Friday, September 26, 2008
not depressed, just busy
I’ve wanted for days just to slam a little essay up here about an old train car. It’s all written up with a photo and everything. Bastardsuckers won’t give a man a break and I expect today’ll be no different, going into tonight. Today’s remedial expenses day - repairs to the washing machine and a new clutch for the old soob. I expect it’ll be ugly but I am expecting ugliness more and more these days. In a desperate attempt to derail the ugly express I’m going to have a grown-up supper tonight at a very nice place in my ‘hood; mom is invited but Zach is not. And yes, I’ll have the debate on TiVo so I can hop right back into the ugly as soon as the mojito-and-harissa buzz wears off. Tomorrow: Pt Reyes estuary hike. Sunday: Academy of Sciences opening weekend. Blog post: not sure when it’ll happen. SO:
In lieu of the essay I wanted to share, here’s a bit of the chucklehut realpolitik: About a year ago I was in a long security line in an airport, behind a very establishment-looking white guy, late middle age, business casual with nice matching carryons. He was clearly on his way to a business meeting and we wound up in conversation. Turns out he sold computer equipment that helped federal banks track the flow of money around the country, and we started talking about the economy a bit. We agreed that things were bad and getting worse. I went so far as to suggest that if things weren’t cleaned up soon we might be facing a depression. He laughed at this, assuring me that a depression was impossible, that the system was too redundant to allow that kind of hole to get punched in the bottom of the money bucket. The overall tone made me think that he thought I was a fool, or at best, hilariously underinformed.
Come this morning and it turns out that a run on my bank has resulted in the largest federal bank seizure in history, on the heels of several others enormous seizures that are leaving our economy looking like an epileptic in a strobelite factory. While a private buyer was found for my bank overnight, the next bank that succumbs to atrophy might not be so lucky. Money is starting to be worth its actual value, and there is less and less of it when you cut out the people whose personal wealth significantly relied on leveraged derivatives (or “levrivatives,” a term I urge you all to use as if it was in steady rotation in the Financial Times). The depression is not upon us, but I can smell it on the weather wind. It may be that fed intervention will help us avoid longer breadlines and dustbowl-type dislocations of population. However, if I was to run into that bank computer sales guy in line at the airport again, I bet he’d be a little less amused by my nightmare scenario. The line from paranoia to realism is sometimes drawn by historical realities, of the sort through which I seem to be living today.
Get beautiful, people. Chuckles needs inspiration. And a little more blogging time.
