Debbie Nathan

A day with the traders, a night with Naomi Klein

I knew it would be standing room only at the Nation’s and the Brecht Forum’s “Emergency Forum on the Economy,” on Friday night. So I made plans to go downtown early. I decided to drop by the New York Stock Exchange first, to gauge the mood on Wall Street.

I arrived in late afternoon. The market had tumbled hundreds of points in the morning, then leapt up, and finally drooped again, just before the bell. Traders were emerging from the vault-like NYSE building. The looks on their faces reminded me of that scene in Don DeLillo’s White Noise, where passengers stagger into the airport after surviving a crash that almost happened but not quite.

These guys had a weekend’s R&R to look forward to. Then, back to their hell on Monday. Besides them, there were a lot of tourists on the street, including a French family muttering “tres bas,” and bevies of TV reporters with their sound crews and trucks. There was a Jesus proselytizer advertising the end of the world, a bag guy with a little American flag playing a baleful flute, and two girls dressed like death or “the specter haunting Europe” or Satanists, staring fixedly and weirding out the whole street, including those brokers.

The whole thing made me hungry for some affordable comfort food so I walked over to the corner, on Broadway, and bought a little plastic bag of candy from the immigrant Russian lady who’s been out there selling gummie bears for a decade. I wondered how her business is these days. I’d just read an article in Slate about how, during economic downturns, rich guys go to pricey prostitutes more than ever — but rather than shtupping, they just want to talk … presumably about their high blood pressure, ulcers, and their broke-ass wounded macho. But, I asked myself, when things go from bad to worse, do brokers need low-cost sugar more than high-cost Sweetie?

“No way,” my informant sneered when I showed her the photos in my camera and asked if she has this type of person as customers. “This men? Hah! Never. Never they buy from me. My candy is dollar twenty five, these men have no little-bit-cash for me, instead they have big million, not keep in wallet, they no buy! Only buy from rich, rich like them, they sell they not for me!”

Then I hopped a train up to the Nation/Brecht Forum meeting. What a relief.

Bill Grieder started things off, reminding the audience that the old order is wobbling and now is the time for the Left to start thinking big about how to act big. Doug Henwood opined that capitalism’s current crisis isn’t a hoax or a scare tactic. It’s very real and very capable of bringing down not just the ruling class, but the rest of us as well. Which is why the bailout was needed, as much as it stinks and now needs retooling. Naomi Klein had a few ideas about what we can do quickly. “Nationalize Exxon,” she suggested, or better, “internationalize” it, in order to distribute all those megaprofits downward — to us — instead of upward.

Klein also pointed out that Barack Obama’s main economic advisor, whom he talks with every day, is the Goldman-Sachsite and Greenspanian Bob Rubin. She said the Left should be immediately demanding that Obama fire Rubin.

The beautiful and corundum Frances Fox-Piven also spoke. As a culture, we’re at the same place now that we were in 1930s, she said. For years lately, Wall Street and Free Marketers and neoliberals have convinced ordinary people that their view of the world and our place in it is right, proper, moral, visionary. Now, as in the 1930s, their class is exposed as fools and charlatans, and their rhetoric stupid and empty. The Great Depression unleashed social movements — of the unemployed, for exmaple, and especially of labor — which pushed Franklin Roosevelt to redistribute capitalist wealth. To a point. Now there’s a chance for a rerun. And who knows how far it will go this time.

But, Fox-Piven warned, don’t expect the end of capitalism tomorrow, much less the beginning of socialism. The phrase “Roman Empire” crept into her talk, as well as the idea that we’re looking at years of decline. “Harsh” was also a word she used. As in: Times are going to be long and tough. As in: We’re going to be doing a lot of political work.

What else is new.

So far there has been one demonstration on Wall Street to protest its rescue at popular expense. Despite the fact that it was planned in only a day or two, it was big. Here are some photos of what people had to say then:

Now, a second demo is in the works. Given the long lead time, it should be larger.

It’s scheduled for Friday, October 16, right by Federal Hall, across the street from the Stock Exchange.