House of Cards
I walked into the elevator lobby and a sound not entirely unlike thunder or maybe a hundred bowling balls falling out of a closet boomed over my head. I looked over at the office services guy who was waiting for the elevator and said “What the hell was that?”
“Financial firm upstairs. They’re gone. Taking all their stuff out today. Wheeling it out in those big hampers.”
So it continues.
I walked across Times Square and looked up at the Lehman Brothers building and saw that the video of waterfalls and sunsets and other stuff that is kind of like the stuff that they put on airline television screens during boarding interspersed with the Lehman logo and whatever their slogan was gone. In its place was a static, bright blue plain screen with the Barclays logo. I looked at the reflection on the building across the street and wondered how the people who worked there felt about the constant, static blue light burning at them all day instead of the old video.
At my corner there’s a card store. It used to be called “With You In Mind” but now it’s called “Cards From The Heart”. That’s not interesting to me. What is interesting me is that under both names the next line on the sign said “Cards 50% off”. Are you giving 50% off straight from the heart, dear readers? Nothing says heartfelt like a discount card. Still, “Yes, I had you in my mind so much I bought you a remaindered Hallmark” is probably an appropriate sentiment for the waning days of 2008.
The first time I went into that shop I was sorely disappointed. I had expected that the cards there would be irregulars. You know, like how you used to be able to buy pants with one leg slightly shorter than the other for half off or maybe socks that were an odd length for 75% off? I expected to find cool stuff like a card with Santa Claus on the front that said “Happy Bar Mitzvah” on the inside or maybe something that said “Happpy Birhtday” or “Best Ol Fuck On Your Engagement”. No such cards were to be found.
I wonder if the greeting card industry ever does screw up like that though. I heard a story back in college, (possibly apocryphal) that the whole two-color jeans craze of the ‘80s was the result of a production line error. Apparently jeans are made by stitching together fronts and backs and someone mis-matched the colors that were being fed into the machine. Instead of tossing out the bad lot the company decided to push it as a new fashion trend. It worked splendidly. The story was cited as an example of the weirdness of consumer behavior where the laws of supply and demand do not strictly apply but rather the consumer perception of an item matters. Many people will not buy clothes if they are too cheap; however jack the price on the same item and call it fashion and it will move. Wine and spirits are another market that works that way. Stick an expensive price tag on a cheap bottle and you’re more likely to sell it to the average (non-street -dwelling or poor alcoholic) consumer. People are funny that way and that’s why economic models don’t always work. Any model or so-called science whose predictive success is based on human behavior simply will not work all of the time and perhaps not even most of the time because human behavior is too much of an unpredictable variable.
The one thing that is predictable about our current economic situation is that those institutions that are still standing will hold their breath, stamp their feet and drive the markets into the toilet until they get the welfare they’re after. I suspect we’ll see that get wrapped up in the next few days. I heard one wag on the news say “Capitalism without bankruptcy is like religion without hell.” It sure does look like a lot of folks are about to be born again at our expense. Ah well, who really needs to ever stop working anyway, eh?
“Financial firm upstairs. They’re gone. Taking all their stuff out today. Wheeling it out in those big hampers.”
So it continues.
I walked across Times Square and looked up at the Lehman Brothers building and saw that the video of waterfalls and sunsets and other stuff that is kind of like the stuff that they put on airline television screens during boarding interspersed with the Lehman logo and whatever their slogan was gone. In its place was a static, bright blue plain screen with the Barclays logo. I looked at the reflection on the building across the street and wondered how the people who worked there felt about the constant, static blue light burning at them all day instead of the old video.
At my corner there’s a card store. It used to be called “With You In Mind” but now it’s called “Cards From The Heart”. That’s not interesting to me. What is interesting me is that under both names the next line on the sign said “Cards 50% off”. Are you giving 50% off straight from the heart, dear readers? Nothing says heartfelt like a discount card. Still, “Yes, I had you in my mind so much I bought you a remaindered Hallmark” is probably an appropriate sentiment for the waning days of 2008.
The first time I went into that shop I was sorely disappointed. I had expected that the cards there would be irregulars. You know, like how you used to be able to buy pants with one leg slightly shorter than the other for half off or maybe socks that were an odd length for 75% off? I expected to find cool stuff like a card with Santa Claus on the front that said “Happy Bar Mitzvah” on the inside or maybe something that said “Happpy Birhtday” or “Best Ol Fuck On Your Engagement”. No such cards were to be found.
I wonder if the greeting card industry ever does screw up like that though. I heard a story back in college, (possibly apocryphal) that the whole two-color jeans craze of the ‘80s was the result of a production line error. Apparently jeans are made by stitching together fronts and backs and someone mis-matched the colors that were being fed into the machine. Instead of tossing out the bad lot the company decided to push it as a new fashion trend. It worked splendidly. The story was cited as an example of the weirdness of consumer behavior where the laws of supply and demand do not strictly apply but rather the consumer perception of an item matters. Many people will not buy clothes if they are too cheap; however jack the price on the same item and call it fashion and it will move. Wine and spirits are another market that works that way. Stick an expensive price tag on a cheap bottle and you’re more likely to sell it to the average (non-street -dwelling or poor alcoholic) consumer. People are funny that way and that’s why economic models don’t always work. Any model or so-called science whose predictive success is based on human behavior simply will not work all of the time and perhaps not even most of the time because human behavior is too much of an unpredictable variable.
The one thing that is predictable about our current economic situation is that those institutions that are still standing will hold their breath, stamp their feet and drive the markets into the toilet until they get the welfare they’re after. I suspect we’ll see that get wrapped up in the next few days. I heard one wag on the news say “Capitalism without bankruptcy is like religion without hell.” It sure does look like a lot of folks are about to be born again at our expense. Ah well, who really needs to ever stop working anyway, eh?
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