Global Financial Meltdown

I just read this long article in Rolling Stone about the global economic crisis. http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/26793903/the_big_takeover. It gives a very comprehensive and yet amusing (because of Matt Taibbi's sardonic writing style) explanation of the global financial implosion.

During the past few months, as the world economy (and my 401K and my children's 529s) have tanked, I have been thinking about how we can get the best and brightest young people in our country to go into government service instead of working in finance. As long as an investment banker or hedge fund manager can make tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars working on Wall Street and the maximum pay grade in government is below 6 figures it is going to be very difficult. The incentives are too distorted.

What I think we need is a Peace Corps or ROTC type of program that would give graduates the opportunity to go into government service in return for having their college and graduate school paid for, or their loans forgiven. If we could get whiz kids majoring in math, accounting, finance, economics, and law and business school graduates to go work for the SEC, the Federal Reserve, the Treasury, NASDAQ or the OTC maybe these regulatory agencies could keep up with the greedy bastards on Wall Street or even get one step ahead of them. Any maybe we do need a tax code that takes away some of the incentive to becoming ultra rich.


There are some bright and talented people who go into low paying professions (think teachers, social workers, artists and peace corps volunteers) because they love what they do and the non-financial, psychic rewards are more important to them than the monetary. Unfortunately in the U.S. culture we have become increasingly materialistic and our whole economy and way of life is dependent on consumption. Since about the 1980's, more than 25 years, we have come to believe that it is our birth right and indeed the American Dream to own 60 inch flat screen TVs, the latest electronic gadgets, mega mansions, designer clothes, and SUVs. It takes a lot of money to fund that type of dream. But pursuing "things" for their own sake is just and endless and vicious cycle. Whether it's a new car, an iPhone (but I really want one!) or a new pair of shoes, the novelty wears off fairly quickly. It starts early in life. A child sees a toy advertised on TV and begs his parents to buy it. He plays with a new toy non-stop for a few days but then quickly forgets about it. The toy ends up in the bottom of a closet, gathering dust. The bottom line is that we don't have a critical mass of bright, talented folks going into public service because it doesn't pay well enough for us to have the life we think we should be able to live.


Perhaps the silver lining the clouds of this financial storm is that we will be forced to reassess what is really important, what really creates a quality of life. To me it is to have the luxury of time. Time to spend with family and good friends, to enjoy the beauty of nature and the benefit of a clean environment, to have time to spend on creative endeavors like writing and painting and cooking, even blogging. Time is the ultimate luxury as far as I'm concerned.

I am hopeful that Obama's presidency will succeed; that the economy will recover, our troops will come home from Iraq and Afghanistan (although things are not looking good on that front today.) and we can spend our resources on something other than war and weapons. I hope having the Obamas in the White House will make it "cool" again to work for the government. Something we haven't seen since JFK was President.

Just Call Me Scrooge

O.K. Now that Nanowrimo is behind me, it's time for my annual holiday rant. I HATE CHRISTMAS! The holiday problem is a feminist issue. On top of all a wife and mother's normal work load, which is basically 24-7 to begin with, the holiday season brings on a whole host (the unholy kind) of extra holiday tasks, just when Seasonal Affective Disorder is kicking in with a vengeance and all I want to do is hibernate like a Grizzly bear.

First there is the decorating: hauling the boxes out of the garage attic (why didn't I label them last year when I was putting all of this crap away!) and decking the halls and mantles with boughs of artificial pine garland and ribbon and lights and pine cones. Oh darn, only half the lights on this strand work. Have to go to Target again and buy more lights made in China that are so cheap they only last a year or two. Fight with your spouse as you put up the Christmas tree and string more temperamental lights on it.

Next, and if this were done first if would not be such a problem, buy, wrap and mail gifts to everyone and your brother. And they need to get there before Easter darn it!

While all of this is going on, throw in a few fancy holiday parties where everyone else is going to be perfectly coiffed, spray tanned, manicured and pedicured and looking fabulous in their sparkly holiday dresses. I am too fat to fit into last year's outfit so I panic and start ordering all kinds of stuff on the Internet to wear and pray to God and baby Jesus that they will fit and look flattering on me and get here on time. Then I eat and drink too much at the parties which makes me feel even worse about my waistline and butt. I'll think about that another day, after January 1st when I make my perennial New Years resolutions vowing to lose weight and get in shape. In the meantime, I'll have another peppermint martini please.

Plan and attend a few school parties and holiday concerts, the more kids you have, the more divided up these precious few days left to get it all done become before the kids are out of school on vacation. Pass the Excedrin Migraine please.

Pick up the relatives that are coming for ten days at the airport and try to feel happy to see them. Smile.

And then as we get closer to the big event of Christmas Eve dinner, there is the meal planning, grocery and wine shopping, cooking, table setting (oops, I'm short one plate, a white wine glass, and two salad forks, wonder what happened to them?).

Put it all together and it is very overwhelming. But I have only myself to blame as a master procrastinator. Still I wonder why my spouse isn't as stressed out as I am. Why should he worry about all of this? That would be my job.

The Christmas spirit will kick in eventually, it always does, usually late on Christmas Eve when I am at a midnight candle light church service listening to my favorite Christmas Hyms, or sitting on the couch in the dark with my husband after the kids and grandparents are asleep (and Santa has come and gone) inhaling the heavenly fresh pine smell of the Christmas tree (it hasn't dried out and dropped all its needles yet because we just put it up yesterday!) and thinking about how blessed we really truly are, and how good it is that the holidays bring out generosity in almost everyone, even my inner Grinch.

Synopsis of My Novel

My good friend and writing buddy Sydne, the one who inspired me to try to do this Nanowrimo thing, told me the other day, that she had heard of an editor from a large publishing house who randomly stumbled across a writer's blog describing the novel she was writing and offered her a book contract! So here I go:

The working title is "The Other Side of the Fence." I hate it, so I know that will change when I'm done with the rough draft. It is a story about four college roommates at an Ivy League University who choose decidedly different career/life paths after they graduate. The novel examines the ramifications of the choices made by these post-feminist women, the careers they embark upon, the relationships with the men in their lives, their families, and how their lives play out as a result of the choices they made. The characters are our own archetypes, a little of them lives within each of us. Their lives are not complete until they come together later in life, and embark on a venture that integrates the various strengths, personalities, and experiences they each bring to the table.

So if you are a publisher and you are reading this and are looking for the next great American Novel, leave me a comment and I'll be in touch asap.

Nanowrimo

I haven't blogged much lately, not only because I'm still basking in the afterglow of the Obama victory, but also because I am participating in National Novel Writing Month. My goal is to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. Clearly Chris Baty who invented Nanowrimo is not a woman who annually hosts a big Thanksgiving dinner at her house and is also responsible for holiday shopping, decorating, gift wrapping, gift mailing, party planning, party hosting and holding another big family gathering on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day or perhaps both! I'll blog more on that as the holidays get closer. Christmas usually turns me into an angry, militant feminist who feels very persecuted during the lovely holiday season as everyone in my family except me is the beneficiary of my largess.

I'll bet Chris Baty does go to a lot of holiday parties however. Even though he chose the unfortunate month of November for National Novel Writing Month, I like him anyway. His book, No Plot, No Problem, is hilarious and very helpful to crazy people like me who have decided to try to write a novel in a month. If you're curious about National Novel Writing Month, I encourage you to go to http://nanowrimo.org for more information. Maybe you'll consider signing up next year.

I'll post more on my novel over the next month or so. Wish me luck!

Red State Blue State

Red state? Blue state? What will be Montana's fate?

All day on Tuesday I felt like a kid on Christmas Eve. I canvassed hard in the morning on the lower north side of town, propelled by adrenalin, I hit all 50 houses on my list in less than 2 hours. Most of the residents weren't home, but I did talk to a few who had already voted for Obama. Later, at the grocery store, where I was picking up food and drinks for the party planned for that night at Obama headquarters, I noticed that most of the grocery workers and checkers had "I voted" stickers on their shirts. During the past few months I had noticed more than a few Obama bumper stickers in unlikely places, like my daughter's elementary school parking lot. Could it really be that Montana was going to turn blue this year?

My family and I watched the election returns on TV all evening and into the night. We rejoiced each time a state was called for Obama and bit our finger nails when others were won by McCain. When the news anchors finally declared Obama the winner we popped an expensive bottle of champagne we had been saving for a special occasion. Woozy with joy (and the bubbly) I went to bed about midnight believing that Montana too was going for Obama. Imagine my disappointment when I woke up the next morning to find out that no, McCain had won our state by 3%.

For a little while I felt angry. Was all my hard work and that of countless volunteers knocking on doors and making phone calls a complete waste of time? Despite trying our hardest we just couldn't quite turn Montana from a red state to a blue state. Then I found out that we did win the county I live in and that made me feel a little better. And after all, losing by only 3% was a huge shift in a state where Bush beat Kerry by 20% in 2004.

And then I began to think about how much I personally had learned from the campaigning process. I tend to be pretty introverted and I had to move way out of my comfort zone to knock on the doors of complete strangers and to venture into neighborhoods into which I had never felt comfortable venturing after dark. The process opened my eyes and that of my family to the plight of many of our neighbors. And I learned a lot about the difficulty of getting the poor, under-educated and disenfranchised to engage in the political process and to realize that their voices need to be heard.

No doubt, it will still be uncomfortable being a liberal living in a majority red state. I had a few doors slammed in my face and talked to more than a few nasty and prejudiced people on the phone during the campaign. When I put my Obama yard sign away, I noticed it was riddled with tiny holes from a shot gun, but it's not all that unusual for people to use signs for target practice in rural Montana. But I won't let those negative things bother me today. When the sun rose this morning the big beautiful Montana sky was streaked with purple.

My Campaign Stops

I've been out canvassing for Obama for the past few days and am signed up for Get Out The Vote shifts up through election day. (This is no time to be complacent and think we don't have to work our hardest to make sure everyone votes!) Yesterday my family joined me and we were assigned to a small Montana town about 30 miles from where we live. It was a real eye opener in many ways and I was glad we all had the opportunity to see how truly fortunate and blessed our family has been in comparison to some of the doors we knocked on yesterday. Days like that put ones problems in perspective almost instantaneously. The list we had seemed to be outdated. Many of the addresses on our list simply didn't exist or were difficult to find because many of the homes were not numbered. After awhile my husband realized that some of these addresses were vacant lots and most likely had had homes or trailers that had been torn down or moved away.

Most of these homes and trailers were tiny: less than 500 square feet. Most were in disrepair with cracked concrete stoops, peeling paint and had yards overgrown with weeds. I couldn't help but think of the contrast to other places we've lived, particular the Midwestern McMansion suburb we lived in for a few years in the roaring 1990s. Most of the homes there were 10 times the size of these rural homes, with huge, meticulously manicured (and chemically treated) lawns.

As we continued to knock on doors, most people weren't home on this Saturday afternoon. Where was everyone? I wondered how many might be out working at a second or third job, or were napping to make up for lost sleep from last night's shift. One of the first thing you notice about poor people is how bad their teeth are. They have no dental coverage for sure even if they do have health insurance. Going to the dentist is an unaffordable luxury for these people. I've heard some very sad stories during the past few days about people lacking health care or maxing out on their policies. One couple was considering filing for divorce so the wife who had health problems could qualify for medicare.

Stories like that make you shake your head. How can the wealthiest country in the world allow people to be bankrupted by medical bills? Why are wealthy people so unwilling to pay 3% higher taxes to fund schools, pave and maintain roads, and provide a safety net for people who are down and out?

The saddest thing of all is that we found in this rural town that the people we talked to were planning to vote for McCain 2 to 1 over Obama. It makes no sense that people in poverty vote against there own economic self interest. How can democrats reach out to and connect with these people? I just heard George Will say on the Sunday morning talk show, This Week With George Stephanopoulos ,that the only demographic group that McCain is leading in is rural, down-scale, white voters. You got that one right George!

I think I'll sign up for an extra Get Out The Vote shift tomorrow.

When Will This Be Over?

I'm about ready for this election to be over. It's hard to be a liberal democrat living in a red state. I miss my conservative friends whom I can't even talk to out of a fear of irrevocably damaging my relationships with them. I miss our walks and girls' night out and my book club. Just the other day when I was carpooling one of my kids around, we drove past a McCain-Palin sign and one of my passengers, a teenage neighbor girl, started talking about how much she loved Sarah Palin. I had to bite my tongue until it bled. My daughter, who has been totally indoctrinated by her liberal mother, and who really wanted Hillary Clinton to win the democratic nomination, didn't make a peep. You could have cut the tension with a meat cleaver. We had a dinner party last week for some of my husband's work colleagues. I had to pull up the Obama sign at the end of my driveway and stick it in my garage for the night. We weren't sure about the political persuasion (although we could make a pretty educated guess) of the couple we were trying to recruit to move here and we didn't want our support for Obama to be the deal breaker.

I'm worried too that because of the negative political ads and mailings, it will be impossible for the next President to reach across the aisle to the other party and reach any kind of compromise. I think what the Republicans did to the Clintons will look like child play compared to how they are going to go after Obama. Hopefully he will win in a landslide and the Republicans will have to accept the fact that he won a mandate for change.

I am feeling the need for a detox, like I've been on a political bender that has lasted too long. I need to go cold turkey and quit my junkie addiction to political cable TV shows and internet blogs. I think I'll go on a macrobiotic diet and train for a marathon. Well not until after November 4th.