Stevieslaw: Sleepless in State College
Smokey Diamond, our ace reporter, has always been excitable but lately she has been unable to sleep. It seems that all she can manage are cap naps. She prowls around the house and the yard at all hours. When I ask what’s wrong, she mumbles something about banks and too big to fail. She has taken to calling Jamie Dimon at JP Morgan and other bank CEO’s, ostensibly to ask for information for Stevieslaw, but really to find out whether or not they have been sleeping and eating well.
On the basis on our recent experience, her mantra has become “If the banks fail, we fail twice.” She certainly has a point. If the banks do something stupid and get into hot water, the economy falters and the little guy gets it on the chin. Then, rather than punishing them, we have to rush in to help as they are too big to fail. We provide them a bail out that we can’t afford and once again the little guy gets it on the chin. Not all banks, of course. Nobody really cares if your little dinky credit union goes belly up.
Imagine Smokey’s dismay then when she woke this morning to find, that according to the local paper—the Centre Daily Times— the demise of the Penn State Football program would mean the demise of the local economy. Smokey finds it interesting that the demise of no other single part of Penn State would have anywhere near as devastating an affect.
“I knew that football was the only association many people had with the University,” she purred. After all, if a second string quarterback were to announce his decision to transfer, it would be all we would hear about for a month, while If a noble laureate in Chemistry were to leave the University in the company of a prize-winning violinist, there would be no local coverage at all,” she lamented.
“Unless, of course, the violinist and chemist left together and were both men or both women,” I was quick to point out.
“Of course,” she concurred.
“But, who would have guessed that I would have to add Penn State football to my prayers at night, out of fear for the local merchants,” she lamented.
While I tried unsuccessfully to imagine Smokey saying her prayers at night, she added “Oil and gas companies, financial institutions, and Penn State Football—who’s next?’
“The Mexican drug cartels,” I was quick to answer. “Those job producers are pretty much all the economy the Southwest has left.”