I have received word that Europe will be starting a new credit rating agency.

The new rating agency will grade on a scale from Fine to Totally Completely Perfectly Fine, with the grades Hunky Dorey, and Just Dandy in between.

It is the opinion of EU officials that this will more accurately assess the status of European sovereign debt, which is of course, as issued by the countries of Europe, unquestionable and totally riskless.

This move will help crush the tyranny of Moody’s, Standard & Poors, and Fitch, bringing freedom to the great people of Europa.

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I know here on the 9th floor, it may seem like every day, in and out, is business. It’s always “market this…” or “company that…” or “let’s analyze these numbers…”

But I want you to know that I’m more than just a dedicated worker. I’m also an author on the side. So I thought I’d take a minute to share with you my latest and greatest upcoming novels, books, and other works of poetry.

The first is a three hundred plus page graphic novel titled “Dick the Decrepit Union Jackass: A Tantalizing Tail of Replacement.”

This masterpiece tells the story of Richard Bimbly and his tragic life, from beginning signing on to a factory where he worked for a debilitating 7.5 hours a day five days a week, until a sudden economic tragedy forced his union to vote out younger, lower paid members. After casting his vote to remove the younger generation, so as to save his dental benefits, Dick is suddenly caught off guard when the company fires the entire staff and replaces them all with the members his union black balled.

I won’t tell you how it en…Dick commits suicide. Oh Damn, I let that slip!

The second book is a self-help guide titled “Education Actually Hasn’t Failed You: Your Kids Are Just Fucking Stupid.”

This book will undoubtedly sell over a million copies in its first five minutes on the shelves, as it eases expectations of bitchy parents, reminding them that their kids would still be disappointments in Ivy League, as much as they are in some cheap public school.

I don’t hesitate to say that its publication will totally change the debate over education shaping up in my home state of Michigan, as both sides remove their calls for reform or increased spending, and return to the tried and true methods of parenting: beating your offspring.

My final composition is merely six thousand words of pros I wrote in my head, driving behind some prick hogging the passing lane, probably from New York or someplace.

The middle two thousand words are just me writing FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU…over and over.

I’m sure you cannot wait to get your hands on these 2011 MASTERPIECES OF LITERATURE.

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Has anyone else noticed that ever since the Fukushima Daiichi crisis in Japan, anytime a bird shits within 1,000 yards of a nuclear plant, it’s suddenly front page news.

We had minute by minute updates about some flood water that was encroaching on a nuclear plant’s personal space here a week or so ago. And now I get to hear how wild fires are blazing several miles away from another plant in N.M.

Assholes, there are nuclear plants all over the fucking place. If you piss yourself everytime something dangerous happens within the same region of the planet as a nuclear facility, you’re going to go through a lot of pairs of pants.

It took a massive earthquake, the fifth largest ever recorded, coupled with a resultant tsunami, to take down the Japan plant this year, an aging reactor from 40 years ago (and even then, half of the operation was kept under control). A little vanilla style tragedy like flooding or a fire isn’t going to do anything. You don’t think the engineers have thought of these common situations repeatedly before now?

You really need to calm down.

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The Greek issue is again being manipulated to create market direction, as news rooms report on the critical importance of today’s vote.

However, I don’t trust this line of reasoning to be correct or innocent.

This is called picking your battles, and the media, in my suspicion, are hyping the relevance of today to create a victory. Does it really matter if the current Greek president recreates a coalition government? Will the world collapse today if he fails?

I doubt it.

Greeces impact would sting, no doubt, but the principal holders of that debt are mainly elements of the EU and IMF themselves.

News anchors and policy wonks are shrewd enough to get a feel for how votes are going to end. Based on how they’re busy pushing this issue as “THE WORLD SHAKING SINGULARITY” I can only suspect that it is fully expected the Greek government will reform under similar lines as exist today.

More pressing, in my estimation, than some miniscule collection of islands in the Mediterranean, is the impact of global economic temperance and U.S. monetary policy, both of which are somewhere between indecisive to negative.

The worst outcome from Greece is the EU is shown to be fractious and begins to break up, which would of course be highly deflationary and jam a rock in this global economy’s engine. But even when it appears Greece stabilizes to save the day, there are bigger things afoot.

And for that, the 9th floor resoundingly declares, “Fuck Greece.”

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I have been drinking mimosa’s with the archangel Gabriel since 8:21 am, also known as THE OFFICIAL 2011 END OF DAYS PARTY START TIME. We are both ripped and loving…um…afterlife. We’re thinking of playing a prank on Harry Reid (D-Nevada), telling him he is already dead and seeing if we can’t get him to walk off the edge of the Grand Canyon in a trust exercise.

Ciao,

Cain

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“Know when to back off”

Alexander of Macedon, who’s conquests earned him the title Alexander the Great, is arguably the greatest military strategist in history, when factoring in the advancements and innovations he contributed to warfare over the course of his rather spectacular and equivalently short lifetime.

His ideas and tactics are still studied to this day by aspiring military commanders; such was the effectiveness of his plans and methods that relevance can still be found in the more abstract concepts he employed.

But perhaps the simplest and most useful teaching of Alexander can be found in the Battle of Gaugamela.

The layout of the battle was as follows: Alexander and his army of perhaps as many as some 50,000 Macedonians met the army of Darius III, leader of the Achaemenid Empire, and his army of 100,000. Outnumbered two to one, Alexander and his commanders were forced to come up with strategy to level the odds.

During this particular battle, it is said Alexander came up with many legendary techniques that utterly changed the face of warfare, including formations that rendered the use of chariots ineffective and the first instance of the echelon formations being employed.

More, during the battle itself, Alexander performed a brilliant feint, riding with his cavalry towards the outermost part of the battlefield, splitting Darius’ forces into two distinctive groups, with a gap formed in the middle where the phalanx echelon was battling. It was then that Alexander reversed his course and drove his 7,000 heads directly into the newly formed weak spot, aiming directly for Darius himself.

The end result was total confusion on the part of the enemy army, as their forces were split and their leader was being born down upon. The ranks began to break and Darius and his entourage began a retreat.

And it was then that Alexander made his most brilliant decision of the day.

He called off the attack.

To understand why, you can’t look ahead of Alexander, where Darius awaited to be slain with presumable victory. You must look behind Alexander, to where the main body of his force was growing weary and one of his most trusted generals, Parmenion, was in danger of falling. Alexander realized that to press his attack would simultaneously be risking his own army and, by extension, his own wellbeing.

Returning to the aid of his main force, they began to sweep up the remnants of the Persian’s who had stayed behind, sealing a decisive victory for the Greeks.

Darius himself would never meet Alexander on the field of battle again. Such were his losses, in both men and credibility, that his empire was torn in two, and shortly thereafter he was slain by the hand of one of his own commanders.

The great lesson is very straightforward. Restraint can often lead to the desired victory, while pursuit of victory can just is easily lead to defeat.

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