Now, that won’t last, but as I say, by the time the pain is spread around broadly enough that it can’t go unacknowledged anymore, the people who started the whole mess will be cleaning up in interest on that 700 billion 1 trillion 3.5 trillion 5 trillion dollars.

And as I also say, I’m just frankly running low on empathy. I’m not especially proud of it, but I can’t manufacture it.

Keifus, I haven’t done any significant versifying for about 15 years, but at one point I spent a lot of time at it and even got published a few times for my trouble.

I had no idea you had such a poetic streak. (Seriously.)

Montfort, I can’t speak for Weldon, but I’ve been looking aghast at our environmentally unsustainable practices for a while now, and if the economic model took a little longer to dig my mind into, it’s every bit as nuts. It’s hard to get past the realization that we’ve produced more than we’ve consumed for decades, and if booming growth kept buoying us up for a while, you have to wonder how long it can last, and lately, all those goods-n-services don’t seem to have grown as fast as wealth has. I’d rather see the system float down to earth gently myself, I know too many people on the leading edge of a fall (mostly who won’t be able to retire) but I can forgive the gallows humor.

Thankfully, there’s evidently an actual economy underneath the huge asset bubble. Does even more liquidity get us from here to there? I’m having trouble seeing it, but then I’m pretty dumb about this stuff.

The real pain, of course, isn’t being felt by the clones of Henry Paulson et al – their hearts, such as they are, don’t split so easily. But for those of, oh, lower-middle income who find themselves unemployable and ill with unending medical bills and days of physical pain and various disabilities, or who are struggling to pay for and concentrate on study for a new career, maybe even an altruistic one, and who have to depend on savings in the form of retirement investments from years past – the only option available for many – pain doesn’t begin to describe the feelings attached to watching your financial future swirl down a rat hole and watching your unpaid-for home decline in value. Here are some synonyms: depression, fear, panic, imprisonment, hopelessness, sleeplessness, worry, anger, powerlessness, and incredible stress – all of them eating away at your psyche with genuine physical effects. They do indeed split your heart, and of course the crash is not a distraction from them but the immediate cause. There’s nothing alleged about it, and it’s far from entertaining – at least if you’re the one experiencing it.

I know your situation, and it saddens me – I’ve been there, and I’ve tried to help people in even worse circumstances. And so it also disappoints me to read that despite your situation, your power of empathy seems to be on hiatus, and instead you reveal a cavalier attitude toward the “real pain” being suffered by millions of other people, some of whom you might even know.