Wishing for a Snow Day
In my twelve years of public schooling, snow days were, obviously, thrilling anomalies whose excitement evolved in variety and intensity as I grew older. In elementary school their joys were simple and obvious: a chance to stay home and watch television, then venture outside to play in the freshly formed drifts.
In middle school and especially high school, the implications of snow days became variform and complex. My swim team would often get the news between sets as we bobbed at the end of the lanes during morning practice. Coach Stanley would bark that he’d just gotten the call: school was off; therefore, we had time for another couple thousand yards. We’d whoop and then immediately groan, and my consequent commingling of joy and suffering was never before in such perfect proportion.
Snow days in high school promised a wealth of quasi-adult activities: lunch at Pizza Hut, a nap, a trip to Wal-Mart for no particularly good reason. Or a group of us would convene in someone’s basement to watch movies. Or Phil and Wes and Mark and I would hold an impromtu band practice.
But whatever the age or activity, snow days were so blessedly perfect not just for their unpredictability but for the persistence of one grand, darkly reassuring notion: school had failed. The bureaucratic rigidity and institutional routine of school—the surest, most predictable thing about our lives up to that point—had, for once, broken down, however temporarily; the system was interrupted.
I am reminded of snow days now, at the end of September, not because I anticipate any of them in the near future, but because of the deep-shit mess in which our nation’s economy has gradually and/or suddenly mired itself. It’s a circumlocutory hike to that from snow days, so please bear with.
I should also preface the entirety of the following with a caveat and a guarantee: that I don’t know dick about economics, never have; and that I will not try and act like I do.
This is why the deep fear and anxiety gripping pretty much every American these days—while it has not left me untouched despite my total lack of pretty much any assets like a house, or stocks, or 401(k), or pretty much anything besides a laughably immature Roth IRA—is for me (and, I submit, plenty of other otherwise reasonably intelligent people) compounded by a sort of meta-fear borne of the fact that I am afraid of/depressed about the economy tanking, sure, but also and perhaps moreso afraid of/depressed about the fact that I DON’T EVEN UNDERSTAND WHY OR HOW THE ECONOMY IS TANKING.
I have no concept of how much $700 billion is, except that it could buy every person on the planet about five iPhones each (I think—I don’t really know dick about math either). I don’t know where that $700 billion is going to come from. Taxes? I don’t know. I mean, I honestly don’t know. I don’t really know how the bailout will work. I don’t know whether I should be for or against the bailout. I have some liberal friends who are glad Congress didn’t approve it and others who are freaking out over its failure. For my own part, I can’t seem to form a cogent opinion on the situation beyond: Those clowns in Congress did it again. What a bunch of clowns.
My cursory, embarrassingly inadequate gloss on the bailout is that it’s going to give money right back to the people who got us into this deep-shit mess in the first place; i.e., avaricious, myopic Republicans and their avaricious, myopic, unfathomably powerful friends in Corporate America. And obviously that’s bad, right? But then, my understanding is that if the bailout doesn’t happen, then we’re all going to be wearing bread sacks for shoes and eating raw hot dogs 3x/day inside of a month. To indulge just one doomsday scenario.
So it can’t be that simple, can it? Maybe it can. I don’t know. That’s the thing: I’m utterly clueless. You could tell me the money’s coming from taxes on iTunes Store purchases and going directly to UNICEF and I’d believe you. This is how far out of my depth I am.
And it’s not for lack of trying. There’s a difference between not knowing something because one is uninformed and not knowing something because one is simply not wired to know it. I’ve done my reading. I’ve had it explained to me in , , relatively terms, and it still eludes me. Or, rather, I grasp it for as long as it takes me to read the “Talk of the Town” or Salon piece about it, upon whose completion the whole thing flees my head again with frightening rapidity. In fact, I will give five rapidly devaluing American dollars to the first person who can successfully get a quick, layman’s explanation of our current situation to stick in my head for more than ten minutes.
But what does all of this have to do with snow days?
Because the part of me that’s against the bailout—the idealistic, principled part of me that abhors throwing good money after bad and doesn’t plan to buy a house or stocks or shoes anytime soon—is kind of irrationally giddy about the prospect of a financial apocalypse. In the unlikely event that a more palatable version of the bailout isn’t approved by Congress, then this country will be plunged into an unprecedented deep-shit mess that will make our current deep-shit mess look like a mere puddle. Shit will get dire on a level not seen since perhaps the Great Depression. Bread-sack footwear will seem like a reasonable consequence of financial hubris. Every aspect of our lives will be disrupted in ways even the experts are having trouble predicting. It will be the biggest, longest snow day ever, and it will shake us out of our complacency.
Because people need to be uncomfortable every once in a while. People need to be disrupted. We need interruptions and incongruities in order to keep us on our toes and engaged with life. There’s a fine calculus to how much disruption that engagement is worth, of course, and sometimes the disruption is extreme or tragic, and because life isn’t fair some people suffer far more and far worse disruptions than others and probably aren’t left thanking God or karma or kismet for the silver-lining character-building whatever-doesn’t-kill-me-etc lesson embedded in those disruptions, but on the whole we—or at least, I—wish for snow days, for a bump or wrinkle in the normal course of things.
This would, of course, be more than a bump or wrinkle. It would be a disaster. And while I’d like to think that the people most responsible for putting us where we are would be the most directly impacted and the most severely punished, I’m not so blinkered as to believe that’s how the world works. The richest and most powerful will engineer bailouts of their own, of varying legality, while the middle and lower classes bear the brunt. That’s how it’s always been and that’s how it will shake down.
But still. In certain moments, addled or fanciful, I wish for breakdowns. Some mornings I wake up hoping for a snow day.
Posted: September 30th, 2008 under General, Politics.
Comments: 13
Comments
Comment from Sonya
Time: 30 September 2008, 13:53
This morning, on the train, I was talking to Jason about the financial crisis (he, on the other hand, was trying to wake up and maybe didn’t hear me). A theory I hold true is that for an environmental change of significance, we’d have to change our culture. A big-ass financial mess might just do the trick.
That’s my Pollyanna thought for the day.
Comment from Stefanie
Time: 30 September 2008, 14:29
Jake — I’m happy to hear (well, somewhat happy) that I am not the only person to ‘understand’ the financial crisis as I read one article on the topic but lose my grasp in time to read the next article. I just learned of The American Life’s “The Giant Pool of Money” show in which they spell it out for us. I’m about to listen to it here:
cheers,
S
Comment from Philip James Hart
Time: 30 September 2008, 14:33
Count me as one of your liberal friends who didn’t support the bailout. If Freddie and Fannie and all those other short-named assholes wanted a socialist handout from the government, they might’ve tried giving a little back to the community when they weren’t in the toilet. This bailout will just postpone the inevitable consequences of the Trickle-Down system we’ve used for fucking ever, so maybe we can shop at American Eagle for another six or eight months. I like this explanation the best:
Events are in fact conforming disturbingly to the scenario outlined in an email sent to me by my Peak Oil friend Rob back in July: “over the course of the next few months the US banking and financial system collapses, beginning with another major bank failure (or its equivalent), followed by runs on ordinary savings accounts, then followed in turn very soon by gasoline and diesel shortages, followed shortly thereafter by food shortages.” I asked Rob about his predictions yesterday, and he followed up with this analysis:
I’d say we’re still a little short right now of even the first step (collapse of the US banking and financial system) […] though last week’s events look a lot like the beginning of that process. The failures of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and AIG were certainly the kinds of “failures” spelled out in the scenario. Reports indicate that the current Hank Paulsen plan was centrally prompted by fear of runs on banks, though among other scary things too. (So that’s about right, so far). But fears of fuel shortages in Nashville seem to have been prompted much more by concerns about the follow-on effects of Ike’s impact on refineries than by understanding that the financial crisis will have its own follow-on effects. And widespread fuel and then food shortages are not currently anywhere in view. (They follow, when they do, since we have little of either stored anywhere in this country, and so are vulnerable to panic buying as soon as the inevitable mass psychology of panic and hoarding are set off.)
But let’s check back as we observe how things play out this month. If Paulsen’s plan is rejected, or is otherwise rapidly proven inadequate, bad things could accelerate and do so quickly. In any case, there is zero chance that Paulsen’s plan or any variant of it now being discussed will stabilize the gigantic problems that have prompted them. They are all nothing more than new sidewalks (gangplanks?) on an earthquake. And that’s all they’re meant to be. It was only a few weeks ago that Paulsen said he never expected to need the powers he has now demanded. We are lied to constantly, and with impunity, as you know. […] So this week’s pieces of the larger crisis, however deep it turns out to be, will only have begun to shift the topsoil of the grand canyons of shit that lie beneath us. The rest of our lives, if we live long enough, will be spent immersed in the stuff. The only thing worse would be to be younger, and so to have more years ahead of us enduring that.
Comment from Philip James Hart
Time: 30 September 2008, 14:36
Oh yeah? I listen to that show too. Here’s an episode that made me burst into tears at work:
Comment from Ransom
Time: 1 October 2008, 08:08
“How does you keep up with the news like that?” – beat joey to it
My five dollar understanding of the crisis – loans were given to people who possibly couldn’t pay them back, many loans which had variable interest rate of some sort. These loans were then repackaged into stuff you could trade, imagine a box filled with poo and diamonds, along with the diamonds you get some poo, but the box is just labeled diamonds. Interest rates went up, and people couldn’t afford their house payments anymore. Therefore foreclosure rates went up which depressed the housing market (supply & demand funtime!) and made your box of poo diamonds worthless. But everyone had put their money in poo diamonds because poo diamonds had always done well and seemed like a solid investment. Now the government wants to buy the box of poo diamonds for safe keeping until things return to normal, and then sell it back?
The part that I’m shaky on is when / if does the government get its money back. I was reading something the other day that between the three options – do nothing, bailout, and nationalization – that bailout was by far the worst. It just rewards overly risky behavior, with the nothing plan, overly risky behavior is punished, with bailout it is rewarded. Also, with the bailout you get private profits and public losses, where as with nationalization, at least there are public profit, the bailout just means that the government takes a large risk without any solid control or reward.
friendship
Comment from Philip James Hart
Time: 1 October 2008, 09:23
The government, in every case I’m aware of, does nothing to get the money back when a bailout is issued. In essence, it’s a big advance on these companies’ allowances, even though Mom and Dad know it’s all going to be tossed away on penny whistles and Joe Bazooka. The people who pay the taxes that fund this stuff never see a cent in return, because when the companies are doing well, they seem to believe they’ve had no assistance from anyone in accomplishing their auspicious goals, and they champion the so-called “free market” for helping to create their profit machines.
And yet, in times of crisis such as these, the gauzy veil of capitalist principle blows away and we see a huddling group of thin billionaires begging for a socialist handout from the taxpayers. And I simply have no pity for people like this.
Comment from Jake
Time: 1 October 2008, 11:49
I actually read a really good argument for nationalization yesterday. It seems like by far the best idea, but I have a feeling conservatives would never get behind it.
Comment from Court
Time: 1 October 2008, 15:44
I know – sometimes the actual premise of it is so absurd its amazing that no one stopped it in the first place. So you’re gonna treat these mortgages as if they were actual capital so you can go ahead and reinvest the money, which you assume you will someday get back, in riskier albeit profitable endeavors under your “Financial Services” umbrella? What, is this a Flying Circus skit? Where’s the cantankerous British woman who comes in and hits you over the head with a rolling pin? I’m actually surprised that so few people saw, as Ransom’s beautiful analogy describes, that the shit would literally hit the fan.
You are right though Jake, I think it was a lot of profit-mongering and hubris. I don’t think that developers or mortgage brokers ever thought that demand would flatten out, deflating the market. And the assbags on Wall Street (and London, Hong Kong, etc) didn’t think twice about gambling around with imaginary capital on riskier and crazy profitable investments as long as the money was flowing. And funny, it would have kept up if it hadn’t fallen apart. Maybe this is the big shakeup that people are looking for… a real recognition by the movers and shakers that this is a global economy with an emerging Asian middle class that is driving up the price of goods and increasing trade and that we can’t simply run our economy with a free-wheeling “when a few of us get stinking rich all of us do” kind of mentality.
In my wildest, most undereducated economic dreams, Congress would vote for a mini-bailout to help stabilize the markets, but nationalize the broken mortgages, provide debt management relief, and use the capital gains to invest in growth industries such as green industries and technology. So that we can use the investment to continue to grow the economy and be competitive on a global scale, and not use the capital gain to buy some douche an Italian villa. We can’t keep our economy going on service industries and consumer-based investments. Won’t cut the mustard.
But will we have the leadership for that? I have no idea how we could pull that off.
Comment from Court
Time: 1 October 2008, 15:49
Oh, and I totally stole that growth industries line from Bill Clinton via the Daily Show.
Comment from Zach
Time: 1 October 2008, 23:57
Thank you for this. I’ve been immaturely asking for a reason for the world to just drop everything and focus on improving everything. We need a post-WWII type attitude but with everyone’s diverse interests noone is going to be willing to sacrifice until they have to. You’ve put it in to words that are hard to argue with.
I think I’ll focus on memorizing Simpsons episodes during my “improvement” time.
Comment from Julie
Time: 2 October 2008, 08:07
I’m de-lurking to expand on what Ransom said because I am a nerd in D.C. with a economics degree that I never get to apply and I used to examine banks and their investments. Also, note that I love the run-on sentence. Many institutions thought they were safely investing in the poo diamonds because they had the backing and safety of the federal gov’t (Fannie and Freddie), which were historically considered to be a very safe and conservative investment for banks. However, Fannie and Freddie were not doing what they were originally meant to do, which was package diamonds, not poo. Some say this is due to some laws that were passed earlier in the decade which required them to buy more poo so that more people could afford housing. Others say that Fannie and Freddie just got greedy and there is probably some poo diamond related fraud going on as there was zero oversight of Freddie and Fannie and they got too big. Its probably all of the above. I’m not a fan of the bailout in its current form and the politicos are having a field day throwing in unrelated and unnecessary earmarks. After living in D.C. for 3 years, I don’t trust any of our elected officials to do what is right, whatever that may be. Its all about self-interest and re-elections around here and I’m almost to the point of sticking my fingers in my ears and singing lalalalalalalalalalala until this all goes away.
Comment from BP
Time: 3 October 2008, 14:34
There’s more pork in that bill than there is at the local Fire Prevention Week Pancake and Sausage breakfast! I read about all sorts of earmarks and pork in that bill. I just hope the CEO’s don’t see one dime of my tax money! I did read some of the ideas from others that read the Jake Mohan blog and I would throw one in: fix the infrastructure. It’s a good use of taxpayer cash and it would help employment. It’s October 3rd and the main road I use to get to work IL 60 is still laden with potholes from last winter.
Comment from Dangrocksprofilemusic
Time: 4 October 2008, 20:43
Jeebus, where did you get such erudite commenters. I, too, now slightly understand credit swap derivates as a result of today’s This American Life.
Anyway, I totally understand that wishing for a snow day, which later in life is necessarily replaced by much darker and elaborate disaster fantasies that would allow one to stay home from work. But I think you’ve hit on some deeper vein here about how in most disasters, we’re “all in it together.” Or maybe we’re both just nihilists.
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