Fall of the Baby Boomers - Financial Crisis 2008

When I first started my cleaning service, in the 1990's, I began to see that the moral values of my baby boomer peers, were inferior to the values of my parent's generation. When did I realize it? Was it the angry call from a pompous psychologist who demanded to know why the recent cleaning of his house was not up to par? When I explained to him that his over indulgent child sprayed a sticky substance known as slime all over the furniture, and that we had to use automotive de-greaser on his kitchen floor, because his lazy wife never cleaned up after herself, he was still indignant. Was it the woman whose son had four slightly used tubes of an expensive, cosmetic pharmaceutical, called RetinA, strewn on the cluttered bathroom counter top? I lined them up like toy soldiers, to show him, his wastefulness. That same woman, a school teacher, once complained that there was blood on the bathroom floor. When I explained that I cut my finger, she never offered me a band-aid or inquired if I was ok. Another baby boom, moron, threw my clean jacket on the floor, when I left it on a chair. It never occurred to her, to ask me to hang it in the closet.

It was the unexpected kindness and decency of my senior citizen customers that made me realize the generational difference. Most of them appreciated our hard work. When some of them passed away I knew that they would never be replaced.

My parents were lifelong New Deal Democrats, who experienced the rising fortunes of the American middle class. My father was a solid member of the middle class. Even though he wore a tie and jacket to work, he was never afraid to get his hands dirty, when something needed fixing around the house. I often watched him, cut or scrape his hands, while fixing something. He never thought about stopping, until the job was done. He raised me to have a healthy respect for people who worked with their hands.

I loved looking at his scrap books from World War 2, where he posed with South Pacific island beauties, and boozy friends, or in front of his ship. He was barely out of high school. Maybe, it was his experience in World War 2, that inspired his belief in working hard and respecting the people he did business with.

In 1992 Bill Clinton became the first baby boomer president. He was charming, smart, and persuasive. However, I noticed something lacking in his moral fiber. He was too willing to compromise. When his health care plan went down to defeat, he just gave up. He didn't have the stomach for a fight like Roosevelt, or Harry Truman.

The stock market was booming. The rich were getting richer. Middle class wages were continuing to stagnate. Bill Clinton was the best Democratic president, Republicans ever had. When Monica Lewinsky appeared, I was hardly surprised. The first baby boomer President was a self indulgent, disappointment. He didn't have the back bone of the erect, plain speaking Truman, nor the courage of the polio laden Roosevelt.

Other baby boomer silliness was evident, everywhere. I had a cousin who gave her infant son tennis lessons. This was part of the Baby Einstein, start training your child to go to Harvard, at age 3, era.

President Clinton said that every child should go to college. This didn't make a lot of sense to me, when I had trouble finding a good tailor, shoe repairman, etc. Over educated yuppies, with fancy resumes and job descriptions that stretched credulity, were everywhere. The woman who worked behind the counter at my local Y, now had a masters degree.

The media began to extol the virtues of the woman who has everything. Yes, you can have beauty, and balance a glamorous career, with child rearing. The unreality, of having everything, in a world rampant with suffering, didn't seem to matter.

Larry Cudlow extolled the merits of 200 million dollar salaries on CNBC. At the same breath, he denounced the long suffering steel workers for being over paid. This judgment seemed absurd to me. The last time I had been in a steel mill, the workforce was only a fraction of what it had been just 10 years before.

In 2000, the Supreme Court, popularly elected George W Bush. A guy who reminded me of Eddie Haskell from the Leave it To Beaver Show, was running the country. The Wall St., CNBC, anti-regulation crowd were running rampant. There were billions of dollars of no-bid contracts in Iraq. Having a tax cut during a time of war seemed imprudent

I first became familiar with the Glass Steagal Act at Temple University in the 1980's. A professor explained, that this bank regulation law, from the Roosevelt administration, would have to be modernized. There was a provision in Glass Steagal that forbade banks from gambling federally insured deposits in the stock market. I believed then, as I believe now, that this provision should have remained law.

Now we're in the midst of the biggest world wide financial collapse since the Great Depression. The crystal ball wizards on Wall St. have laid a giant egg. The provisions of Glass Steagal that prohibited banks from gambling federally insured money, in the stock and commodity markets, were stripped away, for a gaudy casino. The money is gone. All that remains, are the million dollar salaries for those who led the charade.

The sub prime mortgages that are now defaulted, would never have been allowed, years ago. When poor people were tricked into buying homes they couldn't afford, the regulators and the bankers, looked the other way. The Wall St. financiers carelessly climbed over the bodies of defaulted home owners, with war cries of no regulation. The house that greed and indifference built has collapsed, but the cracks were there a long time ago.

The Baby Boomers have failed their leadership test. Unbridled capitalism is dead. A pure free market does not work. This is something the New Dealers knew, all along.

I never believed that my parents were part of the greatest generation. That distinction belongs to the founding fathers of the U.S.A, George Washington, and company. But they were close. My parents made a lot of mistakes. Parenting skills were not as carefully considered as today. They didn't read a lot of books or have as many discussions about it. However, my parents values, were far superior to that of my baby boomer contemporaries . My parents didn't live beyond their means. When they died, they left me money. When they climbed the ladder to success they held their hands out to lift other Americans up, so they too, could climb that ladder. Many baby boom leaders climbed the ladder and then kicked it away. They decreed a life of perpetual hard work, and poverty for all those underneath.

My parents believed that all Americans who worked hard, should have the right to a good life. And that's a whole lot better than the morally and financially bankrupt leadership, that put our country in the predicament that we are in now. Long live the New Deal.