A Short Story About the Economy

                     

Once upon a time, in a galaxy very close to the Milky Way, Fortune 500 companies recruited college student’s months prior to their graduation. They were only interested in the crème de la crème; the Magna and Summa Cum Lades who maintained outstanding academic achievements and exhibited the type of corporate aggression they thrived upon.  Within weeks, sometimes days after flinging their miter boards towards the sky, the recruits were able to indulge in all the trappings and extravagances their new six figure incomes provided.

They were the new cigar smoking, BMW, Porsche, Mercedes owners who only shopped at Bergdorf Goodman, Neiman Marcus, and Saks 5th Ave. They skied in Vail, golfed in Pebble Beach, and only dined at Zagats top 10. The women wore Issey Miyake, Jimmy Choo and Manolo Blahnik while the boys transformed themselves into chic young men by giving up their flip-flops, T-shirts, Gap jeans for the uber cool Hugo Boss, Zegna, and Giorgio Armani.

These were the over confident, self-assured, “nothing-can-go-wrong” concept machines who generated edgy ideas faster than a Turbo Carrera can do one lap at Nurburgring. They had one hand on the Wall St. bulls’ bronze balls and the other hand squeezing a tit on the Statue of Liberty. They had all the solutions….or so they thought

...and then something happened. 

Wall Street became a victim of its’ own greed and self- destructed. Investors lost billions and suicides were as plentiful as Monarch butterflies in Carmel-By-The-Sea during springtime. If that weren’t bad enough the real estate market tanked. Speculators and investors discovered their overvalued properties were only worth 1/3 the original purchase price. It seemed as if it were a nightmare but record foreclosures and unemployment statistics sealed the deal as brokerage houses with solid150 year financial investment histories died slow, painful deaths. Oddly enough banks were thrown a lifeline by the Feds in the form of “bailouts” so they survived the bloodletting yet the taxpayers themselves, who provided the bailout capital through their own income taxes were thrown to the collection agency wolves like Christians were tossed to the lions in ancient Rome. All the while businesses of every size and description circled the drain of failure like lemmings diving off a cliff. 

Nowadays anyone over 50 who lost their cushy jobs with juicy expense accounts, million dollar budgets, and traveled first class exclusively shares an awkward epiphany with blue-collar workers that they are no longer employable. They have become the new dispensable and realize someone half their age would gladly take their job for half the salary, work part time, and not bitch about benefits or country club memberships. 

Things are different now and as the saying goes "if America coughs the rest of the world sneezes" but now the entire world is coughing and blood is beginning to spew from its’ lungs. 

Successful small business owners with established track records and impressive client lists are suffering the same fates as displaced Ph. D’s from pedigree universities. They have became common fodder for the unemployment lines.  However some of the long-term unemployed, out of shear desperation, have packed up and relocated to obscure locations usually known for their association with the Federal Witness Protection Program. Iowa, Utah, Nebraska, N. Dakota, and Montana are becoming the cosmopolitan hot spots of the future. 


The masses are scared shitless. Newspapers dating back to the Civil War are crumbling like our infrastructure, company budgets have been slashed to cover bare essentials, and everyone in every field of business is afraid to spend a dime and terrified of failing for the very realistic probability they will be fired. If you're looking for a self-starter, highly motivated, recent college grad today you can find them at Walmart, Target, Costco, and throughout the country in your neighborhood mall where the Apple store is the Mecca of employment opportunities. 

With the Presidential elections just a few months away before you cast your vote remember what a wise man (my 78 year old barber) once told me. "In order to be a good politician you have to be a very good liar."