On a hot tub cover

I'm also done reading an interesting book on the financial crisis, The End of Wall Street. It does have a lot of behind the scenes detail of the peak of the crisis from March to September 2008, instead of focusing on events leading up to that period like some books (some books on the "crisis" were published before September 2008, so they're obviously incomplete, published too soon to take advantage of the subject). The Fed and the Treasury chief and the rest of the government thought they could cap the problem before it got out of hand, like putting down a hot tub cover, but that didn't work. And they couldn't think of all the side effects of their actions, such as how letting Lehman Brothers go bankrupt would affect money market funds.

On medical job listings

You'd think that one thing that would be virtually recession-proof is medical job listings. People continue to get sick and be in accidents and need medical care, no matter what the economy is like. And I'm sure a bad economy creates certain kinds of problems, if only because people not going to work have more time to run around and do things they shouldn't, and wouldn't if they were on a job. However, hospitals do have to economize and try to make do with as few people as possible, so people with the jobs do get loaded up and overworked. I do think that in general the people who've helped my mother in the past six months have done a good job.