I can’t remember exactly when it was they arrived. Perhaps it was the day I found one of them rooting around my kitchen cupboard looking for a bite to eat. Or maybe it was when I stumbled downstairs early one morning and walked in on one of his mates in the bathroom. Whenever it was, the visitors crept into our lives and our flat during the summer whilst we were distracted by long days in the sunshine and long nights on the terrazas, and now it looks like they’re here to stay. At first I tried ignoring them. Then I tried reasoning with them, suggesting they find somewhere else to stay for a bit. But when that didn’t work I decided I had no choice but to use a stronger method of persuasion, so I went out and bought some heavy-duty insecticide.
I. Hate. Cockroaches. The vendetta began when I was in Mexico and lived in a sprawling flat in the old part of town, which was riddled with nooks and crannies just perfect for hosting all manner of beasties. When we first moved in, I went on the rampage with a broom and tried to kill the colony of spiders living in my room, but the ceiling was too high and all I succeeded in doing was covering myself in dust whilst they retreated sniggering into the rafters. The ants came next, who proved surprisingly resistant despite a mountain of ant powder and the finest bug sprays money could buy. We even had an infestation of bizarre winged creatures who didn’t seem to do much apart from crawl into corners then die and shed their wings, which we then spent the next six months picking out of our clothes, hair, teeth, you name it. But these trifling matters all paled into insignificance when the cockroaches arrived.
Why do I find them so incredibly offensive? Perhaps it’s because the first cockroach I ever encountered had the cheek to lie on my balcony playing dead, then sprang to life when I kindly tried to remove him for his send-off to insect heaven. Cue hysteria and the swift ejection of said cockroach over the edge of the balcony, much to the disgust of the man on the pavement directly below. Or perhaps it was the time one decided to drop onto my back from the ceiling. Or the time I nearly trod on one in the shower. Or maybe it’s more to do with their appearance: those little antennae wiggling insolently at you, the way they scuttle off into dark corners when you turn on the light, the fact that you automatically associate them with dirt and disease. Or maybe it’s just because the little bastards are so damn hard to kill.
Whatever it is, I can’t stand them, and now our paths have crossed again here in Madrid. Ours is a relationship based on mutual hatred: although I despise the cretinous little dirtbags, I’m not scared of them and will happily slaughter them in a second, so they’re probably not all that keen on me either. My preferred method of assassination is the classic underfoot squish, although I’ve been told many a time that this simply spreads their eggs, and cleaning the gunk off your shoe isn’t the most pleasant way you could be spending your afternoon. Seriously though, what are you supposed to do – throw them out the window? The little buggers would just be straight back in again, peering out from under the fridge and laughing at me. At least, with winter approaching, the cold will force them to beat a retreat, meaning I’ll have won the battle temporarily, until next summer when they show their ugly faces again.
Imagine the scene: fairgrounds stretching for miles; lederhosen donning, goofy grinning, beer drinking Bavarians as far as the eye can see; sausages the length of your leg; beers bigger than your head; and oddly enough, sky-scraping carnival rides, spinning and tossing tourists and locals alike high over all the revelry. What cruel, heartless bastard decided to throw thrill rides into the mix at a drinking festival? Apparently, Germans have a strange sense of humor, or a ridiculously high tolerance for booze. Either way, as I discovered this past weekend, these Bavarian beer bingers are perhaps the friendliest folk one could hope to encounter on this continent, and it’s no wonder that each fall the people of Munich fling wide the doors of their city, welcoming one and all to join in on the celebration of life, beer, and everything good that is German.
I’d heard of this magical, far away festival in some fairy tails since I was in my teens, but never had I hoped in my wildest dreams to take part. The legend was revealed to me by a childhood friend of mine name Gerd, who was a first generation German American. Yes, he confirmed, there truly exists such a place, and yes, we must one day go, at all costs. So, in typically cliché high school fashion, we made a pact: as soon as we graduate from college, we will embark upon this sacred quest. We will go to Oktoberfest. It will be awesome. The deal was sealed with a firm handshake and a staunch resolution to follow through. We parted ways soon after, as I began my first fall at Florida State.
Halfway through the year however, I got a phone call from a buddy of mine back home. “Johnson, you might want to sit down, wherever you are. You’re not going to like what I have to tell you.” My heart leapt into my throat and my stomach sank heavily. “Gerd got into a car accident last night. I’m sorry man. He didn’t make it.” I’ll spare you, the reader, the mournful details here. Some things simply go without saying. Let’s get back to the story…
Fast forward seven years: I’m on a plane bound for Munich, Germany, for Oktoberfest 2008. A promise is a promise, after all. As luck would have it, I had three friends from college traveling from various corners of the globe to meet me there as well. The flags of Texas, South Carolina, and the United Kingdom were all enthusiastically represented by my three amigos; and I, of course, proudly held it down for my new Spanish homeland.
We were staying in a hotel about 30 minutes from the epicenter of the Fest, so somewhere around 16:00 on Friday we hopped on the train and headed into the heart of the madness. After getting off, we had no idea where to go, so we instinctively followed the throngs of party goers like the great migration of the humpback whale, and in less than ten minutes, we reached the main gate. I would say that it was like a movie scene, but as far as I know, nothing has yet to grace the silver screen that does justice to the Fest. Truth is always more interesting than fiction.
That first night was like a dream. The four of us wandered into the mouth of the beast with wide-eyed wonderment, sensory overload in full effect. So many beers, so little time! We were bombarded on all sides by beer halls the size of jumbo jet hangars, vendors selling giant German sausages, and carnival rides of all shapes, sizes, and speeds. Without a clue where to begin, we headed to the first tent we found and squeezed our way into the entry line. It didn’t take us long to get the message: like Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, no one was going in, and no one was coming out. If only Slugworth was there to finagle us some wristbands…
That was the first, beer-less hour of our adventure. What a waste. It was time to stop playing around, we decided, and get serious with the drinking. Luckily enough, we discovered that if you can’t make it into a beer tent, you can at least find a seat in the less-crowded, outdoor beer gardens. So as soon as the opportunity presented itself, we slid onto a bench beside some German gentlemen who were about 50 years of age, ordered our first round of liters, and joined in the festivities.
Finally, after years of waiting, the moment had arrived, and as the dirndl-clad waitress set our heavy, foaming mugs on the tabletop, we raised our glasses to the sky. “Here’s to friends, near and far,” I toasted, with the chinking of glass on glass, “and here’s to you, Gerd, wherever you are! I kept the promise!” That first beer went down the hatch in the blink of an eye, and before we knew it, we were joining in the chorus of Country Roads, Take me Home with our German neighbors – toasting, laughing, and sloshing golden bubbly goodness in all directions.
It didn’t take much with our nearly empty stomachs and travel-weary heads, for us all to quickly reach the advanced stages of intoxication (that, plus Oktoberfest beer is typically over 6% ABV. Don’t be a hater. I grew up on Piss Water Light Lagers). So, there we sat with the Germans – talking politics, music, and everything else under the Bavarian moon – until the place started clearing out, sometime around midnight. What followed soon after was a mumbly stumbly tour of downtown Munich, where I proceeded to ask everyone I saw, in my terribly broken Spanish (by this point I’d forgotten that I was no longer in Madrid), “Tienes chocolate? Tienes chocolate?” I didn’t succeed in my quest, but I’m pretty sure I did succeed in freaking out at least a hundred unsuspecting Germans. Oh well. Gotta do what you gotta do. You only live once, and unfortunately, Oktoberfest is only once a year.
European Vibe’s Vanessa Harris explains the crisis that the U.S. economy is plunging into. Like in a dark tunnel, we have no idea where it will end, anyone who may claim to see a light doesn’t know if it’s the other side or an oncoming train.
The state of the U.S. economy is in distress. It is not only in distress; it is in a serious moribund state whereby, if confidence is not restored to the financial market quickly, and credit does not thaw, America faces the most widespread economic upheaval since the Great Depression.
If this was Homeland Security’s terror threat ratings system, green being “there is so much credit floating around even your dog could get a loan!” to orange being “maybe we should stop giving loans to people at rates they can’t really afford” and red being “’oops’, we already sliced and diced those loans and shipped them off into securities that were traded somewhere across the Atlantic,” then we are sitting on that last little bit of red.
Experts, not GOP politicians, now talk about the crisis in terms of possible depression, not recession. A recession is technically considered two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth—something that many economists claim that we are experiencing. A depression is what America experienced in the 1930s when millions of people were without work. What do you call it then, when millions of people owe the bank more money on their house than their house is actually worth? I am not an economist, but it sounds depressing.
I never used to care about what Mr. Alpha Male, professionally known as an investment banker, wanted to do with some rich guys money in a country that I could not pronounce. If the guy wanted to invest it so he might buy another yacht the following year, so be it. As long as I could stay in Madrid and enjoy my time. But I perked up when I realized that maybe if I wanted to go back to the States and open up my own boutique or embark on another credit-intensive endeavor, I might not be able to get the financing.
Or, just let’s suppose, that you wanted to buy a giant Zapatero blow-up doll, but you couldn’t because you have an American Express credit card and the company recently slashed your credit limit in half (as it has recently announced). Now, since you also cannot afford airfare, you will have to hitch hike home in addition to putting off the Zapatero doll purchase for another day. From what I have read, the world of finance is dizzying and at the same time basic. It the basic sense, it is psychological. People are band-wagon jumpers. We can’t help it. It is the herd thing. The same happens to average Joes and alpha males alike. If Wall Street gets a whiff of bad times ahead, confidence sinks and they yell, “sell! sell! sell!”.
Where it gets complicated are the exotic instruments. We’ll leave the “brief” history of futures, options, and swap derivatives instruments to another day. Most people want to know: How did this happen? Essentially, it is the symphony of mortgage-backed securities.
Emboldened by the lowest interest rates in decades, millions of American made the mad dash toward the home-ownership finish line. Enticed further with no down payment in some cases, people with faulty credit or who simply did not have the income to support their new house, were locked into their sub-prime mortgages. The initial monthly payments were not so high but after some time the adjustable rates adjusted.
The scam eventually came to fruition and people were faced with monthly payments for far beyond what they had budgeted. A bout of refinancing put some at ease, but in the end lenders couldn’t help everybody. The scale was too massive. The problem snowballed as more people went into foreclosure, further exacerbating the decline in property values. Now not only is the party over, but the hangover is worse than the week that Gay Pride coincided with Rock in Rio.
But, the tale doesn’t end there. Sub-prime mortgages alone do not explain the debacle. As housing prices were climbing, investment banks (very basically defined as those banks that cannot accept deposits, which is what commercial banks can do) saw that they could use these mortgages as leverage to hedge against debt that they acquired.
When individuals want to take out a loan, we have to have collateral (i.e. a boat or a house) that the bank can take in case we default on, or are not able to repay, our debt. In corporate finance mumbo-jumbo, a boat doesn’t cut it. The amount of debt requires more insurance in case the party in question defaults. So, investment banks issued their version of insurance called mortgage-backed securities. Essentially, a loan is secured by a package of Main Street mortgages. There were millions of these Main Street mortgages circulating around Wall Street as the housing bubble grew exponentially, soaring into the billions of dollars. The value of this type of “insurance” is in proportion to the value of the collective worth of each mortgage.
Investment banks took on more debt and issued more mortgages-backed securities to insure more. Well, bubbles eventually pop. In August 2007, the housing bubble popped. The adjustable rates caught up with people en masse. Defaults doubled, tripled. In the end, Wall Street banks were wheeling and dealing loans that were backed by securities made up of mortgages that very quickly were becoming worthless. Last spring, the ubiquitous word in the Spanish press was yacimiento, or write-down, in English.
That’s when the financial terror threat went to red, or, “oops”. Yea, oops, we are sorry but we have to write down, or tell investors, that the bank actually lost a whole monton of money. One of the biggest losers was United Bank of Switzerland (UBS), which by April 1, 2008 had written down nearly $37 billion worth of toxic debt. True, Swiss is not American, but money is money. If Wall Street had an official language, it would be yens, euros, and dollars.
UBS is a good example of how international in scope this phenomenal crisis is. But at the end of the day, all the American-based banks lost. Some lost so big they do not even exist anymore. At their height, the famed investment houses Lehman Brothers and Bear Sterns sat comfortably with stock prices in the triple digits. Wait, you have never heard of them? That’s because they no longer exist. Even Merrill Lynch has changed. Now it is parading around as Bank of America. When will the nightmare stop?!
That is the question. We cannot even see the light yet. We’re in the tunnel, holding our breath, driving along, singing “Sympathy for the Devil” but there is no light at the end!
The proposal on the table comes from the Secretary of the Treasury. Never trust a man with no hair? Rubbish, I say! Before coming to Washington, Secretary Henry Paulson was Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of American investment bank Goldman Sachs. He knows his numbers. And we may be thankful that Bush appointed at least one guy who knew what he was doing.
Though he was undoubtedly a player in this “game”, in his defense, Paulson was advocating change on Wall Street when he came to Washington. Hypocrite? Maybe. Time to mull it over while the economy worsens? No. He and Dr. Ben Bernanke, head of the Federal Reserve, have sent to Congress a $700 billion dollar proposal to infuse Wall Street with cash. The bailout proposes that taxpayers take on the bad debt and if money is made, then taxpayers will receive a dividend, or payout, much in the same way that a shareholder would. If the debts never turn a profit, then taxpayers do not see a return.
In its first draft, the bailout proposal was all of three pages. So as not to totally freak everybody out, more details have been given. For example, there is talk of money to save the millions of houses on the brink of foreclosure and other clauses about a two-year moratorium on golden parachutes. Golden parachutes are those massive payouts that failed CEOs are collecting on their way out that are making everybody sick to their stomach.
The bailout must pass Congress this week, as it adjourns next Monday for six weeks. Although this proposal may be the light at the end of the tunnel, the economy will not settle until the housing market stabilizes, credit begins to thaw, and confidence is restored.
For the past 23 years of my life I’ve lived in a small town in central Florida. Key word here: central. No beaches. No sea breeze. No hurricanes. Nothing. Instead it’s horse farms, pick up trucks, steam bath humidity, the whole shabang. A large chunk of our population is composed of snowbirds from up north who drive 10 mph under the speed limit, use words like “new-fangled” for the Sony Walk-Man, and who still write checks for a pack of chewing gum at the supermarket. Weekends typically consist of guzzling cheap, tasteless keg beer around a bonfire in the woods, and the most exciting headline of the year would be something along the lines of “New Applebee’s Opens on the Boulevard!” Luckily for me, I was able to successfully plan and execute an escape. . .
Enter July 28th. After years of the “same ol’ same ol’,” I make what my college buddies refer to as a “power move.” In avoidance of the daily grind of the post-under grad office cubicle life, I decided that the wisest decision was to uproot myself to a new continent. I still remember that first madrileño morning of my arrival: my stomach all a-flutter with possibility, anxiety, and an uncomfortable gurgling thanks to the in-flight veggie lasagna. The world was at my finger tips; I was ready to take this city head on.
But as far as first impressions go, Madrid and I had a rough start. Right off the plane, I was shuttled to my flat by a grumpy mustachioed cabby who charged my buddy and me 55 bucks for a 25 Euro cab ride. Can you say americanos estúpidos? Welcome to Madrid, by the way. The language barrier can certainly be a bitch. Secondly, no one bothered to tell me that this city is like a ghost town in August, so en route to my flat, all I can take in through my overwhelmed, jetlagged mind is that every store seems to be shut down, and there’s graffiti and bars covering all the store fronts. Is this trashy concrete jungle really what I traded in for the fresh green grass of home?
The answer? Absolutely, yes. Surprisingly, Madrid has proven to be quite a paradoxical change of pace. Back home, we traveled by horn, screaming obscenities at the slow rolling Lincolns and taking quick, impatient glances at the in dash clock set 10 minutes fast so as to be on time to whatever intellectually stimulating (bullshit car wash job) endeavor one had planned for the day. But here I’ve had to embrace the slow pace of Madrid and just chill out. Relax for a minute. Be on Spanish time. Crank up my Allman Brothers or Tiesto or whatever is on the playlist of the moment, and tranquilo. Take in the sites of the city. Don’t dodge the row of old women walking 4 abreast at a snail’s pace. Watch the people. Count the mullets. Snicker at the man-capris, whatever. In eight short weeks, Madrid has transformed me from a terribly impatient, typically tardy, clock-watching, horn-blowing bastard, into a slow walking, clock-less hombre who considers a 30 minute, open air walk a blessed alternative to the stuffy aired, quick but crowded Metro. Shit, there were kids in my fraternity house in college who I never saw because their room was too far a walk.
There’s another interesting paradox I’ve discovered in this trade of locations, as well: privacy. One could easily lead one’s self to believe that life in a small town comes with its fair share of it. No, no, and no. Every time I sneezed for the last 23 years, I’d receive 20 phone calls from people saying bless you. But Madrid is too busy a city for people to notice or care. People have enough excitement in their lives. I walk around this city every day belting out Chili Pepper lyrics at the top of my lungs, knowing that the mystified/horrified looks from my fellow pedestrian passers by will be only one of the dozen sidewalk shocks they get a day. I’ll never see them again, and they’ll forget (or want to, at least) my screeching song renditions as soon as they reach the next mullet sporting Euro dude.
And finally, there’s the absence of pollution here. Okay, I know that the air smelled a bit fresher in the middle of the forest, but I’m not talking about the environment. I’m talking about MTV. The Real World. Flavor of Love. The Bachelor. Nicholas Cage movies in general, whatever. Pop culture pollutions of the mind if you will. All I’m saying is that instead of spending mind-numbingly pointless hours in front of the boob tube, I’ll think, maybe I can use all this time wisely and find some work to do, or maybe I’ll just put on my head phones, rock out, and take a nice jog at Retiro; maybe even take a couple hours to brush up on my pathetic grasp of the Spanish language for a bit? Sure, these things do happen from time to time. Let’s be honest though. Whether it’s the end of your first week or the end of your first decade in Madrid, you know that this city likes to party. I’m used to living in a town with five bars. Now I live on a block with 15…kid in a candy store anyone?
So now that the culture shock has waned away and the initial shine of big city life has dulled a bit, I just sit back and appreciate my luck. In the quest to find whatever the hell it is I’m looking for, I closed my eyes, spun the globe, jabbed an index finger blindly into the heart of Spain, and was fortunate enough to somehow land myself in Madrid. With an endless amount to explore and a relatively shallow pool of world experiences to draw from under my sparsely-notched belt, this should make for one hell of an interesting couple of years. What can I say? I’m a small town kid who’s just along for the ride, and, if I’m lucky, I just might remember some of it.
