Today's Stories

November 18, 2008

Chellis Glendinning
Cheering for Morgan Stanley

George C. Wilson
Perils of Pakistan: Will It Prove to be Obama's Cambodia?

Franklin Lamb
Who Will Evict Israel from Lebanon: Hezbollah or the UN?

Bill and Kathleen Christison
The Irresponsibility of Appointing Hillary Clinton Secretary of State

Roger Burbach
Orchestrating a Civic Coup in Bolivia: How Bush Tried to Bring Down Morales

John Ross
Drilling vs. Direct Democracy in Mexico

Wajahat Ali
Is Obama the Muslim World's Superman?

Damien Millet /
Eric Toussaint
What Really Happened in Washington? The G20 and the Inconsistent Script

Marc Gardner
When Mooning is a Sex Crime

Eric Walberg
Courting the Bear: a New Era for Russian/Western Relations?

Wendy Williams
The Bottled Water Con

Website of the Day
Where's Zappa When We Need Him?

November 17, 2008

Michael Hudson
Bankers Shake Down Congress and the G-20

Paul Craig Roberts
When It's a Clear Day and You Can't See GM

Mike Whitney
Busted in Washington

Steve Conn
Where is Nader Country 2008? Mapping the Nader Votes

Andy Worthington
Closing Guantánamo: Advice for Obama

Jonathan Cook
The Real Goal of Israel's Blockade of Gaza: "They Are All Hamas"

Rannie Amiri
Dual Loyalties Will Doom Obama

David Macaray
Bailing Out the Automakers

David Michael Green
Twelve Victories

Charles Modiano
Sports Illustrated and Sexism: Tokenism or a New Day?

Website of the Day
The South Sea Bubble

November 14 / 16, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Heading for the First Hundred Days

Jeffrey St. Clair
How Bill Clinton Doomed the Spotted Owl: a Cautionary Tale for Greens in the Age of Obama

Mike Whitney
Paulson the Bungler

Sasan Fayazmanesh
RIP: the Experts, 1929-2008

Moshe Adler
Keynes: China's Greatest Export?

Anthony DiMaggio
Transcending Race?

Jean Bricmont
Cats, Dogs and Creationism

Sheldon Rampton
The Eisenstadt Hoax: a Real Life Example of a "Fake Fake"

Douglas Valentine
Let the Trials Begin!

Joseph Nevins /
Timothy Dunn
Barricading the Border

Tom Barry
Rahm Emanuel's Political Pragmatism on Immigration

Ron Jacobs
Che Guevara Meets Trashman: the Genius of Spain Rodriguez

Larry Portis
The State of the Israeli State

Mary Lynn Cramer Obama's Brain Trust: Seems Like Old Times

Sherry Wolf
The Myth of the Black/Gay Divide

Peter Cervantes-Gautschi
Secretary of Greed: How Larry Summers Championed Wall Street by Impoverishing the Mexican People

Jacob Hornberger
The Conservative Malaise: Hey, Brother, Can You Spare Some Habeas Corpus?

Lance Selfa
The Center-Right Nation Con

Benjamin Dangl
Vermont Against General Dynamics

Seth Sandronsky
Lifelines in Hard Times

Russell Mokhiber
Time to Give the Friends of Big Coal the Boot

Allan Stellar
Nuke a Gay Whale for the Navy

Kelly Overton
Get Thee to a Shelter: the Obamas and the Million-Mutt March

Martha Rosenberg
Why Mink are Cheering the Economic Crisis

Richard Rhames
Palling Around with Ray the Plumber

David Yearsley
How I Played Hooky from "High School Musical 3"

Lorenzo Wolff
Zach is Back: Songs of Hurt, Rage and Resistance

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Ford and Buknatski

Website of the Weekend
The Eyes Have It

November 13, 2008

Pam Martens
The Two Trillion DollarBlack Hole

Vijay Prashad
Guilt by Participation: Sonal Shah's Membership Has Expired

Patrick Cockburn
Who is Paying for the Iraqi National Intelligence Service?

Jonathan Cook
The Withering Palestinian Economy

Ralph Nader
Obama and the Rogue Regime

Bill Quigley
McCain Owes America an Apology

Lee Sustar
Bailing Out the Big Three

Omar Barghouti
Boycotting Israeli Settlement Products

Steve Conn
More Alaska Fun

Howard Lisnoff
The Last Bastion of Hate

Jeff Cohen
What Indy Media Heroes Can Teach Us

Website of the Day
Who are the Obamagelicals?

November 12, 2008

Johanna Berrigan
Scattered Families: the Iraq Refugee Crisis

Steve Conn
The Big Mystery Election in Alaska

Patrick Bond
Against Volcker

Bokar Ture /
Dedrick Muhammad
Remembering a Black Radical in a Barack Obama America

Alan Farago
The Hispanic Vote in South Florida: Not Dyed Blue Yet

Dave Lindorff
Rescuing Joe Lieberman

Karl Grossman
Break Up Big Oil: Tyranny in the Tank

David Macaray
An Obama Litmus Test: Will Labor Have a Seat at the Table?

George Wuerthner
Act Now to Save America's Public Forests

Susie Day
Heavy Weather

Website of the Day
Does the Planet Have a Future? an Interview with Derrick Jensen

November 11, 2008

James G. Abourezk
How to Vote Against Your Own Interests

Allan J. Lichtman
What Obama Can Learn From FDR

Eric Toussaint
Financing the Bailout: a Holy Union for a Deuce of a Swindle

Ron Jacobs
Moving Beyond Hope: a Leftist Looks at the Near Future

Peter Montague
Green Coal?

Corporate Crime Reporter
BP's Big Spill on the North Slope

Laura Carlsen
Latin America Sends Obama a Piece of Its Mind

Col. Dan Smith
A New Unifying Paradigm?

Morton Skorodin
The Machine Grinds On

David Michael Green
My Michelle Moment

Charles R. Larson
Ask Your Doctor for a Free Sample

Website of the Day
Will Old Faithful Be Sucked Dry?

November 10, 2008

David Roediger
Obama's Victory and the Future of Race in the United States

Paul Craig Roberts
Conned Again?

Peter Lee
Obama's Man in Afghanistan

Corey D. B. Walker
And We Are Not Saved

Jeff Halper
A Bone in America's Throat

Bill Hatch
Look on the Bright Side, Dammit!

Andy Worthington
Guilty By Torture

Bill Quigley
Anger and Hope: Haitian Families Furious Over School Collapse

Peter Morici
Paulson's Folly

Anthony Olszewski
The Advent of a New Black Politician

Kim Nicolini
Exile and Displacement on Bunker Hill

Cpt. Paul Watson
Farley Mowat's Last Book? Maybe Not

Website of the Day
Boondocks, Another Banned Episode

November 7 / 9, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Hail to the Chief of Staff

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Politics of Fire

Vijay Prashad
Obama's Indian: the Many Faces of Sonal Shah

Tariq Ali
Great Expectations

Jean Bricmont
Our Obama Problem

John V. Whitbeck
Obama, Emanuel and Israel

Saul Landau
Politics Among the Ruins: Obama Faces an Economic Disaster

Peter Morici
Gone, Baby, Gone: Another 240,000 Jobs Lost

Lawrence Velvel
Obama and Afghanistan: the Return of Clintonia?

Karyn Strickler
Don't Govern From the Middle

Nativo V. Lopez
Banking on Obama with Open Eyes: Latinos and Obama

Christopher Fons
A Generational Moment: From Jackson to Obama

Alan Farago
Sarah Palin's Limited Engagement

David Yearsley
Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang

Christopher Brauchli
Pardoning Industry: Bush's Latest Executive Orders

Samah Sabawi
Gaza's New Cemetery

Dave Lindorff
Getting the Change We've Earned

Deepak Tripathi
A Revolution to Remember

Beth Sherouse
In the Wake of Lost Initiatives: the Gay Glass is Half Empty

Patrick Irelan
La Belle Dame Sans Regrets: Back to Alaska

Stephen Martin
Barack and the Temple

Richard Rhames
Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss

J. Murray
White Cherokee Mythology

Lorenzo Wolff
Anthems for the Average Kid

Kim Nicolini
Exile and Displacement on Bunker Hill: Art Meets Realism in "The Exiles"

Poets' Basement
Farrelly, Fleming and Browne

Website of the Day
Take Who Takes You (For the New Big O)

November 6, 2008

Frank J. Menetrez
Now What?

John Chuckman
The Big Leap: From Hope to Change

P. Sainath
A Magic Moment (But Still Behind the Global Curve)

Joshua Frank
A Look Under the Hood of an Obama Administration

Edna Canetti
Come, Obama, Change My Life: a Plea from Israel

John Ross
Brad Will is Still Dead

Norman Solomon
Sorry Joe: a Mandate for Spreading the Wealth

Fawzia Afzal-Khan
The Morning After: Pakistan and Its New Bedfellow

Robert Weissman
Mordor Brightens: Obama's Challenge--and Our Own

Harvey Wasserman
A Blow to Nuclear Power in Chicago

Website of the Day
Pot Wins Big

November 5, 2008

Cockburn / St. Clair
Why McCain Lost

Chuck Spinney
How Obama Won

Ishmael Reed
Morning in Obamerica: the Promised Land?

Chris Floyd
A Prism for the New Paradigm: "What If Bush Did It?"

Binoy Kampmark
Obama's Victory: a Nation Divided

Michael Donnelly
The Rebooting of America, 2008

David Macaray
Who Should be Secretary of Labor?

Peter Morici
Obama's First Moves on the Economy

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
What Real Change Should Bring

William Willers
Will We be Forced to Sell Off the Public Lands?

Website of the Day
The Killing Fields of South Africa

November 4, 2008

Kathleen Christison
McCain, Obama and Khalidi

James Ridgeway
A New World?

Winslow T. Wheeler
Cleaning Out the Pentagon Pig Sty

Mike Whitney
Obama's Little Red Book

Conn Hallinan
A New Foreign Policy

Holly M. Barker
The Inequities of Climate Change and the Small Island Experience

Ashley Smith
Where is the Occupation of Iraq Heading?

Andy Worthington
Guilty Verdict Fails to Justify Gitmo Trials

Martha Rosenberg
AIG: Too Big to Play Fair

Stephen Martin
Breakdown of the Globalisation Agenda

Doug Lummis
Full Moon Over Okinawa

Carlos Fierro
An Anarchist View of Elections

Website of the Day
La Pequeña as Sarah Palin

November 3, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
Friends Like These

John Kennedy O'Hara
Voter Lockdown: Prosecuting Voters

Peter Montague
Is Nuclear Power Green?

Steve Conn
Nader and the Youth Vote

Andrew Gebhardt
How Much Do the Differences Between Obama, McCain and Bush Really Matter?

Ron Jacobs
Bombing Syria: Borders are for Sissies

Ralph Nader
Between Hope and Reality: an Open Letter to Senator Obama

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Cleaning Up After Bush

Uri Avnery
Obama and the Order of the Optimists

Dave Lindorff
Studs and Me

Fred Gardner
Adieu, Rimonabant

DC Larson
You Are How You Vote

David Michael Green
McCain Finally Gets Tough

Val Strange
Hopeless Hoi Polloi or Step in the Right Direction?

Tuli Kupferberg /
Jeffrey Lewis
Wailing Wall Street:
Bring Spare Money!

Website of the Day
Pranking Palin (the Uncut Version)

October 31 , 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Change You Can See

Jeffrey St. Clair
Killing Leroy Jackson: the Indian Wars Have Never Ended

Douglas Valentine
Giving Aid and Comfort to the Enemy: McCain's 14th Amendment Problem

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
The Great Bailout Fraud: Misrepresenting the Financial Crisis

Dr. Ignacy Nowopolski
Is the Global Economy a Mistake? an Interview with Paul Craig Roberts

Alan Maass
What's So Funny About Peace, Love and Spreading the Wealth?

William P. O’Connor
Reflections of an Average Joe

Patrick Irelan
Johnny's Tantrums: McCain the "Gook Hater"

Brian Cloughley
Out of Control: Memo From Islamabad

Mats Svensson
The Last Dance in Ramallah

Binoy Kampmark
Into Syria We Went

Steve Conn
The Future of Ted and Sarah

Alan Farago
The Division of Florida: the Politics of Growth

Morton Skorodin
The Bush-Obama-McCain Administration

Robert Bryce
Not McCain

Wajahat Ali
Dear John McCain, Please Stop...

David Yearsley
Palin's Flute, Obama's Voice

Dennis Loo
What to Do with Bush and Cheney?

Pam Martens
Why 2008 Feels Like 1932

Stephen Martin
Defense Strategies in Economic Warfare

Richard Rhames
Nothing for Something: the Doomed Rustic's Lament

Ramzy Baroud
A Third Palestinian Intifada

Missy Beattie
I'm Sick of Their Voices

Howard Lisnoff
Burning Reason: More From the Religious Right

Richard Neville
Pickled Heads: First the Revelation, Then the Revolution

Saul Landau /
Farrah Hassan
Bush Ultra Lite: Oliver Stone's Oedipal Problem

Kim Nicolini
Max Payne: Vigilante Violence as Sex Story

Lorenzo Wolff
Dance to the Music--or Else!

Poets' Basement
Four Poems from the Japanese Trans. by Rexroth

Website of the Weekend
Art Against Empire

October 30, 2008

Cockburn / St. Clair
McCain's Women Problems

Vijay Prashad
Smearing Rashid Khalidi

Paul Craig Roberts
World Tires of Rule by Dollar

Glen Ford
Turning the Tide of Ethnic Cleansing in America's Cities

Stanley Heller
Wall Street Bonus Madness

William Loren Katz
"Kill Him!:" a Political Chronicle

Joshua Frank
Memo to Progressives for Obama: What Happens After the Election?

James McEnteer
The Year of Unreliable Witnesses

Felice Pace
The Big Change: Can "Civic Unreasonableness" Save the Earth?

Jonathan Cook
The Executions at Kafr Qassem

Reza Fiyouzat
Boycott the Elections!

Website of the Day
An Open Letter to Whole Foods

October 29, 2008

Arno J. Mayer
The US Empire will Survive Bush

Eric Toussaint
How the Food and Financial Crises are Interconnected

Matt Gonzalez
What Do They Have to Do to Lose Your Vote?

Steven Conn
Obama and the Camp Followers

Jonathan Cook
Israel Bars Visit to a Father's Grave

Patrick Bond
Strauss-Kahn Strikes Again!

Ramzi Kysia
A Freedom Rider in Gaza City

Douglas Valentine
A Glimpse Inside the Head of Joe the Plumber

Stephen Martin
What America is Owed

Margaret Dooley-Sammuli
Alternatives to Incarceration

Amee Chew
Support Obama, Vote McKinney?

Website of the Day
N-Word Chant Doesn't Phase Palin

October 28, 2008

James G. Abourezk
How to Bail Out the Taxpayers

Andy Worthington
The Empty Chair at Guantánamo

Gary Leupp
The Specter of the Sixties: Palin v. Ayers

Paul Craig Roberts
The End of the American Road

Mike Whitney
Meet the World's New Currency

Gregory V. Button
What the Next President Must Do to Save FEMA

Ralph Nader
Share the Sacrifices, Share the Benefits

P. Sainath
Haunted by Socialism

Martha Rosenberg
Melting Pot in Hell

Charles R. Larson
Palin/Wurzelbacher 2012!

Website of the Day
Why You Can't See Across the Grand Canyon

October 27, 2008

Michael Hudson
Scenes From the Global Class War

Barbara Rose Johnston
The Clean, Green Nuclear Machine?

John Dinges
Palling Around with Dictators: McCain and Pinochet

Mike Whitney
Chickenhawks and the Horrors of War

Mary Lynn Cramer Greenspan's Higher Power

Alan Farago
Origins of the Fall

David Michael Green
Remind Me Again: Who Won the Cold War?

Andy Worthington
The Collapse of Omar Khadr's Guantánamo Trial

George Wuerthner
Is Ranching Sustainable? The Story of Bob the Rancher

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Obamanations of Barack

Website of the Day
Heartland of Darkness

October 24 / 26, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Waiting for the Curtain to Rise

Ishmael Reed
Boogiemen: How Lee Atwater Perfected the G.O.P.'s Appeal to Racism

Mike Whitney
Down for the Count

Don Santina
How Maria Fell: Death in the Central Valley

Scott Boehm
Manufacturing Sympathy: Palin, Special Needs and Identity Politics

Saul Landau
Faith-Based Surge: Whining About Winning in Iraq

Ron Jacobs
Iraq and the Arrogance of Washington

Binoy Kampmark
Afghanistan the Un-Winnable

Linn Washington Jr.
The Great Vote Fraud Hoax

Nicole Colson
Mocking Our Rights: McCain's Disdain for Women's Health

Bernard Chazelle
The Humorology of Power

Brian Jones
Campaign by Codeword

Christopher Brauchli
Down the Drain with McCain's Vetters

Benjamin Dangl
Bolivia Rejects Neoliberalism

Val Strange
The Fraternity of John McCain: Scenes from North Carolina

Joe Mowrey
Name That Candidate: He Supports Petraeus, the Death Penalty, the Bailout, Nuclear Power, the Occupation...

Steve Early
SEIU Learns the Meaning of "No"

David Macaray
Patriotism and the Labor Movement

Allison Kilkenny
You Have the Right to Airport Harassment

Richard Rhames
Open Season

Jim Bell
Nuclear Power's Big Con

Kris De Welde
Domestic Violence and Financial Stress

Barry Clemson
John Wayne Syndrome

Adam Engel
Last Exit to Disneyland

Mark Scaramella
The World's Weirdest Pipe Organ?

Tuli Kupferberg
Nobody for President: the Original Version (Annotated)

Lorenzo Wolff
A Frustrated, Broken-Hearted Joy from Kidnapkin

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Swartzfager and Payne

Website of the Weekend
Patrick Cockburn Dismantles the Surge

October 23, 2008

Allan J. Lichtman
What Voter Fraud?

Todd Chretien
Why I'm Not Voting for Obama

John Ross
No Child Left Behind, Mexican-Style

Peter Morici
Strategies to End the Crisis

Mats Svensson
Short Film Clips at a Checkpoint

Marlene Martin
Don't Let Them Execute an Innocent Man

Robert Jensen /
Pat Youngblood
Looking Beyond the Election and Beyond Elections

Margaret Kimberley
Rightwing Obama Love

Deepak Tripathi
Post-Bush Scenarios

David Morris
Why Joe the Plumber is a Socialist (And You Are, Too)

Website of the Day
Voting While Black in North Carolina

October 22, 2008

Brian Cloughley
Kid Killers are Barbarians

Heather Gray
Raising Hell in the South: the Legacy of J. L. Chestnut, Jr.

Jeff Birkenstein
McCain's Disdain for Spain

Ralph Nader
The Song Remains the Same: Convergence and Avoidance in the Presidential Election

DC Larson
The Growing of a Heartland Nader Raider

David Swanson
Colin Powell, Not Qualified for Government Service

Keeanga-Yamatta Taylor Race and the Election: When the "Real" America Enters the Voting Booth

Larry Everest
9/11 and the Imperial Adventure in Afghanistan

Robert Fantina
Anything to Win

Martha Rosenberg
The Financier's Playbook

Stephen Martin
Giving It Up to the Combine

Website of the Day
Brokers with Hands on Their Faces

October 21, 2008

Vijay Prashad
Wealth's Apostles

Paul Craig Roberts
How Inflation Works: Why I Can't Buy an Old Ferrari

Corey D. B. Walker
Empire and White Supremacy

Steve Breyman
How to "Win" in Afghanistan

Eric Toussaint
The Economic Crisis and Latin America: Time to Delink

Wajahat Ali
Boo Radley Comes Out to Play: the Emerging Muslim-American Electorate

Robert Weitzel
Wasting a Vote for Lincoln's Radical Ideal (Or Why I'm Voting for Nader)

Brendan Cooney
Palinoscopy: an Exploration of Why Liberals are So Obsessed with Sarah Palin

Dave Lindorff
Cuba's Oil Reserves: a Game-Changer?

Marqueece Harris-Dawson / Bob Wing
When You're a Black Candidate There's No Such Thing as a Safe Lead

Patrick B. Barr
Socialist, Socialist, SOCIALIST!

Omar Barghouti
The Boycott and Palestinian Groups: Countering the Critics

Website of the Day
How to Dismantle a US War Plane (and Get Away With It)

October 20, 2008

Michael Hudson
The ABCs of Paulson's Bailout

Anthony DiMaggio
The Scandal That Never Was: ACORN, Rightwing Media and Election "Fraud"

Tariq Ali
Zardari Bans My Books

Uri Avnery
Is Akko Burning?

Bill Quigley
Hammered by the Swedes

Ben Rosenfeld
The Politics of St. Joe, Martyr to a Lie

David Michael Green
Payback's a Bitch: McCain on the Ash Heap

William S. Lind
The Afghanistan Advantage

Chris Genovali
Drill, Baby, Drill (Wink, Wink)

Stephen Martin
The Last Man in America

Howard Lisnoff
Bad News for War Resisters

David Yearsley
Organ Meat

Website of the Day
Our Brother is Sick: the Steve Ferguson Cancer Fund

October 17 / 19, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Blow Ups and Bombers

Jeffrey St. Clair
Inside Hanford: a Trip to America's Most Toxic Place

Pam Martens
How the Banksters are Making a Killing Off the Bailout

Paul Craig Roberts
Government of Thieves

Mike Whtney
No More Investment Banks

Michael D. Yates
Bowling Alley Blues: Racism Dies Hard in Johnstown, PA

Suzanne Smith
The Energy-War Connection: McCain Said It, Why Don't We?

Carl Boggs
Prosecuting Bush

Ralph Nader
Closing the Courthouse Doors

Fidel Castro
The Global Crash

Dave Marsh
The Great Levi Stubbs

Saul Landau
Denial, the Election Musical Comedy

Jo Guldi
The Floods of Heaven

Kevin Zeese
Now the Cost of War Really Matters

Larry Everest
Afghanistan, Not a Good War Gone Bad

Steve Early
Stop, in the Name of Joe!

David Macaray
Hey, Joe

Ben Terrall
When Ike Hit Haiti

Missy Beattie
Palin and God's Children

Don Monkerud
American Exceptionalism

Helen Redmond
Health Care Now's Big Con

Dan Bacher
Schwarzenegger's Delta Vision: Canals and Dams to Bail Out Big Ag

Wajahat Ali
Bush Gets Stoned

Farzana Versey
The White Tiger's Stripes and Gripes

Vladimir Frolov
Medvedev to Obama: We Come Not to Bury America, But to Buy It

Kim Nicolini
Frozen River: At Last, a Great Movie That's Neither Hip Nor Cool

Poets Basement
Gibbons, Corsale, Davis and Fleming

Website of the Day
The Real Sarah Palin?

November 18, 2008

"Get Up! Get Up! You Can Do It!!"

Cheering for Morgan Stanley

By CHELLIS GLENDINNING

It was September 23 -- and Bear Stearns,  Lehman Brothers,  and A.I.G. had already tanked.  Morgan Stanley,  still holding on by bloodless knuckles,  had just been sold in bulk to Japan’s Mitsubishi UFJ Group. 

That day,  as the world of capitalism was spinning off its axel,  I received two pieces of mail here in northern New Mexico.  The first was a hand-penned letter assembled with attention to the planet’s dwindling forests,  on the backside of a used printout.  It was from Richard Heinberg.  After publication of his The Party’s Over:  Oil,  War and the Fate of Industrial Societies,  he had become an internationally known expert on Peak Oil.  “The collapse we’ve all known was coming is upon us,” he wrote.   With goose bumps quivering across my gut,  I slowly tore the second envelope open.  Inside was a formal invitation.  From Morgan Stanley.  I was invited to attend a “special complimentary evening” for “the first 100 guests” to hear presentations by five of the nation’s top investment funds,  chow down vegetarian fare at Santa Fe’s most exclusive gated community in honor of a certain account executive whose time at Morgan Stanley had topped 25 years,  and take in a keynote lecture from a …. did I read this right? …. a,  uh … Life Success Coach.

Appreciation for irony is my strong suit.  I inherited it from my mother who had an eye for clashing realities,  and although alone in the kitchen,  a guffaw erupted like a fart.  The world as it had been constructed since the days of the British Empire was banging into its own contradictions,  and granted the aforementioned event had been anticipated before the sub-prime crisis began roaring domino-like through the collective lifeblood,  the recommendation of the experts in the field was to bring on today’s rendition of Norman Vincent Peale.

By the time the dinner party rolled around the Dow had plunged hundreds of points,  Goldman Sachs had croaked and been saved,  the House of Representatives had temporarily refused a corporate bailout package,  with one Congress member calling for “iron bracelets” instead of “golden parachutes,”  Iceland had declared bankruptcy,  the Bank of Scotland had gone under,  Belgium had bailed out the banking-insurance giant Fortis NV,  and the F.B.I. was investigating Fannie Mae,  Freddie Mac,  Lehman,  and A.I.G. for mortgage fraud.

It was evident that to pass into the world of shaky finance,  I was going to have to attire myself in an unusual manner.  Ever since the likes of Bertelsmann had taken over the publishing business,  book sales for non-cookbook/non-horror novels had plummeted and with them advances to mid-list authors like myself,  the lecture circuit had dried up for progressive speakers with the exception of Amy Goodman and Noam Chomsky,  and I had taken to selling off my dear mother’s Hudson Bay coats to costume myself in more modern garb at Santa Fe’s cast-off clothing boutique,  Act 2.

To boot,  I had just been informed that the smallest account Morgan Stanley had ever accepted – mine – was now $100 in arrears.

Upon throwing the doors to my closet open,  I saw immediately that my options were slim.  The brightly-colored coats long gone,  I pegged together an outfit that appeared to me,  by New Mexico cowboy standards,  to suffice.  Stuffing it into a plastic bag,  I headed to the capital.

I got dressed in a public bathroom at the rail yard.  But as I exited the stall and caught a glimpse in the mirror,  I could see that my favorite jeans were sporting a detail I had never before noticed:  pre-planned holes.  My Bolivian peasant shawl did not glam things up one bit,  and my Wal-Mart shoes constituted an upside-down version of a bad-hair day.  Twenty minutes to go before the fund managers were slated to tell us where it was at,  investment-wise,  I skipped to the final stage of death and dying – in this case,  acceptance of fashion failure – and dashed to meet my date.

Chris Wells has given his life to creating ecologically-informed All Species Day celebrations in Latin America,  the Southwest,  and Sweden,  and he has made no money doing it.  He pulled up in a muffler-less ’72 Saab stuffed with boxes of rumpled clothes.  When he jumped out,  I gasped.  Chris was donned in a striped polyester shirt,  untucked;   those athletic shoes that look like sandals,  ratty from miles of bicycle riding;  and ….. white shorts.

“Chris!”  I howled,  knowing full well that I myself had but the fragile last of a Wal-Mart slipper to stand on.  “I told you to dress up,  man!  You look like a homeless person!”  Out of the corner of my eye I could see onlookers chuckling at the spectacle,  and then the coup de grace of long-buried but suddenly relevant fashion-eze spilled forth:  “You can’t wear shorts!  It’s f**cking past Labor Day!!”  A mere 100 feet across the parking lot from Act 2,  I grabbed his hand and headed over.

Ten minutes later,  we emerged:  Chris in black jeans now and his polyester shirt festooned with cuff links and a Kokopelli bolo tie;  my Wal-Mart shoes replaced by way-too-big,  way-too-pointy black pumps – on loan.

You have to prove your worthiness to get in at Quail Run.  If I had been thinking which I wasn’t because I was twisted in knots about the frayed threads on my knees,  I would have removed the Venezuelan,  Cuban,  and Bolivian flags from the dash of my aging army Jeep -- but really,  why bother?  the Che Guevara  decal on the back window would still have been there.  I waved my Morgan Stanley invitation -- and we slipped past the gate.

I think Quail Run must have been the set for My Best Friend’s Wedding.  It is marked by as-far-as-the-eye-can-see grass the color of the green stripes on my mother’s Hudson Bay coats.  The club house,  fitness facilities,  condominiums,  and swimming pool are samples of an architectural style that will be written up in history books to come:  the melding of the faux-Pueblo Santa Fe Style invented by Anglo newcomers in the 1930s with the construction-company Fanta Se Style concocted by this post-Dances with Wolves wave of Ralph-Lauren-clad golfers.

We slithered in to the plump chairs against the back wall of the meeting room.  Its ceilings were a good 20 feet high,  insipid pastels of desert scenes adorned the walls,  and Morgan Stanley,  Eaton Vance,  Van Kampen,  Calvert,  and IVY were aligned on the stage.  I scoped out the anthro-scene:  dark suits,  ties,  hard shoes for the men;  velvet jackets,  taffeta skirts,  4” patent leather heels for the ladies.  And the scene scoped us out.  I mean,  could the eyes of the fund mangers have possibly landed on Chris’ impeccable turquoise neck wear?  No.  They dropped to his shoes and stayed there for an inordinate moment bulging at the fleshy toes sticking through.  I hoped to God we were passing for that class of rich eccentrics who like to go around a la Chauncey Gardner.

The suit behind the podium was painting a picture of the economy the color of a New Mexico sunset.  80-90% of the time that the market takes a bit of a tumble,  he was saying,  it bounces up within months to even more remunerative vibrancy.  I had the feeling that the investors in the room had come,  yes,  to honor she who had been chipping away at the glass ceiling these last 25 years.  But they had also accepted the invitation because they were freaked out.  Nary a registered letter nor even a postcard had followed the sale of Morgan Stanley to Mitsubishi.  Would Morgan Stanley become just a regular bank like Valley National where they would write checks and deposit cash?  Or would it continue to dish out investment advice and move monies?  And most pressing:  was anybody’s stash worth anything anymore?

But the fund managers’ firms had shelled out the bucks for this gala affair for 100,  and damn if they weren’t going to make their pitch.

The second manager regaled us with stories of China,  and it was at this point that I began to smell the sulfur.  I mean,  wasn’t the planet going to hell in a hand basket from rampant development?  And hadn’t this news,  long known in the grassroots communities I was used to hanging around,  finally reached at least … NPR?  But no.  The man waved a cashmere sleeve into the air and pronounced that in the land of our last,  greatest,  and most inscrutable investment coup,  one coal-fired plant was being thrown online every month!  Roads were being built willy-nilly!  Every six weeks a new city the size of Santa Fe’s downtown was popping up where Mao’s minions had once marched!  For the savvy investor,  China was where it was at.  And besides,  the Chinese character for something-or-other,  nobody could quite recall what,  meant both Risk and Opportunity.

This is where Warren Buffett met Quail Run.  I had apparently been misinformed.  I had thought that Warren Buffett was a dude at the top of the heap with a little too much cash on his hands.  But here in the sunset room at Quail Run,  the man was God’s gift to the aforementioned Chinese character.  To buy when the market is at its lowest was the smartest and bravest thing an investor could do.  That is,  of course,  if said investor were not $100 in arrears.

Chris and I had a pre-arranged agreement that our eyeballs would never meet.  I probably would have broken the pact at this point were it not for the timely announcement of dinner,  and suddenly the pack of uncertain investors was whisked into the hors d’oeuvres room for braised red peppers and eggplant.  Chris was glancing about for the open bar I had promised and I am certain that things would have gone in a different direction if it had indeed been open,  but  I had overlooked the cogent detail that the evening’s honoree was a teetotaler of the health-food-freak variety.  True gonzo journalism down the drain,  I made a sober beeline for the Calvert Fund manager.  He was Honduran,  bleary from taking the Red Eye from D.C.,  and,  as we say in northern New Mexico,  un nuevo.  Now here’s someone I can talk politics with,  I thought.

By the time the pack had been reformed around plates of organic walnut salad,  mashed turnips,  and ravioli,  Chris and I found ourselves among a group of sedately-dressed Los Alamos lawyers,  doctors,  and housewives.  I turned to the Calvert guy.  Several nations in Latin America had bucked the World Bank to start their own financial institutions,  I said,  and how did his socially-minded investment company view this interesting move?  I think I caught him just as his forehead was about to drop into the turnip mash – it was after all way past bedtime in the nation’s capitol -- but he twitched long enough to offer that Brazil was the only country in Latin America worth investing in.  It had gone full-tilt boogey into bio-fuels and unlike Venezuela where suitcases of money from only-Hugo-knows-where were appearing,  Brazil could be counted on.  Let’s forget for a moment that the sugar and soy plantations plowed for the world’s Mitsubishis (see:  everything is connected) are not producing food for Brazilians and that the world’s Mitsubishis are heaping on the climate change (more of same),  I could see that we were not talking politics;  we were talking bottom line.

Things move fast in the world of finance and,  as reported the next day by the analyst group Ladenburg Thalmann,  while we were speaking the very viability of Morgan Stanley was being reviewed.  Also as we spoke,  ear-piercing canned rock music began to blare across the dining room,  and after several moments of high expectation,  our Life Success Coach made her entrance.  It was an entrance more suited to the Hollywood Bowl than a dining room encased in adobe,  but there she was – all 5’3” of her,  blonde in a shimmering white suit,  and looking like a cheerleader for Columbine High School.

I mean,  she was bouncy.  Perky.  Pert.  Full of fanfare.  We don’t have people like that where I live in the northern mountains.  We have Korean-War vets and chile farmers in raggy old flannel shirts,  gangsta’ low-riders with bling,  Taco Bell workers,  heroin addicts looking for a fix.  And even in this room of Morgan Stanley investors,  the median hair color was ashen white;  the median psychic tonality,  financial anxiety masked by dinner-table etiquette.   I caught a glimpse of a glass of Chardonnay at the next table,  its stem clutched by an elderly heiress who,  with her ruddy cheeks,  appeared to be such a friend of wine that she had ferreted out her own bar.

Yes,  the life coach was of a different ilk.  To her everything was beyond-exciting,  every waking moment an opportunity for full-out celebration,  every nod on the street a chance to help a stranger avert suicide.  Her own brush with self-inflicted death had laid the basis for her life’s work,  and given the memories of the Depression of which there were a few in the room,  suicide was indeed a timely reference.

The L.A. housewives thought the coach was the cat’s pajamas,  and so the pact for no eye contact went into full operation.  But,  after an hour and a half of “You’re About To Kill Yourself!” followed by “Get Up!  Get Up!  You Can Do It!”  Chris scrawled a sentence on the flyer offering Personal Coaching for $333/month and pushed it toward me.  It read:  “Got to get out of here.”

I was desperately trying to apply a blend of the cheerleader’s message with that of the Chinese character:  every problem,  a beyond-fabulous opportunity.  But to arise in a room full of seated investors -- now deadened by an overwhelm of enthusiasm,  whose bottom-line dedication was respect for the evening’s honoree -- was fraught with veritable risk.  If there was a lesson embedded in financial collapse,  it was that things do indeed change – and sure enough the pack was suddenly herded to either the booth where the coach was,  in good capitalist fashion,  signing copies of her book.  Or to the dessert table. 

Chris and I made a dash for the apple cobbler.  Then in a wink we were outside the rarified vacuum of investment banking,  trundling up Old Santa Fe Trail in an army Jeep,  on gas possibly manufactured as an excellent investment in Brazil,  toward a winter as uncertain as it had been 80 years before.  I kind of wished I still had a Hudson Bay coat.

Chellis Glendinning is the author of six books, including My Name Is Chellis and I’m in Recovery from Western Civilization and Off the Map: An Expedition Deep into Empire and the Global Economy.  She lives in Chimayó,  New Mexico.

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