Nothing Funny

This is depressing. In 1986, I got married and we took our honeymoon in Alaska. One of the high points of the trip was a day cruise from Valdez into Prince William Sound, where we saw seals and eagles and all other manner of wildlife in a icy, pristine environment. We also saw the oil terminals and heard about how important they were to the local economy.

It was a crushing blow for us when, a bit more than 2 years later, the Exxon Valdez ran aground and spilled around 11 million gallons of oil into the sound, blackening a place that I remember quite clearly as almost blindingly white. I remember holding the newspaper and crying.

I can't say I have the same affection for Tibet that I have for Alaska. Our trip there was uncomfortable and occasionally downright unpleasant, and though it was fascinating to be surrounded by this totally Buddhist vibe, I never felt like part of it. Still it's pretty disconcerting to open the New York Times and see a photo taken from a place where I remember standing for a long time waiting for our guide to meet us, and see overturned cars and smoke coming from a neighborhood that we spend hours wandering around. It's an ancient area and I'm sure, like Prince William Sound, it's irrevocably changed- damaged old buildings eventually to be replaced by ugly Chinese concrete boxes.

The Chinese are blaming the Dalai Lama and his followers. Though I know there are two sides to every story (for instance, I have no doubt that some of the protesters are targeting Chinese-owned business for burning, as is alleged), I've read more than a little about the Dalai Lama and as passionate as he is about Tibetan independence, I refuse to believe that he would ever advocate violence as a means of achieving it. The whole thing sucks.

To the compendium of bad vibes, let's add the collapse of Bear Stearns, where a long-time friend of mine has worked for many years. This whole mortgage industry collapse is a nightmare that will continue to unfold, and not pleasantly, for months if not years. An economist whose blog I read refers to the house of cards that is the so-called subprime mortgage industry as the Big Sh-tpile, and though that's an evocative and accurate term, the whole thing makes me think of the coal mining towns in the Appalachians.

If you've seen the movie October Sky, or better yet, Matewan, you have an small idea of the crushing effects of having a single entity control an entire town. Miners were paid in housing credits and scrip for the company stores, making it all but impossible to save enough money to leave to find a different, possibly better life. And if the company went out of business you were screwed. In the modern age, money has no inherent value, it's all just a bunch of computer coding of credits and debits, so we're all just living a in big company town. Any wonder people are buying gold?

Presumably the "company," being the global economy, is big enough to weather this shock, but that won't stop it from hurting lots of people.