I have a couple of random observations today.  First, as was totally predictable, the Europeans are publicly attacking the "speculators" again.  You know, those evil people who make bets on things like derivatives - and often win!  It seems these awful “predators” dared to make profitable bets against the Greek economy and are now making similar bets against other countries as well. And, horror of horrors, they are making big profits as a result.  In fact, they are even demanding nearly double the interest rate on Greek government bonds than German ones, the cads!

Look, next time you hear a politician rail against speculators just remember one thing; if these folks were not investing and providing cash into the financial markets, the whole thing would grind to a halt.  They make bets up and down and you never hear politicians complain when the betting is in their favor!  Profit is a GOOD thing and without it we would all be at the mercy of infantile politicians - which we increasingly are anyway.  I say three cheers for the speculators and a loud raspberry for the politicians in Europe and here as well.  They are all just a bunch of infants.

My next observation for the morning is this: I noticed that in California, the state university system has had to triple tuition to pay its bills.  There is a simple reason for this; back in 1999 the geniuses in Sacramento decided to use 8.25% as the long term assumption for the return on its public employee pension funds and then adopted a formula that used this for calculating pensions.  The retirement age was set at 55 and now there are lots of former state employees who are collecting much more retired than they did while working.  For example, one retired fire chief in San Jose, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal, is making over $278,000 per year retired versus $210,000 per year when he was working an already ridiculous pay for what a fire chief really does.  Sorry, I know that is not PC with them risking their lives and all, but surveys of the most risky jobs in America don't have fireman, let alone fire chief, high on the list.  I know that this may seem counter-intuitive, but the reality is that few houses or buildings really burn and most of the time fire crews are responding to car accidents where they are not at risk or just sitting around a lot in the firehouse on standby.  We need these guys, but at $200,000 per year?  Hmmmm.... 

By the way, the riskiest job in America is commercial fisherman, if you were interested.  And trust me, they don't make anywhere near this kind of change!

So California, New York, and well, most of the rest of America are sticking it to the young to pay for the old.  In other words, they are making the future pay for the past which makes no sense at all.  I have a suggestion for a way to reduce the overhead and costs.  Let's just take college freshman and deliver them directly to old people to work as their indentured servants.  That is what we are already doing and it gets rid of the bureaucracy.  Oh, wait, we can't do that; it wouldn't be politically correct.  It's truly what we are doing nonetheless.  Think about it.