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dailycardinal.com Weekend, September 28-October 1, 2017 7 l
Trump blows off economic advisors, champions return to archaic, longabandoned gold standard in 2017 By Patrick Hoeppner THE DAILY CARDINAL
“It makes sense,” President Trump tweeted Tuesday, amidst declarations of open aggression toward belligerent Southeast Asian nations and tirades against the NFL, “that our nation’s economy be centered around the most valuable metal around!” “He really likes the color gold,” a Treasury official said. “He said that he is willing to donate a portion of the gold lettering from his two Trump Towers to bolster the coffers of the Federal Reserve in New York.” “Analytically, it doesn’t make sense,” a junior economic analyst at the White House said. “The return to the gold standard in the 1920s, opposed by John Maynard Keynes, plunged
every participant nation into the worst depression of the modern commercial era.” Stock analysts in McGraw, Norton, and Pearson’s Wall Street Office claim that their holdings in gold will skyrocket as a result of the new executive actions. “Since the gold standard rests on the value of an arbitrarily valued and easily mined metal, this volatility will really do wonders for our bonuses,” a junior trader, fresh from a toptier Ivy League school, said. “I was going to pull in three million before bonuses last year, but Trump’s actions make it look more like four or five.” Other Wall Street firms are less optimistic. “It doesn’t make much sense to ignore the advice of every economist since the Roaring
Twenties,” said a UW-Madison economics professor. “In our opinion, it’s a load of shit.” Aides confirmed that Trump had been locked in his room with a copy of the James Bond classic film Goldfinger in preparation for the upcoming executive action. “Mr. President really likes the character of Archie Goldfinger,” a secret service agent said under oath. “Even though he won’t be contaminating Fort Knox, his advisors thought it prudent to recommend the film as an educational feature about the price of gold, and how it goes up and down.” Plans to bolster the United States’ gold coffers include an appraisal of the entire Fort Knox and New York Federal Reserve inventories and small-
IMAGE COURTESY OF PATRICK HOEPPNER
Trump forgot to remove his helmet after appraising a gold mine. scale CIA invasions of gold-rich nation-states such as Tanzania, Ghana and South Africa. The chart behind the podium justifying the action was both mistitled and misspelled
as Sarah Huckabee Sanders made the news official to the nation. “It’s evident that the gold standard is the best way to peg our currency, and we hope our economy can handle it.”
Out-of-state freshman to suspect that all other students’ hometowns are ‘just outside of Milwaukee’ By Dana Brandt THE DAILY CARDINAL
It’s finally that time of year; freshmen are flooding the campus, football ticket prices are soaring, house fellows and TAs are dusting off their favorite icebreaker games, and students everywhere are attempting to make new friends. In these first few weeks, these new students will be forced to participate in many icebreakers and answer getto-know-you questions. Out of all of these questions, the most common one is probably the classic “Where are you from?” The hope is that through sharing one’s hometown, an unbreakable bond of instant friendship will be forged, withstanding four years of football games, parties, classes, and financial instability. However, at least half of the time, out-of-state students struggle to conceptualize where small Wisconsin towns are located. The next clarifying question then becomes, “Where is that?” and a nearby landmark city is provided. More often than not, this landmark city is none other than Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Over the course of this tedious process, freshman Fargo Bunyan, hailing from the dense wilderness of northern Minnesota, soon began to recognize a pattern. “Now, I don’t know a lot
about Wisconsin,” Bunyan told us earlier in the week, “But, it’s like, everyone I talk to says their hometowns are ‘just outside of Milwaukee.’ I’m beginning to suspect that it’s some kind of conspiracy. Milwaukee must be expanding in area, absorbing other nearby towns into its suburbs. It’s going to take over the state of Wisconsin! We can’t stand for this.” When asked to elaborate, Bunyan provided us with a list of towns he’s been told are “just outside of Milwaukee.” This
list includes Whitefish Bay, Pewaukee, Kenosha, Appleton, Green Bay, Sun Prairie, the Wisconsin Dells, Chicago, and even the east side of Madison. “I didn’t realize how broad of a term ‘just outside of Milwaukee’ was,” Bunyan went on to say. “I guess we’re all from ‘just outside of Milwaukee,’ in a way.” Bunyan’s most recent statements encourage fellow students to help him fund the construction of a wall around the city of Milwaukee.
IMAGE COURTESY OF PATRICK HOEPPNER
A geography lesson might be in order for the incoming UW class.
IMAGE COURTESY OF CREATIVE COMMONS
Pictured here is the soon-to-be home for another timeshared log cabin in Door County.
Millennials’ refusal to build log cabins is killing the deforestation industry By Matt Van Ommeren THE DAILY CARDINAL
Twenty-four year old Madison resident Collin Sanders flashes his key past a small gray device before entering the door of his residence. He continues through the lobby and into the elevator, where he presses a button before disappearing behind the silver doors of the vertical chariot that will carry him to his abode. Collin’s experience represents a trend among young millennials across the U.S. Lamentably, Collin’s residence differs from traditional living styles in two important respects: he did not build it himself, and it is not a log cabin. Young adults are at the forefront of a troubling trend away from selfbuilt log cabins that is having devastating effects on the economic wellbeing of people in what millennials have coined the “deforestation industry”, says David Boar, who founded Forest2Field Inc. in 1946. “Young people just don’t support family-owned businesses like mine anymore,” Boar said in an interview. “I haven’t talked to my son since he
told me he was purchasing a home near Milwaukee two years ago. I always thought he would build a big old cabin right next to mine.” While Boar is a small player in the log cabin industry, deforestation giants like Peace Trees are also feeling the economic impacts of young people’s refusal to build their own log cabins. People in their twenties don’t understand how their behavior impacts the world economy, says Kelly Tinn, professor of economics at the University of Colorado. “These kids are getting out of college and deciding to just live in an apartment,” she says. “Their laziness is killing the worldwide economy. I used to see hundreds of log cabins popping up around Denver every year, but now I’m lucky to see one.” When asked for his own reasons to opt for apartment dwelling over constructing his own log cabin, Sanders shrugged and said the thought of building his own cabin had never crossed his mind. When pressed, he admitted that he didn’t even know how a log cabin was constructed.
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