Year.
— Bud Norman
The Central Standard Times 