Saturday Stews

I just made a very delicious vegetable stew/soup with organic vegetable broth, organic diced tomatoes, celery, carrots, garlic, red wine, barley, spinach, brocolli, corn, salt, pepper and cumin. I haven't been cooking much and I haven't been eating very well here. But I just felt the need for some old fashioned home cookin'. Also, I didn't make so much that I would have to eat it for months, just a normal potful of it. Perhaps two or three meals worth.

A different kind of Saturday Stew:

We're in the middle of a collapsing economy. We just elected a new President and lots of people here and all over the world are very excited, but reality is not looking very good for many people who are losing their jobs or are in danger of losing their jobs.

I have worked in the financial services industry for my entire career and I can think of several instances where a basically good, useful, creative idea starts out doing what was intended, but over time, "the smartest guys in the room" morph that idea into something that is over the top, that no longer does what was initially intended, and whose purpose now is only to walk the tax law tightrope and make money for the bankers.

One example is the mortgage loan. In the old days, we saved up our 20% down payment and then borrowed 30 year, fixed rate money. The monthly payment couldn't be more than 25% of take home pay, then it rose to 33% and up and up. Now, the housing market has collapsed. Lenders made loans on terms that didn't make sense, to people who could never pay them back. People without income, without jobs, and with no down payment were able to get loans. Everyone looked the other way and held their noses and signed "liar loans", no doc loans, negative amortization loans, exploding interest rate loans, etc. No one was looking and everyone thought housing prices would continue to rise forever. Wrong. Why would anyone be surprised that this bubble burst?

Another example is the high-yield or "junk" bond, created in the '80s, a time of excess in investment banking. Originally a very smart idea, allowing more companies to access credit markets, it was misused over time, causing billions of dollars of losses, the collapse of companies and jail terms for some of its bankers.

So, here we are with consumers not spending, companies shrinking or closing, people losing jobs, the stock market basically a casino, with program trading and hedge funds causing stocks to lurch up and down like a drunken clown on a roller coaster.

But I have many years of previous economic cycles behind me and so, I can look ahead, knowing that we'll survive this too. As long as I have my health and my family, I'm just fine.

Homelessness

I had an interesting experience while with my daughter. Instead of parking at the restaurant where she was to pick up a pizza while I waited in the car with the kids, my daughter paused and then backed out and parked across the street. I hadn't noticed, but she said that she had chosen to park across the street because she thought that I'd be scared of the two homeless guys lounging in the parking lot. Well, I am from New York, have lived in New York, San Francisco, Berkeley and elsewhere where there are homeless people all over the place. So, I am certainly not afraid of seeing a couple of guys in the parking lot.

But it got me thinking. I started thinking about my views and about her action supposedly on my behalf. I guess that I am something of a libertarian in that I believe that we are all responsible for our own situation. Some may think my views harsh, but I see that we are becoming more and more lazy and dependent on others for our support. Except if one is mentally ill, we all make choices that determine how we live our lives. Those two guys were not fated to end up homeless in a parking lot. When they were children, they probably had lots of choices as did their parents. I know, maybe they didn't have parents. Maybe they had bad parents. Maybe they were abused. Yes, these are very bad things for children to have to endure and these are things that will affect them forever. But many of us just made bad choices along the way. We choose to drop out of school, we choose to drink or take drugs as teens, etc. We choose not to get a job and keep it even if it isn't fun or if it's hard work. We choose to get pregnant even if we cannot support our children.

My little princess notices everything and lately she has been noticing people with signs that say things like "Will work for food, anything will help". She reads the sign out loud and asks what the sign means and why the person has to beg for food.

I came from a family where my parents did not go to college. My Mom left high school to go to work during the Depression. My Grandmother had lost her husband three years earlier and had to support her three children, so she (and they) went to work. They didn't stand on the street begging, they worked. And later, when they had children, my parents still worked. My dad worked six days a week for 12 hours a day in his dry cleaning business. My Mom stayed home with us but later went back to work just so that she would have health insurance benefits. They made choices and because of their choices I would have choices. So, thank you, Dad and Mom for being responsible, self sufficient working people who didn't expect Uncle Sam (or any other uncle for that matter) to support your family. You provided the model for me.

I have worked for almost 40 years. I worked when my kids were babies, when I didn't want to, when I was tired, when I was depressed. I worked long hours and many days left home when my children were asleep and returned when they were asleep. I had to. When others needed help, I was (and still am) the one who stepped up to help.

Please don't tell me that you can't find work. There's work out there. Even with the increased unemployment in this poor economy, there are "need help" signs. In all economic conditions there are ways to make money. It may not be much money, it may be hard, it may be dirty, but it seems to me that if I were faced with the choice of losing my home or working at the supermarket, the fast food place, the construction site or anywhere, I know the choice that I would make.

We, as a society, do need to do a lot more to help people become contributors. We have to train people so that they have skills that are valuable. We have to teach them, while they are still children, that education is so important and that information is power, knowledge is power. We have to teach them how to manage their money, how to balance their checkbooks, how to use and manage credit. We have to teach them about relationships and responsibility. We have to teach them that actions have consequences. That getting pregnant as a teen has consequences that will alter your life. Forever. That driving recklessly or under the influence and having an accident will alter your life. Forever. And, that letting things get so out of hand that you have to stand on a street corner with a sign begging for food or money, or lie on the ground in a parking lot will alter your life. Forever.