from APPROVED to DECLINED - the message loud and clear from the House of Representatives

After today's news out of Washington, I was originally speechless. Then I got mad and started writing. My writing style is rather, well, blunt.

My biggest wonder is about getting paid by my clients. But this is a cyclical wonder that happens every 15 days. Either it continues or it stops, right? I work as hard as I can. I don't have a 401(k), I'm not invested in the market - but this stuff worries me. I have aging family about to retire and the value of their 401(k) may put that off - but they may have no choice but to start traveling that road due to lack of employment.

I'm also not sure if globalization is about to be redefined. To the average joe six pack globalization means "Gee, wow, ya mean there's a TGI Fridays in Buenos Aires? Cool!" To the economist - they start to lose me at "intertwined" - not because I don't understand it but because it's SO OBVIOUS. Intertwined? No fuckin' kidding. And then the first time they say "probable" - well then I've really tuned out now haven't I?

What I'm wondering is more along the lines of - are we finally seeing a scripted-in-English slow motion (but picking up speed) localized for our country version of a Latin American collapse? Argentina in 2002? Brazil's hyperinflation in the 1970's? Will the US dollar drop so much in the coming weeks that the Zimbabwe dollar (currently at trillions of them to buy USD$1) actually gain ground, with no intervention of the Zimbabwe government?

I haven't been this freaked out about the economy since I was ten years old, living in Kenosha, WI. Unemployment peaked in Kenosha at about ... 33% if I recall correctly? It was exactly tied with Flint, Michigan. Kenosha sort of recovered, Flint not so much. That was all about the auto industry. It was an impending sea change in the economy and no one knew what was coming out the other end, or when it would end or in what form.

We found out. It was - would you like fries with that OR would you like to get real tech-savvy real fast? There wasn't much in between. And oh did we get addicted. No, not to drugs or alcohol (well... nevermind). We got addicted to the word APPROVED. Better than a food pellet. Some of the machines still show it in blue LED letters in that speak-and-spell font. Some show it completely drawn in, on a black-on-grey LCD. And you damn right well gave that machine the once-over before you shared your card with it, we wised up about tossing those reciepts willy-nilly so that someone else did not assume our APPROVal.

The bankers figured it out although we have to keep kicking 'em in the balls to protect privacy - but they kept those approvals coming because they knew we were hooked. Nobody cared HOW the approvals happened but oh we wanted more. We were ENTITLED at varying levels due to the magic of a thing called a FICO score. Step right up and get approved! You'll probably get approved even with a low score but just skip over that fine print with the boring "legal" disclosures (they'd usually trail off into some fast hard to catch mumbling at that point) and then perk back up with "BUT JUST SIGN HERE, YOU'RE APPROVED!"

And now it's the money shot. We set ourselves up to have that 110-pound 6'1" naked hooker pop out of the cake - except there was a surprise. She used to weigh 510 pounds and hasn't had the skin removal surgery yet, she hasn't quite figured out not to eat much if any fatty food with her Alli tablets so she came out of the cake leaving an oily $4.50 a gallon trail. (Oh, except in Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville and parts 'round there... they line up for a tank of that oily $4.50 a gallon trail!) And oh baby - she's got some medical debt. Her FICO score is more fucked up than the skin on her thighs! By god that cost and that risk is going to get spread across all the users of the system - willing and unwilling.

So we come back to - what is globalization? Just maybe it's not that bright shiny future the marketers pitch. What if, just maybe, it bears NO resemblance to a Cisco commercial? And as approvals are slowing down - snowballing even - what's going to happen now? It's like being ten years old all over again and the biggest industry of your small town just evaporated, never to return - except on a national level.

Oh, it'll rebound somehow in some form - but at what level? The standard of living expected in the mid-70's took quite a bit more effort in the mid-80's and even more in the mid-90's. There are only 24 hours in a day. I hear that in some households there are two parents that both make a real good wage - but that's an ever-smaller demographic. Used to be maybe 20% of the pie chart looked like that. But there's just a sliver left. Your chances of getting a taste aren't high.

So what form could globalization take? A lot of empty unkempt buildings all over urban America - just like major urban areas abroad (and in Detroit)? Evidence that there had once been pavement and road maintenance with odd brief perfectly paved stretches near houses with high walls and electric fences? Four generations under one roof as the norm with as many bars on the windows as one can have but still let light in? Armed private security playing a higher role than police. Could be much of urban America in the near future.

And today the news out of Washington was DECLINED. Oh yeah, the president with the 27-ish percent approval rating (no, the other kind of approval - it has nothing to do with his black Amex co-signed by the Saudis) went on TV to back some legislation HE WROTE HIMSELF, to hear him tell it. His own party and its supporters freaked out. The opposition party called bullshit (as well they should) - everytime that slick fucker in the White House goes on TV several months later it comes out that part or all of it was some preposterous lie to benefit his own agenda.

Could this be where all that APPROVED led us? We pay our elected officials and their employees untold sums of money in salaries, pensions, entitlements - and the result was DECLINED, in the form of no action?

Both sides pointed fingers. Because there's a new synonym for bipartisanship - it's 'bullshit'. Politics has degenerated to, quite simply, having to be RIGHT. That doesn't mean right-wing or left-wing, it means that we have to vote our position because it's the morally superior groupthink correct thing to do among our peer group (political party). After all, it doesn't matter if they get a goddamn thing done because they still get the big salary and the perks. They just have to do their time.

I predict that these highly paid politicians are going to start leaving Washington as if the session is over. Why the hell not? Most of their constituents would be furious about a big hand-out to these same friendly Wall Street bankers - but wouldn't it be a shame if suddenly - there just wasn't a quorum for doing business? As a slick politician who's more concerned about being RIGHT which are you going to pick?

Meanwhile there's heated activity going on inside the huge remaining banks. Most of the mortgage paper is worth just as much as if it were used as toilet paper. Now lets go after the credit cards. There's a trend picking up steam to look at every member of John Q Public and review his avaible credit vs. his FICO score. The new marching orders are to slow down all those APPROVED's.

I hate that any tax money be spent to bail out these wall-street wonks - but at least it CONTROLs it IF our pompous politicians can get past being morally right and actually do something QUITE FORIEGN to any of them: compromise. Because if we don't, wall street is going to implode in an uncontrolled way that will see a lot of golden-parachute deployments over posh Caribbean islands named Saint-Something-or-Other. It'll leave the American people having to kick the APPROVED "drug" cold-turkey but why should they care? It would be a win for the Wall Street slime who shoveled out the approvals. It will be a win for the politicians who have to be morally right. The "Joe Six-Pack demographic" will perceive "they stuck it to the bastards," - and they will realize too late the bastards stuck it to THEM.

The outcome of today's DECLINED message out of the House of Representatives has already reverbrated once around the world. It's going to keep spiraling downwards with every 24-hour cycle. No one knows how far down that will be.

These overpaid out-of-control elected officials need to hear loud and clear: stay in Washington and pass an acceptable compromise that stops the spiral. The historical precedents are there. It may seem impossible in an election year but the two sides have to put aside their differences.