"Not My Financial Crisis - I've Got Literally Nothing to Lose"
As usual, former NY Press editor and current AlterNet contributor Alex Zaitchik has weighed in on a topic like no one else has (at least that I know of). This time it's about what a joke this financial crisis is to those of us who don't own a damn thing and who see this so-called economic meltdown as little more than an excuse to stop paying bills. Here's an excerpt:
Like most people I know in their 20s and 30s, it takes a stretch of
the imagination to understand that I have a stake in the national
economy. In terms of day-to-day life, my only ties to large financial
institutions are a Bank of America checking account, a single low-limit
high-fee Visa card, and a Kilimanjaro of student debt, which I have
come to accept as something I will die with, not from, like a benign
but grapefruit-size tumor or peaceable parasite dwelling in my large
intestine. When people use scary terms like "unchartered territory" and
"total meltdown," my first thought is, "Would an economic cataclysm
wipe out my student debt? If so, then let's press reset and start the
whole damn thing over! Burn it clean!"
I haven't heard much from
or about people like me in the last month. Watching the media report on
the crisis, you'd think the United States had achieved the Republican
dream of becoming a full-fledged "ownership society" populated by an
upwardly mobile class of home-owning day traders sitting on fat nest
eggs. But it hasn't. So here's a news flash from the young-and-indebted
demographic: Those of us without retirement plans or health insurance,
who just barely make rent and buy food in the real economy, a lot of us
aren't as scared as maybe we should be. We have our own gut take on the
disappearance of $9 trillion in electronic NYSE casino chips. And that
is, we could give a shit.
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