Hertz Rental Grand Cherokee. Photo at the Cherryland Regional Airport, Traverse City, MI.
As far as I know, Belgium did not melt down on Monday, but according to the last I heard from my financial sources in Stockholm, this crisis is spreading beyond the banks in Europe, and will soon wash over us, too.
The New York Times says this morning that “all kinds of companies are feeling the strain as European banks pull back on lending in an effort to hoard capital and shore up their balance sheets.”
Crap. I had satellite radio on the Grand Cherokee rental I was flogging down US-31, a mostly two-lane road that connects the Little Village by the Bay and the air hub at Traverse City.
Huskvarna backpack blower. Photo Huskvarna Corp.
I was squirming in the driver’s seat- the new Huskvarna C130 leaf- blower had done something to my back, or better put, my yanking of the little pull cord had done that quite nicely. So I did not tune in CSPAN or one of the news channels. I settled on the Sirius Satellite channel 30- “The Loft,” since I needed alternate cuts of quirky alt rock to keep my mind off the radiating pain and financial realities. Each time, I would boomerang back to the puzzling problem of what is it I need to do?
The Trust is going to be stressed by what is coming, and I was growing apprehensive about how to spin out the remaining money. I do not need another major decline in tax-free municipal bonds. Crap.
Moody’s Investors Service, one of the several credit-rating boards, seems to have awoken after a bad dream in which it assigned “AAA” ratings to those crappy sub-prime mortgages. It is now muttering that it might be on the verge downgrading the value of European sovereign government debt.
I heard this morning that American Airlines went into bankruptcy again. Other financial dominoes could be falling later today, I dunno. The Europeans have been trading for hours already this morning. I should act boldly, but I have no idea what position to take to try to weather the storm.
That was the larger news, and I chose to ignore it and turn up the volume on the music. Snow danced on the windshield of the Grand Cherokee. It is winter in the Northland, and there is no getting around the fact that for the next four months travel is going to just plain suck.
At least Fall was gone, her lovely colors transformed into long piles of leaves shaped by the way the wind from the Bay is channeled by the venture effect of the gap between the main house and the Taj Garage.
It took a lot longer than I thought it would. The leaves were still soaked form the light rain of the day before. Nothing unusual about that, and I budgeted time for that and to clean up the kitchen and run the vacuum around.
I looked at my dirty laundry and sighed. No time for a wash. I would have to go back to Washington with the skivvies I had on.
That is likely the way I will have to get out of Washington, too, so keep a weather eye on the Continent.
Oh, and buy a copy of “Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World” by Michael Lewis. He made his bones in analysis of the financial melt down on Wall Street in “The Big Short.” Boomerang continues the journey down the rapids with visits to Iceland, Greece, Italy and Germany to investigate how and why the crappy sub-prime mortgages now have the possibility to bankrupt Europe and head right back here.
I think you will be surprised by some of the revelations. I know the antics of the Irish and Greek banks are entertaining in a grim way.
The last chapter in the book is about a visit to the California town of Vallejo. There Lewis had a chat with one of those firemen whose pensions are dragging down the municipalities. It is not pretty and there are no easy answers.
What is plain (and it was crystal clear as I went through the police-state security check at the Cherryland Airport) is that we are in the third world now. I don’t think we are going to like how this turns out. But that was never a requirement, was it?
Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com