Economic Anxiety

I really cannot get my head around the economic crisis. The numbers involved are so large that, as many people have remarked, they have become meaningless, like the number of stars in the galaxy. No one seems to really know what is going on, how long it will last or even whether we are through the worst of it.

While not normally an nervous person, if I think too much about this particular crisis I really can get myself anxious. So far we would seem to be fairly insulated from the effects being felt by millions of folks: both Brienna and I have jobs and seem likely keep them, we have plenty of time for our savings to gain some value again, we don't have any debt to speak of and are all in good health. But I feel like much that I thought I knew about finance, about how the world worked economically was illusion. I am left with the impression of skating over thin ice, feeling that at any moment we, our friends or family could plunge into the icy water below.

This video from TalkingPointsMemo, with Josh Marshall interviewing Joe Stiglitz, provides a good overview of the current situation and shadow play in the background. I also like this one. And although a few things in it don't make sense to me (money market accounts are not FDIC insured among others) it does give an insiders view of the magnitude of the issue.

Part of me worries that the worst is actually yet to come. Although millions of people have lost their jobs, there doesn't seem to be any particular reason this couldn't continue. The stimulus package continues to shrink and is still, according to Krugman, probably much smaller than it should be. I doubt that this will rival the Great Depression, but what reasons do I actually have to support that? There seem to be so many unknowns that it is hard to have any confidence that we aren't going to find something else that the Masters of the Universe forgot to mention to the rest of us.

That much of this crisis stems from the policies pursued by the Bush Administration, from the deliberate weakening of financial regulations for ideological reasons, leaves me just dumbfounded. I still cannot quite believe that Alan Greenspan, who draws a significant chunk of blame for this debacle, is not being more widely held in contempt in the States. How do these people sleep at night?

Beneath each statistic of unemployment in the US is a family and often children. Losing a job is no joke in the States, and right now what would be the chances of finding another one? If you did manage to find something, the chances of finding something with the same pay and conditions would have to be remote. That this is happening to millions of folks across the US is just as hard to fathom as the dollar figures for the various bailout packages.