Turning Point by John Francis Kinsella
The taxi dropped him off at his new Dublin home where he was pleased to see the lights were on and through the large windows the decorations on a gaily decorated Christmas tree twinkled. Mrs Reagan, who had been recommended by Clancy, was perfect. Everything was in order, the heating was on and the fridge was filled with the essentials to cover his immediate needs. There was little to do but unpack his bags and settle in. The house had been left furnished and apart from adding a few personal objects there had been little else to do.
The next morning he would think about renting a car to get around, then do some shopping for wine and quality food in town. First, Laura would be arriving from Paris for the weekend, then he would use the time remaining to do some research before his own departure for San Francisco.
The ideas for his new book were taking form and Ireland was a good starting place. What better than to make use of Dublin as a starting point for his story, since Ireland had been harder hit than most places by the financial meltdown.
It was a year since his last successful novel had been published and he had congratulated himself on its timing, it had had hit the market for the Christmas and the sales had been good. He had achieved his goal: firstly, after a vacuum, he had reassured himself and his publisher his creative skills were still intact, and secondly he had reinforced his already comfortable financial situation.
It was evident from the news that Starbucks’ sales had all but stalled, the kind of persons who bought his books would be cutting back on their spending, perhaps there would be a last hurrah with the coming Christmas sales, after all a book was not a big ticket item and the e-book download version was even more affordable.
Dublin’s mayor, Eibhlin Byrne, had decided to switch on the festive lights earlier than ever, at the same time frantically exhorting the city’s inhabitants to spend. Given the financial state of the average shopper it was a foregone conclusion his exhortations were futile. Suddenly Ireland was a basket case, perhaps not as bad as Iceland’s, only the euro had saved them from the same fate as that of their north-Atlantic neighbour.
O’Connelly thought back to his childhood in Enniscorthy, a couple of hours drive to the south of Dublin. Money was still scarce in those days, but Christmas had been magic when his grandmother prepared the turkey in their small terraced house and presents were piled high on the large kitchen table with the smell of turf burning in the stove. There had been a meaning to Christmas when with his grandparents they made their way across the green for the children’s mass and a visit to the crib at Saint Aidan’s. Today’s Christmas was strictly business, nothing but business and spending he thought sadly.
Whilst he couldn’t complain about his own personal situation, the news from the US had O’Connelly worried; he had a lot of money tied up in California. It was one of the states hardest by the crisis, and its governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, had been forced into taking drastic action. A month in the States would enable O’Connelly to form his own opinion, judge the situation firsthand. San Francisco would be the first stopping point where he could settle the problem of his Telegraph Hill apartment; the Wells Fargo banker who had been renting it had been forced to let it go following the difficulties that had hit bank’s headquarters in the city’s financial district.
The prospects of another Great Depression were apparently real and an on the spot investigation would provide him with valuable material for his story. From California he planned to head east to New Orleans where he would join up with Laura before heading on to Florida and Key West for the year end holidays.
Florida like California had been severely hit by the sub-prime crisis and an easy swing through the state seemed like a good idea. Driving to Key West was perhaps not very logical, but it was certainly the best way to familiarise himself with a region he knew little of. It would take them three or four days to reach Key West, where Laura was sure to find the sun she yearned for before flying back to Paris.
The same day O’Connelly left Dublin, the Irish government announced it would recapitalise its banks. It was in effect a nationalization giving it a majority stake in Anglo Irish Bank and a twenty five percent stake in two others. The prime minister held the purpose of the recapitalisation was to ensure that the country’s banking system met the everyday financial needs of individuals, businesses and the overall economy.
At first view San Francisco had not visibly changed since his last visit, but on closer examination he sensed the soul of the city had been wounded. To start with its financial district and Wells Fargo had been deeply affected by the sub-prime crisis. Wells Fargo was a legend, the bank had opened its first office in the city in 1852, boasting ‘Ocean-to-Ocean’ service by 1888, and until the crisis had broke it had been a solid symbol of the city’s success.
Only three months earlier Wells Fargo had agreed to buy the mortgage lender Wachovia, after regulators had forced Wachovia into seeking a new backer following huge losses on its adjustable rate mortgages and commercial property loans estimated to be in excess of seventy billion dollars.
As the housing market continued to deteriorate, tens of thousands of families saw their home seized and found themselves homeless. The pain was visible on the streets of the city as the unemployed swelled the ranks of the homeless and the long queues waited patiently outside of care centres. O’Connelly asked himself how could San Francisco, one of the most sophisticated and cultured cities in the US, come to have so many people living in such manifest misery?
His found apartment was in good condition. Was it worth lowering the rent, he thought not. There was little to do but hope to ride out the crisis. It was not the time for rash decisions and after settling his outstanding affairs he flew east to New Orleans, where there was sure to be a veneer, if only a veneer of celebration.
Like most tourists they found themselves in the heart of the French Quarter. They had reserved a comfortable suite at The Royal Sonesta Hotel on world-famous Bourbon Street. From the balcony there were restaurants, bars and jazz clubs as far as they could see and the streets were filled with revellers. Laura was delighted by the atmosphere. The weather was fine and they even got to use the open air pool situated in the central courtyard of the hotel surround by flowers and greenery, a contrast with the chilly ocean wind in San Francisco and the grey damp Christmas weather of Paris.
Beyond the tinsel of the French Quarter and its tourist attractions O’Connelly realized that America had definitely changed. New Orleans still bore the scars of Hurricane Katrina, which had hit the city at the end of August 2005, and a new urgent hedonistic form of tourism thinly veiled the vice and criminality that stalked the city. Drink and forget, forget and drink, for tomorrow the lights go out and the fun ends.
A twenty-four hour casino drew the not only tourists but also a good number of the citizens of New Orleans, who by the appearance of many could certainly not afford to lose the little money they possessed. A moving moment was a Christmas service at a Baptist Church where people seemed to genuinely celebrate the real meaning of Christmas. As for the rest it was a rather brutal form of tourism: eat, pay and move on, where little warmth or sincerity existed.
After three days they hit the road in the direction of Mobile, Tallahassee and Jacksonville, where they saw the first monuments to the sub-prime crisis: uncompleted condominiums. The same sorry sight was repeated all along the Florida coastline, Atlantic and Gulf coasts alike. Depressed O’Connelly soon regretted his decision to travel by road. He had forgotten how great distances were in the US, but once in their rented car there was no going back.
Things had changed, almost everyone seemed to be driving an oversized SUVs, undoubtedly on credit, and driving well beyond the legal speed limit. The US economy was bound to the automobile as never before. America was inseparable from the automobile – by what other means could such a vast country function, even the waitress at Denny’s or the chambermaid at Day’s Inn needed a vehicle. Without wheels students, retired people, the poor and unemployed were marooned. The automobile wa
s the country’s life blood and gas the oxygen, running through a vast network of highways that served even the smallest of cities, cities such as Pensacola that was linked by four lane highways and overpasses to Interstate 10.
Few Europeans understood how the USA functioned, as for the citizens of the less developed world it was entirely beyond their comprehension. The US automobile industry with all its emanations accounted for over eight million jobs to which were added another three million employed in fillings stations, distribution networks, petroleum refining as well as road construction and maintenance, not forgetting insurance, credit, lawyers, police, hospitals and so on, the list was endless. In other words without the automobile the USA would grind to a halt. For the best part of a century the automobile had transformed the country’s concept of urban planning, creating strip development, urban sprawl and the inexorable decline of its cities downtown areas.
In Miami they celebrated the New Year in Coconut Grove, where the festivities faded soon after midnight. A taxi driver explained business was bad and compared to pre-crisis years the district was almost deserted. In comparison Key West bustled, but on the Gulf coast in the environs of Naples they discovered endless lines of empty homes overlooking almost deserted golf courses, homes that forlornly awaited elusive buyers.
The TV spoke of bailouts for the automobile industry, the press spoke of Madoff. Shopping malls seemed dismally vacant whilst shops and restaurants laid off staff as business prospects dimmed. In spite of the deluge of bad news it seemed however that hope was there. Obama would save America providing sufficient money could be printed.
Florida was of course very different from California, the former being to O’Connelly’s eyes more a state than a country, the opposite being true for the latter, but both were sorely affected by the economic crisis that questioned the American model. What had been presented as an enviable ideal to the rest of the world for the best part of a century was now looking threatened as a huge wave of debt threatened to engulf the country.
Over the years O’Connelly had lived in or travelled to many different states and a great number of towns and cities. In those years he had met a fairly broad cross-section of American people, from casual acquaintances to friends and of course fellow writers. Now his long and intimate experience of American life told him the country was undergoing a deep change.
In January 2009, he asked himself was this the end of American capitalism, the kind of capitalism that had been exported to the world for more than a century. Was it the end of the American Dream? The answer he concluded was probably no, but what he had seen did show the way to a future world where things would be very different. The kind of freewheeling capitalism that has dominated American and more broadly Western economic policies and society was almost certainly a thing of the past.
New Years Eve
The next morning he would think about renting a car to get around, then do some shopping for wine and quality food in town. First, Laura would be arriving from Paris for the weekend, then he would use the time remaining to do some research before his own departure for San Francisco.
The ideas for his new book were taking form and Ireland was a good starting place. What better than to make use of Dublin as a starting point for his story, since Ireland had been harder hit than most places by the financial meltdown.
It was a year since his last successful novel had been published and he had congratulated himself on its timing, it had had hit the market for the Christmas and the sales had been good. He had achieved his goal: firstly, after a vacuum, he had reassured himself and his publisher his creative skills were still intact, and secondly he had reinforced his already comfortable financial situation.
It was evident from the news that Starbucks’ sales had all but stalled, the kind of persons who bought his books would be cutting back on their spending, perhaps there would be a last hurrah with the coming Christmas sales, after all a book was not a big ticket item and the e-book download version was even more affordable.
Dublin’s mayor, Eibhlin Byrne, had decided to switch on the festive lights earlier than ever, at the same time frantically exhorting the city’s inhabitants to spend. Given the financial state of the average shopper it was a foregone conclusion his exhortations were futile. Suddenly Ireland was a basket case, perhaps not as bad as Iceland’s, only the euro had saved them from the same fate as that of their north-Atlantic neighbour.
O’Connelly thought back to his childhood in Enniscorthy, a couple of hours drive to the south of Dublin. Money was still scarce in those days, but Christmas had been magic when his grandmother prepared the turkey in their small terraced house and presents were piled high on the large kitchen table with the smell of turf burning in the stove. There had been a meaning to Christmas when with his grandparents they made their way across the green for the children’s mass and a visit to the crib at Saint Aidan’s. Today’s Christmas was strictly business, nothing but business and spending he thought sadly.
Whilst he couldn’t complain about his own personal situation, the news from the US had O’Connelly worried; he had a lot of money tied up in California. It was one of the states hardest by the crisis, and its governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, had been forced into taking drastic action. A month in the States would enable O’Connelly to form his own opinion, judge the situation firsthand. San Francisco would be the first stopping point where he could settle the problem of his Telegraph Hill apartment; the Wells Fargo banker who had been renting it had been forced to let it go following the difficulties that had hit bank’s headquarters in the city’s financial district.
The prospects of another Great Depression were apparently real and an on the spot investigation would provide him with valuable material for his story. From California he planned to head east to New Orleans where he would join up with Laura before heading on to Florida and Key West for the year end holidays.
Florida like California had been severely hit by the sub-prime crisis and an easy swing through the state seemed like a good idea. Driving to Key West was perhaps not very logical, but it was certainly the best way to familiarise himself with a region he knew little of. It would take them three or four days to reach Key West, where Laura was sure to find the sun she yearned for before flying back to Paris.
The same day O’Connelly left Dublin, the Irish government announced it would recapitalise its banks. It was in effect a nationalization giving it a majority stake in Anglo Irish Bank and a twenty five percent stake in two others. The prime minister held the purpose of the recapitalisation was to ensure that the country’s banking system met the everyday financial needs of individuals, businesses and the overall economy.
At first view San Francisco had not visibly changed since his last visit, but on closer examination he sensed the soul of the city had been wounded. To start with its financial district and Wells Fargo had been deeply affected by the sub-prime crisis. Wells Fargo was a legend, the bank had opened its first office in the city in 1852, boasting ‘Ocean-to-Ocean’ service by 1888, and until the crisis had broke it had been a solid symbol of the city’s success.
Only three months earlier Wells Fargo had agreed to buy the mortgage lender Wachovia, after regulators had forced Wachovia into seeking a new backer following huge losses on its adjustable rate mortgages and commercial property loans estimated to be in excess of seventy billion dollars.
As the housing market continued to deteriorate, tens of thousands of families saw their home seized and found themselves homeless. The pain was visible on the streets of the city as the unemployed swelled the ranks of the homeless and the long queues waited patiently outside of care centres. O’Connelly asked himself how could San Francisco, one of the most sophisticated and cultured cities in the US, come to have so many people living in such manifest misery?
His found apartment was in good condition. Was it worth lowering the rent, he thought not. There was little to do but hope to ride out the crisis. It was not the time for rash decisions and after settling his outstanding affairs he flew east to New Orleans, where there was sure to be a veneer, if only a veneer of celebration.
Like most tourists they found themselves in the heart of the French Quarter. They had reserved a comfortable suite at The Royal Sonesta Hotel on world-famous Bourbon Street. From the balcony there were restaurants, bars and jazz clubs as far as they could see and the streets were filled with revellers. Laura was delighted by the atmosphere. The weather was fine and they even got to use the open air pool situated in the central courtyard of the hotel surround by flowers and greenery, a contrast with the chilly ocean wind in San Francisco and the grey damp Christmas weather of Paris.
Beyond the tinsel of the French Quarter and its tourist attractions O’Connelly realized that America had definitely changed. New Orleans still bore the scars of Hurricane Katrina, which had hit the city at the end of August 2005, and a new urgent hedonistic form of tourism thinly veiled the vice and criminality that stalked the city. Drink and forget, forget and drink, for tomorrow the lights go out and the fun ends.
A twenty-four hour casino drew the not only tourists but also a good number of the citizens of New Orleans, who by the appearance of many could certainly not afford to lose the little money they possessed. A moving moment was a Christmas service at a Baptist Church where people seemed to genuinely celebrate the real meaning of Christmas. As for the rest it was a rather brutal form of tourism: eat, pay and move on, where little warmth or sincerity existed.
After three days they hit the road in the direction of Mobile, Tallahassee and Jacksonville, where they saw the first monuments to the sub-prime crisis: uncompleted condominiums. The same sorry sight was repeated all along the Florida coastline, Atlantic and Gulf coasts alike. Depressed O’Connelly soon regretted his decision to travel by road. He had forgotten how great distances were in the US, but once in their rented car there was no going back.
Things had changed, almost everyone seemed to be driving an oversized SUVs, undoubtedly on credit, and driving well beyond the legal speed limit. The US economy was bound to the automobile as never before. America was inseparable from the automobile – by what other means could such a vast country function, even the waitress at Denny’s or the chambermaid at Day’s Inn needed a vehicle. Without wheels students, retired people, the poor and unemployed were marooned. The automobile wa
Few Europeans understood how the USA functioned, as for the citizens of the less developed world it was entirely beyond their comprehension. The US automobile industry with all its emanations accounted for over eight million jobs to which were added another three million employed in fillings stations, distribution networks, petroleum refining as well as road construction and maintenance, not forgetting insurance, credit, lawyers, police, hospitals and so on, the list was endless. In other words without the automobile the USA would grind to a halt. For the best part of a century the automobile had transformed the country’s concept of urban planning, creating strip development, urban sprawl and the inexorable decline of its cities downtown areas.
In Miami they celebrated the New Year in Coconut Grove, where the festivities faded soon after midnight. A taxi driver explained business was bad and compared to pre-crisis years the district was almost deserted. In comparison Key West bustled, but on the Gulf coast in the environs of Naples they discovered endless lines of empty homes overlooking almost deserted golf courses, homes that forlornly awaited elusive buyers.
The TV spoke of bailouts for the automobile industry, the press spoke of Madoff. Shopping malls seemed dismally vacant whilst shops and restaurants laid off staff as business prospects dimmed. In spite of the deluge of bad news it seemed however that hope was there. Obama would save America providing sufficient money could be printed.
Florida was of course very different from California, the former being to O’Connelly’s eyes more a state than a country, the opposite being true for the latter, but both were sorely affected by the economic crisis that questioned the American model. What had been presented as an enviable ideal to the rest of the world for the best part of a century was now looking threatened as a huge wave of debt threatened to engulf the country.
Over the years O’Connelly had lived in or travelled to many different states and a great number of towns and cities. In those years he had met a fairly broad cross-section of American people, from casual acquaintances to friends and of course fellow writers. Now his long and intimate experience of American life told him the country was undergoing a deep change.
In January 2009, he asked himself was this the end of American capitalism, the kind of capitalism that had been exported to the world for more than a century. Was it the end of the American Dream? The answer he concluded was probably no, but what he had seen did show the way to a future world where things would be very different. The kind of freewheeling capitalism that has dominated American and more broadly Western economic policies and society was almost certainly a thing of the past.
New Years Eve