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A Bazillion Lira
Wednesday March 5, 2003
If you are honest with yourself, you want bad things to happen to people who compete with you. Nothing major; maybe he backs into the boss' car in the parking lot, or she spills coffee on her blouse before she has to make a presentation.
Those sorts of things.
Countries are not supposed to point and laugh when bad things happen to their opponents. But they want bad things to happen to their competitors as well.
Two cases in point. First Turkey:
We would very much like Turkey to allow us to base troops on their soil so that when we go into Iraq we can launch an assault from the North. This would be a good thing as anyone who has ever watched the History Channel for more than six straight minutes knows perfectly well.
As a demonstration of our friendship we promised the Turks something like $30 billion in grants and loans. That should buy quite a bit of friendship.
The Turkish parliament chose not to accept the deal on Saturday and here's what happened on Monday: Share prices on the Turkish stock market in Istanbul, according to the Washington Post, "Plunged 12.5 percent" on the news.
12.5 percent is a lot. A very lot. In US terms, a 12.5% drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average would be about 975 points. In one day.
Good. I'm glad.
In addition, the Turkish lira - the unit of currency in Turkey - lost value against the U.S. dollar. This is a little tougher to explain because the exchange rate between the lira and the greenback has not, historically, been exactly one-to-one.
In fact, the current exchange rate as of yesterday afternoon was 1,618,530 lira to the dollar. That's ONE MILLION SIX HUNDRED THOUSAND to one.
If 1 dollar equals 1.6 million lira; how do you describe 30 billion dollars in lira? 48,000,000,000,000,000. Oh, I see. 48 bazillion.
Now, France: The European Union has strict rules about how individual member-nations have to run their economies. One of the rules is the deficit cannot run more than 3 percent of GDP.
Our pals over in Paris announced over the weekend that - chanceux nous! - they just made it as their deficit was three percent on the nez.
But wait! It seems that the actual number was a tad higher - according to the French equivalent of the Associated Press, the Agence France-Presse, "A source told AFP that the deficit had been calculated at between 3.03 and 3.04 percent of GDP and therefore the three percent was obtained by rounding."
Rounding? ROUNDING? Say, there, Pee-air. Anything under, what, 5 percent would round down to three, right?
Last one. For hundreds of years French Gendarmes have worn those hats with the hard bill and flat top - like Claude Raines wore in Casablanca. This is called a "kepi." It was reported that the traditional kepi is being replaced an "American-style baseball cap."
No. No they're not. I want the U.S. Congress to stop everything they're doing and immediately grant a world-wide patent to the People of the United States for the design of an "American-style baseball cap" and refuse to sell them in France.
Let the Gendarmes wear an Iraqi-style Gutrah instead.
At the end of the UAW-DaimlerChrysler 400 NASCAR race in Las Vegas last weekend, Michael Waltrip, who came in third, started his post-race remarks by asking God's blessings on President George W. Bush.
What? You didn't read about this? You didn't see it as the crawl under the CNN Headline News? No. You would only have read about it if (a) Janeane Garofalo had said something dreadful about the President, again; or (b) Martin Sheen had said something good about the President.
Quite a bit on the Secret Decoder Ring page today: We have a definition of a "Gutrah" as well as photos of the "kepi,;" we have a short, mildly amusing anecdote regarding exchange rates; we have a Catchy Caption of the Day which includes the word "implants;" and a link to the subscription page for those who haven't yet gotten around to it!
--END --
Copyright © 2003 Richard A. Galen
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