How Bad Could It Get?
“Mr. [John Tepper] Marlin (former Chief Economist for the City Comptroller’s Office) expects that there will be more defaults on buildings as condominium and co-op owners fail to pay their common charges, and also more sales of foreclosed properties. Rents will continue to dip. There will be longer lines at the grocery store, because fewer…
“Mr. [John Tepper] Marlin (former Chief Economist for the City Comptroller’s Office) expects that there will be more defaults on buildings as condominium and co-op owners fail to pay their common charges, and also more sales of foreclosed properties. Rents will continue to dip. There will be longer lines at the grocery store, because fewer people will eat out. And he worries about unrest, citing hard-hit Iceland as a recent example. I’m concerned about people being so desperate that they lose the fear of losing their own lives and they become so desperate that they’re willing to endanger other people’s lives, he said.” — NY Times
THANK you, people! To crib an old Catholic phrase, the “sense of the faithful” seems to be carrying the day here. Is it just me, or is the single biggest difference in this current economic downturn the degree of DOOMSAYING abroad in the media?! I came of age in this town in the late 70s (we posted the FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD headline in our journalism classroom, right next to SAM SLEEPS), (that’s “Son of Sam” for you young’uns). Despite the apocalyptic crap going on, the city was vibrating with life and cultural energy; I went to the Met four times a weekend doing SRO for the ballet and opera for $5 a ticket, haunted revival houses for old movies and vintage dives on St. Marks for old clothes, and walked through the Lower East Side every day, stepping over winos and full of excitement for the future. Flash forward to 1986: My husband and I are the (proud?) new owners of a ruined Flatbush boarding house. We survive on Jamaican meat patties, step over crack vials on our way to the subway, spend our last dime on an alarm system, and are full of excitement for the future. Now it’s 2001; everything is f*cked up and terrifying, and the last thing on anyone’s mind to my recollection was the economy; my husband’s job is to publicize a major museum, and it’s virtually empty for months as people stay home smelling smoke and fearing anthrax, but we don’t care because we’re ALIVE.
And now it’s the End of the World as We Know It, because lots of Wall Street Tycoons (and more ordinary folk) are out of work, and million-dollar apartments are only selling for $750K, and there are fewer fancy restaurant meals getting eaten and Birkin bags getting bought. Well, yesterday we spent the Apocalypse in Ikea, where we ate meatballs with our daughter and bought an $11 bedspread and (for her, since she’s starting high school in the fall) a cool $25 lamp. There was a very long line for the checkout–for the meatballs and for the merch–and everyone looked happy and functional, just like the much-mocked Swedish furniture, and Red Hook as always amazed us with its transformation. And I felt, after several hours away from the goddamned mass media and their yawps of doom, guess what? Excited for the future!
I’m beginning to think that guy was right, the one who said we have nothing to fear but fear itself…
and i’m concerned about out-of-work economists being so desperate that they resort to fear-mongering hyperbole as a way of getting quotes in the new york times.
Soylent Green is people.
ETA – also if there was some kind of “everybody gets an ipod, cell phone, and laptop program” there be an all time record almost zero level of crime. send some stimulus dollars to that program i’ve envisioned and you’ll see a much nicer society with almost zero crime. (well burglary and mugging type crime i guess). oh and all children ages 11 – 17 can get an allowance of 50 dollars a week. BUT they have to work for it by doing something like polishing an old lady’s fingernails or something. im telling you it would work!
*r*
Actually rob, if you read the other post, its precisely those things (cell phones and ipods) for which their theft is raising the crime statistics.
We all do our part trash talking people here so that we’re not out on the street “endangering other people’s lives.”
crime can never be as bad as it was in the 70s for the simple fact that technology such as the internet and cell phones and ipods keep a lot of antsy teenage thugs busy with themselves. they are too busy on myspace (im being SO serious about this btw) posting booty pics and trash talking each other, that there’s no time for actual crime on the streets.
*rob*
drama queen
His vision is not a stretch, in my opinion.
How long would the lines get at the PS Food Coop???