There goes the Economy...

Like most observers, I've been anxiously following the news about the financial meltdown in the U.S. and I can't help but feel that we're all standing on the crumbling precipice of an historical shift that is about to sweep us all over the edge. Of course, I could be reading too much into the fearful speculations of the news media. Perhaps it will be another false alarm -- like Y2K -- unnecessary anticipation of what turned out to be a non-event. Yet, somehow, this feels different,-- more real and pervasive. We have been told to brace ourselves for a looming lean-spell that is being billed as a "deep recession" -- "experts" are throwing buzzwords around that imply that this has uncanny resemblance to the crash of 1929. What is one to believe amid all of this panic and dread?
At an individual level, it feels so abstract and removed from our day-to-day realities. A mass-scale defaulting of high-risk mortgages and the subsequent collapse of major U.S. investment banks sounds like some kind of "doomsday" scenario that is too far beyond our control to even contemplate . People of my generation remember living through the end of the Cold War -- a time that was unimaginable prior to when it actually happened. A rapid succession of smaller events built up to the collapse of the Soviet Union and it took us all by surprise, yet still, our lives in the west were not noticeably altered. We continued to live lives on credit and ignore the wisdom of our elders --about thrift and not spending more than you earn. An entire society bred in the instant gratification ethos of the boomer generation. Self-interested entitlement and a rejection of the values of the generation of the Great Depression that warned us about the need to make sacrifices and defer our own pleasure. We've all grown up in a culture of such heedless excess that many of us couldn't conceive of the lifestyle of our more cautious forebears.
At the end of the cold war it was predicted that western capitalism had won out in the end and thus market values had been vindicated. There were some who declared that if history was defined by the Marxian struggle of class, then the ultimate ascendance of free-market capitalism meant the "end of history."
We live our lives against the backdrop of bigger events that frame our more mundane concerns, so why should we be so fazed by yet another one of these larger, unfolding global crises? Anyone with an informed understanding of historical trends(or common sense) could have anticipated the train wreck of the U.S. banking system. Eight years of an unregulated financial sector that was given carte blanche to enrich its shareholers with whatever means possible combined with pathological avarice and a sense of invincibility proved to be the toxic ingredients for a long-simmering brew. This whole crisis ought to translate as a lesson in political economy for the public. It demonstrates how an untouchable financial elite who have been allowed to play by a different set of rules (in this case, no rules) without parameters, or prudence and blindsighted by insatiable power and greed -- have wiped out the hopes and destroyed the lives of the many. I wonder if this is enough to pull the curtain back from in front of the American public's self-focussed gaze and reveal the raw, ugly essence of the dogma of American privilege that they have been duped into swallowing. I wonder if they'll be able to make the connections and discover the source of their forthcoming woe? It is perhaps too optimistic to credit the American public with such sophistication and sense but at least some of that anger and frustration will translate into electing Obama in November. In the eyes of an outsider who will nonetheless be effected, this all reads as some form of karma.
The U.S. electorate handed an inept, callous administration a second mandate to fine-tune its ideologically-driven agenda. Now we're reaping the harvest as it were. In a sense, this wild de-regulation didn't start with the Bush administration, but let's just say that it was certainly aided along with his presidency.
It may take a few generations to recover from this. We have all been violated by this and it seems that anger is not enough, a whole process of reckoning is needed -- on the global scale,on the societal scale and on the individual scale. Will we continue -- as a species, as a population, to live in a collective form of denial? While the planet is dying and the lifestyle of consumption and convenience that we've only ever known becomes more inaccessible to most of us, will this be enough of a clarion call to consciousness? One hopes so, but perhaps it will take another generation -- the true inheritors of our mess -- to take up the cause of real change. But by then it might be too late.