I was working this weekend and was driving through New Jersey. As I often do I was scouting the neighborhood, making mental notes of the areas we were passing through. We went from Manhattan to Jersey city, through Newark and further along Mountain Ave.
I felt a sense of fear grip me as I realized that I had been driving for miles amongst streets filled with boarded up homes and businesses. Literally blocks and blocks of homes and commercial spaces were boarded up with plywood or closed and padlocked. It was a slow but real and heavy realization of how bad the area was. I pondered what could the people in the area be going through right now-where are they and what jobs they have ended up with? Are these recent? The plywood on the windows-on multi-story buildings-seemed new. I was hoping they were just derelict buildings, but the sidings are new on the homes, the paint was still good. These could have been closed maybe only months ago.
It was another bad sign which was on my list of things to look out for. Despite the news of growth and jobs, I kept wary. And now, it seems the news cannot hide the truth for much longer. If you notice, the news are slowly admitting the real problems-transitioning to the bad news. And if you realize, after months we went on with no mention of the word "recession" from the government or the news, suddenly we're looking at the reality of defaulting on our national debts. How can this transition be so sudden? Because it was all pent up problems which we had tried to keep quiet.
I spent today at work listening into CNN's live broadcast of the debt reduction debate. I am in my 30s, living in NYC. Normally people like me would be plugged in to their music-not listening to 60 year old career politicians bragging about their achievements and blaming each other.
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