As Economic Crisis Continues, Many People Change the Subject

Even as the personal price tag for a $700 billion-plus bailout sinks in, even as retirement funds shrivel and businesspeople quake, the conversation among many ordinary citizens seems muted in recent days when compared with more easily digested catastrophes.

A combination of factors -- including reluctance to open up about personal finances, bewildering talk of derivatives and credit default swaps and the intensity of the presidential campaign's final weeks -- appear to have muted the buzz normally associated with such big news.

People who talked comfortably about the messy aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and their fear after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks have not made their financial worries the topic of conversation in hair salons and doctors' offices. Policy wonks, serious investors, financial advisers and MBAs are consumed by the crisis. Still, many other people from all stripes of life, even those seriously worried about it, are finding it just one more topic of conversation.

People who spend their workdays speaking with customers, clients and patients say the financial meltdown is talked about, but not as much as the latest travails on the presidential campaign trail or the Redskins.

"More people are talking about the election and the debates," said Winterson Hittle, a Parole hairdresser for whom each customer means another conversation. "I know people are worried about it. I can tell that their mood has changed, but they don't talk about it."

"Hardly anyone has mentioned it," said Marc Schwartz, an Annapolis chiropractor. "The couple of people who have just shake their heads."

"We're not hearing a lot about it," Stuart Ross, a dentist who practices a few blocks from the White House, said yesterday. "Nobody's jumping up and down. A couple of people have mentioned it, but they're lawyers, so they understand it better than you or I."

Asked why his customers weren't talking more about the financial disaster, Jay Kleinfeldt, a custom cabinet maker with a shop in Springfield, offered an explanation: "It's been very confusing for a lot of people. For a while there, Congress was going around in circles, and they seemed as confused as I was."

Perhaps the potential turmoil it poses in many people's lives is slow to absorb, although almost a third of Americans are somehow invested in the stock market, according to the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association. A Washington Post-ABC survey taken last week, as the House reconsidered the bailout package but before the Dow Jones industrial average dropped below 9,000, found that 53 percent of registered voters were pessimistic about the national economy, but 61 percent were optimistic about their personal finances.

That optimism might thrive among people who view this as simply another Wall Street disaster of the same sort the economy has weathered before.

"We're not very good at interpreting the meaning of numbers," said Catherine Tinsley, an associate professor of management at Georgetown University. "So we look at the context to determine whether we need to be concerned or not.

"One reason people may not be worried is that, in their lifetime, they've seen the market tank twice and come back."