I’m not normally the worrying type, but all this financial crisis stuff made me think. Is this the big one? Am I going to have to go back to work to pay the rent? I decided to look for answers around me.
This is the first of two blogs I intend to write on the current financial crises, but, of course, I’ve intended write a lot of other stuff too. Sometimes the fire just goes out before I get ink on paper so to speak. We’ll see.
One would have to have been hermetically sealed not to have been scared witless by a) 30% decline in the stock market, and b) talking heads shouting from every news channel that this was the worst crises since the great depression, and c) questions from the DW (darling wife) about whether we still had enough money left to see us into our dotage. My own reaction in times of crisis is to do the ostrich number….that is to say, I refuse to look at my Goldman Sachs account to see the carnage, thinking that if I don’t actually see the evidence, it might not be true.
But then I thought, what the hey! There’s evidence all over the place. All I had to do was to observe how people behaved, and I’d be able to tell how serious things really were. We’re there any jumpers out there? Any signs of hoarding food commodities? Anyone loading up the old gas guzzler and heading for cheaper climes? Yeah, I heard the stories about Boone Pickens being down 87% in September. But 87% from what? And old what’s his name, the CEO of Chesapeake Energy having to sell out three million of his company shares to meet a margin call. So what if guys like that had a $200 million or $2 billion loss. They’d probably make it up in reduced taxes or something equally clever. What about the real folks? You know the metaphorical man on main street. Joe Six-Pack (as some might say). How about the swarm of ladies at the Vietnamese nail salon.
Here’s what I found in my own not so scientifically constructed market survey:
1. The Apple Store on Knox. I went there Saturday thinking to ask a quick question at the Genius Bar while the DW was across the street buying decorative pillows or somesuch. As I approached the door I could hear a faint buzz from within. Maybe someone’s trying out a new iPod Nano. I opened the door to find a mass of humanity. Every square foot of space occupied by a dizzying array of high tech products, a sales person in an Apple logoed polo shirt, or a customer buying or trying to buy something. You had to wait your turn to give them money. Hmmm.
2. The Texas State Fairgrounds mid-week. The DW and I went on Wednesday as the market was dropping like a rock and gratefully accepted our senior citizen discount of two dollars per ticket hoping to avoid the crowds of years past. No such luck. Lines to buy thickets of $.50 cent tickets to spend on stuff we did not need and would never use if not eaten at that moment. Lines to ride the aerial tram where one could watch hoards of people waiting in other lines. Lines at the cotton candy stand. Lines at the smoked turkey leg stand. More lines to pitch coins ($$$) which bounced off cheap vases to try to win a stuffed elephant made in China. My favorite sight was of a couple of a certain weight and style in the food court lugging a tray filled with two smoked turkey legs, a giant nacho el supremo, a dozen tamales, and two extra large beers. Ok, I’m a nosher at the fair too, but two turkey legs? Hahhh!
3. The Texas State Fairgrounds Texas/OU game. I wasn’t actually there, but I knew people who were, and I watched the whole thing on the telly from the vantage point of my very comfortable couch. 92,00 of them, people I mean, to watch a game and spend large sums of money on food and beverages that they really didn’t need. At least $100 for a ticket (there were reports of scalpers getting up to $500), $20 for parking, $6.00 for each beer, no telling what it cost for a hot dog or a turkey leg. And this doesn’t even count the other 25,000 or so people out on the midway spending equal amounts without having to watch a game. Ohhhh!
So I asked myself, “does this evidence give the big lie to all this financial crisis hooey, or what?” If not, what’s the meaning of it all. Now, I don’t know how people reacted in the real Great Depression, but I suspect there were more lines at the free soup kitchens than at the Genius Bar or the seven dollar turkey leg stand. I dunno, maybe it just hasn’t sunk in yet, or maybe there are political and other factors that you and I just aren’t meant to understand. Yes, I know. Real people have been really hurt by losing jobs and losing real value in their homes, their IRA’s and 401k’s and mutual funds, as have I, but no one seems ready to jump just yet.
I think we’re being patient with America.
