The news is all bad, all the time. We're told another Great Depression is around the corner. People are scared. The answer appears to be a guy named Obama, because he has a (D) beside his name. Throw in a drought or another few hurricanes and maybe we'll all be serfs again.
It's kind of funny that while the US economy tanks, the US dollar is at its highest point against the Euro in 13 months. The more I read, the more I figure it will be Europe that collapses long before the USA. The European Union looks like a good idea on paper, until you realize that it only exists on paper. Ireland, France, Germany, they can all do whatever they want with their economies. They don't have to follow each other's rules, making it extremly difficult to run a true economic union. How do you have a union when you're not united in anything except the word "Euro?"
This is a global problem, but the USA always makes for better headlines. As long as Bush is in the White House, you won't find blame being assigned anywhere except on Pennsylvania Avenue. The rest of the world is merely incidental.
I took a drive through a quiet California town this afternoon. Small diners, small cafes, small houses. Small. I wondered how many of them are leveraged to the hilt and shaking in their boots about losing it all? I'll bet not many.
I ate at a deli and had a cup of coffee before walking the streets for a bit. Nobody in the deli was talking politics and the only thing beaming in from the outside world was the satellite radio above the counter. Soft rock, no commercials.
You look in the eye of the girl making sandwiches. She has a face like a pin cushion, and there's tattoos all over her arms, but you know she'll be fine. She'll always be fine. She runs the place better than any drill sergeant, and her sandwiches taste like heaven. While the stock brokers cry and the reporters lament the collapse of America, she'll knock the price of pastrami-on-rye down 25 cents and carry on. The more I hear about bankers and other assorted whiners, the more I think a deli girl with face piercings would be able to sort things out in no time.
Think I'm joking? The reality of these economic troubles is that all of the very clever people got very careless and very stupid. They did this to themselves, and they're panicking. They have absolutely no idea what to do, except beg for money and hope for the best. Lord knows how often they avoided eye contact with panhandlers on the way to their swanky offices. Now that they're just another bunch of beggars, I'll bet they still do. A collapsing stock market might take your money, but it doesn't seem to provide a sense of irony.
I didn't see too much fear in people's faces while hanging around the small town. That doesn't mean they aren't freaked out about losing their life savings, it just means it doesn't look like it. People are still living, shopping, eating, driving. They don't strike me as the begging type, nor as the type to put themselves in that position in the first place.
Then I get back to the hotel, turn on the news, and they're telling me to buy a lot of underwear because I'm going to be crapping myself for the next year or two. They tell me that everyone's scared stiff, then flash the dropping Dow, then tell me people are scared, then the Dow, then the fear, then the Dow. Prophesy, meet self fulfillment.
I wonder how the news people know that everyone's scared, because I didn't see anyone from CNN hanging around the small town (Main Street, they call it; as if any reporter's been there since they left home for journalism school). They say there's another Great Depression on the way, people will be broke in no time, there's no way out of this mess, it's the end of life as we know it. So I flip the channel and Paul Konerko smacks a homer over the left field wall of US Cellular field, and the sold-out Chicago crowd goes wild.
I think about the people in the small town, and I wonder if it's all one big joke we're telling ourselves. It's nice to believe that regular, innocent people became victims in this mess, but a lot of responsibility has to lie with the people who lived way beyond their means and wanted to live beyond their means. How much of this disastrous news is for their benefit - misery loving company, so forth - and will it ever sink in that the market must right itself over the coming months to make up for how badly they tried to scam it?
Hard hearted? I guess. Listen, there's a lot of people with a few grand in the bank, a decent two bedroom house, a couple of five-year-old cars, and one credit card in their wallet. They're doing fine, though not so fine as yesterday because their money is now being used to bail out people that wanted a four bedroom house, two SUVs, five credit cards, and a college education for their kid as long as it was at the best school in the country. Or they're bailing out someone exactly like themselves, but with this difference: their doppleganger wasn't happy with the two-bedroom pad, and wanted more than they could ever afford.
Standing over all them all are the charlatans that thought they could get rich by exploiting them, and the social engineers who thought they could manufacture happiness (not to mention votes) by offering something for nothing. Until the bill came due.
So who's the victim? Yesterday's wanna-be that showed off fancy duds and a two-car garage, or the small town deli owner that has to save the wanna-be's ass?
While driving along the slow state highway, an old song kept playing through my head. Warren Zevon wrote it, but Dwight Yoakam did an excellent cover of it a few years back. It's called Carmelita. Exchange "Uncle Sam" for "Carmelita," and "hubris" for "heroin." Maybe you'll get my drift.
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