It’s not often that my heart goes out to workers in the City. Having mingled with them over the years in London, and watched some of their worst excesses, I can say that they are not a likely group of folk to be drawing my sympathy. However, my heart really does go out to all those who lost their jobs at Lehman Brothers yesterday, and all those who will lose theirs in the coming months. However well paid you are, whatever sort of a person you are, having the rug of financial security pulled out from underneath you always feels horrendous, always causes the same anger, fear and panic.
I feel a particular empathy, rather than a delighted sense of schadenfreude, because I am surrounded by people in similar situations, struggling to cope with the loss of security that a regular salary and a guaranteed job brings. I was talking to a colleague about all this the other day and his comment was that, in the Great Depression, workers could be seen throwing themselves out of the office window when news of their company’s demise reached the workforce.
Does the fact that no bodies (so far) have been seen splattered on the pavements of Canary Wharf and the Square Mile mean that the doomsayers are wrong, and this is not the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression? No, it just means that the safety net that is credit has become so taken for granted that when we lose our jobs, we just borrow more money, either by actually taking out a loan, or by switching from the debit to the credit card (which amounts to the same thing). It doesn’t mean we don’t worry about money, but it does mean that by the time we get to that suicidal stage where we can’t afford a loaf of bread and the children are dressed in rags, we have reached minus £50,000 or minus £100,000 rather than simply zero.
I can’t work out which is worse: a land of zero credit where no job = starvation, or a land of infinite credit, where no job = more borrowing = people sleepwalking into a nightmare land of spiralling inflation and unemployment, infrastructure collapse (thanks, Radiohead) and an agonising slide back into the past. A quick death versus a slow death, in other words.
But there’s no real choice, of course. It is our nature to delay disaster in any way we can. So while I wait for the lights to go out, I fancy a double latte, and my credit card says yes.
Safety nets
I worked for an investment bank (as an editor) while abroad. I know what bankers are like and I too empathise with the Lehman staffers. The vast majority of them will not be on fat cat salaries anyway – it’s only the high flying dealers on the trading floor who earn the mega bonuses.
My grandfather lost everything in the Wall St Crash, including several homes (the main one being a Long Island mansion complete with a retinue of servants) – his siblings had to wire money to him so he could bring his wife and children back to the UK. (There but for the grace of God… I could have been a Jewish American Princess!)
The really sad thing about the current crisis is that you are right – people will just pile yet more debt on to their credit cards instead of cutting them up and learning that it’s better in the long run to live on what you have rather than on what you don’t have. Downscaling a lifestyle never hurt the vast majority and before Thatcher’s debt revolution no one lived beyond their means, anyway. We need to go back to that.
I for one never put anything on the credit card that I can’t afford in cash.
You've hit the nail on the head. The first real tragedy of these huge bank collapses (and there will be more) are the folks who lose their jobs. America is not a nice place in which to lose your job; I didn't realize this until I travelled to Australia, where losing your job doesn't automatically imply losing your house (nor your sense of self-worth).
And you're right that people have become dependent on credit cards to prop them up. Thing is, though, if the social net against poverty which the government should provide (in my opinion — I'm not a fan of overpadded government, but I don't think people should starve) were functional, they might not have to use their credit cards for food. And I've watched many, many of my friends do this in bad times.
When times got bad for me in the late '80s, I sold LPs and books for the small amount of grocery money I could get. I ate a lot of ramen noodles. But then, the minute things got a bit better, that’s when I started running up my credit card. I'll never completely understand it, but it took years to get that debt — acquired mostly in travel and eating out — wiped out.
I'm trying to put all this into something coherent but I'm really just moseying around, thinking out loud in response to your thoughts.
My thoughts are currently far less coherent than they were when I made that post. A day of strength-sapping negotiation over a fair price for a piece of work has left me flailing around like a limp but aggravated fish.
*Flaps around in the imaginary mud*
You worry too much Bureauista – it’s always the Apocalypse… I’m sure you remember this:
“my death waits there among the leaves
in magicians mysterious sleeves
rabbits and dogs and the passing time
my death waits there among the flowers
where the blackest shadow, blackest shadow cowers
lets pick lilacs for the passing time
my death waits there,in a double bed
sails of oblivion at my head
so pull up the sheets against the passing time”
I’m here for ya.
Ah Johnny, I certainly grok that sentiment. But I don’t know the verse. It’s quite beautiful. What is it?
Of course I’ve only ever heard David Bowie’s cover version – which is why I thought you’d know it. It’s `My Death’ by Jacques Brell,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIzE3j84kKU
“a few good times before the end, so let’s drink to that and the passing time…”