Meltdown Madness
The Human Costs of the Economic Crisis
By Nick Turse
The body count is still rising. For months on end, marked by
bankruptcies, foreclosures, evictions, and layoffs, the economic
meltdown has taken a heavy toll on Americans. In response, a range of
extreme acts including suicide, self-inflicted injury, murder, and arson
have hit the local news. By October 2008, an analysis of press reports
nationwide indicated that an epidemic of tragedies spurred by the
financial crisis had already spread from Pasadena, California, to
Taunton, Massachusetts, from Roseville, Minnesota, to Ocala, Florida.
In the three months since, the pain has been migrating upwards. A
growing number of the world's rich have garnered headlines for high
profile, financially-motivated suicides. Take the New Zealand-born
"millionaire financier" who leapt in front of an express train in Great
Britain or the "German tycoon" who did much the same in his homeland.
These have, with increasing regularity, hit front pages around the
world. An example would be New York-based money manager René-Thierry
Magnon de la Villehuchet, who slashed his wrists after he "lost more
than $1 billion of client money, including much, if not all, of his own
family's fortune." In the end, he was yet another victim of financial
swindler Bernard Madoff's $50 billion Ponzi scheme.
An unknown but rising number of less wealthy but distinctly well-off
workers in the financial field have also killed themselves as a result
of the economic crisis -- with less press coverage. Take, for instance,
a 51-year-old former analyst at Bear Stearns. Learning that he would be
laid off after JPMorgan Chase took over his failed employer, he "threw
himself out of the window" of his 29th-floor apartment in Fort Lee, New
Jersey. Or consider the 52-year-old commercial real estate broker from
suburban Chicago who "took his life in a wildlife preserve" just "a
month after he publicly worried over a challenging market," or the
50-year-old "managing partner at Leeward Investments" from San Carlos,
California, who got wiped out "in the markets" and "suffocated himself
to death."
Beverly Hills clinical psychologist Leslie Seppinni caught something of
our moment when she told Forbes magazine that this was "the first time
in her 18-year career that businessmen are calling her with suicidal
impulses over their financial state." In the last three months, alone,
"she has intervened in at least 14 cases of men seriously considering
taking their lives." Seppinni offered this observation: "They feel guilt
and shame because they think they should have known what was coming with
the market or they should have pulled out faster."
Still, it's mostly on Main Street, not Wall Street, that people are
being driven to once unthinkable extremes. And while it's always
impossible to know the myriad factors, including deeply personal ones,
that contribute to drastic acts, violent or otherwise, many of those
recently reported are undoubtedly tied, at least in part, to the way the
bottom seems to be falling out of the economy.
As a result, reports of people driven to anything from armed robbery to
financially-motivated suicide in response to new fiscal realities
continue to bubble to the surface. And since only a certain percentage
of such acts receive media coverage, the drumbeat of what is being
reported definitely qualifies as startling.
Breaking the Bank
In September 2008, a 23-year-old woman from West Norriton, Pennsylvania,
robbed a bank, police reported, to pay her rent. According to East
Norriton Detective Sgt. Peter Mastrocola, "She said that the reason that
she went to PNC Bank and committed the robbery was because she was two
months behind in her rent and she was going to be evicted." In fact,
after stealing $1,410, the young woman reportedly told police that she
"took the cash from the robbery and went to another bank where she
purchased a cashier's check for $1,410 made payable to Westover Village
Apartments…"
The next month, in Northampton, Pennsylvania, a 49-year-old woman
reportedly robbed a bank and, just 18 minutes later, "arrived at a
check-cashing business and arranged for several money orders -- totaling
$1,090 -- to pay a portion of the rent she owed her landlord." According
to court papers, a "confidential informant" told police the woman had
confided that "she was going to rob the bank to satisfy about $1,800 in
back rent." The police reported that she was "in the process of being
evicted."
This, however, is no Keystone State phenomenon. As the Los Angeles Times
recently reported, "Another sign of the bad economic times… [b]ank
robberies, which had been declining for years, rose in 2008 in Southern
California… [by] 22% compared to 2007." In Orange County, the spike was
especially acute, a jump of 41% to 145 robberies. Similarly, Inland
Empire News Radio reported that authorities attributed a 13% rise in
bank robberies in Riverside and San Bernardino counties to a "poor economy."
"We've certainly seen a rise in bank robberies across the country
particularly in our metropolitan areas," FBI Special Agent Scott Wilson
recently pointed out. "The bank robbery rate has risen dramatically."
Last year, according to the New York City Police Department, bank
robberies in that city jumped to more than 430, a 54% rise over 2007. On
December 29th alone, CNN noted, "robbers targeted five banks in the Big
Apple, some striking in broad daylight and near famous landmarks."
Interviewed by the New York Times, a customer in one of the robbed banks
put the obvious into words: "It makes me think that the recession is
making people go to extreme measures." Illinois Wesleyan University
Economics Professor Mike Seeborg agrees. Commenting on a similar local
spike in crime, he told a Central Illinois TV station, "There's a clear
linkage nationwide that when the economy is in bad shape, when
unemployment begins to increase, if people lose their jobs and output
falls, that crimes against property especially increase."
full:
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175027/nick_turse_desperate_times_and_desperate_measures
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