Long bike ride this morning along the lakefront with a slight chill in the air – a welcome chill – I stopped at the Causeway and watched the very large brown pelicans and white pelican perched atop the railroad ties. Back for the winter. Oh what a glorious sight to see. I called to them that the bayou is ready for their return.
At a gathering of Spanish, Brazilian, American, and others there was not a concern for Wall Street – some in the group already live on the margin, happily I might add, and are not expecting anything to be added or subtracted to their lives.
Spare a minute or two and listen to the sage advice of Sarah.
When we moved back to New Orleans in 1995, we lived on Napoleon Avenue in a half a double and had a back porch that was surrounded by night blooming jasmine and crepe myrtle. Our neighbors had a fountain that we could enjoy from across the dense leaves of a jasmine vine. Despite having arrived during a heat wave and having to unpack a van packed tight with our belongings that we dragged cross country not once but three times, we managed to sit outside nearly every night for about ten months.
We had dinner or drinks or cigars or just coffee out back in that small yard, sitting there in that lush outdoor room, the weather, the feeling, the whole package was ideal.
Narrator: It was an unusual time – San Francisco was a distant memory that was beckoning Steve back to architectural glory, New Orleans was a changed landscape of friends gone distant and family gone nuts.
In the backdrop of our New Orleans story, on the West Coast, a dot.com subterfuge was tuning up and playing out – the likes of which folks my age have never seen (aside: though our relatives had back in the roaring 20s).
Fast forward, we returned to San Francisco in 1996 and experienced the hay day of financial gluttony gone mad and then years later, we came back again to New Orleans, in 2005, and I spent the next couple of years trapped like a rat in the American Can Company because of Katrina, still longing to sit outside in the warm sultry evening that only the South seems to offer.
So, I planted night blooming jasmine by the screen porch so the nights would be heady again and now finally, last night, we sat out back with friends and had dinner, conversation, and wine and the decade or so period of time that came in between those nights on Napoleon and the nights here at the LaLa fell away.
Narrator: But not so subtly in the background, the shenanigans on Wall Street had come undone and a din chorus of powerful men’s voices buzzed like flies circling a raw piece of meat – and we sat like young maggots on a discarded heap of trash, our insides in a constant state of agitation against the hum of white noise.
Credit Oprah with having said that and my friend Jer who told me about it – but I was just speaking to a long term source today who said, “Rachel, you cover media, work in the financial industry and live in New Orleans – now you, have an interesting life.”
I said, yes my dear and it is getting interestinger and interestinger all the time!
In an interesting conversation yesterday, I was surprised to learn that some folks feel it is the fault of the people who offered credit, and not those who sought credit, as to why we, as a country, as a global community, are in this financial mess. Come, come – if someone offers me the ability to borrow more than I have the means to pay back, am I blameless for taking it?
We all have a responsibility to this country. If we have to shoulder the burden that comes from having partied too long – then so it is – what we don’t want is for us commoners to have to go home from the party while the Mr. Fishmans and his ilk continue the two-step from dusk till dawn.
Excerpted from today’s NYT:
But as panic gripped financial markets last week after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, WaMu customers started withdrawing their deposits. The government then stepped up its efforts, at points going behind WaMu’s back to work privately with four potential bidders on a deal. On Wednesday afternoon, the government solicited formal written bids. On Thursday morning, regulators notified James Dimon, chairman and chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, that he was the likely winner.
“We are building a company,” Mr. Dimon said in a brief interview. “We are kind of lucky to have this opportunity to do this. We always had our eye on it.”
But the seizure and the deal with JPMorgan came as a shock to Washington Mutual’s board, which was kept completely in the dark: the company’s new chief executive, Alan H. Fishman, was in midair, flying from New York to Seattle at the time the deal was finally brokered, according to people briefed on the situation. Mr. Fishman, who has been on the job for less than three weeks, is eligible for $11.6 million in cash severance and will get to keep his $7.5 million signing bonus, according to an analysis by James F. Reda and Associates. WaMu was not immediately available for comment.
Republicans are scared the bailout smacks of socialism – now, I love me a free market economy, but for Mr. Fishman to walk away from this mess pocketing $7.5 million and a severance of $11.6 million is just plain wrong.
Went to Meaux Bar to split a delicious burger with gruyere cheese and have a Ketel One cosmo before going to see Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Woody Allen’s new film. Highly recommend. Think that Bardem and Cruz were so awesome together that their characters practically leapt off the screen. See it while you can – it left Canal Place after only being there a week – DON’T ASK – sometimes living in a third world state ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.
Four years ago for the election Bush scared the shit out of the American public by making them believe that if they voted for anyone but him the terrorist were going to come over and decimate us. Night before last, FOR THE UPCOMING ELECTION, he almost cried as he told the American public that we are going to hell in a hand basket – the EMPIRE is crumbling – and we need this bailout which is going to cost you, me, and Joe Blow down the street lots of our hard earned dollars – but dear readers THE EMPEROR HAS NO CLOTHES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Everyone is scared – everyone is panicking.
This is a time for clear headed-ness, a time for long-term solutions, a time for bucking the status quo and going with unfavorable views and take a good hard look at the problems and finding real answers. There is only one man who is capable of doing this – Barak Obama – I hope he heeds the call.
In 1998, I was sitting at a restaurant having a glass of wine in San Francisco and the four women sitting at the table next to me were not talking about shoes, men, or children. They were talking about their portfolios. One gushed that she had moved more of her money into equities and another and another said that she had upped the amount she was putting into her Schwab account.
Fast forward. Ten years later….
Yesterday, over Turkish cay, four women sitting at a table in my house and one says, “Should I pull 20% out of my retirement, take the loss, but get the cash out while I can?” The other woman says, “And then what, put it under a mattress?” Another says, “Did you see Bush last night. He was terrifying.”