You'll probably feel slightly offended by this. I hope so. I'm a product of my environment (mixed in with a jigger of random factors). So are you. Another suicide bomber. Yawn. Anything better on?

I buy and sell all day. That's what I do. You start to feel the pulse of the economy after a while. Last week was a bad week for Silicon Valley. We all lost tons. Equity losses and thousands more unemployed. Everybody's licking their wounds right now. Last week everybody was selling. Bringing goods back, bringing in aunt mildred's flute and seeing if I'd buy it - that kind of thing. The avenue was strangely quiet - not even lunch crowds. This week I'm getting hit with merchants. Ad agencies, salesmen for companies I do business with who just kind of drop in. A few more people eating lunch downtown and checking out the window. Still no buyers to speak of. But it feels like a wave - building up over the last week. To be fair - I waived the opportunity to own aunt mildred's fine flute and swished away all the ad salesmen. I'm a product of my environment.