Let’s talk about the fiscal cliff. Everybody asks me: what IS this thing called the fiscal cliff? And I say, oh gee whiz, let’s not talk about that now.

Let’s talk about the fact that since the election, the DJIA (Dow Jones Industrial Average) has gone from 13,120 to 12,570. If my math skills remain intact, that is a loss of 550 points in 8 days. That’s a loss of 4%, as pointed out by today’s Marketwatch online site. This is what the trend looks like…

If, hypothetically, this trend were to continue, with 47 days left before the end of the year (as indicated by that tiny little ‘fiscal cliff’ link in the predictions section that takes you to the site that counts down the days)…anyway, back to my point..

If this trend were to continue, that would equate to a 23.5% further reduction in the DJIA. That would put it at 9616.05, which is 1384 points lower than even I – the doomsday prepper – predicted. So we’re likely not looking at a linear downturn…

But I stick with my prediction of 11,000 by year’s end. That is a net 16% loss from the value of those 30 stocks that make up the DOW. And why, my gentle reader asks, is this happening? The answer is quite simple: dithering over the FISCALLLLLL CLIFFFFF…….(note picture above – pay particular attention to the location of that rope)…

Are the learned ladies & gentlemen of Congress and the Executive Branch aware of this trend? I’m confident they are. The more important question is: do they care? Or are they so caught up in the drama, they fail to see the impact their head fake games are having on ordinary citizens? That is the question..

To that end, I have a thought: I think the learned ladies & gentlemen in Washington get so caught up in the goings-on in their world that they rationalize the impact on the real world. Otherwise, how do you explain the behavior of the individuals involved in the mess known as the Petraeus scandal? Get ready…going to change subjects on you here…

Jill Kelley, the squealer, gets some guy in the FBI to check out some messages from a person whose identity she likely knew. How does that happen? If you complain about this blog post anonymously, do you think I could get the FBI to discern your identity? Sure…so she complains, once the investigation gets going, it really spins out of control and then the investigators have a real tiger by the tail. In the end, four families are somewhere between troubled and devastated, careers are on hold or lost forever and all of this is because…some gal got pissed off at another gal.

So what’s the moral of the story? Every so often these pampered and coddled folks come up for real air and sense the gravity of their transgressions. Unfortunately, just like in most Greek tragedies, alea iacta est…Latin for ‘the die is cast’…and once that die is cast, there’s no putting it back in your pocket and walking away.

And so it goes with the so-called negotiations over the fiscal cliff. The Republicans are trying to save some semblence of face in spite of the election outcome, and Obama et al can’t help but succumb to a whole lot of smug. Where will this end? 11,000…lots of money lost…and not much likelihood of any kind of collaboration in D.C. But that’s a topic for another post…