"the best advice is just to buy anything" the source of the currnt troubles, part 1 - housing

this is about the current financial crisis. i know that i might not have the specifics completely correct, but i'm confident of the general idea. This American Life's 2 radio shows on the subject, starting with "the giant pool of money" are also highly recommended.

So the problem started with the housing market. it always went up. for decades, it always went up. now, investment markets work on perception, so because people always expected it to go up they were willing to put in more money and it went up faster and faster. so then in the 90s and the early 00s, it was super duper overvalued. like, houses were being priced at waaay more than they were worth, because everyone involved, the buyer, the seller, the builder, the state and federal gov'ts, even, regarded these very high prices as essential and normal (because they'd all been making money from it--the builders could charge more, land was worth more, property tax revenue was up, the home buyers were expecting a rock-solid high return investment).

but there were more ways to make money from the always rising housing market (which, i should note, was the only sector of the economy that kept always going up in these decades, i remember during my formative years in the 90s being under the impression that although the stock market was recessing the real estate market was where the real gold was). anyway, people figured out that if they found people who didn't qualify for normal mortgage loans from legit banks, they could supply the loan themselves and then charge the person as much as they wanted in interest. people didn't care about paying tons of interest because the value of the house always went up. so anybody, regardless of how much money they had or what their job was, could rack up an enormous amount of debt and a potentially ruinous interest rate and then turn around and pay it all back in a few years along with a large profit for themselves, because the value of the house just rose that fast. remember how in perfect strangers when larry gets the idea to buy that huge house and then fix it up themselves to turn around and sell it for millions?? yeah.

so then the "bubble burst"--people had been talking for years about how the housing market was over valued, and finally homeowners started listening to them. anyway, the perception was that the houses were worth less (and i mean really, isn't this a good thing? anyone who has seen the steady disappearance of cornfields and trees in favor of urban sprawl and insta suburbs in the mideast will have to agree, except for RE people, contractors, constuction, some landowners, etc). and this might have been because of the spikes in gas prices and the perception that they weren't going down again--nobody wanted to invest tons of money in houses in the burbs because they didn't have it and would cost them in gas. so. housing values stopped going up. in fact, they started going down. unheard of! thats not good for any homeowners (although it is good for people who don't own homes, but for the last few decades EVERYONE has been encouraged to buy a home, often by the gov't, because it seemed like such a good idea / solid investment) but it made things totally untenable for those people who had put themselves in massive debt on the expectation of "free" profits. especially because as soon as the market started to sour the lenders raised the interest rates wherever they could (although of course if you had a legit mortgage from a legit bank it would prob be fixed rate, unless you were a crazy optimist and were hoping it would go down?) so now the people with no job/bad job and huge debt were suddenly faced with no home valuse to get equity loans combined with huge huge monthly payments just to make their debt remain even. so they declared bankruptcy. so the banks (or whoever) foreclosed on their home. now, when a home gets foreclosed (which means that it gets repossessed), theres a possibly automatic process where people look at ALL the homes in the area and wonder if the people who bought them and the prices they paid were actually speculative investments (because its assumed that thats what the foreclosed home must have been) and so for every one of these you have in a given area, the official value of ALL the homes decreases.

which furthers the perception that the housing market was overvalued. which makes people not want to buy homes (At least not at this time). which makes the market loose more value. which makes more people who could barely afford their homes i nthe first place declare bankruptcy...

and with the cash cow of all those profligates sacrificed at last on the altar of common sense, spending on cell phones and hybrids and SUVs and plasma TVs likewise goes down, so companies earn less and might hire less people and govt tax revenue decreases further...

Next Time:

The source of the current troubles part 2:

that money is spent!

speculation, bundling, interconnected debt and international investment

the blister bursts when rubbed

mouth breather
nose whistler
foot tapper
nail biter
dandruff scratcher
eats constantly
"slurp, aaaah"

regarding extreme pain

two years ago, i somehow herniated a disc in my back. i think it was probably because i rode stphen's bike to work during the transit strike (i had just moved back to the city and started a new job so i felt like i was under some pressure) from brooklyn to the upper east side, and i really wasn't in shape but pushed through anyway. so at some point i remember feeling a sharp pain in my lower back but kept gonig anyway.



i thought i had pulled a muscle.

but over the next 6 months, the pain just kept getting worse and started reaching further and further down my left leg. it didn't respond to stretching, in fact it didn't matter what i did at all. it hurt when i would walk, causing me to change the way i walked and favor my right side. the worst when i was sitting on the subway. about 3 months into this, my health insurance kicked in and i went to the doctor. i was limping. this was on the upper east side, and all of the other patients in the waiting room were very very old. the doctor said, "young man, don't worry!" he told me to take asprin and make an appointment with a physical therapist. i took a long lunch and limped the 10 blocks from the office to the closest physical therapist. he tried to move my leg around but it hurt too much. he said that there wasn't much he could do to stretch the nerve, but that i should do some exercises to strengthen my abs. he said i should come back every day. the appointments cost $25 apiece with insurance. the pain got worse.

sortly thereafter i was at home after work (couldn't exactly go out and do stuff!) and it hurt so much i didn't know what was going on. i couldn't lie down, i couldn't sit down, i couldn't stand up, i couldn't think straight. i called the doctor. it was 11pm. the doctor said to call 911. they sent an ambulance. i had to buzz them in. they helped me down the stairs, i couldn't really move and almost fell. i didn't know what hospital to go to and wound up going to a crappy one. there was an incredibly drunk lady with an IV screaming about how she was going to fucking pee right here motherfuckers unless someone unhooked her and let her go pee. nobody came. i don't know if she peed or not.

i waited 3 hours shifting around sprawled on a plastic chair. finally a harassed doctor saw me. he gave me a percoset but refused to write me an RX for any opiates. the best part was that i got a hospital-issue cane. it was after 1 by the time i left and had to call a cab to get home. by the time i got home the percoset had worn off.



i went back to the doctor and he gave me an RX for extra strength vicadin. it made me mind the pain less. i kept going to work, what else could i do? i started eating 2 extra strength vicadin and 2 valium every day. the doctors, at least, weren't shy about handing out the pain meds because acute siatica is considered one of the most painful afflictions possible--its on the same level as fully body burns or road rash.

at some point, i composed the following poem:

You may find yourself with a view of the carpet. Just think!
That this has released you from all else
What mattered and seemed so much never was now,
and you may have: This view of carpet
or you may have nothing.
but the choice, isn't even yours!
and when you come back,
it will still be waiting.

see, the thing about siatica is that its a physical impingement at the bast of the largest nerve (besides the spine) in the body, which registers in the brain as a very high level of pain indeed. i remember wishing that i would just pass out. i remember that the pain would decrease and i'd realize that i was hunched over staring at the ground and that i hadn't been able to think while it was at its worst, that i didn't know how much time had gone by. at one point i was scrounging through my stash of painkillers unable to remember how many i had taken, unable to think well enough to weigh the risks of taking more. i decided to take more even if i died. I couldn't really mind, because the thoughts that would make one resentful, like "i'm a young man, this shouldn't be happening to me" etc didn't seem to have any meaning at all.

not like after the surgery, anyway, when i was recovering from that without the stabbing pain. that was lame.

and now i have it in the other leg.

Untitled

For two years in a row when I was younger, I volunteered at a summer camp for children with skin diseases. my parents wanted me to do it, and it fulfilled the community service requirement at my highschool. I qualified as one myself, and the camp always tried to present the kids with adults and role models who had the same conditions and problems that they did. The councilors, campers, and doctors with allopecia, of course, were comparably healthy, but it was still a chance for people dealing with the onset of the disease (which can cause random bald spots, etc) to feel normal. i also got to hook up with a bald girl from virginia, and have some cute photos. anyway, there were people and children with all kinds of problems, some of them rather extreme.

One of my friends at camp one year was a young australian named Derrick. Derrick had an extremely debilitating degenerative disease where his skin, where it rubbed on itself, would break down and fuse. therefore, although his face looked fine his neck, feet, knees, elbows, etc, had to be dressed and wrapped every day. He mostly sat in a wheelchair, even though he could stand with effort. I think the movement caused his skin to rupture where it had started to break down. With movement costing him so much, his muscles were in a sorry state. Keep in mind that he's a 17 year old boy. he did seem to have a bit of a nerdy bent and was very intelligent, but perhaps that was just the accent and if he had his preference he would have been playing rugby. alyway when i helped him up or helped him pick something up, i could feel the tremors in his muscles, which he nevertheless relished to use. likewise, when he hugged you you could feel his arms shaking. There was a younger kid with the same disease, but although he likewise needed his joints to be dressed and wrapped, he wasn't nearly so bad off and was much more active. by the time he reached derrick's age, he would probably be in the same condition.

looking back, i was rather a hellion at the camp, wherein the older and active kids were allowed to run a little wild and hook up with each other, have shaving cream fights (on a side note, an excellent thing to do is to take a regular shaving cream container, stick a pin in the nozzle, and then melt the nozzle around the pin with a lighter. When you pull the pin out and push the button, the shaving cream with shoot out about 4 feet, it works and looks like silly string, but makes a huge mess and you have to wash your clothes to get the oily cream out.) anyway i had some followers among the older campers and we would do "raids" where we would sneak into the woods and then throw sticks and things at the tents of the younger kids (just little sticks, so that it hits the roof and slides off the tent and makes a sounds like, "wump! zzzzzit) and scare the bejesus out of them, or just throw water baloons. then you could run up and shaving cream their camp, alway humiliating. so anyway derrick really wanted to go on a raid, and we asked the doctors about it and they were like, no. but he really wanted to go and the whole point was that we were badasses, so we wheeled his wheelchair to the edge of the woods and then helped him out. he had trouble walking through the underbrush because you have to step high. he became exhausted, but wanted to keep going. finally, we got within range of the enemy camp, and he chucked a few water baloons. he wanted to really "get" them and actually hit someone with one, but i explained that these were younger kids and we were really just trying to sow fear. finally we convinced him to treck back through the woods and his chair (only about 20-50ft), and despite his excitement he went to bed soon after. i can only imagine what damage was done to his skin, but he did seem to have a really good time.

the worst thing about his condition, though, was his hands. the constant motion caused the fingers to fuse together, to fuse to the palm. the doctors could cut them apart, but it would only happen again. you know that clear stuff that leaks out of cuts when they've stopped bleeding but art still trying to heal? and it forms a protective coating over the cut? his hands were coated in that. or rather, his fists. you could see the bones under the translucent skin/scab, but the only bit that he could move was the tips of his thumbs and the second knuckle of his pointer fingers. He used this to grasp the knot of the water baloons, or to shake your hand. sometimes he would wiggle the bones in his hands at you to be ironic. sometimes when i look down at my hands i see his.

the sacred nature of money in american capitalism

*so happy to be back. sorry for the delay.

in a society which values, forthrightly, money as the razon'det (sp?) for labor, which I think we can say is for most the body of everyday existence, that is, that labor and the struggle for the means to continue (whose exchange form is money) is the major pursuit of life, money is neverthess hidden and not discussed directly. This secrecy gives it the characteristics of the sacred, so that conversations regarding employment, which is of course essential to everyday existence as it does, for the majorety of people, determine who they will be spending their time with every day (this must be considered of major importance to their lives), that although these conversations have money as their foundation and are essentially negotiations about money, the money is never mentioned until the very end, the climax, of the discussion (said discussion possibly lasting months). the secret nature of the dollar ammounts being alluded to gives them a sacred tinge: that these are the all powerful figures, that are so powerful they must not be mentioned outside of the sacred context (the closing negotiation), that they have the power to eliminate people from your life as surely as if they ceased to exist. breaking the taboo regarding their sacred context, also, results in excommunication as a candidate "only" concerned with money should not be considered.

at the edges of employment, when one is changing jobs, for example, the sacred figures are called to mind in a daily existence that tries to forget their importance for it's own protections, because the stress of having the higher world looking down over your shoulder would makes life working life too difficult: the stresses, rivalries and competitiveness of open salary negotiations are so important and so powerful to the worker that the work itself is in eminent danger of being neglected in favor of them. They are the true work which is after the true purpose of all such work--the money. therefore, no one is supposed to know anyone eleses salary, and salaries are never to be discussed or mentioned, but rather forgotten, as the steel bars that hold up the office tower are ignored behind the drywall. at the edges of employment, when one is looking at new jobs, the comparison of salaries is unavoidable and the money shines through the cracks and colors everything nearby.

This can cause people to behave in strange ways, as the presence of the sacred often does, by imputing a feeling of powerlessness to those who have to bow before it's might and resentment in those who forgot that this arbiter of their lives and the people in them was always lurking behind the scenes, validating or invalidating everything, to those who feel extraordinary worth when their communion with the divine comes out in their favor, regardless of the relationships that they have trampled, former benefactors spit upon, human interactions and dependencies, build over months or years, ripped out by their roots.

I should also note that the extremely stressful environment surrounding the sacred dollars does benefit the employer (who creates it) because the stress level associated with dealing with is make employees less likely to question their underpinnings and ensures that only the strongest and most determined, most ruthless, most phsychotic, or simply most able to deal with the stress, will demand more money, risk the unknown, and meet emplyers closer to their true dollar limit.

regarding "luck"

some people really are luckier than others, and for these lucky folks things really are much more likely to go their way. however, "luck" only ever applies to one thing; being good-looking. if someone is lucky enough to be good looking, people are much more likely to listen to them, to want to be around them, to do what they want and try to help them however they can. this is then interpreted as the continuing influence of luck, when in fact it is just a reverberation of the interpretation of their physical form by their ambient society.

ANARCHY

Anarchists, like the black box, the kind that go to protests with socialists and have a vague luddite/marxist platform, seem to think that without corportate america there would be peace on earth. no wait, that's naive i have to give them more credit than that:

without any coroporate or government structures and without money, there would be peace on earth. or at least, what the young could build from the blank slate would be better than the built-up system.

when I was younger, stronger, and in better health i agreed with them. but i didn't think that there would be world peace, i thought that in the shuffle i could grab a bigger slice of the pie for less work by virtue of being fit and smart. i was probably wrong, but let me tell you what i would do if the world capitalist system collapsed along with all national governments and religions, tomorrow:

1. get together as much money as possible while the banks are going bust, convert it to gold, and bury it.

2. gather as many guns, body armour, and other weapons as possible

3. find some people i could trust, and arm them

4. find the most stable/promising rising warlord

5. pledge our support to him

6. help him sieze control of as large a territory as possible

who's with me?