A REFLECTION

I'm glad I'm between jobs right now. If I were working, I'd probably feel like a ghoul.

For the past five years I've been in business journalism. I mostly enjoy it. I have a genuine interest in money and markets and, usually, it's the sort of work I can feel good about. The subject matter is often dull but I feel - admittedly naively - that I'm helping to provide a valuable service.

Transparency helps markets work, markets help make the world work, blah blah blah.

But, if I were still in my last job I would have spent the past few days calling around to see what the effects of the tsunami were on the ethylene market, whether freight rates were rising, if insurance premiums were going higher and other peripheral matters. None of it would have seemed particularly important.

That's what it was like for the quake in Bam last year and, to a much lesser degree, some of the Northeast Asian typhoons this year.

If I was working, then for every story I would have to check whether the number of deaths had been revised upward. It wouldn't have been 'that' important for whatever story I would be working on. It would just be background to keep the item 'current.' And, after work, I'd reflect on how I just spent a full workday treating the deaths of tens of thousands as 'background.'

So, I'm glad I'm between jobs.