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SPEAKER’S CORNER
CONVERSATION WITH A BRIT BY KEVIN CORCORAN
I’D
ALREADY HAD SEVERAL ROUNDS OF BEERS AT WILTON’S TAVERN ON 7, WHEN SIMON — AN EX-PAT FROM LONDON — ABRUPTLY DECLARED, “DUDE, HATE TO BREAK THIS TO YOU, BUT AMERICA IS F—KED.” “Well, thanks for sharing and caring,” I said, half-listening as I worked my Blackberry. “You just don’t get it yet.” I casually looked up from my device. “Get what, exactly?” “You Americans think you have the greatest quality of life in the world, when in reality, you have one of the worst.” Okayyyy. I sipped my beer thoughtfully, and responded confidently to my smug European compadre. “Things may be a bit, uh, challenging for Americans now, but markets recover, they always do — the U.S. economy is nothing if not . . . resilient.” Simon snorted. “Then it’s on to the next economic bubble, right? Boom and bust. First it was the savings and loans crisis, then the junk bonds, then the dot-com bubble, then the housing bubble. Somewhere right now, a propeller-head from M.I.T. is figuring out the Next Big Scam and in another seven years from now, there’ll be more Congressional hearings on what the Wall Street bubble did to decimate Main Street once again.” “You got me there, Simes.” I ordered another round of Heinekens. Simon chugged the last of his drink. “Meanwhile, China is on its way to becoming the dominant economic superpower – totally and absolutely debt-free. And sometime within this decade, when America is in its fourth or fifth war in the Middle East, China will decide the time has come to pull out of its massive U.S. Treasury position and it will dump its entire $940 billion position on the open market.” “Scary scenario,” I conceded. “But that doomsday scenario is at least several years future-tense, no?” “Maybe closer than you think,” Simon countered. “Anyway, let’s get down to basics. Health care. You guys are the only one in the developed world that doesn’t have centralized health care. Millions of Americans go bankrupt every year because they can’t pay medical bills for an emergency surgery or an unexpected illness. They lose their health and then they lose their homes. Only in America.” “But we have the best doctors, the best medical care.” “That’s just an American talking point concocted by lobbyists to justify
the status quo,” Simon said, waving it away dismissively. “Health care is just as good everywhere else in the world.” He shook his head critically. “And the food you eat.” I laughed. “All due respect, a fish-and-chipper from London doesn’t exactly have much standing to trash my diet.” “It’s not just the Supersize-me diet I’m talking about,” Simon said, wagging an accusatory finger. “It’s the way the raw food is processed. It’s a mind-numbing scandal how the government allows producers to pump cows full of growth hormones and strange experimental drugs that wind up in the bloodstreams of your children. Is it any wonder that there’s so much autism in your country? Or that this generation of children is hitting puberty at age seven or eight? Obviously, the lobbyists must be doing their jobs quite well to circumvent meaningful salmonella and e Coli inspections at the food processing plants. And let’s say our hosannas to the American obsession with carbonated sodas. From kindergarten, the elementary schools are serving up high-fructose corn syrupy drinks to schoolkids. Combined with a sedentary life of X-box video
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games, no wonder one in three American kids is cartoonishly obese.” Now it was my turn to scoff. “C’mon, Simon. Don’t tell me Europe doesn’t have its share of the morbidly obese.” But Simon was already changing channels. “And what affliction is it that you Americans have with vacations? What’s this trend you call – what, ‘stay-cations’? You don’t even feel entitled to taking a real vacation, you must always try to ‘mix business with pleasure.’ The whole time you’re guiltily ping-pinging on your Blackberrys.” “Okay, what you’re saying is that Americans have a strong work ethic. What’s your issue with that?”
HISTORY TEACHES US THAT A GREAT SUPERPOWER BLINDLY THRASHES ABOUT IN ARROGANCE, AND IT BEGINS ITS DECLINE WITH SELF-INFLICTED WOUNDS. “Work ethic.” Simon snorted again. “In Italy, they have six weeks vacation. France, Germany — more than five weeks. Americans get a measly two weeks. And where do they go? Disneyworld? The Cape? Vegas? Americans from the fly-over states don’t get that it’s a Big World out there – they say less than 27% of Americans have passports. Ninety percent of Brits have them. Most Americans swim in this country like it’s a giant fishbowl.” “I see.” We’d passed the point of no return. Now it was something of a game to see how far Simon would go before I’d seriously consider dealing him a roundhouse to the jaw. But I kept my instinct in check; truth is, I was fascinated by the depth of this foreigner’s anger toward my country’s shortcomings, which he felt entitled to spew while I was picking up the tab. “But the United States is the land of opportunity. I mean, you’re here working for an American bank, right?” Predictably, Simon scowled. “I was hired to clean up the derivatives mess left by a 27-year-old Ivy League punk who was given a $500 million book of business two years out of grad school. But like everyone else in the American workforce, my employment is temporary. After years of busting unions, and ‘outsourcing’ manufacturing jobs to Asia, the American middle class is a few paychecks or an illness away from poverty. And the over-educated masses like you?” “I’m all ears.” “Well, at age forty, you’re basically screwed for the rest of your life. The fact is that the Ivy League diploma mills are cranking out bright-eyed zom-
3 4 W E S T O N M A G A Z I N E G R O U P. C O M
bies, each one of which possesses the work ethic of a sled dog. Meanwhile, the corporate employers have effectively gamed the ‘age discrimination’ problem by systematically writing up fictitious performance reviews on you. The sole purpose of these ‘performance reviews’ are intended to protect them from EEOC lawsuits. So you claw your way to some illusion of job security, while the higher-ups play you off against your coworkers like wild cats in a potato sack. Then the moment they get the chance, they cut you off at the knees with a piss-poor severance.” “Okay, but with the levels of education available to Americans, there’s always a chance to reinvent yourself, right? You have to concede the point, Simon, that we’ve got some of the best universities in America.” He was having no part of agreeing with me. “Don’t get me started. Tuition is out of control in the US, even with the multi-billion-dollar endowments at the top universities. Most European countries have subsidized higher education; sometimes it’s even free. But like everything else in this country, just to get a four year degree, they load you up with debt and away you go, off into the workforce with entry-level pay. Living paycheck to paycheck, trying to scrape up enough to buy a house, you find you’re stuck in neutral unless you get another two-year M.B.A. And God knows, America needs a few more of those! Yes, for Americans these days, graduate degrees are the new undergraduate degrees.” “Look, we’re still one of the wealthiest countries on earth – ” “No!” Simon sputtered, almost choking on his beer. “You’re the most indebted nation on the planet. If you’re somehow able to qualify for a home loan, you’ll take out a thirty-year mortgage — thirty years! — and you’ll be immersed in indentured servitude to pay off that crushing debt for most of your working life. Just to have a roof over your head! Hell, next thing you know, Goldman Sachs will be bundling your mortgage into a synthetic CDO and betting that you’ll lose the house before you’re able to pay your debt. Christ on a crutch, when you take the car payments, the school loan payments, the mortgage payments — you’re not wealthy. You have stuff, sure — but you’re broke.” “Okay, maybe. But we have tremendous freedoms in the United States and that’s unique anywhere in the world. We have a Constitution that guarantees us fundamental human rights.” “No, no, no!” After four beers, it seemed that Simon’s antiAmericanism was spiking up to all-time highs. “After 9/11, you began living in a police state. Worse than Communist Russia! Did you know the supercomputers at the NSA tap every phone call, scan every email? Every move you make is tracked: surveillance cameras, credit card records, Google searches. The government even has a secret catchphrase they came up with for all this high-tech invasion of privacy. ‘Total information awareness.’ TIA was launched by your Defense Department in January 2002 so they wouldn’t have to go through all the trouble of getting a court-approved wiretap to eavesdrop on the bad guys. No, instead, they came up with a stroke of genius — let’s wiretap EVERYBODY!” To punctuate this revelation, Simon threw his hands dramatically in the air. Awkwardly, I peered around to see who was glaring at us. As Simon just said, “everybody” was peering at him – at us. I decided to start moving the mindf—k into overdrive. “How come I’m not hearing about this in the media? Fox News should be all over this.” “Fox News!” he screeched. “Fox News!”
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“Okay, I meant the New York Times.” “The Times? That’s even worse. Let me ask you a simple question about your so-called freedom-of-the-press. If Watergate were to happen in 2011, would the New York Times or the Washington Post have the balls to report that story?” “Maybe. Or sure, why wouldn’t they?” “Why wouldn’t they? The American press has been infiltrated. Infiltrated by whom? Infiltrated by corporate and military interests. How do you think
rency is under assault. You’ll soon lose your coveted triple-A credit standing and the creditor nations like China, Japan, Korea and the OPEC nations will dump the greenback like toxic waste. The cost of funding your trilliondollar Middle East misadventure will rise beyond the ability of your grandchildren to fund it. Eventually — inevitably — America will default on its sovereign debt, and the U.S. economy — an intangible service economy, really — will spiral into massive unemployment mode.” Interrupting his closing argument was fruitless, so I folded my arms
IT’S A MIND-NUMBING SCANDAL HOW THE GOVERNMENT ALLOWS PRODUCERS TO PUMP COWS FULL OF GROWTH HORMONES AND STRANGE EXPERIMENTAL DRUGS THAT WIND UP IN THE BLOODSTREAMS OF YOUR CHILDREN. George W. Bush got you mired in endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? He used fear-mongering and threats of domestic terrorism and spread that through the useful idiots of the mainstream media with stuff like ‘threat level orange’ and ‘Islamofascists.’ I can’t believe you Americans still pay good money to buy newspapers when they’ve become house organs for the Defense Department. Worse than Pravda. See, you Americans have been indoctrinated to think you enjoy freedom of the press — but control of the press has been concentrated in the hands of a small number of conglomerates, who don’t dare to get on the bad side of the Federal government next time they want to buy a chain of TV stations.” “So what do you Brits think about Obama? He was elected on the basis of running on ‘change you can believe in.’” “You haven’t yet gotten it through your head that your politicians are among the most corrupt that walk the face of the earth, have you? Congress is like high school except with unlimited power and taxpayer funds. Backroom deals, backstabbing. Political donations and PACs, they’re all just massive bribes that are ‘reported’ and therefore, somehow kosher. Obama is not running the country. Goldman Sachs is. General Electric is. The Pentagon, the CIA — they run the show, pull the puppet strings. For God’s sakes, man, George Bush was your elected president for eight years. When your grade school tells you anyone can grow up to be president, well, Jesus Christ, there’s your proof. You guys are gonna be mired in war for — what did John McCain say? For the next hundred years! And Obama is just a figurehead who has to go along with what the generals say.” Maybe it was the fog of imported beer, but I couldn’t decide whether he was just prattling on in an incoherent rant, or was I too pumped up on patriotism to see that my country had been fully hijacked by special interests? Maybe it was a combination of both. “Go on,” I said. Simon hiccupped. “It’s like the inevitable rise and fall of the Roman Empire. History teaches us that a great superpower blindly thrashes about in arrogance, and it begins its decline with self-inflicted wounds. As I stand here, in Wilton, Connecticut, U.S.A., revealing these truths, the very foundation of the United States of America is crumbling. The country is as deeply in debt as its inhabitants, the petro-dollar as the standard global cur-
and let him go at it full-bore. “But that’s okay,” Simon said, sarcastically. “You’ve got Prozac, Fox News and ‘Jersey Shore’ to distract you, keep you lined up like sheep. Hey! There’s a funny video of someone’s cat playing piano on ‘YouTube’ so the CBS Evening News doesn’t need to disturb you with pictures of the bodybags coming home from Afghanistan. You don’t care. As you Twitter away, Facebooking with some hot transvestite in South Beach, or surfing the web for pictures of Lindsay Lohan without panties, your government is working hard on a national biometric ID system that will track your every move — online, on every street corner and across international borders. All in the name of ‘Homeland Security,’ bro. Cheers to that!” He over-dramatically clinked bottles with me and took a long slug of what was left of his Heineken. The bartender approached. From the toxic attitude he directed toward Simon, I could tell he had been tuning in to some of the snippets of conversation. Maybe all of it. “Can I get you another round, gentlemen?” Simon nodded. Like magic, another round appeared before us. I had to ask. “Simon, if the quality of life is so unbearably horrible in the United States, why the hell are you wasting your time here?” He stared at me in disbelief. “Dude, c’mon. The U.K. is so f—ked. Right now, it’s the absolute worst place in the world. The genetically modified Frankenfood is horrible, the politicians are irreversibly corrupt, and, after bailing out all the over-leveraged banks, the government is teetering on the verge of bankruptcy. Don’t you read the news? Europe’s going down the drain with black-hole bailouts for Greece, Spain, Portugal.” He grimaced. “Don’t even get me started.” And, of course, I didn’t. ❉ Kevin Corcoran is a Fairfield County-based writer and Wall Street executive who once interviewed for a job at Goldman Sachs at 9:30 PM on a Tuesday night and — finding the trading floor packed with employees —
decided the quality of life as a
financial writer was the better way to go.
As far as he knows,
his mortgage hasn’t yet been packaged into a synthetic C.D.O. but he wouldn’t be surprised.