'Red, white and very bluehttp://www.theage.com.au/world/red-white-and-very-blue-20081213-6xw8.html?page=-1
As the US recession deepens, individual stories of hardship are everywhere.
Guy Rundle hears a few, and finds a nation deeply fearful about the times ahead.
FIVE minutes from Denver airport, in the sprawling suburb of Montbello, the gathering effects of the American recession are difficult to miss. Denver has a 6 per cent foreclosure rate, and most of it seems to be concentrated here, with "for sale by order" signs and chipboard across windows.
Though it doesn't have the spectacularly sad vistas of a place like Cleveland, where street upon street is deserted and weed-strewn, here the number of boarded-up houses is enough to change the complexion of the community; to give it a sense of decline.
Denver as a high-growth "New West" city was hit harder than most by the subprime crisis, and then by the first round of lay-offs as companies that had planned location and expansion here suddenly curtailed those plans.
The victims are as easy to spot as the houses.
In Starbucks, I meet Steve, a quiet man in his 50s taking a break from preparing his house for sale ahead of a forced foreclosure. "It just kinda hit all at once," he says of the past few months. His catering business went through the floor as firms began to cut costs. As his income fell, the rates on his mortgage rose. Three months ago, the two met, and he lost the long struggle to stave off disaster. "They now say the economy's been in recession for a year," he says drily. "No kidding."
Recession is recession, but how did he put himself in the sights of a subprime mortgage? "That's easy — they lied to me. Look, I'm not excusing myself, I should've had the contract checked out."
He looks at the newspaper on the table, reporting a strike at a Chicago company called Republic Windows. The militancy of the strike has attracted national attention. "Perhaps I should stage a sit-in," he says.
As the US recession starts to deepen, stories like Steve's aren't hard to find. The earlier winnowing process of the first subprime crisis — the eviction of the poor — has all but been completed. Now the second wave is beginning as the lay-offs commence.
In Washington, the heads of General Motors and Chrysler have been battling for a $US15 billion ($A22.3 billion) Government loan that they say is essential to staving off a pre-Christmas bankruptcy.
The news is bad all over: Yahoo laying off 1500 people; a round of Starbucks closures. Daily, it seems, there's another shattering announcement — the bankruptcy of the Chicago Tribune media group being the most recent. Cars, newspapers and coffee. If you can't sell these to Americans, what can you sell? Of course, many of these firms were being badly run and were over-leveraged and slow to respond to market changes.
Failure is just the market doing its job.
But what about cutting-edge sectors like online? Aren't those businesses going gangbusters? Aren't they?
"The new media is bullshit. I find it hard to feel any sense of, you know, tragedy because it was never like a real job in the first place," Ronnie says, downing half a bottle of beer in one gulp. She was laid off a week earlier.
We were in a bar behind Times Square popular with media people because of its closeness to the subway station which takes them, every evening, from the towering wonderland of midtown Manhattan to Queens, the endless sprawling borough offering affordable rents for entry-level word-serfs.'
Guy Rundle hears a few, and finds a nation deeply fearful about the times ahead.
FIVE minutes from Denver airport, in the sprawling suburb of Montbello, the gathering effects of the American recession are difficult to miss. Denver has a 6 per cent foreclosure rate, and most of it seems to be concentrated here, with "for sale by order" signs and chipboard across windows.
Though it doesn't have the spectacularly sad vistas of a place like Cleveland, where street upon street is deserted and weed-strewn, here the number of boarded-up houses is enough to change the complexion of the community; to give it a sense of decline.
Denver as a high-growth "New West" city was hit harder than most by the subprime crisis, and then by the first round of lay-offs as companies that had planned location and expansion here suddenly curtailed those plans.
The victims are as easy to spot as the houses.
In Starbucks, I meet Steve, a quiet man in his 50s taking a break from preparing his house for sale ahead of a forced foreclosure. "It just kinda hit all at once," he says of the past few months. His catering business went through the floor as firms began to cut costs. As his income fell, the rates on his mortgage rose. Three months ago, the two met, and he lost the long struggle to stave off disaster. "They now say the economy's been in recession for a year," he says drily. "No kidding."
Recession is recession, but how did he put himself in the sights of a subprime mortgage? "That's easy — they lied to me. Look, I'm not excusing myself, I should've had the contract checked out."
He looks at the newspaper on the table, reporting a strike at a Chicago company called Republic Windows. The militancy of the strike has attracted national attention. "Perhaps I should stage a sit-in," he says.
As the US recession starts to deepen, stories like Steve's aren't hard to find. The earlier winnowing process of the first subprime crisis — the eviction of the poor — has all but been completed. Now the second wave is beginning as the lay-offs commence.
In Washington, the heads of General Motors and Chrysler have been battling for a $US15 billion ($A22.3 billion) Government loan that they say is essential to staving off a pre-Christmas bankruptcy.
The news is bad all over: Yahoo laying off 1500 people; a round of Starbucks closures. Daily, it seems, there's another shattering announcement — the bankruptcy of the Chicago Tribune media group being the most recent. Cars, newspapers and coffee. If you can't sell these to Americans, what can you sell? Of course, many of these firms were being badly run and were over-leveraged and slow to respond to market changes.
Failure is just the market doing its job.
But what about cutting-edge sectors like online? Aren't those businesses going gangbusters? Aren't they?
"The new media is bullshit. I find it hard to feel any sense of, you know, tragedy because it was never like a real job in the first place," Ronnie says, downing half a bottle of beer in one gulp. She was laid off a week earlier.
We were in a bar behind Times Square popular with media people because of its closeness to the subway station which takes them, every evening, from the towering wonderland of midtown Manhattan to Queens, the endless sprawling borough offering affordable rents for entry-level word-serfs.'
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