Storm Watching

Each morning for days or weeks, the ritual has been the same. Rise at 4 a.m. and check the models, the Nikkei, the Footsie, the DAX, the CAC. Where is the center of circulation now, over Europe, over Asia, headed back toward the United States? What is the downward pressure on the Dow?

The economic forecasts sound like symptoms of a global pandemic: liquidity, inflation, stagnation, Asian crisis, Japanese malaise. It's too late to reinforce the mortgage supporting our home, too late to install shutters of bonds across the windows, too late to bury caches of cash beneath our mattress. We will have to manage with the stocks we have on hand. We track the numbers like coordinates, trying to read the futures like tea leaves lingering in the bottom of a cup or tarot cards spread purposefully across the kitchen table.

The storm approaches rapidly, intensifying quickly as predicted by ancient oracles named Opal and Charley. Technology collapses and the lights go out on the NASDAQ. We light candles from the S&P as short trading is suspended. The storm rages, pounding a hail in letters against the windows, LIBOR, FDIC, P/E, GDP, FMOC. Outside, Washington Mutual saplings snap off at the roofline while hundred-year oaks crack in half from rot or become completely uprooted. Lehman Brothers, Morgan-Stanley, AIG. Can our cherished elms of Main Street be far behind?

Like water, the markets seek their own level, exploiting any uncaulked crack or crevice as they descend. Like storm-driven rain, they flood toward the basement as they run down interior walls, collapsing the bone-white tower we've constructed floor by floor. As each layer of resistance pancakes, we shudder and pray the next support level holds as the Fed shores up its bracings. From pulpit and soapbox and tree stump, our leaders seek to assuage us with readings from the Book of Katrina: "...and, yea verily, none among us was endowed with divine foreknowledge to know whither this storm would strike."

Outside the Great Temple of lower Manhattan, a pitchfork-toting mob gathers to ignite oil-soaked stacks of corporate paper as makeshift torches, threatening to set the structure further ablaze without casting a single pail of water. Do they not realize, or just not care, that half the population huddles inside the sanctuary, mostly elderly, their parents and grandparents? That their communities can no longer bond a promise to repair their crumbling infrastructure, or raise fresh levies of frontline defenders to combat their other, now forgotten mortal fear? That master craftsmen can no longer employ their trades? They content themselves with prying up chunks of broken roadbed to smash the plate glass of other people's houses, as though their own aren't constructed of the same frangible framework of debt.

We cower inside our shelter praying the roof stays down, praying the windows don't bow to the eternal pressure, praying the panicked mob doesn't batter through the door. Why do we always look to the Almighty for salvation from any man-created crisis? Is God fully invested in the market? If so, what would Jesus own? Is that his wrath I hear overturning the money markets in the Temple, or just a tornado peeling back the rafters? Should I dive for the basement and pull a tempered sheet of Swiss gold over my head until the storm abates? Paralyzed by indecision, I clutch a rosary to redeem my financial sins, counting out the beads of my losses one by one as I recite the liturgy: There is no God but Wall Street, and Warren Buffet is its profit.

As if heeding my beseechments, the winds pause momentarily and the markets draw a single breath. Have we found the bottom or is that a second wall of wind and water darkening the horizon? As we wait for the all-clear siren to return to our investments, stormchasers prepare to spin up an H-60 to survey the homeless devastation of stilts and foundations and free-running breaches from the air. In the months ahead, experts will dissect the footage in minute, statistical detail to determine whether retrenchment has spawned recession. Economic psychologists are left to assess whether depression has poisoned the general mood.

Regardless of the outcome, the sun shines brightly this morning. Outside, one neighbor tends his lawn as he does every Wednesday. Another oversees the pavers being set to replace her torn-up driveway. The mail arrives with the same assortment of useless advertisements as any other day. Men and women head to work in the morning, children to school, the elderly out on their walks. Recent rains have revived the grass out front. Hibiscus and alamanda briefly bloom, providing a final splash of yellow, white and orange before the dun of winter sets in. Blue jays and mockingbirds flutter and squawk as they renew their annual, territorial war. Signs of recent excavations to conceal acorns dot the garden as squirrels continue their autumn preparations just like any other year.

Our youngest cat chases a feather on a string for hours before rediscovering the real birds sitting in the birdbath just outside the window, just as we cast our gaze back toward our portal on the real world instead studying the artificial glass that reveals only prophecies of doom from Bloomberg and CNBC. As mourning doves settle back on their perches, we are tempted to interpret their doleful cooing as lamentations for everything we've lost, forgetting that, just as their white brethren, they serve as joyful reminders that all storms pass and life continues uninterrupted just within our reach.


© 2008 Edward P. Morgan III