The Temple of Wall Street continued its collapse today, Monday, September 28th, the very day the US House of Representatives was expected to lay a new foundation for the Street's resurrection, when the DJIA closed at an historic record loss, a punishing 777 points. This happened despite earlier efforts of traders/bargain hunters with ice in their veins to throw some water on the fire.
They failed.
After the Crash of '29, with its collateral damage, the Great Depression, government safeguards set in place supposedly rendered the destruction of Capitalism's Sacred Cow - Wall Street -beyond the pale.
They've again failed - at least for the next 3 days, while Congress retreats, having headed home over the Jewish holidays.
In the interest of full disclosure, for 9 years I sported the pinstripes of an "account executive," more commonly known then as a stockbroker, for a major retail wire-house, EF Hutton & Co., Inc. before it ran into its own problems, only to be scarfed up by another firm, disappearing into the lore of Wall Street Houses gone-bad.
By then, I had already departed in search of other, more rewarding, if no less risky, adventures, heading to Hollywood to fulfill my creative needs. With "Street cred" behind me, and stories of my former colleague's misadventures dancing in my head,in 1986 I wrote a pilot for television series, "BOARDROOM,' in which I penned forth the peccadilloes of the wealthy,the greedy and the caught-in-the headlights innocent, as they played and preyed - a "Dirty,Sexy Money" meets "Boiler-Room" potboiler.
I scripted a scenario purely out of my imagination in which, by the end of the first day, the DJIA plummeted over 800 points. As the pilot played out, lives were scorched - the "sky's falling" affect- everyone was in a sea-change together: moral individuals took the high ground, the not-yet-named "Masters of the Universe" were drowning in their own private hell, and innocent bystanders were swept along with, or under, the tide.
Thanks to a William and Morris agent, the script was circulated among the usual suspects who wheel-and-deal in television pilots. But after a few weeks, when no offer was forthcoming, I asked what was wrong...
"Pure fiction!" I was told. The network "suits" found the idea of the DJIA crashing to that extent absurd, unimaginable, implausible, and therefore, not sale-able to the viewing public.
The idea was, in short, DOA, dead-on-arrival, much like the Administration's rescue bill on the Hill today. Unfortunately for the man-in-the-street, he's expected to bear the burden of rescuing not just the caviar and champagne lifestyle of the villainous "masters of the universe," but to save Western Civilization as we know it.
Wellll, okay, maybe that's hyperbole. But when you extrapolate the Domino Effect out to the 10th power, it's not quite so absurd.
We're damned if we do rescue Wall Street, but toast if we don't: like it or not, Wall Street is now the shadow side of Main Street. We are in this together, but for most of the past 2 decades, it's been a "heads Wall Street wins; tails the little guy loses."
That's got to change. Let's hope our fearless leaders get some sense knocked into their heads on this 3 day hiatus, and that they can come together to rescue, not the Street but the American Dream.
In the meantime, I think I'll dig up that old "BOARDROOM" script - for a documentary
