Imagine trying to tell someone who had never lived in a culture that had cigarettes that they are unhealthy and that a sane person should never, ever start smoking.  That person would probably look at you like you were crazy, light up, get a nicotine high, lose some weight, and continue smoking for the next forty years, all the while thinking that you’re a nutjob.  Perhaps, decades later, when emphysema and lung cancer kick in, he would believe you – or he would attribute it to bad luck and deny the causal element.

Now imagine telling someone that chugging an entire bottle of Jose Cuervo may make him the life of the party, but will result in bad things.  It’ll take him all of about ten minutes – when the nausea sets in – to believe that you may have a point.  After suffering for a night and waking up with the mother of all hangovers, our intrepid bloke will think you a savant.

So, with apologies to those who are losing their lifetime savings in the stock market’s plummet towards really huge negative numbers, this gal is happy to see such an immediate repudiation of socialist principles.  This will not be an issue of waiting an entire century for FDR’s misguided “Great Society” to ruin the country; rather, every time a stimulus is proposed, the stock market tanks.  When Tim Geither opens his mouth to discuss a plan, the stock market drops.  News analysts watched people sell, en masse, as the speech progressed. Far from having priced in an Obama win prior to the election, investors realise what a radical we have and are protecting their own assets.