The Great Paradox

We bought another truck a few weeks ago, to offset the loss of our stolen truck a few weeks before that.

I am at a crossroads, now to decide to sell the Honda Civic or not. I can afford both, I can only drive one at a time, and I hardly drive at all as it is, but you can see my great paradox; the more stuff, the better off I am, while I think I'd be better off with less stuff. The more stuff I have, the better I can show up my neighbors. The more stuff I have, the more ALIVE I feel.

I bought a truck from a now bankrupt outfit, General Motors. I paid about 70% more for my truck today than I did for my old truck in 1995, but remember, this increase in cost is more than offset by the increase in pleasure I derive from pushing its new electronic controls instead of manually turning the old Chevy's dials. I feel MORE ALIVE as a result.

Of course, this action did little to maintain American jobs. The truck was manufactured in Canada anyways, and is used. the Iranian immigrant selling this truck bought it as part of a bank repossession lot...it's a repo truck. I stop to consider the sequence of events that led to me acquiring this vehicle:


The truck manufacturing date is stamped November, 2001, the same month I visited the still smoldering remnants of the world trade center. Another unknown American, instead of enlisting in the Army to kill the infidels, decided instead to follow then president Bush's mandate of "Go Forth and Spend" and bought himself a new Chevy truck. This was the extent of his sacrifice, no doubt; to buy a new truck for himself that was manufactured in Canada under the guise of American-made and financed at zero-interest. He might even had attached an American flag on the antenna, further evidence to convince others that he's a real American, willing to sacrifice his own economic security for the support of 3,000 dead 3,000 miles away.

His flag waving days were over in a matter of a few months, however, as regular eighty mph speeds on the freeway led to the tattered ruins of the little flag. Shoulda bought that window sticker instead, he lamented in May '02, but of course, that would have ruined potential resale value with degredation of the tinting. But by then, his zeal for sacrifice was muted by the fantastic rise in real estate that was just beginning. He bought his first house that summer and although it was twenty two miles from work, no problem, gas is cheap and the recession is over thanks to his and thousands of other car purchases. It sure was nice commuting in that truck instead of that 1976 Pacer.

By early '03 with the Iraq war beginning, his job as a loan underwriter was really starting to sing. He bought his first spec house and flipped it at the beginning of '04, and with those proceeds he 1031'ed it into another flipper. The problem at that time, of course, was that all those new HDTVs were just coming into the high-end range of the middle class...he'd have to cash-out refi his own house to get one now, he thinks. No problem, interest rates are in the dirt and with prices exploding he's got more than enough equity.

All the gouges in the bed of the truck weren't from moving building materials to improve his home, they were from all his consumer purchases made between 2002 to 2007; big screen televisions, riding lawnmowers, swingsets, stainless barbeque grills, dining room tables and chairs, rollaway toolboxes...

At the peak in early '06, life was fantastic. Up to his eyeballs in debt, that mattered little as income was tidalwaving in from all those loosely underwritten mortgages. Increasing debt means nothing so long as income is rising faster, he reckons.

And right he was! Even as the re-financing boom was drawing down, his quarterly bonuses were still rolling in, so the good times were there to stay even without increasing work. Slowly at first, his workload decreased...he took longer breaks, three appletinis at lunch instead of four, until it all started crashing down around him. He was laid off in late '07, upside down on his own mortgage and his two flippers-turned-rentals. With the new tougher bankruptcy laws, he thought he'd just ride unemployment through. Instead of 26 weeks he got nearly 50, taking him to the brink of the new year '09, when he just couldn't keep the house of cards from finally collapsing.

Bankruptcy was such a relief, he wonders why he didn't declare it sooner. Having much more debt that he could possibly have paid off even in two lifetimes made the judge all that more willing to erase nearly every debt...except, in the small print, he had to surrender his truck to the bank. With nary a tear, he watched his daily companion of eight years get loaded onto the flatbed hauler. That's OK, he thought, the American economy is so car sales dependent that he knew he' be able to finance another one in less than six months from bankruptcy. He bartered with his nephew to let him borrow back his Pacer from time to time.