Another Frightening Week with the Economy

So the Economy is failing. Really failing, actually. It's impossible to ignore, even for someone that lives on cash, like me. The numbers may seem unreal, and the entire structure of the global credit market can be at times surreal with all those trailing zeros.

Personally, its been a tremendous learning experience for me because I was never interested in economics in school, and barely remember passing high school econ. But I'm a shrewd and curious person, so when I started hearing about the subprime mortgage crisis earlier this year, I began to look into it.

That was about the time that I started listening to This American Life religiously. And of all the unlikely news sources, I've learned the most about the global credit crisis from this oft-kilter left of center Saturday afternoon radio show.

TAL has a great way of breaking down the relationships and steps that have led to 3 weeks of roller coastering stock averages and a freeze up of the credit markets that are threatening to plunge America, and the world for that matter into depression.

Admittedly, I was upset about the bailout when it was first propsed. Partly, this is because the politicians in this counrty aren't capable of properly explaining such a complex problem. Although the roots of this are spurious and deplorable, its imperative to stop the freezing up of credit markets and attempt to bring stability to the stock markets.

And most important of this whole thing is to learn to regulate again and vote for responsible leadership. I don't necessarily think Barack Obama has all the answers, but I think of either of the candidates he is more to listen to intellective advice instead of an anti-intellectual base.

Here are some useful links:

Planet Money - An extension of This American Life's financial coverage.

This American Life streams all of their episodes. Listen to Giant Pool of Money and
Another Frightening Show About the Economy.

The New York Times talks about how TAL has done such a good job of explaining this by asking the "dumb" questions.

Also at The New York Times, a great interactive graphic about the severity of the current crisis.

How Credit Default Swaps are spreading the effects of the Sub Prime Mortgage Crisis.

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New Writing

Here's a single session piece I wrote before bed the other night:

What a vague, terrible time we live in.

I ride my bike to work and picture a future where there are no new cars, just rusted out hulking suvs that burn expensive fuel and pollute the already polluted streets. It feels like this is the beginning of something real actually happening. You can feel it. People are nervous. Even the weather is erratic. The delicate balance as they say has been knocked off kilter, and is slowly spiraling downward towards chaos.

At least it feels that way.

There's nothing more pathetic than an empire in decline, and thats how I feel the first of October two-thousand and eight. Even when I drop all the politics I still have an ugly, vapid culture staring me back in the face. There's no surprise that real greed is even more painful and damaging then what's in the movies. Real greed pushes this entire country off the edge of a cliff with nothing to do about it but sit back and occasionally blog. My generation is too busy updating its damn facebook to look around and realize that the america that they grew up in is changing and falling behind the rest of the world.

A few months ago I read the Foundation series by Isaac Asimov. There's great emphasis in the later books about the empire's decline, about its shabby fall into physical and intellectual decay. It's weird that I can see little examples of that here and there, little cracks in the facade of the richest nation on earth.

Even the homeless population in Boulder seems to have grown a bit, favoring the young and desperate. Why get a job that takes money out of your meager paycheck when you can panhandle and keep one hundred percent of your profits? Some of the street performers make hundreds of dollars a day, and even the least pathetic looking vagrant is bound to get a least a few bucks every couple hours. And they just get to sit around getting high and talking shit with their other street kid friends. We call them mall kids, and avoid eye contact at all costs, except for the occasional sneer. But how are they any less american than I am? They're living on terms that they alone brokered, like cowboys in the old west. Except their horse is a pipe and the mall is their sunset. But anyway, this population has always been here, regardless of whats happening with the economy.

I guess that I should be glad I have a job, even though I hate it, and I should be glad that I at least make the same amount of money that I did a year ago. But I need more. I need to relegate this unpleasantness to my early twenties and be done with it. I need to be paid for doing what I'm good at, and I'm starting to figure out what that is.

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Support Your Local Library

I usually take the care to misspell library on nearly every occasion to (libary being the favorite), but I've decided to take the high road and not do that in my headline.

This week I picked up a great book at the Boulder Public Library, and its really an invaluable resource to me. I tend to buy a lot of books, and although they're mostly used, it still has the tendency to be financially straining. So I've sort of created a cycle to my reading that involves alternating phases of exclusively using the library and exclusively buying my books. There is some overlap, but for the past year or so its worked itself out to be a fairly predictable transition.

One of the best reasons for going to the library is to check out books that you wouldn't normally consider buying, but are still worth a read. Mostly trashy fiction and super serious dense non-fiction--both of which I thoroughly enjoy reading, and the latter of which I'm reading now.

Every Man A Speculator by Steve Fraser is a comprehensive (and I mean comprehensive, complete with thick appendices) history of America's relationship with Wall Street, as sort of a lay man's guide to the most complexly historical parts of our economy. Given the nature of the news the past few weeks, this was an easy choice and is a surprisingly light read. Well, light only in the figurative sense; it's an easy 600 pages.

So generally I'm pretty open with my casual reading regardless of whether or not I'm purchasing. I'll read anything, nearly. Just keep it interesting and keep it moving is the motto I stick to, and I came across this subject via one of my favorite sources of news and cultural commentary, NPR.

I wouldn't say that I'm addicted to NPR, nor have I drank the cool-aide and donated to them or anything, but it does make great background noise for most of my workday. The author, Steve Frase, was on the interview program Fresh Air this past wednesday and lets say he was interesting enough to prompt me to take a walk to the library on my lunch break and pick up one of his books. This isn't his newest title, that one was checked out, but this was one of the books mentioned on Fresh Air.

And remember, kids: knowledge is power!

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777 Means Nothing to Me

If only if the dow had dropped 666 points yesterday, I could be blogging about this being yet another harbinger of the apocalypse. But alas, there was a last minute speech from House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) and over 100 Republicans helped to put an end to bailout package 1.0. So in turn, the fiduciary gods decided to punish the markets for congress' unwillingness to prop up the now failed money markets.

Personally, and this is really only from the standpoint of greed, I have absolutely no interest in this bailout coming to fruition. Now, thats not to say that I don't understand why it may be necessary, but the realities of my personal financial situation make this impossible to agree to. Isn't personal fiscal freedom the most important aspect of a free market economy?

The markets are volatile, yes. Perhaps this is a sign that we may need to rethink some of our most basic tenets of modern banking. Maybe all of this fictional borrowing and trading has finally gotten the better of itself. But on the same note, the last major (by that I mean on the scale of only this and the great depression) government interference with banking institutions came with the New Deal, which helped to lay the foundation of sixty years of almost uninterrupted American prosperity and wealth.

I think that the urgency that all this has been carried out with is tantamount to its failure. Our lame duck president has only brokered another deal to bail out those to whom he has already helped so much through his blindfolded economics policy. I think that this can wait until a more nuanced, rational president is in office.

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