Please Hurry Dear April

March Madness is on sterioids.

For the first time in history, tornados ripped through downtown Atlanta this weekend. The SEC basketball tournament was moved over to Georgia Tech and the only people who could attend were the player’s families. The rest of the crowd not only had to go home without seeing the games they had paid and traveled to see but some had their luggage blown out of the windows of their hotel.

I heard some were very upset because they couldn’t attend the rest of the tournament. From the pictures I saw, they probably should be thankful they are alive.

In the aftermath of that, the Georgia Bulldogs won four straight SEC basketball games and matched the number of SEC games they had won all year and won the SEC Basketball tournament. And they did it on the home court of their arch rival no less.

About the same time the Georgia Bulldogs were celebrating their unlikely victory, Tiger Woods sank a 25 foot putt on the final hole to win his seventh straight golf tournament. I had never seen him rip his cap off his head and throw it at the ground before. But I’ve never seen someone win seven straight professional golf tournaments before either.

And then I turn on the radio in my car today and hear that J.P. Morgan bailed out Bear Stearns at $2 per share when it was trading for $60 per share just a few days ago. And the federal government is throwing money at the resulting ramifications as if they make it or something. Interest rates will probably be reduced again tomorrow. It will be cheaper to borrow and you can’t help but wonder if that is what the people of our country need. But the people who pay their mortgages and are trying to save money will earn less on their savings. And as all this transpires, the American public is getting very nervous about the strength of our economy.

Then to top it all off, I not only heard the word Recession on the radio tonight but I heard the word Depression. And my cab driver in Houston had me convinced that is exactly where we are headed.

At my age with my retirement funds depending on the stock market and the strength of the economy, I wonder if I should be depressed.

But I remember that I view life from a hearse. From that perspective, a hundred years from now people will probably have to use a shovel to get the dirt off my grave marker just to see what my name was.

So I will choose not to get depressed even if we are headed into a Depression. I’ll just attribute all the rumblings and strange happenings to March Madness. I think I will feel better when April gets here.

Please hurry dear April.