Tricks And Traps

I pulled the napa cabbage from my CSA box this morning, sliced it up, and soaked it in salt water all day long.

After drying it this evening, into the kimchi mixture it went, and at this moment it's just begun its four day fermentation on my kitchen counter.

Homemade kimchi by a white guy is a freakin' gamble; I never know if the temperature is right, if it's too salty, if it will actually ferment, if the garlic and ginger are correct, did I add too much cod gill, will the Korean chili burn too much, etc. So there it sits. Waiting. I might be unpleasantly surprised.

While coating the leaves with my spicy mix I couldn't help this afternoon but to draw comparisons to my attempt at kimchi to our government's attempts at stabilizing the big banks. I'm wondering if the paper in their vaults is nothing more than rotten fermented cabbage, waiting to surprise the taxpayers should we decide to take ownership of the banks. Nationalization is the new "N" word. It wasn't a word uttered at this weekends' cocktail parties in the Hamptons.

How many credit default swaps, collateralized debt obligations, and structured investment vehicles have been sitting there, fermenting away for months now, if not years? Look no further than BofA and their colossally fucked up partnership with Merrill to get an idea of the trap doors lying in wait for the government. We'll be entering the Mad Duke of Duckburg's castle:



Anyone at the treasury, anyone, as kids would have been Uncle Scrooge fans, eh? And they all grew up to become our tax evading and wealth hoarding treasury secretaries and economic advisers. Thing is, they all failed to remember the Mad Duke's catacombs, filled with booby traps at every turn. Tricks and traps might be the only things lining the Citi and BofA bank vaults.