When I started this blog, I named it according to where it looked like our country was going - long term. But here it is. Last Tuesday, the German magazine, Der Spiegel, published an article about the United States, entitled "The End of Arrogance: America Loses its Dominant Economic Role. In it, George W. Bush is described as a mere shell of his former self.
The ticker tape shows the Dow is down over half of a percent as I leave for my meeting. . . .
The meeting is in recess, and I'm taking a break. The ticker tape has the market down 1.6% for the day. My bank was seized and a quick sale was arranged to keep it from failing. I should breathe easy and go back to having my paycheck direct deposited, but there's really no barometer for knowing if or when your bank will fail like going in on Friday to deposit your check. Sometimes, when it looks unusually busy, I leave and go to a check-cashing place, where I forfeit a huge chunk of my earnings for the security of knowing I have access to my own money - unless someone steals it. The teller is safe behind the bullet-proof glass. The sun penetrates the plate glass windows, making the air stale in a place that already smells of cigarette ash. She counts out the bills so that the person in line behind me, who's fidgeting because he can't smoke indoors, knows how much money I'm leaving with. I put the cash in my wallet, slide the wallet into my hip pocket and walk swiftly out the door. I wait to unlock the door of my car until I'm just a few feet away, get in and immediately lock the door.
My meeting starts in two minutes. The Dow is up 3/10% so far for the day. . . .
It's lunchtime on the West Coast and the Dow is up over a percent. The debate last night was a poor showing for both candidates, though you wouldn't have known by its appearance on the front page. The big news of the day was in the Business section of the Los Angeles Times, "AIG Fiddles while Wall Street Burns." I understand that Nicholas II and Alexandra were similarly clueless as to the plight of the starving minions outside the Palace in the last days of the Romanov dynasty. Their opulent lifestyle, paid for by the struggle, sweat, blood and starvation of the many must have seemed outrageous to the people who saw them from afar. A failed insurance company that went panhandling to the people to the tune of, "Brother can you spare 82 billion dollars," may have a slightly different perspective of a $440,000 expenditure on such frivolity that those of us whose labors never yield the kind of posh lifestyle these folks appear to take for granted. Then again, when your salary is 300 times that of the average laborer - regardless of whether you win or lose - there would be a bit of a disconnect. What AIG's mishandling of nearly half a million dollars in taxpayer money shows, however, is perhaps the most salient factor in this culture of opulence: their appetite for luxury is not mitigated by their personal finances; rather, it is only constrained by their ability to acquire and dispense with, other people's money. When your accountant does that, s/he goes to jail for embezzlement. It was upon Milton Friedman's ideology of unfettered capitalism that such neoliberal kleptocracy was born.
My lunch is over. According to the ticker tape, the Dow down over 3/10% from yesterday's close. . . .
It's my afternoon break, and the Big Board closed an hour ago, with the Dow having lost another 2%, or 189 points, closing at 9,258.1 for the day. Our retirement plans have lost two trillion dollars over the last 15 months. It's okay. I've been steeling myself against this for years: there's no way a generation of 40 million can support one of 70 million in retirement - not when that generation hopes to retire at 65 and live until they're 110. Social Security, the promise made by FDR in the 1930s and kept by Tip O'Neil for the WWII generation, appears elusive. Perhaps the first wave of Baby-Boomers will get it, maybe even the second; anyone who can claim to have worn bell-bottoms in Junior High or earlier may want to consult their 401K.
Oh, wait. We lost our 401Ks in the stock market. The same stock market the free market fundamentalists wanted us to put our Social Security into. . . .
It's 5:01 PM, Pacific Standard Time, and my workday has ended. For now, at least, I'm one of the lucky ones: I still have a job and a home.
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