| Vol. 3 No. 21 October 16, 2008 |
| Reflections/Jonathan Gramling Economic adjustments |
| There was a time in my life — it’s hard to fathom most days — that I had a lot of time on my hands. Maybe it was just because I was younger and could stay up late at night and make sense of the next morning on little sleep. It was before my newspaper days and after my son was old enough to be fully engaged in his own life, but still dependent on me for meals, a roof over his head and the occasional loads of laundry. I was an empty-nester in waiting. So every once in a while, I could hide away for a day and read a book straight through. It might take me 16-18 hours, but I could read a book from cover to cover and get completely lost in the imaginary world contained inside. We aren’t talking books on philosophy here. We’re talking mystery stories. One of my favorites was John Grisham novels. The Firm intrigued me because I had passed through Memphis, the setting for the book, many times and lived in Mississippi where some of the action occurred in his books. And then there was always New Orleans that added some plot twists from time to time. The ending of The Firm has the brother of the protagonist basically whiling away his days on a boat that cruised from one Caribbean port to another. I could always imagine myself — especially during cold Januarys — on that boat cruising the Caribbean. Other novels and movies left me imagining myself striking it big somehow and living out my days in some tropical area sipping margaritas and perhaps writing the “Great American Novel.” Sometimes my fantasy was located in New Orleans, sometimes Florida and also Mexico from time to time. I was ready to get away from the rat race and enjoy a life of contemplation at an early age when I was still physically fit to enjoy it. It would be something to work hard for. It was something that could keep me motivated and coping with the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. I realize that I was not the only one with this day dream. All of those Corona ads and other elements of our mass culture found that tropical, sedentary lifestyle appealing. So many of us invested with a plan to retire at age 55 and kick back. And it seemed as if every available coastal plot of land was bought in the last 40 years and houses were built everywhere including in floodplains and the paths of hurricanes. Personally, I wouldn’t be able to enjoy it much because it seemed as if the only way you could get a sense of nature and seclusion would be to develop tunnel vision and look straight ahead at your little slice of the ocean view. It would be like the ‘Back to the Future’ ride at Universal Studios. The illusion of time travel seemed real as long as you didn’t look below you or above you and notice that hundreds of people were going through the same experience. During the past few years — from the Carolinas to the Mexican Caribbean coast — people have found that reality has crashed down hard on their dreams. People’s homes have been destroyed — sometimes several times — by the intense hurricanes that have barreled through the Caribbean, wreaking havoc on the tropical dream that millions shared, but Mother Nature could not support over the long term. Something had to give. The reality could not support the common dream that millions shared. And now with the financial havoc that germinated in New York and has spread like a pestilence over the global economic structure, I can’t help but think about the retirement dreams of millions of Americans who are approaching their golden years. At 56 years old, I am on the younger edge of the baby boom generation that resulted from all of those millions of armed service folks coming back to America at the conclusion of World War II and starting families and buying homes in unison. The baby boom generation is a big bubble moving into the golden years where a smaller number of people below the bubble are expected — as things now stand — to support the people inside the bubble during their golden years, for many of whom it started at age 55. It’s almost like an inverted pyramid and I have always wondered how that big base was going to balance itself on that rather small point. Perhaps too many of us in the baby boom generation had that same dream of having decades of good health and plenty of cash funneled to us through our 401(k)s, annuities, dividends, interest and all sorts of other financial arrangements. If all of us are enjoying the good life and someone else is supposed to be doing all of the work — something was creating the demand that caused millions of undocumented workers to leave their homes for the U. S. — but there aren’t enough people creating real goods and services and not just adjusting the monetary stream in their favor. Something had to give. So maybe why millions of us had the dream — and created all sorts of screwy securities offerings and other questionable financial deals to allow more and more of us to enjoy the dream — maybe the reality of the situation couldn’t support the dream and now the whole financial structure has come crashing down around us, wreaking havoc on the lives of millions. Perhaps this is a market adjustment that is bringing the dream closer to reality for many, many millions of Americans who may not be able to retire at 55 or move to the beach or golf all day or travel the world. Many of us might have to work a lot longer than we planned because our financial houses have been devastated by Hurricane Wall Street. Perhaps this has been a correction of the dream of America so that many of us will have to work well into our golden years. Too many of us may have had the same dream and tried to fulfill that dream all at the same time. Reality has a way of intruding. Nature has a way of correcting in spite of the man-made barriers and institutions that are created to channel it. Me, I entered the newspaper business and knew I would never be able to retire. I feel the pain of the millions who have been harmed by this financial catastrophe. Something had to give. |