Crash Culture: Dawn of a New America

It's been a bad year in America and we're only three months in. So bad that I've considered withdrawing what little cash remains in my savings and depositing it in a series of hand-dug ditches in the woods behind my house. I've never had a ton of money, so as a rule I've never worried much. But when the meager earnings I'd managed to squirrel away over the past decade started disappearing last November, thanks to the brain trust on Wall Street and whoever else is to blame for this slow-motion disaster sequence (cue Demz vs. Repubs slapfight), I began to worry.

Understanding economics was never, and perhaps will never, be my strength. But I've always been able to gain an understanding of these types of situations by reading and listening to a variety of perspectives on an issue. But when it comes to this mess, I just don't get it, no matter how much I read or listen to 'experts.' It feels like we're talking about Monopoly money, but we're not. It's real money that people are losing, everyday. When I opened up my last 401K quarterly statement it said I had lost $10K. Are you kidding me? Those numbers didn't even look real to me.

What this whole economic clusterfuck has taught me, above anything else, is the fact that even the safety of a corporate job -- the boring, ego-crushing jobs the majority of us must endure to survive -- is nothing more than an illusion.

Anyhow, here is a selection of things I've been reading and watching in my neverending search to make sense of how and why we are all going broke.   

Struggling Cleveland
Already battered by unemployment, the city struggles to weather the housing crisis.
[View photo essay here]

Frozen in indifference
Detroit has been in decline since before I was born. This story about how life goes on around a body found in one of the city's (many) vacant buildings speaks to the consequences of neglect.
[Read full story here]

How the Crash Will Reshape America
Love 'em or hate 'em, Richard Florida's take on Econo-Meltdown 2008/2009, and how it very well may alter the landscape of the country, is worth a read.  
[Read full story here]

Everything's Amazing, Nobody's Happy
Comedian Louis C.K. waxes poetic on the state of the country.
[Watch video here]