Like a wreck on the highway, I can’t look away. The budget in public education always involves minor cuts and the threats of bigger cuts but this was the most tense budget year since I started teaching. By now everyone knows someone who has been laid off or someone who had to keep working and put off retirement. Shanty towns are popping up, Seattle has their own Nicholsville, named after our reputably heartless mayor. There’s not much humor to squeeze out of this crisis. It makes me nervous, edgy. But there is a Pynchonesque novel of names like Glass Steagall and securitization and Black Scholes and credit default swaps and Brookley Born and derivatives and Ayn Rand and subprime mortgages all swirly w/ simple dreams and fathomless gall. Three early chapters follow. If you haven’t already, check them out.
The End, By Michael Lewis
The Reckoning, By Peter S. Goodman
The Quiet Coup, By Simon Johnson
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