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DEBTOR NATION

Chapter 1 ♦ AIRMAIL FROM AFTERLIFE

1976

One rainy summer day, I packed my backpack and went to America. I was seventeen. I knew what I was doing: I was escaping from the debacle at home. And I was looking for something. For what exactly, I didn’t know, but I’d go look for it in America. There, the heat burned in my nostrils. Lawns were brown. Cars were big and air-conditioned. Girls went gaga over my accent. Guys thought I was cool. And I fell in love with it all.
          Three years later, I was paying my way through college in Texas when the notion of home, distant and convoluted as it had become, blew up with gratuitous violence. A Boeing had crashed into a mountain in Turkey, killing all 155 people aboard. I heard about it on the radio. But I didn’t connect the dots.
          A few days later, I found a message from the operator in my campus PO Box. Telegram, call Western Union, it said. I called from one of the pay phones. My heart was pounding in my temples, and I had trouble hearing the lady on the other end.
          “I’d read it to you,” she said. “But it’s in German. I think you better come by and get it.”
          “I’m fixing to go to work. Can’t you try to read it to me?”
          “Oh dear.”
          “Is it long?”
          “Two lines.”
          “Can you spell it?”
          “Well, I guess I could. Are you ready?”
          I pulled out a notepad and pen. “Ready,” I said, though I knew that I wasn’t ready, that I’d never be ready for whatever she was about to spell.
          “E-L-T-E-R-N new word,” she said, “A-M new word M-O-N-T-A-G new word M-I-T new word F-L-U-G-Z-E-U-G new word I-N new word D-E-R new word T-U-R-K-E-I—”
          “Stop! Please.” I couldn’t write anymore. Parents on Monday with plane in Turkey.... German sentences, even in abbreviated telegram style, had the main verb at the end, but I didn’t want to hear the main verb, didn’t want to hear it spelled out letter by torturous letter. “Thank you. That’s enough.”
          I’d escaped the debacle at home and had gone as far away as possible. But this wasn’t what I’d had in mind. I stood there in a daze, brain deadlocked, numb, clutching the receiver, drowning in abysmal emotions.
          Then I went to work. It was just a part-time job, but now I needed the money more than ever. Afterward, I drove to the Western Union office and picked up the yellow slip of paper with twelve lines of all-caps alphanumeric gibberish and two lines of readable text. It was from my sister, sent from the town where she was staying with friends. But it didn’t include their phone number. And my brother was on vacation somewhere. So there was no way to reach him either.

Next....

TESTOSTERONE PIT, the novel

Wolf Richter

Chapter 1 ♦ Circle Jerk

It was Saturday, the biggest day of the week, and everyone was working bell to bell, over forty salesmen, though Ferronickel didn’t know exactly how many he had because some hadn’t shown up and might have started selling cars some other place, and because he’d hired a bunch of new guys an hour ago.

“It’s a beautiful day,” he sang in a basso profundo voice as he marched across the showroom in his asymmetric gait. He was the general sales manager at the Ford Superstore. His Tabasco Sauce tie was loosened, his collar unbuttoned. His gut that hung over his belt strained his shirt. He had puffy eyes and was full of mean energy, ready to explode, ready to force things to happen. He blew out the door, came to a halt on the porch that surrounded the showroom on three sides, and lit a cigarette.

Al Millikin, one of his four sales managers and perhaps the best closer in town, was watching Mad Boxer work a customer on the truck lot. Potential deal.

“Why can’t he bring that guy inside and write him up?” Ferronickel said.

“He ought to tell him we got free pussy on the showroom,” Millikin said.

“Don’t give me any ideas for our next live remote.”

“Come to think of it, that would be a hell of a lot more effective than the classical rock-and-roll shit we’ve been doing.”

“For our male customers.”

“We could alternate. Free pussy one day, free Godiva chocolates the next. We’d have both ends of the spectrum covered.”

“You’re a fucking Einstein, Millikin.”

Reginald Pierce, another sales manager, a big guy with a shortish Afro, was jumpy and his eyes darted about. He fretted about Whacker Packer, Hackman Jones, JoAnn Delouche, and several other salesmen who’d formed a dope ring by the plate-glass window. If left alone, they’d make up rumors, complain about dealership coffee, and infect each other with morale problems. He singled out a young guy.

“Freddie T, are you going to participate in a circle jerk?” he growled. They called him Freddie T because of his unpronounceable Greek last name. “Or are you going to sell something?”

It startled them; they’d forgotten all about selling. And they drifted apart.

Lou Massago gesticulated on the phone in one of the closing booths. He wore a white button-down shirt, a red and blue tie, slacks, and ostrich-skin boots. A scar curved upward from the right corner of his mouth, giving him a lopsided grin even when he was serious. His eyes were set close together and peered out from under his bushy eyebrows with ferocious intensity. But he had a soft voice when he wanted to, and now he wanted to because he was talking to a customer about a 15-passenger van that had come out of the rental fleet. There were ten of them. They were scratched and dented and had too many miles on them, and they were overpriced, and no one could sell them, but he was king of sales, and if he could sell them, it would prove he could sell anything.

He hated working the phone. He needed his customers in front of him, needed to stare into the whites of their eyes. But no one had sold any of those vans yet, and to prove he was king of sales and could sell anything, he’d decided to sell them all. Besides, the Saturday rush hadn’t begun yet, and calling old customers was more productive than standing around waiting for something to happen.

Next....

Wednesday

Oct052011

Greece 'Finds' Treasure, Stays Solvent For Another Month

Wednesday, October 5, 2011 at 8:01AM

The Greek government has been engaging in financial shenanigans on a routine basis for years—example, it hired Goldman Sachs to hide the actual size of its deficits in order to be allowed into the Eurozone. As shocking as these revelations used to be, they don't surprise anyone anymore ... until they come up with something that surprises everyone.

Mid October, Greece is going to plunge into insolvency because it won't be able to pay the salaries of its 1.3 million civil servants and government employees. Unless it gets more EU bailout money. The inspectors from the Troika (ECB, IMF, and EU Commission) are in Athens right now to inspect once again if Greece is complying with the Troika's demands. Most likely, they will leave angry again; getting an accurate read on Greece's finances is like nailing Jell-O to the wall. It can't be done.

Meanwhile, the Greek government has been pressuring the Troika to pay the next installment of the bailout money rather than to dillydally with inspections. Remember, insolvency is going to happen by mid October, they threatened.

But Jean-Claude Juncker, Prime Minister of Luxembourg and President of the EU Group, announced on Tuesday that the next installment of the bailout package wouldn't be paid before mid November (Spiegel, article in German); the inspectors are still trying to nail financial Jell-O to the wall and need more time.

No problem, said Evangelos Venizelos, Finance Minister of Greece, and announced that his government had suddenly found €1.5 billion in a bank stabilization fund that was set up during the crisis of 2008. Enough to keep Greece liquid until mid November.

As if to underscore the impossibility of bailing out Greece and putting it back on track: A 24-hour general strike is paralyzing the country right now. Airports are closed, and tourists and others are stuck. Hundreds of incoming flights have been cancelled. Yesterday, civil servants blocked the entrances to seven ministries in Athens. They're all part of a massive wave of protests by civil servants and government employees who fear losing their jobs, rich salaries, early retirement, and hefty benefits that politicians have handed to them—funded with cheap Euro debt. Take the state-owned railway system. Trainose, which operates the routes, and OSE, which manages the tracks, pay out €400 million in salaries a year but take in only €100 million in revenues. It's all part of the Greek vote-buying system that is now crashing.

For more on the impossible enterprise of reforming the Greek government apparatus: Reform Rebellion in Greece.

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4 Comments | |

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Reader Comments (4)

Your Greek analysis is spot on. I lived there six years and the corruption is endemic; the lies second nature. It's been building for thirty years, and, sorry to say, but only default will allow this lovely country the opportunity to purge their bloated public sector and get back to making an honest living.

October 5, 2011 |

rdow

Thanks for your comment. Cool to have this post validated by personal experience. I didn't realize that one of my readers used to live in Greece.

October 5, 2011 |

Wolf

I couldn't agree more. I worked there before and after the 2008 crash, corruption was endemic, nobody paid any tax and one (of the many) of the closed professions was on strike almost continuously . The political system is centred around two extremely corrupt families that have near enough half of the unions each as supporters.

One of my colleagues had a heart operation and had to pay the surgeon and the anaesthetist in cash, Dentists and other health professionals boast of paying next to no tax. Any corporate approach to any Government arm such as planning permission etc must be preceded with a brown envelope.

They have no indigenous industry apart from tourism and just cannot survive without EU subsidies.

October 6, 2011 |

marko

October 6, 2011 |

marko

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