In mid-2007 I finally revealed to the Spousal Unit that, over the past year, I had been developing an increasing anxiety over the state of the economy. By any measure available to the layman the economy looked healthy; robust even. High-end developments were blossoming like endless fairy rings on open meadows and newly deforested woodland. This meant construction trades and every sector associated with them were booming. The Mister was working for an architecture office as the job captain for the home office and resident code wonk for both branches of the firm.
But deep in my gut something was wrong. It just wasn’t adding up. In part, because the Mister and I kept looking around us and saying: You can’t build houses forever. At some point there has to be market saturation. Then what happens? Has a history replete with Tulip Mania and Beanie Babies taught us nothing?
We kept trying to have rational conversations on the subject with our social circle, but most of them were in the trades to some degree and didn’t want to hear it. And you know what happened to Cassandra. One theory was she didn’t bring cookies.
Someone once described me as having “a tinker-toy model of the universe” in my brain. I will chance upon a quandary and somehow, I can’t let it go until the pieces fit. They don’t have to fit perfectly or beautifully, they just have to fit. The effect is like having a hangnail in your consciousness. Or like those pop ditties with a hook that runs mercilessly through your head, and nothing short of a near overdose of prescription sleeping pills can shake it.
So at some point in 2006 I started cruising business and economic sites on the Internet. MSNBC, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg and various political sites that included economic fora. I read, I researched and what I didn’t understand I plugged directly into a search engine. I wasn’t going to chance asking tenderfoot questions on an open internet forum. No0bi3s are often targets of derision and harassment, even when they ask sensible questions. I wasn’t inclined to add the humiliation of virtual swirlies to the very real anxiety I was already experiencing.
After a year of lurking and researching I knew just enough to be dangerous. And I had learned enough to know that the Mister and I had not been too far off base in our concerns. The way it looked, the housing market was probably going to tank and tank badly.
The pieces of my tinker-toy model had re-arranged themselves to the point that I could now future pace what was likely to happen in the broader economy when housing slowed down. In my head it looked like beautifully crafted concentric rings of Dominoes, with the housing market as the center starting point and staggered sectors like overlapping petals surrounding it.
When housing reached saturation, I theorized, all the trades associated with it would slow as building slowed. This only made sense. Framers can’t frame, plumbers can’t plumb, roofers can’t roof and electricians can’t…electrify, if they don’t have new construction. So the basic trades would be forced to cut employees. Interestingly, some of those jobs would not even show up as losses in employment because a number of the crews working in North Carolina consisted entirely of illegal aliens with an English speaking foreman. Yet the loss of those “non-jobs” would impact other sectors of the business economy.
The next ring of Dominoes to fall would be the businesses that supplied materials to the building trades, including the literal tons of heavy equipment used to clear the lots. Services like landscaping, painting crews, concrete and paving companies would find themselves with too much equipment, too many employees and not enough work to go around.
People buying new quarter million dollar homes see an opportunity to “try something new” with their “look”. For that reason, businesses providing everything from décor to guest room linens on to basic pots and pans would find fewer customers buying their (frankly overpriced) products.
Now because the Dominoes aren’t perfectly aligned, we have to move back to our first ring which has secondary effects on the wider market. Yes, the high-priced homes, the services and all the 2nd ring attendant purchasing have fallen because the market has stalled. But so have the 3rd ring blue-collar jobs supporting those trades and businesses. This means the laborers like linen store workers, paint mixers, people who make furniture, the lawnmower repairman; all these people have been forced to cut back on spending. The same holds true for 4th ring business supplying finished goods and supporting 3rd ring stores and laborers. Best case scenario for most, a reduction in hours with a tighter spending budget. Worst case: they have been laid off due to the slowdown in the housing market and have no money to spend.
And those ripples affect the “petals” food stores, restaurants, mid to low priced clothing stores, white goods (appliances) luxury items like electronics, toys and games and most surprising to me in hindsight, spending on healthcare.
In another way, the effect is completely un-like Dominoes. It’s more like being on the freeway, going home at 5 o’clock on Friday during a horrific thunderstorm. The freeway is packed with cars, covered in water, saturated. One car slows down to avoid hydroplaning. Then, traffic jam. Standstill. It’s that quick. And if you aren’t paying attention, it can be devastating.
So, early one Saturday morning in mid 2007 I call the Mister to the table and ask him to hear me out. I proceeded to lay everything out as calmly as I could. I explain that my main cause for concern was, once the trades and supporting businesses slowed down, so would new business construction; hotels, shopping centers, travel centers. These were businesses his firm looked to for clients. As a last hire, I was afraid his job wasn’t entirely secure. For that matter, based on the range of possibilities I had come across in my research I wasn’t entirely sure we weren’t in for an economic collapse.
The Mister gets a certain look when his brain is processing a chunk of novel information. It’s not exactly “deer in the headlights”. It’s more like a young indoor cat seeing a mouse for the first time. There is initially, a blank incomprehension; a vague fog, lasting from a few seconds to minutes. Then comes a danger assessment. Then cogs begin to turn; possibilities and strategies come into play.
And that almost instinctive understanding of strategy is one of the many reasons I love the Mister; his understanding of game theory is phenomenal.
We began to discuss possibilities in earnest. After a year of silent fretting, I am sitting at the table, practically vomiting stored up anxiety. The Tinker Toy model in my brain is limited in its ability. I need concrete facts, pieces to fit into the model. No pieces, no clarity. Beyond that it’s down to conjecture. I suck at conjecture.
The Mister is now on his feet. He thinks best when he’s doing something. He goes to the kitchen and begins to clean. And as he comes to understand the depth of my fears surrounding an economic collapse, he uses a phrase so succinct and yet so descriptive that the clear genius of it is startling to me. “They won’t let America’s economy collapse.” he says, “It’s the Mafia Model.”
“What?” The incongruity of the phrase has kicked me out of my physical anxiety and back into my head.
“The Mafia Model. You know…. ‘It’s bad for business.’.” He turns to face me from the kitchen. “Back in the 30’s and 40’s the turf wars between the mob bosses had gotten out of hand. Drive by shootings, bombings, murders. Civilians getting killed. Finally, the Feds along with local police agencies started cracking down on them, interrupting their ability to do business. The mob bosses started losing money.”
“So they get together, decide that the all out wars are ‘bad for business’ and the way to make money is to make peace. Support each other. Syndicate”
“If America goes down, it’s not good for anybody else’s economic health. They literally can’t let it happen. It’s bad for business. And by the same token, we can’t let any other large economy go bust either.”
In a perverse sort of way, I found the thought comforting; even a little heartening. The economic ecosystem was in the midst of its own crisis. It seems they were being forced to take a lesson from that other struggling ecosystem: Adapt or Die.
And so far, the Mister has been right. Over the past 2 years I’ve been watching them; the world leaders, the financiers, the billionaires. Now, I see them clearly, as they are; all tethered as one, clinging to the side of a cold, heartless mountain of money, while the storm of a century rages around them.
As they struggle to gain purchase, I can only image that they pray fervently to what gods they comprehend. Because they surely know what we know; if one falls, the rest will surely follow.
Of Greater and Lesser Sins.
December 23, 2009 at 5:04 pm (Commentary, Economics, News Article, Stories, class war, food)
Tags: childhood poverty, church, coping, Crisis, culture, disease, economy, hard times, homeless, Homelessness, humanity, hunger, mission, moral absolutist, moral relativist, poverty, priest, right, self-awareness, sin, wrong
The Moral Absolutists and Moral Relativists have both managed to get it wrong. On the one hand, there is no one unyielding truth. No unequivocal right or wrong based, ultimately, on some political, social or authoritarian structure.
On the other hand, the fact that some acts are labeled as wrong across cultures, across societies, across time, tells us that at some primal level, there is recognition of something that could be labeled as “sin”. It can, without judgment, be best described as: When you no longer understand that the person standing in front of you is human. And in being human like you, they suffer the same fears, the same hurt, the same hunger as you.
In forgetting this simple idea, the sinner loses some part of what makes him human too.
The one point of agreement between the two camps is that not all sins merit the same levels of condemnation. There can be great evils and then there are the evils of a lesser degree.
In this series of recent stories, the grim irony of the holy man telling his flock to sin, but to sin carefully, ranks in the measure of humanity, as the least sinful of all.
City of Miami to Julia Tuttle Squatters: If You Are Not a Molester, You Gotsta Go!
Police in Miami, Florida have been forcing those convicted of sex crimes to live as squatters under the Julia Tuttle Freeway after their release from prison. The growing number of laws across the country restricting where sex offenders live make it difficult, if not impossible, to house them.
The presence of a “city sanctioned” tent city created a draw for other, non-offending homeless. No surprises there. The homeless will tell you there is a degree of safety in numbers.
Yet somehow, beyond all comprehension, the morally bankrupt idea of forcing people to live as no better than cattle was compounded when police began ordering the non-sex offending homeless out of the squat. So, now the innocent poverty stricken are being treated worse than the people already being treated as less than cattle?
How to comprehend the mind-bending thought processes in play here? From the police, to social services, to city administrators, to the justice system, each person in those systems turned their backs on the most basic of moral imperatives: treat human beings as if they possess humanity.
Phoenix Church Ordered to Stop Feeding the Homeless
The premise stripped down and laid bare: The application of zoning laws is more important than the fact that men, women and children are starving.
Yes, little old ladies might find it disconcerting to see bedraggled strangers wandering down the street in order to get at least one meal today. And the uptick in minor crimes is something to be concerned about. But these are manageable problems.
It comes back to the idea that if they keep sweeping this human dirt under the rug, the problem disappears. They have failed to realize this mere trickle is the leading edge of a landslide. Sometimes, there isn’t a rug big enough.
The wise and humane thing, the human thing to do is to find a way to accommodate the concerns of the homeowners and the mission of the church.
Fund boss made 7 billion in the panic
I’m not averse to money. Nor am I averse to people making money. But throughout history, there has always been an inverse proportion between wealth concentration and human suffering.
The tipping point measuring human benefit to human damage in our economic system has long passed. And in its waning, it echoes the arc of the twin cults of Self-Actualization and Individualism. These structures have served their purpose for this cycle in history. They have stopped functioning to benefit anyone. It is past time to move beyond them.
Like it or not: We will be forced to move back toward ideas of shared responsibility. Look at the news from across the globe, look at these stories. We are already moving, out of sheer necessity, back to a collective interdependence. We literally can’t afford to continue supporting people or systems that take food out the mouths of our children under the guise of free market ideals.
70% Of The Q3 GDP Growth Was Cash For Clunkers
Summary: The little White Lies of Statistics aren’t helping anyone.
This will most likely mean further stimuli will be considered necessary. A severe contraction of the GDP in future quarters could spook those meager few who now hold a majority of the wealth. And, right now, them that have the money are the only ones with the ability to move it through the economy.
The problem is, the wealthy are merely human. And, in that frailty, they share the same irrational fears as the rest of us, regardless of means. In the end, this does not bode well for those of us without access to those same means.
Priest advises congregation to shoplift
I am not a religious woman. But if it were in my power to deem him a Saint, I would gladly do so.
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