Before Alcoa could build its smelter it had to defer to a government expert to scour the enclosed plant site and certify that no elves were on or under it. It was a delicate corporate situation, an Alcoa spokesman told me, because they had to pay hard cash to declare the site elf-free but, as he put it, “we couldn’t as a company be in a position of acknowledging the existence of hidden people.”Hum....
[ cf Wall Street on the Tundra ]
Why isn't there a national ban on allowing Overseas Corporations from Importing Cheap labor such as elves, leprichauns, and other types of undocumented workers that they conjure up from below the depths of thingus and Pooh!!!
Clearly if we do NOT draw the line here, then there will be trolls, orces, BugglyWugglySquirmey things - all of whom will want to get welfare and food stamps...
Ok, so the article in vanity fair also addresses the sort of absurdities which do not appear to be driven by the fact that jimmy carter was a democrat:
At the same time, in part because the banks were also lending Icelanders money to buy stocks and real estate, the value of Icelandic stocks and real estate went through the roof. From 2003 to 2007, while the U.S. stock market was doubling, the Icelandic stock market multiplied by nine times. Reykjavík real-estate prices tripled. By 2006 the average Icelandic family was three times as wealthy as it had been in 2003, and virtually all of this new wealth was one way or another tied to the new investment-banking industry. “Everyone was learning Black-Scholes” (the option-pricing model), says Ragnar Arnason, a professor of fishing economics at the University of Iceland, who watched students flee the economics of fishing for the economics of money. “The schools of engineering and math were offering courses on financial engineering. We had hundreds and hundreds of people studying finance.What????
( op cit )
Some how the majikal third eye of the imaginary invisible foote of the market was not prepared to deal with:
( op cit )</blockquote> or would it be nicer for americans if we were to simply start a TeaParty to stop the growing threat of Elves....