By Ashley Halsey III
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, October 11, 2008
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."
Tinsley's research shows that surviving flirtations with disaster, as in past Wall Street nose dives, doesn't make people more timid. Instead, it emboldens them to take on more risk. And it makes them less fearful when the next "market correction" occurs.
What's more, public conversation about a generally private matter -- they are called "personal" finances, after all -- can stray onto delicate ground. Wall Street woes aren't meaningful to some people unless their jobs are threatened, so fresh reports of looming layoffs might sour people who had remained upbeat.
The "ride-it-out" message plays better with younger people than with baby boomers nearing retirement.
For example, Becky Shatzoff, 33, describes herself as a "poor person" and says she doesn't own stock. She and her friends in Prince William County don't expect to be burned by a failing economy.
"Mostly it's talked about on the news," Shatzoff said. "I don't hear other people talking about it, other than NBC."
Thomas Walsh, a Fairfax County security consultant, said that at age 40, he's "not ready to jump out the window." A "news junkie," he has followed the crisis closely and remains optimistic. "The economy has its upturns and downturns," he said. "My 401(k)'s not looking good right now, but whose is?"
The economy does come up when his neighbors gather, Walsh said, but "it's kind of like you talk about the weather or the Redskins. It's a topic of conversation."
"I think everybody around me is oblivious," said Meg Maier, a Severna Park real estate agent who is following the crisis closely. "I don't hear anybody talking about it or sense that they've been thinking about it."
Penny Banello, 61, confesses to having been one of those oblivious people.
"I learned that I have been oblivious, much to my peril," said Banello, who lives in Cape St. John. "I didn't know what the ramifications of deregulation were 10 years ago."
She has talked with her brother and sister, who live in Upstate New York and Montana, about the possibility of living under a single roof again.
"Since I live off my [investment] portfolio, it's going to affect me terribly," she said.
Why, she was asked, aren't more people talking about the economic crisis?
"Maybe they are thinking, 'If I just don't pay attention, maybe it will go away.' "
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