Sat down Monday morning with a friend who also is president of the local credit union. Not exactly a financial institution that is hurting today but the effects are felt everywhere just the same.
As we talked, he paused a little, set down his mug of coffee and said "Have you ever experienced anything like this before? This is a little different."
In fact, we both had been here before but in circumstances one could say was much worse than today. We both lived through the 1982-83 recession when the prime rate was 17% and that was coming down from its high of over 20%. I had just locked in my mortgage at 13.3% a few years earlier and felt lucky!
Unemployment hit a high of 10.8% that year and my employer froze every one's pay. He then took to wearing dress shirts with frayed collars and driving a run down pickup truck after we just had some layoffs. I was lucky because I was new and lower paid. I was also young and being poor was nothing unusual for people my age.
We didn't remember those times as being particularly paralyzing as they seem today. Today is a little different.
Back then we had very specific and limited sources of information. We had only the three network news programs at 6 p.m., a common point of reference for us all. Rush Limbaugh and his ilk had not yet made it to the national talk radio scene. Johnny Carson was a reassuring Midwestern voice for late night viewers and his satire was less biting than today.
Of course, we had newspapers and we had our backyard fences over which neighbors would discuss the trials of the day and find some solace in shared pain.
Why are we so much more frightened today than we were 25 years ago?
We lived through the S&L crisis and survived. We lived through the "malaise" of the '70s with the long gas lines and heating oil crisis and moved on to those dastardly '80s.
And before that we lived through the upheaval of the '60s when people thought our very democracy was crumbling.
And here we are having just lived through one decade of "excessive exuberance" -- that we were sufficiently warned was unsustainable but who was listening -- so that when it did start to erode, we now feel somehow that the end is near.
Today, we seem more edgy, more pessimistic, less sure about coming out whole.
But why is it so different?
It could be because today we are barraged constantly, unrelentingly with updates -- we have 24-hour cable news of all persuasions needing to find ways to fill up the other 23 hours; news alerts on stock market conditions beamed to our Blackberries; Twitter texts sent with up-to-the-minute reinforcement from other Tweeters to let us all know that it is still bad out there, don't get too comfortable; Internet at home and at work accessing all sorts of unfiltered news, blogs and chat rooms.
There is barely enough time to reflect and ponder before the next news blast.
And the backyard fence conversations have been replaced with societal clones -- people who like to converse with, listen to and read from like-minded people thereby shutting off the chance contact with someone who may have a different perspective on things.
In an effort to surround ourselves with assurance, our comfort zone must be secured and isolated from challenge. Consequently, other voices -- maybe unpopular voices, definitely different voices -- are not heard, evaluated, challenged and measured against what we see, hear, believe.
And so we remain paralyzed -- first by the constant drumbeat of bad news and secondly by our cloistered existence -- lacking confidence that it will all come out all right even though times were tougher ... maybe not for those who have lost their jobs in this latest round but historically so.
This is especially tough for those under 40 years of age who don't have a frame of reference to or (as some research suggests) even a desire for history.
So what's to be said of all that?
Well, maybe we should all pause at bit, step back from the dance floor and climb up on the balcony. Disentangle ourselves from the chaos of the every day and find those related experiences to learn what was done back then as well as seek out those who lived through it and find out how. Learn from history. I know that's a bit out of vogue but something I genuinely hope the leaders of today are spending some time doing.
As we talked, he paused a little, set down his mug of coffee and said "Have you ever experienced anything like this before? This is a little different."
In fact, we both had been here before but in circumstances one could say was much worse than today. We both lived through the 1982-83 recession when the prime rate was 17% and that was coming down from its high of over 20%. I had just locked in my mortgage at 13.3% a few years earlier and felt lucky!
Unemployment hit a high of 10.8% that year and my employer froze every one's pay. He then took to wearing dress shirts with frayed collars and driving a run down pickup truck after we just had some layoffs. I was lucky because I was new and lower paid. I was also young and being poor was nothing unusual for people my age.
We didn't remember those times as being particularly paralyzing as they seem today. Today is a little different.
Back then we had very specific and limited sources of information. We had only the three network news programs at 6 p.m., a common point of reference for us all. Rush Limbaugh and his ilk had not yet made it to the national talk radio scene. Johnny Carson was a reassuring Midwestern voice for late night viewers and his satire was less biting than today.
Of course, we had newspapers and we had our backyard fences over which neighbors would discuss the trials of the day and find some solace in shared pain.
Why are we so much more frightened today than we were 25 years ago?
We lived through the S&L crisis and survived. We lived through the "malaise" of the '70s with the long gas lines and heating oil crisis and moved on to those dastardly '80s.
And before that we lived through the upheaval of the '60s when people thought our very democracy was crumbling.
And here we are having just lived through one decade of "excessive exuberance" -- that we were sufficiently warned was unsustainable but who was listening -- so that when it did start to erode, we now feel somehow that the end is near.
Today, we seem more edgy, more pessimistic, less sure about coming out whole.
But why is it so different?
It could be because today we are barraged constantly, unrelentingly with updates -- we have 24-hour cable news of all persuasions needing to find ways to fill up the other 23 hours; news alerts on stock market conditions beamed to our Blackberries; Twitter texts sent with up-to-the-minute reinforcement from other Tweeters to let us all know that it is still bad out there, don't get too comfortable; Internet at home and at work accessing all sorts of unfiltered news, blogs and chat rooms.
There is barely enough time to reflect and ponder before the next news blast.
And the backyard fence conversations have been replaced with societal clones -- people who like to converse with, listen to and read from like-minded people thereby shutting off the chance contact with someone who may have a different perspective on things.
In an effort to surround ourselves with assurance, our comfort zone must be secured and isolated from challenge. Consequently, other voices -- maybe unpopular voices, definitely different voices -- are not heard, evaluated, challenged and measured against what we see, hear, believe.
And so we remain paralyzed -- first by the constant drumbeat of bad news and secondly by our cloistered existence -- lacking confidence that it will all come out all right even though times were tougher ... maybe not for those who have lost their jobs in this latest round but historically so.
This is especially tough for those under 40 years of age who don't have a frame of reference to or (as some research suggests) even a desire for history.
So what's to be said of all that?
Well, maybe we should all pause at bit, step back from the dance floor and climb up on the balcony. Disentangle ourselves from the chaos of the every day and find those related experiences to learn what was done back then as well as seek out those who lived through it and find out how. Learn from history. I know that's a bit out of vogue but something I genuinely hope the leaders of today are spending some time doing.
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