I started my weekend with Shakespeare's "Midsummer Night's Dream" and ended it with John Cusack in 2012. That's quite a polarity. While the timeless Bard delighted audiences of his day with the delicate twists of language and plot that have survived for over 450 years, our modern day "plays" on the big screen have a life span of about six weeks before they hit the DVD dump cycle in their retail life. Then we move on to the next blockbuster. But this movie seemed determined to leave every block well busted, from the sun drenched shores of Malibu sliding into the sea in massive burning chunks, to the dizzy snowcapped heights of the Himalayas getting swamped by a massive tsunami. (Warning: plot spoilers dead ahead).
In my mind, the movie was a strange metaphor for the disaster that has been unfolding on our daily news outlets the last 18 months. The planet's core was superheated by mutating neutrinos spewed out by massive solar flares, and this led to the destabilization of the earth's crust--so goes the explanation offered up by the film. I couldn't help but think of the financial world overheating on leveraged securities, causing the crust of capitalism to shift under the foundations of institutions that have stood for nearly a century, and sending them toppling to the ground like the high rises of LA.
It was ironic that Cusack and his precious family make their initial escape in the stretch limmo he drives for a wealthy Russian fat cat. How many "investors" out there imagined themselves at the wheel as they barreled through the toppling wreckage of AIG, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Countrywide last year? Cusack trades an expensive watch to rent a small plane so he and his family can escape the cataclysm that catches the Terminator Governor, and most of the fast living inhabitants of the state, by surprise. (What was the pilot going to do with the watch besides count the seconds remaining before doomsday?)
Guess what--California IS sliding into the sea after all. As I watched, the lyrics of the famous song ran through my mind..."Day After day, more people come to LA. Don't you tell nobody the whole place is slipping away. Where can we go, when there's no San Diego? Better get ready to tie up the boat in Idaho." But where is Cusack headed? He's just come back from a road trip to Yellowstone where he met a crazy pirate radio broadcaster who claimed he had a map to the place where secret "ships" are being built, a hidden sanctuary where only the wealthy are issued tickets to board seven massive Arks built by the Chinese, (of course), that will serve to save a remnant of humanity. Want a boarding pass? First pay the hefty ticket price of $1 billion Euros per head. So Cusack returns to the park just as it's about to go into a supervolcano fit, and finds the map--filed somewhere after "Roswell" in the crazy DJs van. They escape the thousand degree plumes of the supervolcano, (by flying through them unscathed), and catch a ride on a big Russian transport conveniently waiting at Vegas. Thank god for the stretch limmos and Antonov 225s of the wealthy.
They head for China, and there is a great scene where the massive Antonov skids to a crash landing on a Tibetan glacier, stopping at the very edge of the cliff. The pilot sighs with relief, but a moment later the cliff collapses sending the plane plummeting to a fiery destruction. That's a bit where we are now in this crisis. The economy has skidded to a stop at the edge of the next cliff. Everyone is talking recovery! Things are about to take a sudden turn down again, though you will not know this by watching stocks.
That said, our heroes are safely off the plane in a Bently and they approach the last refuge of the rich and famous, where we are treated to a scene during boarding where the doddering Queen of England shuffles by at the end of a leash led by her little mutt. Just what contribution the gray haired dowager intends to make to humanity at age 86 escapes me. It simply goes without saying that those who presently hold wealth and power get a berth on the Ark, and the rest of humanity is left to fend for itself as all hell breaks loose. Everyone in India, for example--and I mean EVERYONE--is completly submerged by a massive tsunami. The loss of all those customer service and tech support reps is, in and of itself, a catastrophe. But, in spite of that, cell phone service seems to humm along just fine throughout the whole disaster flick. The only place it wasn't working was in the theater itself, where viewers were admonished to turn off their phones before the flick. At one point Cusack receives a call, and his phone uses the exact same ringtone as mine. Even though I knew my phone was "off" I could not suppress a reflexive start when I heard the ringtone, wondering who would be calling me on a Sunday night.
In our own little disaster movie, those that once held wealth and power in the halls of JP Morgan, and Goldman Sachs, well they continue to get a pass here too. It's pretty much business as usual at the trading desks of GS, while Main street crumbles away. Our high rises may not be crashing into massive chasms, but the banks and financial houses that built them have all fallen into the deepest hell of insolvency. The insiders have already taken to their stretch limmos and private planes to make their hasty exit to the last remaining Arks of financial stability. You and I don't get a boarding pass. It's also ironic that Cusack's American family has to haggle with a Chinese guard to beg admission to Ark number four, who will only relent when his Amah (Grandmother) shames him into opening the gate.
America, as a nation, is now so beholden to the Chinese and their $2 billion per day Treasury bond habit that we would certainly be lost without them. Not to mention the fact that virtually everything we've been buying during the last ten years of boom time was also made in China. It was only fitting that the Chinese built the Arks that saved humanity.
We caught an early show and then fled through a deserted shopping mall to head for our own wheels and hi-tail it to a good Thai restaurant, grateful that everything was still standing. Later that evening there was a fairly extensive power failure in our area, and I could not help but wonder if the lights went out in the theater right in the middle of California falling into the sea during the late show. That would certainly get the viewers reaching for their cell phones, neh?
You can read more of my ruminations on this movie and the disaster of our economy here.
In my mind, the movie was a strange metaphor for the disaster that has been unfolding on our daily news outlets the last 18 months. The planet's core was superheated by mutating neutrinos spewed out by massive solar flares, and this led to the destabilization of the earth's crust--so goes the explanation offered up by the film. I couldn't help but think of the financial world overheating on leveraged securities, causing the crust of capitalism to shift under the foundations of institutions that have stood for nearly a century, and sending them toppling to the ground like the high rises of LA.
It was ironic that Cusack and his precious family make their initial escape in the stretch limmo he drives for a wealthy Russian fat cat. How many "investors" out there imagined themselves at the wheel as they barreled through the toppling wreckage of AIG, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Countrywide last year? Cusack trades an expensive watch to rent a small plane so he and his family can escape the cataclysm that catches the Terminator Governor, and most of the fast living inhabitants of the state, by surprise. (What was the pilot going to do with the watch besides count the seconds remaining before doomsday?)
Guess what--California IS sliding into the sea after all. As I watched, the lyrics of the famous song ran through my mind..."Day After day, more people come to LA. Don't you tell nobody the whole place is slipping away. Where can we go, when there's no San Diego? Better get ready to tie up the boat in Idaho." But where is Cusack headed? He's just come back from a road trip to Yellowstone where he met a crazy pirate radio broadcaster who claimed he had a map to the place where secret "ships" are being built, a hidden sanctuary where only the wealthy are issued tickets to board seven massive Arks built by the Chinese, (of course), that will serve to save a remnant of humanity. Want a boarding pass? First pay the hefty ticket price of $1 billion Euros per head. So Cusack returns to the park just as it's about to go into a supervolcano fit, and finds the map--filed somewhere after "Roswell" in the crazy DJs van. They escape the thousand degree plumes of the supervolcano, (by flying through them unscathed), and catch a ride on a big Russian transport conveniently waiting at Vegas. Thank god for the stretch limmos and Antonov 225s of the wealthy.
They head for China, and there is a great scene where the massive Antonov skids to a crash landing on a Tibetan glacier, stopping at the very edge of the cliff. The pilot sighs with relief, but a moment later the cliff collapses sending the plane plummeting to a fiery destruction. That's a bit where we are now in this crisis. The economy has skidded to a stop at the edge of the next cliff. Everyone is talking recovery! Things are about to take a sudden turn down again, though you will not know this by watching stocks.
That said, our heroes are safely off the plane in a Bently and they approach the last refuge of the rich and famous, where we are treated to a scene during boarding where the doddering Queen of England shuffles by at the end of a leash led by her little mutt. Just what contribution the gray haired dowager intends to make to humanity at age 86 escapes me. It simply goes without saying that those who presently hold wealth and power get a berth on the Ark, and the rest of humanity is left to fend for itself as all hell breaks loose. Everyone in India, for example--and I mean EVERYONE--is completly submerged by a massive tsunami. The loss of all those customer service and tech support reps is, in and of itself, a catastrophe. But, in spite of that, cell phone service seems to humm along just fine throughout the whole disaster flick. The only place it wasn't working was in the theater itself, where viewers were admonished to turn off their phones before the flick. At one point Cusack receives a call, and his phone uses the exact same ringtone as mine. Even though I knew my phone was "off" I could not suppress a reflexive start when I heard the ringtone, wondering who would be calling me on a Sunday night.
In our own little disaster movie, those that once held wealth and power in the halls of JP Morgan, and Goldman Sachs, well they continue to get a pass here too. It's pretty much business as usual at the trading desks of GS, while Main street crumbles away. Our high rises may not be crashing into massive chasms, but the banks and financial houses that built them have all fallen into the deepest hell of insolvency. The insiders have already taken to their stretch limmos and private planes to make their hasty exit to the last remaining Arks of financial stability. You and I don't get a boarding pass. It's also ironic that Cusack's American family has to haggle with a Chinese guard to beg admission to Ark number four, who will only relent when his Amah (Grandmother) shames him into opening the gate.
America, as a nation, is now so beholden to the Chinese and their $2 billion per day Treasury bond habit that we would certainly be lost without them. Not to mention the fact that virtually everything we've been buying during the last ten years of boom time was also made in China. It was only fitting that the Chinese built the Arks that saved humanity.
We caught an early show and then fled through a deserted shopping mall to head for our own wheels and hi-tail it to a good Thai restaurant, grateful that everything was still standing. Later that evening there was a fairly extensive power failure in our area, and I could not help but wonder if the lights went out in the theater right in the middle of California falling into the sea during the late show. That would certainly get the viewers reaching for their cell phones, neh?
You can read more of my ruminations on this movie and the disaster of our economy here.
