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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

Dec212011

The Most Disparaged Profession

Wednesday, December 21, 2011 at 3:22PM

Congress is the ideal American institution: it spends far more than it takes in and borrows the difference. We love that. To heck with the future. It means free money, services, wars, and other goodies. At least some of us get to profit from it. And then we blow it or invest it, and lose it or make money on it. It all adds up to that glorious GDP. It’s the American dream.

Lawmakers are so efficient at it that 36% of every dollar in the budget has to be borrowed.... Oh wait. They don’t do budgets anymore. They’re uncool. They do continuing resolutions. Given this bottomless largesse, mathematically speaking, it’s logical that Congress would have sky-high approval rating. Wait.... Oh no!

Only 11% of the people approve of the Herculean job lawmakers are doing, according to Gallup, which has a knack for peeking at our innermost feelings. It’s the lowest score since Gallup started tracking it in 1974.

How can that be? Didn't we just learn that it's a virtuous activity for lawmakers to give out privileged information on pending legislation? Profiting from opportunity is an American principle we cherish. So, a few hedge funds were given tradable information about compromises in the healthcare law just before the announcement on December 8, 2009. According to the Wall Street Journal:

They belong to a select group who pay for early, firsthand reports on Capitol Hill. Seeking advance word of government decisions is part of a growing, lucrative—and legal—practice in Washington that employs a network of brokers, lobbyists and political insiders.

Insider trading by lawmakers and staff is an honorable practice as well. It’s perfectly legal and part and partial of their wealth aggregation package, according to 60 Minutes. So how can it be that a record 86% of the people disapprove of the fine job Congress is doing?

And more importantly, who are the stalwarts who approve of the job Congress is doing? Gallup has the answer:

7% of independents. That’s good news; it’s above zero. Zero would have been embarrassing. And even with the survey’s margin of error of ±4%, it remains above zero
12% of Republicans
14% of Democrats (they’ve got some ‘splainin to do)

It all boils down to honesty and ethical standards, which lawmakers have to check at the door when they enter the profession. According to another Gallup poll, a record 64% of respondents rated lawmakers very low or low on honesty and ethical standards. That’s the worst score ever for lawmakers and matches the prior record awarded to lobbyists in 2008. Together, lawmakers and lobbyists are the “most disparaged professions” in the history of Gallup’s surveys. In the last poll, lobbyists were second, with 62%, followed by telemarketers with 53%, and by car salespeople with a practically stellar 47%.

It has been a vertiginous decline from the peak in 2001, when 25% rated Congress very low or low on honesty and ethical standards. Back then—coincidentally or not—budget deficits were under control, and gross national debt was “only” $5.7 trillion. Since then, with every additional trillion in debt, respect for Congress has been shrinking. The current gross national debt of $15.1 trillion will likely hit $16.4 trillion by next December, and if that trajectory continues for a few more years, approval ratings for Congress might actually hit zero ±4%. Which would be a blast.

The irony is that we the people hired them—and as long as our personal lawmakers bring home the bacon, we’ll vote for them again, though we scream and holler about the other scoundrels in Congress. And bringing home the bacon is what the congressional chef d’œuvre, the tax code, is all about—just when corporate tax dodging puts the finger on its Strenuously Hushed-Up Basic Flaw.

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