Sinanation

So much has been written about this financial crisis. It became the media’s most valued celebrity. So much has been said that even the people who did not have an interest in finance became experts on the subject. Housewives started chatting about it at their tea parties. Young kids started to worry if they are ever going to get that new toy they have been dreaming about. Beautiful girls with big prince charming dreams tried to imagine a future where there is less fish in the pond. Articles came out about the art world and the dating scene after the crisis. So much money funded by the Federal Government has been put on the papers and TV screens that we finally got tired of counting and comparing it to our own paychecks. The consumer blamed the banks, the banks blamed the government and the government blamed the consumer. The financial crisis of 2008 became the mosquito that insists on not putting us to sleep, flying around our ear all night long. We are all tired. We wish to get a good night’s sleep. Even if we don’t have enough worries to keep us awake, the mosquito is there and we are too slow to get rid of it.

Thanks to the media, most of us now know what the crisis means for everyone else but us. We watch houses with foreclosure signs dipped in their garden. We see money managers forced into jail. We see once the greatest banks in the world becoming pieces of antique sold on eBay. We witness retirements going down in flames. We hear investment bankers’ dreams getting crushed by the new regulations. We see trust dissolving into anger and worry. Yet the real question we wish to get an answer to is how the crisis affects us? How our lives are going to change? When should we expect the change? This has been the mosquito around my ear at night for a long time now.

I desperately try to witness the strength of the crisis I read in the papers and watch on the TV screens. For most of us it has been this unidentifiable monster waiting to knock on our door, sneaking into our bank accounts and disturbing the life we became accustomed to. I came to see that the wait is longer and more painful in Manhattan.

I go out everyday in the city that never sleeps, the city where it all started looking for a sign of despair, a sign of insecurity. I fail each time. The city is busier than ever before. The restaurants are so packed that you can’t get reservations if you do not call a day earlier. The nightclubs still have their waiting lines packed. I tell myself maybe they are tourists this time, yet I see the same faces having fun. I read articles where Saturday happy hours are even better than before. I wonder every time if the bomb is still ticking or if it will ever blow up. I keep waiting for the monster. Hoping it will pass my door and the doors of the people I care about. I try to sleep with the mosquito on the background. Maybe one day I will find the strength to act faster and get rid of it.