Originally Posted by JustPassingThrough

I don't know why people have such a hard time wrapping their heads around it. The stock market crash of 1929 happened 12+ years before Pearl Harbor. 9/11 was the catalyst.

Not that I disagree with you (I happen to think 9/11 started something), but your reasoning makes no sense whatsoever.

Originally Posted by Arkarch

My quibble with 9/11 is that I dont think there was a 4T attitude shift within the country. This in no way diminishes the horror for those connected or nearest the attacks or the military that went out in response to it. My vantage point is from the westerrn United States - Vegas - Phoenix - California Coast - and the 4T was just not here.

That's what I saw in the Midwest. Dubya had the opportunity to call upon Americans to buy savings bonds, cut discretionary spending, conserve fuel, join the Armed Forces, and work in defense plants. I would have done any of those except join the Armed Forces -- which ordinarily aren't looking for people in their mid-40s. Instead he told us to do the definitive 3T activity: go shopping. Dubya didn't even tell us to buy American!

Late 2005 was the beginning of a true shift. We began to realize that government was failing us. It failed us by not being able to respond to the Hurricane Katrina crisis as we expected. It failed us by showing us Intelligence failures that rallied us into a long war that may be more ideological than necessary. It failed us by managing military and terror prisoners in way never expected in our society. Financial regulation failures allowed us to double the price of homes in a short year only to see them drop as fast or faster since 2006. In short, we knew something was going bad.

There was of course the military and diplomatic mess resulting from Dubya's choice (Iraq) Whatever sympathy Americans got in the aftermath of 9/11, Dubya threw it away. The war in Iraq proved a $10 billion-a-month. Maybe there's no connection other than coincidence, but that's about when gasoline became expensive, and the projected cost of the financial bailout is 70 months (5 years, 10 months) at $10 billion a month. We Americans are paying for a "Mission Accomplished" that wasn't quite accomplished.

Coming into the current financial credit credit, the shift was already occurring. Both major political parties nominated candidates that were not culture warriors. Why not a Clinton or a Giulliani or a Romney? We ended up with McCain and Obama - so the change was already occurring. Those who finally realized we had a crisis two weeks ago were late to the party.

But the culture warriors still lead the Republican Party apparatus for ideology, and John McCain foolishly chose a culture warrior in Sarah Palin. It would have been far wiser for McCain to choose someone like Lugar or Voinovich even if they don't excite people. A 4T offers no shortage of adventure, and it is better that the people who lead are the sorts who don't look for trouble but are cool-headed enough to meet dangers of the time with rational solutions. The greedy corporatists still dominate the economic policy of the Republican Party, and they are the ones who will most readily be associated with bringing about our economic mess.

As to the previous crisis period - we did not just immediately dump into a crisis on the October 1929 crash. In fact, stock prices came back up by April of 1930. It was the slow grind and the banking failures in the early 1930s, especially 1932-33, that finally brought the economic downturn to roost.

Likewise the collapse of the Housing Market started in 2006, and it is now with the failure of the credit system that we see the true picture.

The huge increases in petroleum prices may have begun the downturn. The customers of subprime lenders were the first to get hurt; they were living on the margin and were the people most vulnerable to rising costs of fuels. There was no compensation for rising energy prices.

If 1929 is the marked start of the prior 4T, I submit that late 2005 / 2006 was the start of the current 4T.

1929 looked like a good year at the start -- but that is when things began to go very bad very fast. The political and economic rot that people got away with for eight years finally showed their effects. I can almost consider the period 2001-2008 analogous except in its telescoping to 1921-1932: Dubya looks like Harding (amorality), Coolidge (inattention except to the well-connected) and Hoover (economic bungling) combined. I see 2006 analogous to 1930 in politics and -- should Obama win in 2008

In any event - the joy of understanding S&H is also the misery of understanding S&H.

Cassandra wasn't exactly a party girl; she didn't have a very enjoyable role in life.

Much of life resembles ancient Greek tragedy; the rest is largely Shakespeare and Goethe. The ancient Greeks had their heads on straight and were quite sophisticated even by the standards of our time. We ignore their lessons at our peril. We also ignore Shakespeare and Goethe at our peril.

The plan for an economic bailout is being revised. No matter what happens, it looks to me as though this will be a lose-lose situation regardless. All indications are that the economic picture is to be f****d up regardless of whether the bailout package is passed or not, and I would bet that it will be, although we may not have seen the end of the controversy yet. Looks as if we now are going to need a lot of energy and stamina to get through the coming time.

Originally Posted by Cynic Hero '86

I doubt communism would play a role in this crisis, given that communism was discredited by the collapse of the USSR. They are very few communist countries today an you can distinguish between those few nations and by the fact that they are all one party states and absolutly do not hold elections. Communist countries do not hold elections, ever.

Have you had a look at Latin America of late? One country after another is going at least quasi-Communist. Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador,...

Perhaps, to borrow from Carroll Quigley's theory on the evolution of civilizations, Latin America is now concluding that authoritarian socialism is a perfectly suitable instrument of civilizational expansion.

Originally Posted by SVE-KRD

Have you had a look at Latin America of late? One country after another is going at least quasi-Communist. Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador,...

Multi party republics.

Originally Posted by SVE-KRD

Perhaps, to borrow from Carroll Quigley's theory on the evolution of civilizations, Latin America is now concluding that authoritarian socialism is a perfectly suitable instrument of civilizational expansion.

I look at Latin America through the prism of Amy Chua's World on Fire. Recent US administrations have promoted free market global capitalism and democracy. The problem is that these two systems, while more or less balanced in influence in the US and other First World powers, are not balanced at all in the still young traditions of Latin America. Capitalism favors the upper ruling class. Democracy favors The People. It takes quite some time for democratic traditions to develop to the point where the power of the wealthy ruling class is well balanced such that the wealth is shared reasonably with the lower and middle classes.

Heck, I'll argue that the current financial crisis illustrates that the United States hasn't perfected the art of democratic government checking the influence of our own capitalists. We are still experimenting and on occasion falling flat on our faces.

So, yes, we are seeing the election of strong government executives in Latin America. They are trying to suppress the excesses of capitalism. The profits of US and other global corporations who have gone abroad seeking to exploit cheap labor are being threatened.

It is not clear, however, that the elected strong men are entirely the bad guys. We are going to have to develop a global economy. Governments working to guarantee decent wages and worker's rights are going to be part of it. Too many strong men are tempted to go too far, to nationalize industries, to break away from competitive free markets into controlled economies. In the long run, this is a mistake. As much trouble as our overly deregulated economy is in right now, the overly regulated and controlled Soviet economy got itself in worse trouble a few decades back.

But Latin America is going to have to make its own mistakes. They are going to have to find their own sweet spot between competitive free markets and protecting the working classes. As we are so mucked it up just now, I'm not overly ready to tell them how it should be done.

Originally Posted by Bob Butler 54

Multi party republics.



I look at Latin America through the prism of Amy Chua's World on Fire. Recent US administrations have promoted free market global capitalism and democracy. The problem is that these two systems, while more or less balanced in influence in the US and other First World powers, are not balanced at all in the still young traditions of Latin America. Capitalism favors the upper ruling class. Democracy favors The People. It takes quite some time for democratic traditions to develop to the point where the power of the wealthy ruling class is well balanced such that the wealth is shared reasonably with the lower and middle classes.

Heck, I'll argue that the current financial crisis illustrates that the United States hasn't perfected the art of democratic government checking the influence of our own capitalists. We are still experimenting and on occasion falling flat on our faces.

So, yes, we are seeing the election of strong government executives in Latin America. They are trying to suppress the excesses of capitalism. The profits of US and other global corporations who have gone abroad seeking to exploit cheap labor are being threatened.

It is not clear, however, that the elected strong men are entirely the bad guys. We are going to have to develop a global economy. Governments working to guarantee decent wages and worker's rights are going to be part of it. Too many strong men are tempted to go too far, to nationalize industries, to break away from competitive free markets into controlled economies. In the long run, this is a mistake. As much trouble as our overly deregulated economy is in right now, the overly regulated and controlled Soviet economy got itself in worse trouble a few decades back.

But Latin America is going to have to make its own mistakes. They are going to have to find their own sweet spot between competitive free markets and protecting the working classes. As we are so mucked it up just now, I'm not overly ready to tell them how it should be done.

One ray of hope: I was listening to some radio show on XM radio, I think it was on
the POTUS channel and some economics guy was saying that the fuel will never get
below $2.50 a gallon again for gasoline, BUT because of 1. The higher cost of transportation fuel (think cargo ships) and 2. The rising wages of people in the third world
countries that it is no longer as cost-effective to make things over there and ship
them here, so some manufacturing is coming back here to be closer to the consumers

Now, though, just as that happens, we go into a depression and people stop spending altogether.

Oh well....

Saw this on the A/P this morning:

Oct 4, 3:24 AM EDT

Women say NY's dollar-dance clubs have darker side
By CRISTIAN SALAZAR
Associated Press Writer

NEW YORK (AP) -- As neon lights bathe the dance floor of the darkened nightclub, a group of young women from Latin America sit at tables, sipping water or soda and waiting for men to approach and hand them cash.
For $2, the women will dance one song. For $10, they will dance a set. Forty dollars buys an hour of their time.
The scene plays out in immigrant neighborhoods across New York City, providing a key source of employment for immigrant women and a haven for men seeking to stave off the loneliness of being far from home. It is a perfectly legal form of entertainment - there is no stripping but plenty of hand-holding.
But some of the women say the clubs have a darker side. They complain about exploitative management, sexual advances from clients and even violence. A 24-year-old dancer was recently shot and killed in Queens, and one of the city's largest dollar-dance venues is now the target of a federal lawsuit.
For many dancers, the stigma of working at the clubs is the most trying problem.
"Sometimes people or clients say we're prostitutes, but we're not. We dance," said Tania Zarate, a dancer at one club in Queens.
That dancing can veer from prudish to the sensual grind. Some clubs demand that dancers wear skimpy uniforms. Elsewhere, they dress in jeans and T-shirts. Bouncers are often hired to fend off unruly customers or those with straying hands.
Many of the dollar-dance places can't rightly be called nightclubs. They are bars that just happen to feature dance floors with women who get paid by the dance.
Zarate, 35, who is from Veracruz, Mexico, wore a short jean skirt, white blouse and white tights on a recent summer night. She said she returned to dancing after leaving the job to try her skills in another line of work. But that job ended.
She was not happy to return to work as a dancer.
"To have to come from my country and work this kind of job? No!" she said in Spanish, with a wave of her hand. "Sometimes you dance with a guy and then he doesn't want to pay up."
The idea of women dancing with a partner for a song has a long tradition.
During the Depression, men in many big cities could go to "taxi-dance halls" to pay for dances. Back then, each dance cost just a dime, and the women were largely of Eastern European descent.
Today, the woman hail from Mexico, Ecuador, Colombia, the Dominican Republic and elsewhere. They are often single mothers who have become migrant workers to support the families they left behind.
Carla Ramirez, 26, a married mother of three, said she began dancing at a club soon after arriving from her native Ecuador. She said she keeps the job secret from her husband.
"He thinks I work in a restaurant," she said. "He doesn't like me drinking or dancing with another man."
The men she dances with at a nightclub on Roosevelt Avenue in Queens are mostly laborers from Latin America. They are often construction workers, landscapers and restaurant workers. Many come to the clubs still wearing boots and jeans, splattered with paint and mud.
A 41-year-old laborer, who spoke on the condition that he be identified only as Emilio because he didn't want to be known as a patron of the clubs, said he sometimes spends hundreds of dollars a night on dancing, drinks and female companionship.
"When a man is lonely, he looks for someone who he can talk to and someone he can spend time with," he explained.
Ramirez said she sometimes worries about safety. "There are times when the guys are drinking, and they start to fight and throw bottles," she said, but adds that the club where she works hires bouncers.
The need for security was highlighted in December 2007 when 24-year-old Adriana Valderrama, a dancer at the nearby Tulcingo Cafe, was fatally shot and her dance partner wounded. There have been no arrests in the killing, and detectives believe the gunman fled to Mexico. Messages left for the bar's owners were not returned.
Dancers can also face the relatively ordinary peril of labor exploitation.
A lawsuit against the Flamingo, a tropical-themed nightclub in Queens, alleges that the bar's owners failed to pay wages and overtime, subjected the dancers to video surveillance in a dressing room, and required them to pay entry fees of up to $11, plus fines if they were late for work or missed a day.
Diana Trejos, a former dancer who is one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, complained that the women were controlled as if they were employees: They were given schedules, required to have doctors' notes if they missed work because of illness and required they buy uniforms for theme nights.
"All of these things were controlled," said Trejos, 40, who is from Colombia.
Attorneys for the owners of the business asked a court to dismiss the complaint, arguing that nothing in the suit was true.
The dancers and their lawyers disagree.
"You can't call a worker an independent contractor and avoid the requirements under the labor law," said Elizabeth Wagoner, an attorney for a community organization that is supporting the former Flamingo workers in their lawsuit and has organized protests against the nightclub.
Gary Kushner, an attorney for the Flamingo's owners, said he asked his clients not to comment. He said they had promised the federal judge they wouldn't litigate through the media.
Handwritten posters in the window of Flamingo apparently put up by current dancers at the club disputed the former employees' claims: "We are happy to work in the paradise of Flamingo," and "They're against us because they're not here."

We be 4T.


Bri2k

Originally Posted by takascar2

One ray of hope: I was listening to some radio show on XM radio, I think it was on
the POTUS channel and some economics guy was saying that the fuel will never get
below $2.50 a gallon again for gasoline, BUT because of 1. The higher cost of transportation fuel (think cargo ships) and 2. The rising wages of people in the third world
countries that it is no longer as cost-effective to make things over there and ship
them here, so some manufacturing is coming back here to be closer to the consumers

Now, though, just as that happens, we go into a depression and people stop spending altogether.

Oh well....

Such are the predictable consequences of a government making a commitment to economic decline. Our government chose to gut whatever power labor had in the market and become a creditor's paradise. Our manufacturers became importers, and legal loansharking became the cornerstone of a system that has induced people either to drain their assets or sell out their future. Real wages fell for most Americans, and profits as a share of GDP rose.

If you look at the American economy over the last eight years, it looks in some respects as if it came under the control of malign foreign powers that chose to bleed it for assets while investing in nothing that did any tangible good. But the wreckers were here. They chose to have a war for their own profit. They chose to gut domestic manufacturing (probably to instill labor 'discipline'. They chose to exploit consumer debt as nearly-pure profit. Only in the last couple of months has the fraud collapsed.

We are now 4T.

Jim Hoagland's column in today's paper states - and has as its central thesis - "This year, culture wars are being eclipsed by culture truces in U.S. politics. Wedge issues of gender, race, and sexual orientation are being overshadowed or even defanged by an exploding economy and war-and-peace choices."

Without any awareness that such a thing exists, he (like many others) has just called the Turning.

Originally Posted by The Grey Badger

Jim Hoagland's column in today's paper states - and has as its central thesis - "This year, culture wars are being eclipsed by culture truces in U.S. politics. Wedge issues of gender, race, and sexual orientation are being overshadowed or even defanged by an exploding economy and war-and-peace choices."

Without any awareness that such a thing exists, he (like many others) has just called the Turning.

4T, 1T= Class War.
2T, 3T= Culture War.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/10/04/...ict/index.html

O.J. Simpson guilty of armed robbery, kidnapping

* Story Highlights
* NEW: Ex-football star 'extremely emotional' after verdict, attorney says
* Jury finds Simpson guilty of all counts in 2007 sports memorabilia heist
* Simpson did not testify; evidence came from tapes, former co-defendants
* Simpson, co-defendant Clarence "C.J." Stewart could spend rest of lives in prison

From Paul Vercammen
CNN Senior Producer

LAS VEGAS, Nevada (CNN) -- O.J. Simpson and co-defendant Clarence "C.J." Stewart were found guilty Friday on 12 charges, including armed robbery and kidnapping.
The jury reached the verdict 13 years to the day after O.J. Simpson was acquitted of two murders.

The jury reached the verdict 13 years to the day after O.J. Simpson was acquitted of two murders.


The case involved a Las Vegas, Nevada, hotel room confrontation over sports memorabilia. Simpson said the items had been stolen from him.

The verdicts came 13 years to the day that a Los Angeles, California, jury acquitted Simpson of two murders.

The Las Vegas jury reached its verdicts after about 13 hours of deliberations Friday.

Simpson sat quietly and showed little emotion at the defense table as he listened to the verdicts being read.

Deputies then handcuffed Simpson and led him from the courtroom.

Simpson, 61, faces the possibility of spending the rest of his life in prison for these convictions. Clark County District Judge Jackie Glass set sentencing for December 5.

Defense attorney Yale Galanter spoke with Simpson after the verdict and told reporters the former football star was "extremely upset, extremely emotional."

Galanter said he will file a motion for a new trial and appeal the case.

Simpson and Stewart were charged with 12 counts, including conspiracy to commit a crime, robbery, assault and kidnapping with a deadly weapon.

Carmelita Durio, Simpson's sister, sobbed as he was being escorted out of the courtroom, The Associated Press reported. As spectators left the courtroom, Durio collapsed and paramedics were called, court spokesman Michael Sommermeyer said.

Although Glass prohibited mention of the 1995 murder case during the robbery trial, it remained an unspoken undercurrent throughout.

"From the beginning, my biggest concern, and I told you this the day after Mr. Simpson was arrested, was whether jurors would be able to separate their very strong feelings about Mr. Simpson and judge him fairly, equally and honestly," Galanter said.

Stewart attorney Brent Bryson said he was shocked by the verdict and said his client was hurt by Simpson's notoriety.

"I'm in disbelief that a jury could come back and find all those counts and convict Mr. Stewart on all those counts," Bryson said. "The only explanation that is even conceivable is the spillover prejudice from sitting next to Mr. Simpson."

Simpson arrived at the Clark County Justice Center around 10:50 p.m. Simpson told CNN before the verdict was read that he was "apprehensive."

Prosecutors charged that Simpson led a group of men who used threats, guns and force to take photographs, footballs and other items from memorabilia dealers Bruce Fromong and Al Beardsley in September 2007.

But a defense attorney said Simpson was targeted by police out to get him and cohorts in order to make "big bucks" off him.

Neither Simpson nor Stewart testified during the trial, and witnesses gave sometimes conflicting and contradictory testimony.

Galanter said Simpson was a target of investigators from the very beginning. The case "has taken on a life of its own because of Mr. Simpson's involvement," he added.

"Every cooperator, every person who had a gun, every person who had an ulterior motive, every person who signed a book deal, every person who got paid money, the police, the district attorney's office is only interested in one thing: Mr. Simpson," Galanter said.

The most compelling evidence for both sides came from the audiotapes.

For the prosecution, conversations taped by collectibles middleman Thomas Riccio took jurors from the poolside planning to the profanity-laced hotel room confrontation.

Riccio, a chatty sports memorabilia dealer and convicted felon, made the rounds on network news shows immediately after the hotel room fracas. He admitted on the stand that various media outlets paid him $210,000.

The crucial evidence for the defense came from two audiotapes, a voicemail from a key prosecution witness who seemed willing to tailor his testimony for a price and tapes of Las Vegas police officers laughing and joking about Simpson's Los Angeles acquittal following his arrest.

Galanter told jurors the surreptitious recording captured police investigators in the hotel room after the confrontation. "They're making jokes. They're saying things like, 'We're gonna get him,"' he said.

Police were called to the hotel around 8 p.m. on September 13, 2007. Shortly after midnight, detectives visited Simpson at his hotel. He told them he was just trying to recover property that had been stolen from him.

"Why are they not in trouble," Simpson asked about memorabilia dealers Beardsley and Fromong, according to police reports filed in the case. Both men testified for the prosecution, although Beardsley said Simpson did nothing wrong and was "set up" by the "rat Riccio."

Riccio, who was not charged in the case, testified that he didn't think twice about recording Simpson when asked for help retrieving what Simpson claimed was his property.

All four of the former co-defendants testified for the prosecution. Two of them tied Simpson to guns and threats.

Michael McClinton testified that Simpson instructed him to bring a gun and "look menacing" before they entered the hotel room.

Simpson has told police he had no idea the people with him were armed.

The testimony was laced with innuendo about unsavory activities by several of the witnesses, many with criminal records. Riccio and Beardsley feuded openly, calling each other names and questioning each other's sanity.

Aware that loose cannons on the stand could blow the case into mistrial purgatory, Glass refused to let David Cook testify. Cook, an attorney for the family of Ronald Lyle Goldman, searches for Simpson assets to satisfy the $33.5 million civil judgment against the former NFL star.

Simpson was acquitted of killing his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and Goldman in a trial that ended 13 years to the day before the Las Vegas jury began its deliberations.

Regarding Glass' ruling, Cook told CNN: "If you read between the lines, I think she thought my appearance would bring up the Ghost of Christmas Past."
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As testimony neared its end, Glass vented her frustration with the quibbling lawyers.

"I'm trying to get this trial back on track," she snapped. "I am surprised you haven't seen my head spin and fire come out of my mouth at this point in this trial."

Originally Posted by Pink Splice

O.J. Simpson guilty of armed robbery, kidnapping

Is this what they mean, "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas?" ™

4T Indicator: After all these years, O.J. Simpson is finally convicted of something/anything... may spend the rest of his life in prison... AND NO ONE CARES.

Originally Posted by Roadbldr '59

4T Indicator: After all these years, O.J. Simpson is finally convicted of something/anything... may spend the rest of his life in prison... AND NO ONE CARES.

Nope. Just doesn't seem that important anymore.

A Fiscal Lesson for the Ages

For Some, the Economic Turmoil Is a Grim Reminder of Past Crises. For Others, It Marks a New Fear.
By Brigid Schulte
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 5, 2008; C01

Kerri Reddick-Morgan lives a solidly middle-class life. She has a master's degree, a good job as a marketing director for a nonprofit group and rents a nice townhouse in Woodbridge. But as Wall Street, major investment banks and markets around the world have come unglued, she has had to reassure her anxious children that their world has not.
Ten-year-old Kamar is so worried that another Great Depression is coming he thinks he might not have kids when he grows up, in case he can't find a job.
Eighteen-year-old Andrew has become so stressed out about paying for college next year that he has started referring to it as "the C-word."
And hearing about failing banks, 12-year-old Kaise wondered whether her babysitting money would disappear from her savings account. Time to talk FDIC insurance, Reddick-Morgan said.
"The only calming thing I could do was to tell her, 'You don't have over $100,000 in your bank account, so your money is fine,' " she said. "That is not a conversation I thought I would ever be having with my 12-year-old."
Amid free-falling stocks, shrinking retirement and college savings plans and skyrocketing foreclosures, it's not just adults who have been seized with uncertainty recently.
A survey of 500 U.S. teenagers released Friday found that almost 70 percent feared an "immediate negative impact" on the security of their families. "That's a gigantic figure," said Michael Cohen, a research psychologist who runs the opinion research firm that conducted the poll. "There's anxiety about this. And the anxiety is not just for the society at large, but for me and my family. I was quite taken aback by the scope of that fear. "
And unless parents, who might be fearful, too, can help restore a child's sense of security, many might wind up with headaches or stomachaches or begin acting out or losing interest in school, child psychologists say.
For some children, the anxiety is far more overwhelming.
Alexandria resident Adelfa Ramirez cleans homes, and her husband is a carpenter. Business for both has dropped dramatically as the families who hire them have cut spending. The family is about to lose its home to foreclosure. Her 15-year-old, Eduardo, has offered to forgo his allergy medication and get a job.
"For him, $6 or $7 an hour seems like a lot. But it's nothing," Ramirez said in Spanish. "He wants to work to help us, but I told him: 'No. Not yet.' For me, it's far more important that he prepare himself intellectually so that he can go to college."
But even children not in crisis "pick up the mood, the tension, the anxiety -- there are no secrets in families," said Stanley Greenspan, professor of child psychiatry and pediatrics at George Washington University, who has started to see the economic anxiety show up in his practice. "Younger kids tend to be all-or-nothing thinkers. So a healthy 8-year-old is more likely to worry in a more extreme way than an adult."
That's certainly true of Kamar.
Reddick-Morgan tried to draw out why he was so afraid. He had been shopping with her and could recite to the penny the rising grocery bills. He worried when she complained about rising gas prices. He told her that he was scared everyone would run out of money, then no one would have food.
Kamar reasoned that they could always move in with their grandmother in Georgia, a child of the atomic age who keeps a basement stocked with food. And if they needed money, he said, he could sell his iPod: "I could take all the songs off and erase my name."
Reddick-Morgan shook her head. "I had no idea they were thinking like this," she said.
Greenspan, author of "The Secure Child," said that at times like these, parents need to make more time to hang out with their children. They need to ask their children how much they know about what's going on, then answer questions in an age-appropriate way. They need to find ways for their children to help others. "If a child is active in helping make things better, there's less worry," Greenspan said.
So Reddick-Morgan has explained subprime loans and the foreclosures at the root of the crisis -- the children know at least three neighbors who have moved after losing their homes. But she does not tell them that she was so worried about her 401(k) a few years ago that she withdrew the money and put it in an ING savings account. Working for a nonprofit group, she sometimes fears that the grant funding her position might not come through. But that, too, is not something she shares: "That's something no child needs to worry about."
No matter the financial situation, never lie to children, said Jerilyn Ross, director of the Ross Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders in Washington. One patient had just lost her job but was too ashamed to tell her two teenage daughters. So when one daughter kept bugging her to buy new clothes and she refused, the girl felt angry and thought her mother was being unreasonable. "When the mom finally sat down and told her she couldn't afford the clothes because she'd lost her job, the daughter felt guilty, then wanted to help the mother," Ross said.
Shawn McLaughlin, who runs a small investment firm in Alexandria, said the crisis has kept him at work until 10 most nights and away from his four children, ages 2 to 8. "They're listening when I listen to the news, and they ask what does it mean. I use it as a chance to explain that this was all about greed," he said. "They're picking up on some of the despair. But I also say that better days are ahead. I talk about how we've been tested before as a country. I explain about Pearl Harbor and how we always come out the other end far stronger and far wiser."
Likewise, Reddick-Morgan has used the crisis to reinforce the importance of faith, family and education.
She sat with her children on a recent balmy evening, Kaise clutching her Clifford the Big Red Dog pillow and wrapped in a Winnie the Pooh blanket. "The only thing that matters is who you are and how you treat people," she told them. "Money. All these material things. You can't take it with you. You have to believe that no matter what happens, God is going to take care of us."
Because, she thinks, what else do you have?

Try using a darker color.

Originally Posted by writerGrrl

A Fiscal Lesson for the Ages

For Some, the Economic Turmoil Is a Grim Reminder of Past Crises. For Others, It Marks a New Fear.
By Brigid Schulte
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 5, 2008; C01

Kerri Reddick-Morgan lives a solidly middle-class life. She has a master's degree, a good job as a marketing director for a nonprofit group and rents a nice townhouse in Woodbridge. But as Wall Street, major investment banks and markets around the world have come unglued, she has had to reassure her anxious children that their world has not.
Ten-year-old Kamar is so worried that another Great Depression is coming he thinks he might not have kids when he grows up, in case he can't find a job.
Eighteen-year-old Andrew has become so stressed out about paying for college next year that he has started referring to it as "the C-word."
And hearing about failing banks, 12-year-old Kaise wondered whether her babysitting money would disappear from her savings account. Time to talk FDIC insurance, Reddick-Morgan said.
"The only calming thing I could do was to tell her, 'You don't have over $100,000 in your bank account, so your money is fine,' " she said. "That is not a conversation I thought I would ever be having with my 12-year-old."
Amid free-falling stocks, shrinking retirement and college savings plans and skyrocketing foreclosures, it's not just adults who have been seized with uncertainty recently.
A survey of 500 U.S. teenagers released Friday found that almost 70 percent feared an "immediate negative impact" on the security of their families. "That's a gigantic figure," said Michael Cohen, a research psychologist who runs the opinion research firm that conducted the poll. "There's anxiety about this. And the anxiety is not just for the society at large, but for me and my family. I was quite taken aback by the scope of that fear. "
And unless parents, who might be fearful, too, can help restore a child's sense of security, many might wind up with headaches or stomachaches or begin acting out or losing interest in school, child psychologists say.
For some children, the anxiety is far more overwhelming.
Alexandria resident Adelfa Ramirez cleans homes, and her husband is a carpenter. Business for both has dropped dramatically as the families who hire them have cut spending. The family is about to lose its home to foreclosure. Her 15-year-old, Eduardo, has offered to forgo his allergy medication and get a job.
"For him, $6 or $7 an hour seems like a lot. But it's nothing," Ramirez said in Spanish. "He wants to work to help us, but I told him: 'No. Not yet.' For me, it's far more important that he prepare himself intellectually so that he can go to college."
But even children not in crisis "pick up the mood, the tension, the anxiety -- there are no secrets in families," said Stanley Greenspan, professor of child psychiatry and pediatrics at George Washington University, who has started to see the economic anxiety show up in his practice. "Younger kids tend to be all-or-nothing thinkers. So a healthy 8-year-old is more likely to worry in a more extreme way than an adult."
That's certainly true of Kamar.
Reddick-Morgan tried to draw out why he was so afraid. He had been shopping with her and could recite to the penny the rising grocery bills. He worried when she complained about rising gas prices. He told her that he was scared everyone would run out of money, then no one would have food.
Kamar reasoned that they could always move in with their grandmother in Georgia, a child of the atomic age who keeps a basement stocked with food. And if they needed money, he said, he could sell his iPod: "I could take all the songs off and erase my name."
Reddick-Morgan shook her head. "I had no idea they were thinking like this," she said.
Greenspan, author of "The Secure Child," said that at times like these, parents need to make more time to hang out with their children. They need to ask their children how much they know about what's going on, then answer questions in an age-appropriate way. They need to find ways for their children to help others. "If a child is active in helping make things better, there's less worry," Greenspan said.
So Reddick-Morgan has explained subprime loans and the foreclosures at the root of the crisis -- the children know at least three neighbors who have moved after losing their homes. But she does not tell them that she was so worried about her 401(k) a few years ago that she withdrew the money and put it in an ING savings account. Working for a nonprofit group, she sometimes fears that the grant funding her position might not come through. But that, too, is not something she shares: "That's something no child needs to worry about."
No matter the financial situation, never lie to children, said Jerilyn Ross, director of the Ross Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders in Washington. One patient had just lost her job but was too ashamed to tell her two teenage daughters. So when one daughter kept bugging her to buy new clothes and she refused, the girl felt angry and thought her mother was being unreasonable. "When the mom finally sat down and told her she couldn't afford the clothes because she'd lost her job, the daughter felt guilty, then wanted to help the mother," Ross said.
Shawn McLaughlin, who runs a small investment firm in Alexandria, said the crisis has kept him at work until 10 most nights and away from his four children, ages 2 to 8. "They're listening when I listen to the news, and they ask what does it mean. I use it as a chance to explain that this was all about greed," he said. "They're picking up on some of the despair. But I also say that better days are ahead. I talk about how we've been tested before as a country. I explain about Pearl Harbor and how we always come out the other end far stronger and far wiser."
Likewise, Reddick-Morgan has used the crisis to reinforce the importance of faith, family and education.
She sat with her children on a recent balmy evening, Kaise clutching her Clifford the Big Red Dog pillow and wrapped in a Winnie the Pooh blanket. "The only thing that matters is who you are and how you treat people," she told them. "Money. All these material things. You can't take it with you. You have to believe that no matter what happens, God is going to take care of us."
Because, she thinks, what else do you have?

Originally Posted by Mr. Reed

Try using a darker color.

Sorry about that.

In my opinion if kids are afraid of what's going to happen in the government, that's ultimately a good thing because then they'll grow up to be more politically informed in the future.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/162401?tid=relatedcl

Originally Posted by Pink Splice

http://www.newsweek.com/id/162401?tid=relatedcl

But will he change his mind?

Originally Posted by SVE-KRD

Nope. Just doesn't seem that important anymore.

So to the extent that the 4T takes care of issues that could not be resolved in the 3T, this sure looks like we're in the 4T and possibly into the Regeneracy. (And SVE's comment is pure 4T...3T issues are not as important.)

Since they got OJ on a relatively small potato charge, is OJ this era's Al Capone?

Originally Posted by writerGrrl

Sorry about that.

In my opinion if kids are afraid of what's going to happen in the government, that's ultimately a good thing because then they'll grow up to be more politically informed in the future.

Are we seeing the new "Help-mate" Artist generation appear? Welcome to the world, Homelanders. Sorry its so screwed up....

I would be very interested in your thoughts about Naomi Wolf's interview.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XgkeTanCGI

Originally Posted by takascar2

Are we seeing the new "Help-mate" Artist generation appear? Welcome to the world, Homelanders. Sorry its so screwed up....

Don't know, but hear this.

My middle child is 3 ½. He’s up at 5:00am and we practically have to use duct tape to get him to go to sleep at 8:30pm. Nap? “NEVER!!!!” is his battle cry. He’s not hyper active and he’s not suffering any other abnormalities….he’s just a ball of energy.

Here’s the thing. Though he likes to play blocks, draw, swing, chase the cats, play with the goats, chase the chickens, etc. he seems to derive a special pleasure form helping his mom and dad with work.

~ He insists on helping with dishes. To accommodate this we save all the plastic cups and baby plates for him to do.

~ He wants to carry in and stack wood. If he sees his mom starting a fire in the stove, he dons his boots and begins carting in logs from the wood shed.

Whatever his mom and dad are doing, he wants to do as well. Since we’re mostly working on something around the farm from dawn to dusk, that’s what he wants to do.

When he’s done, he’ll walk over and pronounce in a serious tone. “I’m tired….FROM WORKIN HARD!!!!”

We’ve never insisted that he learn these things (for godsake he’s only three) but we’ve certainly modeled them with our constant activity. Further, we seem to enjoy what we’re working at and that looks inviting to him. For him, these activities appear to be natural pastimes.

His 14 year old brother has NEVER been this way. Instead, every opportunity to avoid work is exploited….even paid work. Rather than being an adolescent development, this is something he’s done since he was little. However, what was modeled to him in his early years by a single mom in graduate school (work is exhausting, take every chance you can to NOT WORK) is different than what his little brother sees these days.

My wife (’64) and I (’61) are both Jonesers leaning heavily X. Our oldest boy exhibits all the traits of a Millie, good and bad. Our three year old strikes me as headed for a “helpmate” Homelander status if he continues on that trajectory.

I dont quite know where to put the Millie/Homelander cut off but I do know it's a wierd thing to watch generational archetypes develop before your very eyes.

From Slate.com, an excerpt.

Marlene Turnbach is a pro-life Democrat from Hazelton, Pa., who twice voted for George W. Bush over abortion. As she told me a couple of years ago when I interviewed her for a book on women voters, "Bush won because all my friends who are Democrats voted for him and put abortion over everything else." Though only about 13 percent of those likely to turn out at the polls are true single-issue pro-life voters, I met a surprising number of women, most of them Catholic, who said that they did not expect the Democratic Party to switch its basic position on Roe v. Wade but nonetheless felt increasingly marginalized and unwelcome in the party as dissenters from party orthodoxy on that one issue.

And now? Not so much. With the economy in freefall, abortion opponents afraid even to peek at their third-quarter 401(k) statements suddenly see their way around this obstacle on their road home to the Democrats. In Turnbach's state, where one-third of all voters are Catholic (and six in 10 Catholics describe themselves as pro-life), pro-choice Barack Obama is nonetheless ahead of John McCain, who opposes abortion rights, by 12 points in one poll and 14 in another. At a rally in Johnstown, Pa., on Saturday, Sarah Palin all but pleaded with pro-life voters to give her party one more chance to deliver on 35 years of pro-life promises: "In times like these with wars and financial crisis, I know that it may be easy to forget even as deep and abiding a concern as the right to life, and it seems that our opponent kind of hopes you will forget that." Yet when I checked back in with Turnbach and others, it was clear that for them social issues are off the table, at least for now.

Originally Posted by The Wonkette

I would be very interested in your thoughts about Naomi Wolf's interview.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XgkeTanCGI

I think it is scary but possible. But I am hopelessly paranoid. I think today's "nationalization" of the banks without any real restrictions is another step towards fascism in that the oligarchs and the state are becoming one. My understanding of this action is that the Paulson has "encouraged' the banks not to horde the money but rather to put it in circulation. But there is no leverage to actually force them to do that. In Europe some of the nations have control of the boards of directors and restrictions on what can be done with the money they have given the banks. Does anyone know anything about this?

IMHO the oligarchs took over this country in 1980 and have used racism and populist diatribes against activist gov'mint in the same way Hitler used the Jews. They won't go down without a fight. Look at how they have used this crisis as a way to raid the treasury for even more money. Grim. Prognosis poor.

However, on the bright side, I have been working for Obama and have been so impressed by the energy and optimism of the volunteers (excluding me)... and even some of the people I have cold called sound very firm for obama. Everyone's main issue is economy and jobs. The McCain voters (mostly hispanic, read cuban) don't want to talk about why they are voting for him, they mostly just say they don't like Obama and leave me alone.