Strange Days Indeed

Krugman, a relatively mainstream economist with the New York Times, writes that we are in fact in the grips of an economic depression of global scale. Warren Brusee, who has been suggesting all along that unsustainable economic practices have precipitated an economic depression, writes in his mid-June 2012 blog post that the US may sidestep a worsening economic situation because of investors fleeing the EU. And many are scratching their heads as to why much of the world is still struggling through the morass of economic decline that really became apparent in fall of 2008. 


Anecdotally, I have well-educated, sober-minded friends who are stocking up on beans, bullets, and band-aids. Other friends are breathing a sigh of relief and spending heavily on vacations, expensive homes (though a deal in 2007 terms), and restaurants. What the heck!


My feeling is that if the Euro-Zone falls like dominoes - the uptick in foreign investment in the US will not offset the loss of wealth from our heavily interconnected financial systems. Contagion will not be contained to Europe and the impact on the US economy will be very significant. Exports will slow, lenders will stop lending, and  jobs will evaporate. But, who really knows? One thing is for sure, the uncertainty is already creating volatility in the US stock market and consumer confidence is taking a real hit. So the professional prognosticators may differ in their reading of the tea leaves, but one thing is for sure: the next 6-months will be key in deciding whether the global economic situation will stabilize and improve or spiral downward. Buckle up and stay tuned!

Stay Human

I make few important life decisions without reflecting on some pithy quote from Master Yoda. Today I have been mulling over this little gem:

“Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”

It seems like almost overnight sober, even-keeled folks are reduced to panicky, wild-eyed ... well, animals. Fear is primal. It is a base emotion, like anger, that strips the mind of all capacity to work in a rational manner. Without rational thought we are incapable of sussing out effective action. We become confused and simply react to stimuli. While we all experience fear now and again - it is inhuman to live in fear. And as one moves from fear to anger and then hate, one become less and less human.

When under the spell of fear, I find it useful to recite the Bene Gesserit litany against fear from Frank Herbert's Dune. I really only remember the first four lines, but the litany in its entirety is a zippy little recipe to work through the fear and come out the other side in tact: human.

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.

Stay human people!

A more flexible society?

Regardless of how you view the mid-term elections, one thing is clear: at the very moment we need a thoughtful and responsive government, we are going to get at least another two years of gridlock. Only this time around it will likely be far more intractable than the merely contentious previous two years. Just as the House failed to extend unemployment benefits last Thursday, the Federal Reserve downgrades their earlier, more optimistic view of the economic recovery in 2011. So, it looks like we're in for long sputtering haul with high unemployment and a government that probably will not be able to make the bold moves necessary to alleviate socioeconomic conditions for the poor (1 in 7 Americans).

With the government incapacitated, it is up to Americans to do what needs to be done. And we can do it. Many already are doing it. So here is my suggestion, polyanna-ish though it is:

Folks on the right, as mistrustful of government competency as you are, now is the time to get involved in the kinds of community efforts that will help lift people out of poverty. Your best public philosopher, Francis Fukuyama, wrote an entire book on the subject!

Folks on the left, bent as you are on social equality, this is an opportunity to put your lefty activist cred where your mouth is. Get out there and start an NGO to connect people with jobs, training, or food!

Seriously, the time for rallies and placards and partisanship is over. We are far from out of the woods and we need to work together to pull through this rough patch--or else it may turn out far nastier than any of us can envision.

Things you can do...

1) Volunteer at a food pantry

2) Volunteer at a soup kitchen

3) Donate to charitable causes that help alleviate poverty... anywhere

4) If you are a business owner, create a new job

5) Start or join a community garden

6) Volunteer to teach job skills (computer applications, welding, car repair, horticulture... anything)

7) Start an NGO to... secure low cost or no cost housing; find/create jobs for the jobless; teach skills; increase community involvement...

8) Buy stuff! Not on credit, not irresponsibly, not at the expense of your own savings, but stimulate demand for goods and services in your community - preferably from locally owned merchants (more of the money you spend will likely recirculate back into your own area, rather than getting siphoned off to Arkansas - apologies to Arkansan readers)

9) If you have a friend, acquaintance, ex-coworker, who is unemployed (and who doesn't these days?), then be a job-hunting buddy. Help them meet their own goals for application placement, acquiring new marketable skills, etc. And then take them out for a beer/cosmo at the end of a long week of job-hunting.

10) If you can't do anything - too busy, can't easily get around, etc., then go online and donate cash, clothes (often they'll pick up), or optimism.

11) If you don't do anything, then, at the very least, ease off the vitriol you hurl toward your imagined political rivals. It's not about politics anymore.

People on the left and the right have deep traditions of helping others. Whether through your church or your commune, get involved, and not just through the holiday season. We're not nearly through with the fallout from fall 2008 - the outcome depends on us.

"Helping Hands" illustration by Chris Kasch

Economic refugees find shelter in tent cities

My grandparents knew them as hobo camps - groups of unemployed men doing what they could to get by during the hard times of the Great Depression. Today we witness a more troubling phenomenon. Tent cities have been springing up all over the nation in the last few years. Composed of a conglomeration of unemployed, underemployed, the working poor, and discouraged workers, this new phenomenon suggests that the current economic downturn is producing some disturbing features. The National Coalition for the Homeless has launched a new study in an attempt to better understand this growing social concern. What they have found is that municipalities have differed greatly in their response to the sudden, urgent need for housing among folks affected by the recession. Some cities (Seattle, WA and Portland, OR, for example) have set aside land, provided services, and attempted to alleviate the human suffering experienced by those displaced by the shifting economy; other cities (Colorado Springs, CO) at first worked with the homeless, and then, panicked by their increase in size and apparent permanence, broke up the tent cities and sent people packing.

With the disappointing unemployment numbers just out, the inability of our politicians to extend unemployment benefits, and a structurally weakened economic system, we must prepare to accommodate a growing number homeless with creative solutions. The "new study" link above compares different approaches along the west coast of the US and worth a look.

Love letters straight from the Heart

Apparently this email made the rounds recently -- it's the swan song of the utopian capitalist, the death rattle of the "survival-of-the-fittest" individualist, the last gasp of the crass materialist. It is weird how detached Wall Street bankers are from the so-called "Main Street" lives they assume they will be leading. $85K per year? Four months vacation? The median household income in America is around $50K and three weeks vacation is the average for someone with 25 years in at their job. To which Main Street does Joe Wall Street think s/he'll be moving I wonder?

"We are Wall Street. It's our job to make money. Whether it's a commodity, stock, bond, or some hypothetical piece of fake paper, it doesn't matter. We would trade baseball cards if it were profitable. I didn't hear America complaining when the market was roaring to 14,000 and everyone's 401K doubled every 3 years. Just like gambling, its not a problem until you lose. I've never heard of anyone going to Gamblers Anonymous because they won too much in Vegas.

Well now the market crapped out, & even though it has come back somewhat, the government and the average Joes are still looking for a scapegoat. God knows there has to be one for everything. Well, here we are.

Go ahead and continue to take us down, but you're only going to hurt yourselves. What's going to happen when we can't find jobs on the Street anymore? Guess what: We're going to take yours. We get up at 5am & work till 10pm or later. We're used to not getting up to pee when we have a position. We don't take an hour or more for a lunch break. We don't demand a union. We don't retire at 50 with a pension. We eat what we kill, and when the only thing left to eat is on your dinner plates, we'll eat that.

For years teachers and other unionized labor have had us fooled. We were too busy working to notice. Do you really think that we are incapable of teaching 3rd graders and doing landscaping? We're going to take your cushy jobs with tenure and 4 months off a year and whine just like you that we are so-o-o-o underpaid for building the youth of America. Say goodbye to your overtime and double time and a half. I'll be hitting grounders to the high school baseball team for $5k extra a summer, thank you very much.

So now that we're going to be making $85k a year without upside, Joe Mainstreet is going to have his revenge, right? Wrong! Guess what: we're going to stop buying the new 80k car, we aren't going to leave the 35 percent tip at our business dinners anymore. No more free rides on our backs. We're going to landscape our own back yards, wash our cars with a garden hose in our driveways. Our money was your money. You spent it. When our money dries up, so does yours.

The difference is, you lived off of it, we rejoiced in it. The Obama administration and the Democratic National Committee might get their way and knock us off the top of the pyramid, but it's really going to hurt like hell for them when our fat a**es land directly on the middle class of America and knock them to the bottom.

We aren't dinosaurs. We are smarter and more vicious than that, and we are going to survive. The question is, now that Obama & his administration are making Joe Mainstreet our food supply…will he? and will they?"

A Year's Hiatus

At the end of April, 2009, I decided to stop blogging about what seemed, then, as a looming global economic collapse and started to practice what I was preaching. I finished my postgraduate degree, started "leveraging" my skill-set to make a little money, and I have been working at being less spendy and more attune to the value of free stuff - you know, the good stuff, the stuff with substance and meaning: family, friends, art, music, literature, living well, and living less encumbered. Still working on the last one. It's been quite a year. Here are a few things I've learned.

1. Your skills and talents are valuable and there are people who are happy to pay you for your knowledge.

2. Getting out from behind the computer is the best, maybe only, way to live.

3. Despite the neoluddite sentiment of point #2, meetup.com is a great site to find groups of others with similar interests...

4. and craigslist.org is a good way to get the word out about what you have to offer the world.

5. Jogging keeps one sane and fit (two things we should all strive for).

6. Making a good soup is the most important skill one could possess.

So, why am I blogging here again? I guess things are getting pretty bad politically, environmentally, and economically and 1) attention needs to be paid to, let's say, alternative reactions to calamity, 2) blogging is one way to build community and, truth to tell, it's something that I have missed, 3) I find that blogging helps me place events in perspective and makes me spend some time carefully considering how to articulate with the future.

What's new after a year? Not much economically. The unemployment rate is higher and likely to climb; there is an oil slick covering the Gulf and threatening to catch ocean currents, spreading it even farther; Europe is in crisis; the stock market is slumping...again...

How about the positives? CO2 emissions drop in 2009 due to the recession; consensus on important issues is starting to emerge - e.g. the US National Academy of Scientists have agreed that global warming is real and due to human activities; a new deal protects millions of acres of forest lands in Canada; the recession has prompted a record number of startups in the US; contraction is the new growth (which is not necessarily a bad thing).

Futures: Charles Schwab, Barak Obama and me

I understand completely the importance of optimism about the future when it comes to social, political or economic change. One has to believe in positive future outcomes if one is to invest time, money, effort and hope in projects that will not come to fruition for months or years. I get it and, more importantly, I buy into the proposition that tomorrow grants us an opportunity to better ourselves and the world. So why do I find it irksome when companies hype the future, or when commentators pounce on some obscure economic indicator and turn it into the harbinger of prosperity? The new Charles Schwab ad says "Dwelling on the past won't help my future. Do something about it." Very paternal, Chuck. 

I think most people's problems from the economic downturn are not grounded in the past; rather, it's the present and very immanent future that most of us are contending with: drained retirement accounts, loss of jobs, cut hours, lack of available credit... While there is no doubting that years from now we'll look back at the 2008-2??? depression and laugh or grimace, but now is the time to think clearly about what we should be doing with dwindling, threatened or otherwise reduced resources. Pretending, as suggested by the Charles Schwab ad, that we're out of the woods and that our reluctance to go whole hog back into the stock market, or supermarket for that matter, is based on an irrational reaction to past events is foolish to say the least. 

Prudence is called for. While it might be tempting to bet on the stock market or take out more credit to get out of our current financial doldrums, we should be looking instead for sustainable solutions. Americans should not re-adopt their role as the world's economic engine. As we are finding out, the growth in the world's economy from 1995-2007 was largely based on consumers and companies overextending themselves on credit, on insane financial commodities and an irrational belief that real estate can leap in value year after year...forever. What a difference a year makes, no? How about more sustainable investments: a car that uses less fuel, appliances that use less energy, solar tiles for your home, community investments that bring quality of life returns, or an investment in education? These things won't make you rich, but some will allow you to save money and others will contribute to a genuine sense of well-being, which is what all the over-leveraging lo these many years was supposed to do, right? Here's to hope!