"Aa-Chu !!"

      Steven Chu is a Nobel Prize winning Physicist, a very, very smart man.   

      And yet, as Secretary of the Department of Energy, Professor Chu approved

guaranteeing a half billion dollar loan to Solyndra, which promptly went bankrupt. Maybe if he had been investing his own money...     

       People are always having ideas for making stuff that they think YOU will like.  If they're right, you'll like their  stuff and they'll make money.  If they're wrong, they'll lose money. And, by the way, you can have any color stuff you want. Not everyone likes green.

      [Go call your wife and tell her that you're a better economic prognosticator than a physics genius even though you still don't know if Queens is part of Long Island or of New York City so, when you go out to eat, is the tax supposed to be 8.50% or 8.75% and are you supposed to tip on the tax?]

      YOU, of course, doesn't mean just...you. It means the millions and billions of YOU's or, as we call them in Brooklyn, YOUSE's, who mostly don't know each other or even ever met each other. They're just folks buying what they want and doing what they want. It's what Adam Smith called the 'invisible hand' of the market and it works pretty well if we just stay out of the way except for laws to prevent stealing and cheating.

      And don't believe people who tell you that some things are so expensive that the gov't has to do them. There's always money for a good idea. You just have to start small,
                                                                    ***

       "Henry, come in and eat before your supper gets cold. Why couldn't you get a nice job in the Post Office like your brother Seymour? A regular paycheck, good benefits, free stamps..."

       "In a minute, Sylvia."
                                                                   ***

       If Henry Ford had gotten a grant from the Department of Energy instead of working in his own garage and using his own money, he would have had to try and build an engine that could be implanted in a horse. Bureaucrats don't much like change.

      You know, there was a time in this country when the way to get rich was to "build a better mousetrap." Now, you just throw something together and then hire a lobbyist to make it illegal for anyone to compete or to import something better. The only ones happy with this arrangement are the mice.