I thought that I was like everyone on the planet in my close following of the soon to be called Second Great Depression. It turns out I was wrong. There are people on the planet who aren't thinking about this crisis. More about them later.
As an Irish person living in Canada I am having a mild schizoid response to the soon to be called SGD, as the Irish person in me wants to sit in a corner Peig-like, rocking myself into a hysterical fit with my smelly shawl over my face.
The east coast Canadian resident in me, who doesn't work in an industry related to cars and petroleum could give a shit about the whole thing.
The reader in me is interested in the narrative of the STBCSGD.
Which of my faces to wear? Which, which??
So far, I've been veering towards 'it'll be alright, Nova Scotia can't really tank much further, pass the potato chips and put on the next episode of The Wire'.
Then a couple of things happened this evening and my potential panic got viralled (is that a verb? It should be.)
A friends noted what appeared to be concern at the crisis on Facebook. As this friend is one of the few of us who is understood to understand money stuff he got some 'what have you read? what? what?' comments.
To which he responded, the Dow.
Classy!
Another friend, whose opinion I also respect, wrote that he had tried to blog about the Irish demiracle-isation and found it too depressing. As this friend is one of my 'black humour and pithy analysis of the underlying themes' reference points on world affairs, I had to restrain myself from the 'no! no! no!' comments. I don't want to further depress him.
Then I had to get back to normal, and have supper with my beloved and then upload his cool photos of a snowy owl for his friends to see on Facebook.
How much of our world we live online now?
During which time we discussed the soon to be called Second Great Depression over the pork chops and baked potatoes and subsequent PhotoFiltre action and photo-posting.
I explained the premise of the article I had found when I typed Credit Default Swaps for Dummies into Google. After I had decided maybe I should give a shit after all.
Firstly Himself laughed uproariously at the punchline. Which appeared to be, you didn't have to own the asset to buy insurance on it.
Then he spent a bit of time figuring out how we'd work such a scheme in our favour if in fact, we had our own version of a CDS.
If we could buy insurance on say, our friend's Kevin's house, even though we don't own it, and get a big pay out if the house burned down.
Then he spent some more time figuring out how many other people we know would have been filled in enough on the situation to have bought insurance. Say, if people started to notice that Kevin had a stupid habit of dumping his still-warm wood stove ashes in the green bin and figured he'd been leaving it a little close to the side of the house. And then looked up the forecast and fixed on a particular night when it wasn't going to snow or rain. And then bought the insurance.
Then he got mad.
Who in the hell sold this insurance to other people?
All of which, on top of everything else, got me a little upset.
But thankfully, I keep our green bin out in the middle of the yard away from everything.
Himself said 'it's like the fishery.'
When you live with a fisherman, even a former fisherman, everything in the world is like the fishery.
Major things like the bible are of course, all about the fishery.
And of course, global finance is like the fishery.
You grow up in the fishery and there's loads of fish, but you can't afford a boat so you go out on someone else's boat and fish, but you can't get much fish. You spend your time thinking about all the fish you could catch if you just had a licence. And a boat. And some nets. And sonar/ radar/ GPS.
Then one day, after a lot of lobbying, the government sets up a fisherman's bank and you get a cheap loan to buy a boat and all the accoutrements and you go out fishing a lot. And you make a lot of money and have a much better life than your parents.
But that's not enough, because you can catch more fish, and there's a market for it and so you buy a dragger.
And so there was a whole generation that left school early and grew up making eighty, ninety, hundred thousand a year just catching boatloads of fish. And a whole generation of financial services executives left college early to get bonuses giving these guys cheap money to buy toys, because they could afford to pay for it out of next year's catch.
And then one day, Queenie, we went out to catch next year's boat payments and car payments and ATV payments and whatever else payments, and there was nothing out on the ocean for us but a bare hook.
That's all it is now, Queenie, it's nothing but a bare hook.
Yes dear, I know it's like the fishery and that means it's really terrible and sad.
- I may seem slightly cynical, but I have heard this story one hundred thousand and four times.
It's just this time, dear, I think maybe the whole world's run out of fish at the same time.
It got me thinking though.
What makes former fishermen really squirm and rage and howl about the death of the fishery is the deadweight of the guilt of their own culpability. The fact that they knew they were destroying the fishery by dragging, but they did it anyway to make their boat payments.
Despite the efforts of legions of university researchers, despite the warnings of generations of environmentalists, nobody who had the power to break the cycle even tried to figure out how to stop it.
They try to make themselves feel better about it of course.
Nobody did anything because it was all about the fish processors needing big catches to pay for their processing plants and value chain modifications.
Goddamn big business.
Maybe.
But nobody made them go out fishing.
Or did they?
It was also all about jobs in rural communities. Crappy, back-breaking, seven bucks an hour processing jobs in rural communities that had nothing else and never would, unless they found oil offshore.
Goddamn small rural communities thinking they have a right to survive and rear another generation of kids on minimum wage jobs!!
Doesn't have quite the same righteous ring to it as goddamn big business, does it? In fact, who'd be against that?
Who'd be against a whole generation being able to stay home if they wanted to?
The deep depression caused by this deep depression is related to the fact that we all knew we were heading towards the bare hook a long time ago and nobody did anything to stop it.
There's no amount of trade union marches going to get rid of that nagging sense of guilt.
Standing on the deck after supper, listening to the sea pound behind us and the coyotes howl in the woods beyond the house, Himself said 'there isn't one person I work with ever talks about any of this. It just never comes up.'
Interesting.
Why do these guys not worry about the future?
Where we live, the bare hook swung by a while ago.
And not just through the fishery.
People adjusted.
They take a short view on things here now.
There are disadvantages to that.
And some advantages.
The guilt lingers though.
Maybe it's our lot to be the ones who feel that guilt.
