Welcome to the Third World

A couple of weeks ago our dishwasher broke. It is a GE Profile, with an illuminated shiny stainless steel interior and a brushed stainless steel exterior. Great design, from the aesthetic point of view, but it doesn’t work. A couple of months ago it was leaking and the repair guy came and replaced a gasket. That seemed to stop the leaking but then two or three weeks ago it stopped working altogether. The repair guy came back and said he would have to order the parts, but they are on backorder. He was back last week, with the parts, and worked on it some more, but it still doesn’t work. He is supposed to be back tomorrow – but of course gasoline is in short supply in the Atlanta metro area, so who knows if he’ll make it?

On Wednesday, our internet connection stopped working. (I am writing this off line, and will upload it when I get access to the internet.) Since then Tom has spent several hours on hold or talking with various Earthlink support people. Finally one of them called back Friday night and told him that the problem was that Earthlink had switched our DSL from one station to another and now we were too far from the station, so unless they can switch us back, well, we just can’t get DSL any more. It will take them 5 days to figure out whether or not they can do that - or maybe 10.

Of course, the U.S. economy stopped working a week or so ago too. I’m not trying to get a loan, but from what I’ve heard and read, the credit markets are frozen up because The Smartest Guys in the Room dreamed up devilishly complex financial instruments that were too complicated for anyone to understand, and no one said “no” – not the executives of the companies, who were making a bundle off this, or their Boards of Directors, or their auditors, or the regulators. No one said “no” and it doesn’t look like they even asked any questions. And now, Congress is talking about a $700 billion dollar clean up. That’s on top of Bear Stearns and A.I.G. Put it all together, and pretty soon, well, you’re talking real money.

Here in Atlanta, there is hardly any gasoline. Tom and I have been talking about what we’ll do if we have to get by on the ½ tank in the minivan and the ¼ tank in my car for, well, who knows long. Yesterday I went to the grocery store and shopped for the week. There are doctors’ appointments on Wednesday. Iain can walk to school, but what about the girls? Can they take the MARTA bus? Caroline went to a movie last night at Phipps Plaza – she walked to the MARTA station with two friends. We asked if the attendance was down at the movie for a Saturday night. Maybe a little, she said, but there were a lot of people on MARTA. I could work from home some of the time, if we had an internet connection, but we don’t (see above).

We are not big television watchers in my house, but we’ve been watching the local news the last day or so, trying to find out about the gasoline shortage. What’s going to happen on Monday morning, when people from this whole metropolitan area, including the MARTA-free suburbs, need to get to work but can’t because the tank is empty, or are afraid to, because what if they can’t get home? Who is going to go anywhere that they don’t have to go? Our state leaders have been notably absent from the airwaves, although I did hear Governor Perdue Friday evening asking people to not make trips that aren’t essential. Thanks, Governor Perdue, we already figured that part out.

None of this of course is anyone’s fault. It all just happened.

While Tom was out looking for gasoline, I was washing the dishes. Standing at the sink, thinking about the dropping reservoirs (it just happened that Atlanta has not made plans to assure a longterm water supply, while the metro area grew unfettered, without any plans on how to deal with a sustained drought) I was imagining the tap running dry.

But forget investment in new technology to get us out of our dependence on oil from countries that hate us, or investment in our young people, or investment in research – no, Congress is going to spend $700 billion in a hope of cleaning up after a bunch of guys with six and seven and eight figure salaries who have brought the U.S. economy to its knees.

It just happened.