Occupy Greed

   I was in my high school band. Every 3 years, our district participated in a band exchange with another district. We'd travel to the other school for a weekend, do a joint concert and stay in their houses, then they'd come to our area a weekend or two later. Our exchange was with Hewlett High School on Long Island.

Talk about culture shock.

Back then my school in Norristown, PA about 30% African American, 30% descendants of ethnic immigrants, 30% Pennsylvania Dutch. Our student body of 2000 were primarily middle-class and poor students.

Their school's population was closer to 700, and at least 600 of them were rich white kids.

When we visited Hewlett, I was housed in a mansion with servants, an indoor Olympic-sized pool, and the biggest Great Dane I'd ever seen, named Sir. My guest room was larger than any room in my house, had its own bath and walk-in closet, and had never been slept in by a member of the family.

I grew up in a semi-detached home where 5 people shared a bathroom. We didn't have guest rooms. We could only accommodate one Hewlett student and only because my brother was away at college.

Skip ahead to this year's Malice Domestic Convention next month. I've been assigned to a panel titled Occupy Malice: When Money is the Root of All Murder. All of the authors on the panel have set their stories during bad economic times. I'm on the panel because half of my novel, FEAR ITSELF, takes place during the Great Depression. In thinking about the topic, I realize that all my Possessed Mystery novels are about poor and/or unemployed characters, and all take place during difficult economic times.

Why have I done that? Well, they do say "write what you know."

This week I heard a man named Charles Murray interviewed on PBS. His theory is that the wealthy are morally superior to the poor. He points to a lot of statistics that show that the majority of crimes are committed by poor people. My answer to that would be that poor people are more likely to be arrested and convicted. If we look at the amount of money stolen by men like Bernie Madoff, or by the mismanagement of the banks and investment firms that caused the 2008 depression, I'd guess it far surpasses the amount taken in crimes like convenience store robberies over the same period.

IS money the root of all evil? No. People are. Evil people exist at all levels of the economic spectrum. Greed isn't a matter of how much you have, but how much you want. The big problem comes when evil people take their greed to a national scale, have too much power over the government, and suck in taxpayer money.

I can't help remembering those Hewlett students. They taught us how the other half lives and how to drop 'R's from the ends of words. We taught them what it was like to go to a diverse school, and about cheesesteaks and shoo-fly pie, and to pronounce "water" as "wooder." We made good music together. We had fun. As their bus pulled away to take them home, they waved and called out the windows to us, and we waved and laughed back.

They were good people, and so were we.
I hope we all still are.

Peace,
Elena

The Forgotten Man at the Bottom

Even if you only catch national news on the fly while switching channels between ESPN and Disney, you probably noticed that this week everyone's talking about the economy and whether or not we're headed for another Great Depression.

The historical part of my novel FEAR ITSELF is set in the first week of March, 1933. The main reason I chose that week was the infamous "bank holiday" that officially began on March 5th and shut down all U.S. banks. In my mind, I pictured that as a really scary thing--no credit cards, no ATMs, no way to access your money. No knowing how long that would be the case.

Then I asked my parents about it. "We didn't even notice," Mom said. "We didn't have enough money to put in the bank."

A difficult concept to wrap my brain around: No savings, except maybe a few bucks squirreled away behind a picture frame now and then. More likely only the coins in your pocket to get you through each day.

That's not to say that poor people weren't affected by the Depression.  This is where the theory of trickle down economics has any validity at all--not in times of prosperity, but in times of loss. When speculation bubbles burst, the loss gets passed down the ladder to the poor. They're the first to lose their jobs, their means of transportation, and their homes. And because they have so little, the percentage of what they do lose is huge. Less workers, less mortgages, less loan payments all mean less profit, so eventually the wealthy also lose money and the situation, at last, can be called a Depression. Someone finally takes a look at the economic structure and finds the weak links.

In 1933, banks were some of these links. No computers then. At best, this meant human errors often went undetected. At worse, lack of consistent record keeping made corruption and fraud easy. FDR called a "bank holiday" so Federal inspectors could audit bank records. Once a bank passed audit, they could reopen. Since Saturday March 4th was the president's inauguration, many banks were persuaded to close early on Friday the 3rd, giving the inspectors a long weekend to get started.

As some of you know, I start my historical chapters with period quotes. Here are a few of my favorites from FEAR ITSELF:

"All the really important millionaires are planning to continue prosperity."

 Arthur Brisbane, Nov. 26, 1929

"These really are good times but only a few know it."

Henry Ford, 1930

"There is not an unemployed man in the country that hasn't contributed to the wealth of every millionaire in America."

Will Rogers, Nov. 1931

"These unhappy times call for the building of plans...that put their faith once more in the forgotten man at the bottom of the economic pyramid."

FDR, campaign speech, April 1932

So, are we headed for another Depression now? Don't ask the bankers or Wall Street. Ask the forgotten people at the bottom of the pyramid. Many of them will tell you we're already there.

Elena