The Pope and the Bailout

"Repent!" says the Pope - more or less. Pope Benedict XVI has chastised Western culture for being too oriented towards money and material wealth. He's right, of course.

In the United States, people worship the free market. As if throngs of self-seeking, short-sighted people have the divine in their brokerage accounts and wallets.

Our tendency is to worship the Invisible Hand of the marketplace. Whose hand, by the way? G-d's, of course. And G-d's Invisible Hand is guiding America's success in the world and our natural dominance over others, right?. So if they resist, they are resisting the work of G-d. This logic plays into our Puritan ethos.

There's always been this theme running throughout American discourse on free markets: that G-d works in free market forces. These would be the same free market forces that brought us slavery and prostitution, by the way.

Pope Benedict XVI reminds us that the marketplace is a man-made creation, and is no more superior to man than our SUVs are. Let's try to live that way for a while. It would make universal health care and free higher education more of a right and less of a privilege. Hey, we're Socialists now, why not?

Weirdly Cheerful Anchors at CNN Money dot com

Christine Roman smiles and smiles as she chats about the meltdown of my retirement savings. The other one, whatever her name is, does the same thing.

I recognize this trend of having attractive young women reading the news. It's the same sexist thinking that led to the choosing of Sarah Palin. It's the "hey let's get a good-looking chick in there and tell her what to say" idea. "She won't have any ideas of her own. She doesn't need qualifications." And the chirpy Christine Roman is the result.

They can't stop smiling, or in the case of Christine Roman, they can't quite eliminate the laughter in their voice. Not that she's laughing at America. No. She's not up to the task of delivering economic news. Nor understanding it, it seems.

When are we going to get some real reporters on television that aren't misplaced models? Are they really just news readers? They certainly aren't financial reporters.