Economic downturn headed lower

It’s a nice quiet Sunday and, for at least one day, I’m not going to worry about our collapsing financial system. For the last several months, as my work for a financial services company became less and less, our once-routine weekend of overtime has gone the way of Lehman Brothers and AIG. The company still has a perceived need to put us on call for Sundays, just in case the recession ends overnight, but now we get an inevitable call on Saturday telling us basically “never mind, you’re still doomed”.

The drumbeat of bad news that’s been so incessant in recent weeks can really get a person down, in case you haven’t noticed. I’ve tried several times to swear off checking the Dow every few minutes or so, but like a heroin addict I keep coming back to the sizzling spoon and needle stick of imminent economic collapse. I rationalize any less-than-horrible news into something that can give me hope: Friday, for example, I’m sure we were all thrilled that the fall was less than 200 points, far better than anything else we’d seen that week. I was just as thrilled to learn the other day that my health insurance is going up only 9% and that my gynecological checkups are no longer subsidized.

Still, down, down, down it spirals, and the media scramble to come up with ever-more alarming descriptions of how bad things have become. One website calls it a “tailspin”, while a newspaper opts for “catastrophe”, and the networks use labels like “disaster”, “calamity” and “tsunami”. Confidence is “sliding”, “plummeting”, “diving”, “tanking”. The market is volatile, disturbed, upset, deranged, explosive, troubled, distressed, unbalanced or unhinged. Any minute, I expect to see the news flash reporting that “moments ago, the Dow crashed through the trading floor, seriously injuring 12 in the sub-basement below.”

We scout about desperately for something reassuring, for some fringe economist willing to go on record with a prediction that the recession will last only a few more quarters. Here’s someone standing behind a podium and looking authoritative; he says the economy will be “fine”. Oh, shoot, it’s just the president, sounding like someone who’s just been asked how his weekend was. Here’s another politician expressing faith that we’re destined to see an improved economy in the long term because Americans are the hardest-working, most-innovative employees in the world. Obviously, someone who’s never been to Hardee’s.

To avoid all the repetition of how bleak things are, maybe we can turn the scales upside-down. I think I’d feel better to hear that recessionary trends are “sky-rocketing” or that the downturn has now “exceeded the fears of even the bleakest pessimists”. Instead of hearing that analysts on Wall Street are “looking for a bottom” (who isn’t?), we could think in terms of a “new peak in negativity”. Maybe we’ll hear soon that equities have fallen so low that 100 shares of GM are being given away with the purchase of every new Hummer, though I guess that still would mean no one is trading in the stock.

I’m also getting tired of the whole Main Street versus Wall Street dichotomy. This seems like a cynical effort to put the blame for the crisis in the laps of those who were silly enough to buy up our mortgages, rather than in our belief that we could move into a dream house for the down payment on a new pick-up. We pretend that failing banks and crippled investment houses are hurting only those snooty New Yorkers who probably deserve to be taken down a Cosmo or two anyway. What good does it do to focus instead on the deserted storefronts in our own dilapidated downtown districts? I couldn’t shop in a store on the Main Street of my town if I tried, unless maybe I was looking for some of that heroin I was mentioning.

I’m also growing weary of the visuals we keep getting from financial capitals around the world that attempt to put a human face on the misery by capturing the moment that some desperate trader has just learned that not only has he lost his investments, but his job and the love of his mother. We’ve all seen these pictures of crushed individuals putting their hands into various positions on their faces -- covering their mouths, rubbing their eyes, wiping their brows, blowing their brains out. They cringe, they scowl, they sulk and they make a variety of other frowny faces. Are these the only expressions of dismay these folks are capable of? Or is it just easier for a photographer to capture than the moment when Morgan Stanley’s floor manager stomps his feet, holds his breath and advises clients they should all sit in the corner and eat worms?

So we didn’t end last week with the Black Friday that many had predicted after the near-700-point drop in the Dow we saw on Thursday. Whether or not we’ll have a Black Columbus Day instead is yet to be seen. I thought we’d have a nice three-day weekend to catch our breath, but now I see the market will be imploding at its usual start time of 9:30 tomorrow morning. Can’t we even honor the memory of the western world’s most over-rated explorer without wondering what shade of ebony the day is going to be?

I’m still waiting for the media to point out that you can’t spell “confidence” without “con”, you can’t spell “Standard & Poor’s” without “poor”, and you can’t spell “Nasdaq” without “ack!” And you can’t spell “Dow Jones” without “down”, though you’re left with “Joes”, which I guess could be the name of a bankrupt diner on Main Street. While we’re at it, I might add that anagrams for Wall Street include “wallet rest”, “rat well set” and “law let rest”. But I’m not sure that adds anything to our understanding of why Western-style capitalism teeters on the brink.