Fort Apache: Still Can't Move

They say the housing market is getting better but most people still cant move. Unless you want to walk out of your home and start over. A lot of people are doing that. Well some. But you have to be ok with taking nothing with you and maybe wrecking your credit. But the bottom line is the normal process of taking some money with you for your next house has been obliterated. Not only was lending destroyed in the Great Recession but Real Estate has pretty much ceased to function. At least for people who now own

Even if you can get a little out of your house then you have to find a house where the new numbers ill work. The fact of the matter is most people are so upside down in their homes they cannot move. In this way people are stranded. There is no mobility anymore in the upward mobility of Americans. We always prided ourselves on being able to move on if things don't work out. Now we have to just hunker down. The problem is we have been hunkering down for five years.

And they say real estate is up. But for who? First time home buyers. They can come at it fresh with no loss on their current home. Lets face it....it is freaky to walk away from hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equity. Poof. Gone. Intellectually you know it. Of course the real problem is bad credit. A lot of people cant qualify for a new home or they don't have the income anymore. Fort Apache. That is where we are now.

We have to just hide out in our fort until....

Rocket Man....the novel of the Upside Down Generation

Corporations are not people

I used to know a guy in college who always said, you are either for me or against me. Usually he wanted help in some way and everyone had a good laugh. But there is no laughing now. Sixteen million people unemployed with a double dip recession looming, one quarter of all mortgages under water, houses worthless, and a vanguard of zealots running for President who want to destroy Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare. See Paul Ryans plan if you doubt what I am saying or watch Governor Perry in the debate last night.

These are the times of you are either for the people or against the people. Ideology aside. Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, green whatever, this concerns the people. Black, white, yellow, brown, it doesn't matter your color. The people are on the line right now. The American Jobs Act will be unveiled and it will help middle class people. It will help the people. Even if you are employed and doing very well, this plan will be better than doing nothing because we might have a chance to get things going.

Corporate America will bail out nobody in the United States. They are in pursuit of other markets. They are in other countries where the emerging middle class has buying power. They are after those consumers. They are sitting on trillions and are not going to employ Americans because the American consumer has been shucked and left with only the husk. There is no more money for the corporations to mine. This is a basic concept. There is no Buy America. The buyers have left the country for ports where people can buy. And corporations are not churches, they do not have our best interests at heart. They could give a damn.

Mitt Romney was wrong. Corporations are not people. They are not feeling creatures. They are entities created to make money anywhere in the world. America to them is like a service station where you can pick up some gas and a few goodies, but you are on your way somewhere else. The right will try and obstruct Obamas plan. They have already begun. But they are not obstructing the Presidents plan. They are obstructing the people.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man  One Man's Search for the new American Dream. James Frey

Priming the Pump

We had a Briggs and Straton lawn mower when I was a kid that refused to start. I would have to pop off the spark plug and pour gas into the cylinder, blow out the gap in the plug, put it back and start pulling again. The mower would start with a quick burst and then sputter. I had to do this three times before the mower heated up and ran again. Dad called it priming the pump and when I got minibikes and motorcycles then snow blowers it became my go to method to get an internal combustion engine running again.

This is what we need now. We need to prime the pump with some raw gas and get things going. If an economy is a motor then ours just wont start. Middle class people are the gas of an economy. Sorry but they are. Without buying power it doesn't matter how many times the spark plug fires there can be no combustion. People have no buying power anymore, no gas. We have to pull off the plug and pour rag gas into the cylinder and see if can get the motor to catch now. It is a last resort but that is where we are.

Do not insult me with trickle down nonsense. Nothing trickles down. Let me say it again. Nothing trickles down. The rich stay rich and companies say fat. They will not suddenly release all their millions and employ people. They will find things to do with their money no doubt, but we now need to put the gasoline directly into the cylinder. We do need New Deal style muscle.We need to give people jobs. Any kind of jobs. Call it Grow Up. But the gas must be poured into the engine and not sit in the tank.

People need money to spend. This is how the economy gets rolling. Oh but it will sputter. The stimulus didn't work. Bull and so what. Something is better than nothing. Forget about rich people bailing us out.  That Republican mantra is just bull. We will bail ourselves out by giving to the people who will spend the money to buy the goods and get the economy rolling.

A lot of times I had to put the gas in several times before the mower would start. We will probably have to do this several times also. But priming the pump does work, and eventually, the motor  starts again.

1929 All Over Again

There was a great financier who stepped in on the second day of the Stock Market Crash in 1929. He was the richest man in the country and he had decided enough was enough. He would personally save Americas bacon by bailing out the stock market. He went around and bought shares in every large company, infusing millions and millions of dollars  all over the stock market horizon. The market would not crash on his watch and for a while it seemed to work. The crash paused while people took heart that the richest man in the world had just rescued the market and by proxy the American economy. Then it went to the floor.

Now we seeWarren Buffet bailing out Bank of America with billions. Bank of America stock goes up nine percent and people are taking heart that one of the richest men in the world is giving the bank a vote of confidence. Too bad he gave the money to the wrong people. Bank of America is in the toilet because our homes are worthless and becoming more worthless. He should have just given the money to the homeowners. The bank mirrors the market and the derivatives that killed it and is now on the hook for billions in litigation. The great ship Buffet will not stem this tide. Bank of America is too big to fail but it seems destined too.

Because no one is doing anything for the very people who can bail out BOA: their customers. The bank prefers to just let everyone default while they foreclose on people whose only sin was to own a home that is now worthless. Bank of America is the Titanic of the Housing Crash. She holds tons of soured mortgage securities pawned off to people who are now suing them. She bought Countrywide. Talk about an iceberg laden with sub prime garbage. And she is taking water so fast that even Warren Buffets patch will not work. What is scary is that Buffett had to do this.

And what will the government do? Bail them out again? More money after bad. President Obama better do something for housing or he will be the Captain John Smith of the SS BOA breaking in two and heading for the icy darkness of our second Great Depression. Oh, that financier who tried to bail us out the last time: JP Morgan.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

Rocket Man

Mr. Perry Comes to Washington

Those Texans. They have their guns and their horses and their hats and all that land of cactus and sagebrush and land. Think Giant with Rock Hudson and now Obama is James Dean trying to get a toehold on the big ranch of jobs. Mr. Perry just  comes a blazing with his six guns shouting JOBS JOBS JOBS and the town folk are impressed. There haven't been jobs in these parts for a long long time and now comes this big Texan saying now you listen and you listen tight! Were going to get the jobs and were going to get them now.

The President is nervous on his pony. Mr. Perry has a big American stud and a large hat and he has the jobs or so he says. And now that is half the battle isn't it? The assumptive close. Say it and it will come true. This evangelical secessionist swaggering governor could just upset the whole applecart with his Texan ways. There is a reason people hate Texans. They brag. They swagger. They assume they are better than everyone else and more of a man for that matter.

And I'm not sure the President is really up for Mr. Perry. I don't know if Mr. Perry knows any high faluting words like bipartisanship or compromise. God is on his side anyway and he don't have to compromise if he don't want too. He does have a Reagan swagger. The question is how big is his boot and will he stick it all the way in his mouth? Only time will tell, but President Obama better saddle up, because there is a new sheriff in town.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man Kindle and Paperback

Reality is Stranger than Fiction

When I wrote Rocket Man I exaggerated. That's what you do in fiction. You exaggerate to prove a point, make a story move, create a moment. My main character is a guy who moves to the suburbs about to lose everything and then he does. His house, his job, his marriage. He is an everyman, a guy who bought too much house and took on too much debt with too many kids. He questions the American Dream and it's pursuit of materialism. The world implodes around him.

At the time I had created an economic situation that had not come to pass. Until now.I thought like everyone else the Recession was temporary. I assumed there would be a bump and people would dig out. But now like everyone else I see that our situation has become one of stasis. And Rocket Man has turned from a whatif story to a story of our reality. And while a lot of people have not lost their home and questioned their choices and ended up in radically different circumstances, a lot more people can relate to  my character, Dale Hammer,  than ever before.

And now we see that there is no will to help middle class people at all. We are truly on our own. This is an epiphany Dale comes to understand. That no one will help us but ourselves. I painted a very stark picture of America and the American Dream in decline. I never thought it would become our permanent reality.

Rocket Man Kindle Download

Pensions are DOA

The world has changed. Look at Greece and London and America. The old days of doing a stint of thirty years and then retiring are gone. Pensions are DOA. The problem is that you now have millions of people with absolutely no safety net and that is sucking down the people with a pension. The people who have nothing because of our prolonged recession do not want to pay for anybody. They have nothing and have nothing to lose. The bottom line is there is simply not enough pie to go around anymore.

One group has taken more than their fair share and this has left millions holding the bag. You have to question the worker states set up under capitalism where people are plugged into jobs with the promise of gold at the end. This scenario worked for a long time as along as people were making money and there was still enough pie to divvy up. This is not the case any longer. One group is taking a good healthy twenty seven percent of the wealth pie and capitalism has simply run out of gas. With so many people displaced, the old promised gold is now under attack.

The protected groups are no longer protected and this world is ending quickly. There is simply too much economic devastation globally to fund the people who cut the deal way back when. The metaphor of people drowning and swamping those in the life boats is too easy too resist. But it is no less true. The pension lifeboats are being swamped by those with nothing. Conversely the governments have nothing to pay and they are letting everyone know now: you have been the victim of the biggest bait and switch in history.

There is no gold at the end.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man will be out in July

Imprisoned in McMansions

I haven't paid my mortgage for three years the woman said outside foreclosure court. I had gone for my normal three month meeting over an investment property short sale and the woman had sought me out in the hallway. You look like you know what you are doing she said. I didn't but I listened to her tail of McMansion woe. She had bought in the boom and ran up a mortgage to about 450k with a second tacked on. Her house was now turtle to the tune of about one hundred grand. Her job imploded and she went into a loan modification that never happened and started going to foreclosure court staving off the inevitable. Three years later she had not paid a dime.

But it sucks. I feel like such a loser still living in my house, but I cant afford to move, she went on. It's like I'm in prison. True. Her four thousand square foot monster is her prison. McMansions became pretty standard in the boom for the most egregious debtors in the move into upper middle class mobility. And why not? Money was cheap and the houses were amazing but now these Tyrolean haunted houses are prisons for thousands of people who cannot afford to move.

I can't afford to downsize because obviously I cant sell and I wont have a down payment and my credit is shot the woman said fearfully. All I can do is keep coming here and hope they wont foreclose. And they probably wont with foreclosure projections sixty two years in New York to clean up the mess and ten years in Illinois. The McMansion prisons start to fall down because people cant afford the maintenance, but like the golden handcuffs of a job we hate ,the person simply cannot afford to move.

It's schizoprhenic. I pull up to this big beautiful house everyday and I'm so broke I couldn't afford a bungalow. She paused and shook her head.  I'd like to afford a bungalow. That would be heaven to live in a small house.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man comes out July 26th

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man in July

I want to talk to the President....

And tell him trickle down has killed all the middle class lawns. And that the credit faucet has been turned off for anyone not in the one percent and the lawns have become dormant and are in danger of dying. I would tell him middle class people are  no longer represented in Washington and he has let a group  of people choke off all the water under the lie of fiscal conservatism. I would tell  him middle class people are not dressing as well and their cars are getting older. I would tell him that their houses are worthless and that unless he restores their value the economy is doomed to sputter.

I would tell the President the banks do not want to lend to the middle class anymore. I would tell him they have upped the requirements for a loan that nobody can qualify. I would tell him that credit is being withheld and it is starving the very people he needs to bring about a recovery. I would tell him he should allow people with good credit to refinance regardless of the value of their home. He should tell the appraisers to stop using foreclosures and short sales for comparables. I would tell him to pass a law making it mandatory for holders of second mortgages to subordinate to the first loan and allow people to refinance their home.

I would tell him that the banks will  not lend anymore and he has to establish a National Bank to lend to the middle class. I would tell him to walk through Home Depot or Starbucks or Target and see all the people working there who used to have white collar jobs. I would tell him to notice there are no customers. I would tell him that unless he gives buying power back to the John Q Middle class our economy is doomed. Maybe our republic. I would tell him he has to fight the bad guys now even if he loses. He has to fight the one percent, the banks, the corporations. He has to fight for the little guy who elected him.

I would tell the President time is running out. That it is going to be a long hot summer. I would tell him it is not too late. I would tell him to start on housing. Start with the middle class's biggest asset. I would tell him if he restores housing then he can grow the economy from the bottom. That is where the grass has to be watered. I would tell him to call me or any middle class person and find out what is really happening in America. I would tell him this could be his greatest moment, but he has to act now.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man will blast off in the summer

Maybe this is as good as it gets

As a writer you are used to hard times. You do not question those hard times and think well easy times are on the way. You just accept the hard times as the way things are and deal accordingly. This allows you to navigate the very hard existence that is the writers lot and get on with the business at hand. After you accept the situation then you are empowered because you are not waiting  anymore. This is the way it is. This is as good as it gets.

Our economy might be as good as it gets. If you turn off the crack cocaine of easy credit for the last twenty five years and accept we now live in a global economy with no lock down on markets, then you start to think well maybe this is really our economy  Take away that rocket fuel of stimulus credit and the good ship prosperity does not seem so close anymore. It is a sobering thought.

We are waiting though. We are waiting to uncork the champagne when the good times return. We envision a starting gun going off or damn being opened or a tidal wave of pent up  demand to sweep over the country and the good times will be back and we will all wipe our brow and say, wow, glad that's over. But what if the situation we are in right now is the real economy? If you take away the artificial stimulus of money for nothing and accept we must compete in world markets, then maybe this is what our revved down economy feels  like. Not a Mustang, but maybe a slow steady Buick.

This would mean millions of people are waiting for nothing. Millions of people are not taking bad jobs or menial jobs on the bet that the good ship prosperity is just over the horizon. I know twenty somethings who have come out of stellar Universities who have been out of work for years. They are waiting for their anointed jobs to return. But maybe the straight commission job of the insurance salesman, the door to door salesman, the Amway salesman, the copier salesman, the telemarketer, the fry cook, the MacDonald's position, the cable technician...maybe these are the real jobs of our economy and we better start going after them. Maybe, this is as good as it gets.

Bestselling author William Hazelgrove is the Hemingway writer in residence for the Ernest Hemingway Foundation. He has written four novels, reviews and features for USA TODAY and been the subject of stories in the NY Times, LA Times, Chicago Tribune, USA Today, and NPR'S All Things Considered. His forthcoming novel is Rocket Man. More information can be gathered at www.billhazelgrove.com

The New Beat Generation of the Great Recession

I wrote Rocket Man two years ago and thought that by the time it came out the recession would be over. But I wrote the novel thinking someone should come to grips with his awful calamity grinding up the middle class. Little did I know we would still be in the belly of the beast at the time of publication. The Great Recession is grinding on and on and steadily wearing away the thin fabric of our middle class and decimating a whole group of workers that might never return to the work force.

Of course I am talking about the over fifty crowd who went into this recession as young men and women and have come out old and used up. F. Scott Fitzgerald said his father had lost his job when he was a boy and came home an old man "he had lost his immaculate sense of purpose and was a failure for the rest of his days." This eloquent line sums up more than anything what is happening to the people who went into this recession very much engaged in life and are coming out in their slippers and pajamas, a rootless people with literally no where to go.

In Rocket Man I paint a picture of a man on the brink of disaster. He is barely hanging on to his house, his marriage, his life. I accelerated his disaster into one week but now when you read the paper, specifically the New York Times, there is an article speculating that the people who have become unemployed at fifty may never enter the work force again. Even my protagonist who hits bottom in every sense of the word, doesn't recognize the possibility he will never work again. This is really the bleakest aspect of the Great Recession yet.

For the unemployed it is the perpetual thudding reality of not being part of the whole anymore. The beat generation of the forties played around with this idea, Kerouac and the others stating they were perpetually beat from the stress they labored under during the war years and before that the Great Depression. Maybe we now have a new Beat Generation. It may well be the oldest one yet.

William Hazelgrove's Rocket Man is due out in the fall
http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

The Permanent Unemployed of the coffee houses

As a writer I am in a lot of coffee houses and man you see them everywhere. The unemployed men you pick them out in a second. They are a lot of white guys with beards and goatees. Grey haired. They meet people in the coffee shops and talk in hushed voices. They read with the paper hiding their face. They meet at park benches and walk up and down the street with other men. They are the displaced work force of the Great Recession who will probably never go back to work. Like cattle they have been marginalized early in the ungracious retirement that is a massive economic realignment.

Call it what you will but the economy will become something else. It will become a cyber based green based machine that will be global in scope. It will move away from brick and mortar and the jobs offered will be different than those that exist today. The upheaval of the economy is a massive displacement of people and skill sets that have experienced sudden obsolescence. This is not a pause, this is a metamorphosis that will shed older workers like leaves that have grown brittle.

The young workers will fill the funnel first and then there might be some filling in. But middle aged white men will not be called up. There has been a fundamental shift in the tectonic plates of our everyday life and the slushy credit market that allowed companies to carry people in bloated management does not exist and will not exist again. That great run started by the greatest generation fizzled with the rise of China and the implosion of the derivative market. The funny money of twenty years vanished into the Monopoly board and left only the players...but without a game or money or properties worthless, the game is shelved for the new reality of  Don't Wake Daddy...because daddy has nowhere to go.

William Hazelgrove's new novel Rocket Man is due out in September. The story of a man who moves to the suburbs and loses his mind. www.billhazelgrove.com