The Economy

We took our distantly related friend (who's brilliant and self-sufficient at 100 years old) out for dinner and grocery shopping yesterday. She being a young woman in the Great Depression, we asked her about what she thought of the current economic situation. Having just read Upton Sinclair's The Money Lenders and possibly influenced by it, she said every 80 years the rich get caught being greedy and suffer a little and the poor suffer greatly for ten years. It started the last time with mortgages defaulting just like this time. From her point of view it was much the same before in that it was a slow moving storm that some saw in the distance and others went about their daily lives. I'm not sure what the metaphorical equivalent is to boarding up the windows before a hurricane, but the time is surely ripe for another humanitarian like Sinclair to take on the powers that be and explain to the masses just what happened. I can't help feeling a mixed melancholy in looking at his picture though. He at once seems so determined, thin, brave, weak, and inspiring. Did he make a difference that lasted 80 years? Did he just chase the evil into hiding or are these just new and different devils? Or is none of this so simple and the problem of good and evil is that in the end neither really exists? Maybe the caption beneath Sinclair should be an old thought: The greatest battle you can ever fight is the one you will loose.

B