Finally, we got to hear “I’m in the Money” on NPR this morning. The market has been treated for its bout of de-regulation. All this has made me realize how much money I don’t actually have. I was not the product of parents who talked about money. It was a secret. I guessed my dad, who was a physician, had a bit more than others because whenever I told people he was a doctor, they seemed to think me more friend worthy; but if we were wealthy, I wonder why we lived in that old duplex under the really loud Polish family of five. I’ve certainly never had so much that I’ve lost track of it.
I don’t understand money all that much more now that I did back then, but I get that a dollar is like a Warhol, it’s worth is only what people deem it to be worth. It is almost impossible to talk with young children about what is going on around them causing their parents to watch the news a little more, maybe be a little grumpier, and insist you eat at home instead of in the car on the way to someplace fun and expensive. As I have taken in the news this past week-and-a-half, I’ve developed my own glossary of words we hear from every pundit, commentator, moderator and politician as we ride this wave of Wall Street meltdown.
1. Wall Street and Main Street: These two labels, often said in the same sentence are juxtaposed to talk about places where guys sport monogrammed shirts with their actual initials on the cuffs, and places where the rest of us work.
2. Crisis: An event that happens to investors before they realize they should have made a plan for it.
3. Rally: This can be a verb or a noun. As a verb, it is that last little bit of energy to go to the noun version of the word, knowing there will always be someone there who will embarrass you incredibly by yelling out something stupid or low class when there is a break between words or sentences of the speaker.
4. Red Meat: This is what you throw at a crowd when you want to get them all fired up and ready to actually tar and feather the opponent. Maybe even tar, feather and then re-tar. Words like
5. Terrorist: come to mind. I’m not sure what the entire definition of terrorist is, but apparently you don’t actually have to do anything to be one anymore.
6. Junket: That’s like a field trip grown-ups take, only with massage oil, golf clubs, a smirk and an ass that should have been served to them on a platter, but was saved by the American people instead.
7. Fundamental Difference: This is what you say when you describe the contrast between what you believe and what that knuckle dragging idiot you are debating with thinks.
8. A Bailout: What we’re being told we’re not doing for investment bankers and Wall St. mucky-mucks. In other words, it has been elevated to “rescue” status, to make the guilty seem like victims so we’re more willing to chip in.
9. Gonna, nothin‘, lettin’, somethin’: What happens to some politicians’ vocabulary when g’s are all in foreclosure.
Now that we’ve gotten through the wannabe crash, the threats, brigades of white horses and one day of hope, I guess we can take some comfort in the fact that the price of gas is going down. But then, you don’t need to fill the tank just to go into the basement and play ping-pong again.
May the financial force be with you.
