Waiting For the Other Shoe...

The talk in my friends and family circle is - well, all about the economic downturn. My friends and I represent a range of middle class-ness in terms of socio-economics. Some of my friends are modestly-salaried academics with a great deal of creative freedom and just enough money for their needs, others are hedge fund managers with lots of money but no real freedom to wander, except over to their desks to ponder the data on Bloomberg. K. and I fall somewhere in the middle of this range.

When we go out or have people over, the conversation invariably veers to the dismal state of the economy. Most of our friends in the corporate sector are, understandably, extremely worried about their jobs. As yet (knock on wood) nobody is unemployed. But everyone is waiting for the other shoe to drop.

I don't see any discernible impact on the downtown stores of our little town. Are people spending less? Not if you see the women I see, dropping $98 on silk tank tops and dragging their sulky teenage daughters around into upscale shoe stores. I am spending less, but there is no noticeable difference in my lifestyle. Having very young children, we rarely went out anyway (when I go out for dinner, I want to spend more than fifteen minutes gobbling down my meal to the refrain of "go home, wanna go home" and since that won't be likely for another three years at least, I prefer to eat at home). I work part-time and K. is self-employed so we had no work-related social life anyway (on the plus side, we also don't have the added anxiety of being laid off).

But we are nervous too. The nameless dread of waiting...