Housing crisis
October 22, 2008 | Author: Paul Sullivan | Filed under: News
The first long magazine piece I’ve written ran in the October issue of Conde Nast Portfolio. My story focused on Bradley Birkenfeld and his role in a scandal that has engulfed UBS. It was a lot of work but I was proud of it in the end. Then a couple of weeks of my life disappeared with the latest - and last - round of repairs to our house. It was the worst one so far, the first instance of really overstepping and getting hit with a mammoth bill. (Who knew a half dozen pine trees could cost so much?) So in a moment of recession-fearing belt tightening my wife and I stayed in on Friday, and I finally got around to reading the rest of the October issue.
What I read was heartening: Michael Lewis, my hero, recently found himself fighting a losing battle against a house that was always going to win. The story of renting the mansion of his dreams in New Orleans is billed as a parable of the subprime crisis, and it is in the sense that all of us want more, particularly when it comes to a home. Overreaching can lay us low and it almost does to him. There was wonderful metaphor midway through the story, the lure of the rabbit hole as it were: “Three weeks later, I noticed a door near the master-bedroom suite that I hadn’t seen before; it was like a magical door that someone had carved into the wall while I slept. What could it be? I opened it to find…another huge dressing room! Inside, I could have fit every stitch of clothing I owned, three times over. It seemed weird to just leave it empty, but I didn’t have anything left to put in it, so I closed the door and pretended the room wasn’t there. But the thought occurred: Maybe I need more clothes.”
And maybe we needed more trees? Of course not! We wanted them. But I felt consoled. If my hero, the author of such brilliant books as Liar’s Poker and Moneyball could get seduced when he was smart enough to know better, then it was okay. He walked away from the mansion; I look away from that tiny hole in the tree that let’s me see the edge of my neighbor’s god-awful above-ground pool…
feel free to leave a comment
Comment Guidelines: Basic XHTML is allowed (a href, strong, em, code). All line breaks and paragraphs are automatically generated. Off-topic or inappropriate comments will be edited or deleted. Email addresses will never be published. Keep it PG-13 people!
XHTML: You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>
All fields marked with " * " are required.
1 person has left a comment
You really need to let the above ground pool thing go - seriously - my neighborhood is filled with them with the sweet sound of children playing in them - and that my friend is where you will find hapiness.