The Fed met last week to discuss inflation. Wow, to be a fly on the wall of that meeting?

We’re all talking about Ben Bernanke, the Fed chairman, whose job was hanging on a thread last week. The tumultuous week on Wall Street was the result of his uncertain fate. Wall Street is made up of a lot of nervous people. Imagine your grandma on a roller coaster after eating six fish tacos.

See, the Fed meets regularly to discuss whether or not to change interest rates on the money they loan to banks. Created during a financial panic back in 1913, The Fed is the central bank of the United States. And instead of toasters, they give away billions of dollars, or not, depending on whether they want the participating banks to lend money, or not, depending on whether or not they believe inflation is at hand. Or not. Are you with me so far?

Sounds complicated, and to make it worse, they meet in secret. Kinda like I did with that skanky girlfriend my parents hated. (We’ve been married 20 years.)

Back to inflation. See, the Fed feels that when everyone has money, they’ll buy up all the stuff everyone needs, and that’ll make the price go up. On the other hand, if there’s not enough money, the price goes down, and businesses lay off workers. They have become the invisible hand that may or may not have washed leaving the bathroom.

Now, another way to go is to let the market decide how much money should be out there. That’s a free market. It will, in the long run, balance out. But as John Maynard Keynes, a famous economist once said, “in the long run, we’ll all be dead.” And he’s right. Not about the free market necessarily. About being dead. He died in 1946.

There are a lot of conspiracy theorists who believe the Fed is some sort of quasi-underground group of white guys trying to control the world. But they are wrong.

That would be Congress.

(ITB)-McDonalds International has responded to the national spotlight on obesity by introducing smaller doors at their restaurants. McDonalds spokesman, Daryl Phast, said that it would be unfair to the non-obese patrons to take the flavor out of fries, Big Macs and other well known Micky D’s high calorie staples. Instead, the restaurant chain has installed smaller doors that keep the obese out, and the flavor in. Test markets for the doors will begin in Alabama and Georgia next month.

(ITB)-Congress is considering expanding their mandatory five-day waiting period for aquiring a firearm to include criminals.  Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D) from California, sponsor of the bill says “it’s time we got tough on crime.” Waters says the bill wuld force those considering committing a crime to wait five days before stealing or usng a gun. “This will force crminals to stop and think about what they are doing,” said Waters.

(ITB)-The Supreme Court’s recent 5-4 decision to allow corporations to spend more on political advertising has some critics saying politicians are now “for sale” more than ever.  This has drawn the ire of justice Clarence Thomas, who feels that the high court is at a tremendous disadvantage.

“I feel like a bitch,” said Justice  Thomas in an exclusive ITB interview. “Everybody be gettin there share, what kind of fool do we look like.  There are 535 on the Hill, and they all gettin some. Sheeeet, I gotsta be lookin out for me.“

When asked why he was talking ghetto, Thomas said, ”Obama dropped the Negro dialect, and look where it got him. Fitty Cent is a multimillionaire and he’s a punk.”

Justice Antonin Scalia said he would have some friends from the old country look into the matter.

(ITB) Talk Show host Glenn Beck has experienced  “a massive brain hemorrhage,” this according to doctors attending the tremendously successful Fox News host. The injury has apparently lapsed Beck into an irreversible coma.

On a brighter note, Fox says that Beck will continue to do his show, and complete his nationwide tour with fellow Fox star, Bill O’Reilly, with new dates added in Amarillo and El Paso.

(ITB) In response to yet another rash of DUI fatalities, Transportation Secretary Roy LaHood has proposed a new set of highways exclusively for drunk drivers. The Highway system would be called Intertstate .08 and would force the inebriated to drive where they could hurt only themselves.

The Secretary said that the road costs would be reasonable since they  wouldn’t require smooth pavement, lines, and barriers between lanes.  The proposed road is not without dissent however. Jeff Judah, a spokesman for DAMM, (Drunks Against Mad Mothers) is organizing a protest against the road, scheduled for 2am at the Waffle House right off I-40 in Albuquerque.

(ITB) -Shala-ali-Hasan, the mother of Ali-HalaLique Abdulmutallab, says her son may be a terrorist, but his underwear was clean when he tried to kill 330 people Christmas day. The man who tried to bring down a NW flight headed for Detroit by blowing up his underwear,  was arrested and charged with the attempted murder of those passengers, but TSA officials did back his mother’s story.

Bob Strong, a TSA officials based out of Detroit, said a close inspection of the Wal-Mart Mighty Briefs the terrorist had loaded with explosive chemicals revealed no streaks or any other evidence that they were used more than one day. “He’s a lowlife piece of crap,” said Strong, “but his ass was clean.

Remember that question? I dated a girl in my 20’s whose mother kept asking me when I would drop “Chip” and go by my given name, “Charles.”  She said that it just sounded more adult. Maybe she had something there because over the years, I’ve seldom been seen as an “adult.”
I have an idea about the world that parallels  the movie, “King of Hearts.”  It’s a French film where a town is abandoned during a battle in the second world war, and the insane people from a hospital are left behind to fend for themselves. So when a soldier who has lost his way stumbles into town, the roles become reversed, and he is forced to reexamine his world.

I can’t help but look at the world different. My mother used to challenge me to face fear down, and to believe anything was possible. It doesn’t mean I’m morally superior, it’s just how I’m wired.  When I’m asked, “what do I think happens after you die,” my first thought is, “that’s the wrong question.”  What if before and after are nothing more than barriers to just living right now? Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. Chip got hold of some good shit.

The quantum world which will shape the foreseeable future respects Euclid and Newton, but at the same time exposes them as well.  It perplexed Einstein to his dying moment. I understand and feel their pain. Quantum principles challenge preconceived notions of time, space, and reality in a way that forces us to look at the world much as that soldier did. But I love the idea that the answers to so many paradoxes may be simply more questions. That the answer to the most complex of equations may not be a number, but instead as physicist Niels Bohr suggested, more like a song.

So call me odd, or whatever you like. But for the record, the name is Chip.