Burning dim

The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.
--Sir Edward Grey (August 3, 1914)

As I wandered around downtown today, observing the wonders and curiosities of Seattle, Sir Edward's famous words kept circling through my brain -- at times, I found myself almost humming them. Those lines were uttered by the British foreign secretary in the opening hours of World War I, as he pensively watched a lamplighter light the gas street lamp outside his office window.

Downtown Seattle looked beautiful, as it always does at Christmas. I passed one upscale shop after another, all lavishly decorated for the season, selling every luxury anyone could desire or imagine. The streets and shops were bustling with shoppers. The only gaps, the only places along the sidewalks not lined with prosperous-appearing shops, were the construction sites, marked by giant cranes. Skyscrapers, mixed-use buildings designed for both retail and residential use, continue reaching for the sky.

The usual homeless hung out on the sidewalks, holding their hand-written cardboard signs. But if we overlook them, as we in fact do, life could hardly look finer in the great Pacific Northwest.

So it was in Europe in 1914. Only the old folks could remember a time when life hadn't been peaceful and prosperous. Everyone was excited by new technological advances, scientific wonders. The arts were thriving. Everyone looked forward to the future. The lamps of civilization burned brightly.

But then ... the armies began to move.

In Seattle, today, not all is well behind the glossy surface. The shops are crowded with shoppers, but actual sales are reported to be unnervingly poor. Towering buildings are being erected by mobs of hard-hatted construction workers -- but, if you notice, no new construction has begun within the past six months, maybe even a year. The streets at lunch hour are packed with office workers, but each day the newspaper carries stories announcing new lay offs.

Washington Mutual, one of Seattle's proudest jewels, employing thousands in its glittering new national headquarters building, has collapsed and has been acquired by Chase Manhatten; eighty percent of WaMu's Seattle workforce have received their termination notices in place of a Christmas bonus.

Still, for most of us, life continues normally. The usual happy family Christmas lies ahead. We know all about the banking crisis, the stock market crash, the auto manufacturing crisis, the layoffs around us -- but so far we are safe. Our stock portfolios are down, but we'll be patient. The stock market hits a bear phase every so often, right? The bulls then return and the stocks climb even higher than before. We can wait.

And in August 1914, as the young men -- boys, really -- marched off to war, everyone cheered and said the war would be short. The boys would be home for Christmas. But it wasn't. And they weren't.

We read the news, but so far the news -- well, it just hasn't hit home. But when you're fired, as our neighbors are being fired, you don't buy luxuries, or maybe even necessities. And when you don't buy goods and services, the businesses that sell can't meet their payroll. And when they can't meet their payroll, more employees lose jobs, who in turn stop buying. Pretty soon, that wave of distress, sensed in the distance, draws close. It hits and washes over you.

It took us quite a few years, but that's the kind of economy we've ended up with, an economy that hits the rocks when people stop buying. Even when they just stop buying things they don't need. Because we can't keep a full economy going selling just goods and services that people actually need. This is the inherent contradiction of capitalism that Karl Marx said would eventually cause its collapse.

What results is called a deflationary spiral, and that's where many economists think we're heading. Once it starts, it feeds on itself, because people who are scared don't spend. They hang on to whatever money they have. Women don't buy haute couture dresses and gowns, men don't buy Hummers, when their families may need that money just to eat. Unless something breaks the spiral, we end up all unemployed and all hungry.

Christmas 1915 was not a happy time for most British families. I wonder what Christmas 2009 will be like here in Seattle? In America?

I think the lamps may be going out.