Hard Times

I've never felt the effects of booms or busts, at least not directly. I still send my bills out one-at-a-time, just to make sure that all my checks don't come due all at once; this is what I've done for the last ten years, no matter how much money is being made or lost at any one time by assorted plutocrats, capitalists and masters of the universe. This state of affairs has everything to do with my own choices, priorities and disposition. Others, in the US and elsewhere, find themselves in much more dire straits and with far fewer options.

The only change I've noticed in my life as a result of the current economic 'crisis' has been a proliferation of news and feature stories detailing the sudden immiseration of the of those (formerly) employed in the banking and financial industries. I mean, how can we dare to call ourselves civilized when we read of indignities such as these (from the 11/3/08 issue of New York):

Shortly after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, Stan, an equities trader at a midsize Wall Street firm, realized that he was going to have to break some bad news to his wife: They'd need to put off remodeling the kitchen of their 100-year-old Westchester Colonial until the financial crisis passes. "Tell her before you leave the office," one of Stan's co-workers advised him. "That way she can get her crying done while you are on the train."

In the end, Stan ignoed his colleague's advice and told Amy the bad news about the kitchen face-to-face. "Well, I broke down in tears," she says....

"You get to the point where you almost don't want to go home," Stan says at a softball game at the New York Athletic Club in Westchester. "You're always bringing bad news. You start looking for things you need to cut back on. But you know that every cut is a cut into the life that your wife is used to living."

Amy agrees. "I'm always afraid of what I'm going to hear when he comes home," she says. "There are plenty of examples of scaling back that I can think of."