Excuse me.  I’m from the the planet Mars.  (You know, analysts are from Mars, the Wall Street Journal is from Uranus.)  I just arrived on your planet and read this morning’s WSJ.  The lead headline says “2009:Banner Year for Stocks”.  So naturally not knowing about your earth-centric calendrical system and wanting to gain perspective I looked in my Apple tablet (we aliens are able to obtain products from the future through wormholes) for a chart and now I am very puzzled.  The WSJ says stocks are up 20% for the year.  Using your earth calendar I can see how this is true. In fact here is a picture of the wonderful year that has been:

But when I look at the complete chart instead of a wonderful rosy picture I see a long term unmitigated disaster.

True I see much excitement and opportunity for the agile and the dishonest and for Goldman and Paulson.  I see a gold rush for the semi ethical and the sharp practitioners.  I see a roller coaster ride of historic nature and thrills.  I also see the destruction of trillions of dollars of stockholder wealth and distress for the victims of Goldman and its ilk.  Ah, well, it was ever so on Wall Street.

I have put a great deal of thought into analyzing your earth news systems and have come to an epiphany about how your earth works.  Your earth newsmedia reports only the news as it sees it in its ability to see the end of its nose.  This is the reason it is called “news”.  It is called the “news media”, not the “perspective media”.

It seems to me that you earthlings must be very careful in ingesting your news media.  It is a well known fact on Mars that geese were once intelligent reasoning creatures.  How and why did they become geese?  Because they ingested too much “news” and adversely affected their brains.

Anyway, as long as I am here on earth for the New Year I intend to take in those most glorious accomplishments of earth culture over the  holiday — Texas vs Alabama and Oregon vs Ohio State.

I also understand you earthlings have some really ingenious new forms of fireworks with which you are going to entertain the galaxy at some point in the future — what are they called? — nuclear weapons?  I expect to be back on Mars with a ringside seat for this show.

It is a pleasure to be on your planet during the season of good will and peace towards all men.

Karnak, Analyst First Class, Mars, Sub-commander Bokononist Corps