Weekend Highlight: Land of the Lost Economy

Things were a bit more hectic than usual here at our Baltimore HQ, this week. It was the week before Memorial Day and office workers seemed to go missing with odd frequency – knowing that they wouldn’t be seen again until the following Tuesday.

But here at The Daily Reckoning we never really stop working…especially in times like these. Things need to be reckoned with daily, even during long holiday weekends. And so we’ve put together Weekend Edition of the DR for your consideration.

Bill Bonner was reckoning with Congress on Capitol Hill this week and shares that experience with us in the excerpt below…

Yesterday…we ventured into “Bubble World.”

“What’s going on? When will this be over? How bad do you think it will get? What can we do to turn this around?”

Members of Congress have the same questions the rest of us have. They read the same claptrap in the newspapers. They hear the same balderdash explanations from economists and federal officials. They’re wondering what is really going on.

Not that we know. But they asked us anyway.

We report to you today from the banks of the Potomac. Our old friend, Congressman Ron Paul organized an off-the-record discussion with several other members of Congress. The subject was the financial meltdown…and the bailout. We were there to talk, of course, but we were more interested in listening.

“You don’t understand,” said a Senate functionary we met later, “these people live in Bubble World. They’re protected from the real world by their staffs and by the system itself. You imagine that they would know what is going on. But they don’t. They know less than we do. And they’ll be the last to find out. They are so busy meeting constituents…dealing with donors…working out deals with their political parties and supporters…and feeling like big shots…they don’t really have any time to study the issues. So they count on staff and party committees to tell them what to say, how to vote…and what to think.”

Waiting in the corridor of the Cannon building, two men in grey suits walked by…we overheard this conversation:

“Did you vote ‘no’ on that last resolution? You we’re supposed to vote ‘yes.’”

“I thought I was supposed to vote ‘yes’ to cutting off the argument…as far as I’m concerned we’ve heard enough about Nancy’s problem with the CIA…”

“But that wasn’t about cutting off the debate, that was just technical…about allowing them to modify the previous vote…”

“What are you talking about?”

“I don’t know…I didn’t think it had anything to do with stopping all this gabbing about Nancy and the CIA…”

And so goes the empire.

You can read more of Bill’s adventures on the Potomac here.