Anxiety, Anxiety, Anxiety

Like a fool I checked my retirement plan on-line yesterday. I had avoided doing it since back in October when everything started collapsing. I needed to waste some time before leaving for work, because I had to stop at the bank to make a deposit. I don't even know the user name and password. I have to fumble through piles of papers to find it. That should have been a deterrent. It should have been a sign to just read through another blog, change my sweater, or email a friend on the West Coast who might still be sleeping.

Since October, I've lost 38% of my retirement fund, which is conservatively invested in diversified stocks along with bonds and fixed income investments.

This is the reason why we should never privatize Social Security.

When I did get to work, my daughter sent me the long email the president of her college sent to students. It was about how the significant operating deficit because of the loss of an undisclosed portion of the college's endowment would impact the daily life at school.

As I read through the email, I realized that ordinarily, institutions offer early retirement as an incentive to older employees whose salaries once freed could be used to bring in younger and less expensive workers. But the problem now with buying out older employees is the problem I faced yesterday morning: profound losses of retirement investments. The college president mentioned that a different kind of incentive was being developed to help people make a "voluntary" decision to retire.

I didn't like the way that sounded.

And then there was the NPR story about "zombie banks." "A zombie bank keeps draining bailout capital from the government but doesn't respond with any meaningful lending that helps the economy recover."

My bank takes bailout money. Is it making loans? Last week I closed another bank account because suddenly the bank started charging me $10 a month. I didn't notice at first, but when I did, I went into the branch and asked what was happening. No one knew, so I withdrew all of the money and closed the account. That bank took bailout money. Was that bank a "zombie," too?

Years ago I read all three books of Isaac Asimov's Foundation in three days when I was trying to quit smoking cigarettes. I needed some perspective because I had just finished taking the New York Bar Exam. I recall only one aspect of Asimov's premise: a society collapses when a worker accidentally drops a wrench into a nuclear reactor. No one knows how to stop the chain reaction, no one knows how anything works, it has all become so complicated.

It's all become so complicated.