-Caveat Lector- http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/07.01A.pitt.dogs.eye.htm
A Dog's-Eye View of the Recession By William Rivers Pitt t r u t h o u t | Opinion Sunday, 30 June, 2002 In order to make a few extra dollars during this summer gap between teaching high school, I applied for and nailed down a job at a well-known store. The store, which I won't name for obvious reasons, is part of a large chain that covers pretty much the whole country. They sell a variety of items: clothes, books, videos, high-tech gadgets and the like. If I named the place, you'd know it. After a few shifts, I am stunned I got the job in the first place. I have worked there on several different days for a good number of hours now, and in all that time I have served exactly three people. Plenty come in to browse, and to take advantage of the air conditioning, but no one is buying anything. I've had conversations with the register jockeys at neighboring stores - we're all located in a popular tourist zone/shopping district - and they are singing the same tune. The wallets are not coming out. A year ago, I am told by my manager, the store was positively booming. They did not have enough people to handle the customer volume. Now, the home office sends daily memos to the store cajoling the sales associates to throw a full-court-press at everyone who comes through the door. Sell anything you can, we are told, and squeeze out every dollar possible. They set daily sales goals that are missed by thousands of dollars. These goals are based upon last year's sales totals. By my calculations, the place is experiencing a factor-of-ten decrease in revenue. Why they hired me is a mystery. They don't need me, and my meager salary is further cutting into their profits. I have gotten myself a dog's eye view of this recession: A ground-level perspective on the spending habits of very average Americans. People are completely unwilling to part with their money right now. This is a cancer of the most elemental economic kind that goes by the moniker of "consumer confidence." From my dog's-eye view behind the register, there is no confidence out there at all. The political observer in me wants to believe all this is happening because of the disastrous stories of Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, Arthur Andersen and the rest. The fear that every single share of stock on Wall Street has been polluted and corrupted by lies and shady profit reporting cast a dark shadow across the economy. Even the good stocks - and there are plenty of them - are burdened by a sense of total mistrust. Strangely enough, the political observer in me has to take into account that most of the people I've questioned about these companies know very little about the scurrilous details of their dirty dealings. It is almost as if all these tales of fraud and deceit are taking place in an alternate dimension. Most people seem bored by the dry facts behind these stories, and have not bothered to inform themselves on them to any great degree. Why is it, then, that my hours as a retail sales associate have been spent watching people absolutely refuse to buy anything? Something seems amiss. Maybe consumers, like the prey they are, have begun to smell danger on the wind. There is more to consumer confidence, after all, than the desire to by doodads at some store. A recent Zogby poll indicates that Bush is enjoying a 69% approval rating, but only 51% of the people questioned would vote for him in 2004. The margin of error for that last number puts Mr. Bush right back where he was on November 7, 2000. The 18 point gap between those numbers suggest that the populace is not entirely comfortable with the guy in charge. Another recent poll stated bluntly that some 46% of Americans don't think Bush is in charge of anything beyond deciding what kind of sandwich meat to have for lunch. These people believe he is controlled entirely by the corporate interests that funded his campaign. This takes us back around the bend to Enron and WorldCom. Even the catastrophically uninformed know that Bush was tight with Enron's CEO, Kenneth Lay, to the point that Lay and other Enron executives basically wrote Bush's energy policy proposal. The WorldCom scandal will soon revolve politically around Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi, home state of that dying telcom corporation. Still, this big-business fraud stuff is vague for most people. Much of America hadn't heard of Enron or WorldCom before these revelations, and don't seem prone to getting worked up about it. It's like hearing about dirty dealings by strangers - you're disgusted by the behavior, but you're also pretty quick to turn the page and check the box scores. That is why, from my dog's-eye perspective, this whole insider trading flap surrounding Martha Stewart could be the straw that breaks the economic camel's back. Martha made hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars a year selling her goods through K-Mart. Her TV show and magazine made her Queen of Household Propriety. Millions of Americans have a shirt or a skirt or a homeware item with her name on it. Everyone knows her, and a lot of people look up to her. And here she is getting clobbered with the same stick they're using to beat Ken Lay and the WorldCom folks. She is facing the Security and Exchange Commission, along with investigators from the Justice Department, for allegedly dumping drug manufacturer ImClone's stock the day before they received bad news from the FDA about a new product. Martha has managed to do what Enron, WorldCom and the shred-happy indictees from Arthur Andersen failed to do - mainstream the sad facts about corporate fraud and the perilous fragility of the stock market. The arcane rules of economics are as inscrutable as voodoo to me, but I've seen a few things from the selling floor. I have to remember to wear my comfortable shoes to work tomorrow. Standing around doing nothing for six hours takes a toll on your feet. <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. 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