Thanks to my talented and dedicated webmistress, comments have now been enabled. So my dedicated readers can now leave a comment by clicking below. I've liked this feature on other blogs and haven't seen it too much abused, so talk back if you wish.

And now off to the job which pays my salary, where I hear phrases tossed around such as "collapse of the credit market" and "the freeze-up of commercial paper." Or, as the famous curse would have it, "May you live in interesting times."

Christiane Amanpour mentioned recently on Bill Maher's show that "credit" shares the same root as "credible," from the Latin credibilis -- worthy of confidence, reliable.

It is one thing to suffer famine based on the failure of crops, due to a drought. It is another to suffer from a famine of trust, based on a drought of good sense. In the first instance, we reap a dessicated acre of soil; in the second, we cope with the crumbled harvest of our bad behavior. That is a much harsher marketplace.

Labels: comment, credit, credit markets

posted by Elizabeth at 8:06 AM   0 Comments

Way back in the day (as the kids say), still entertaining the “I’m a writer, so whatever I do for wages is just some sort of exercise” myth—which is, okay, long aside here – scarcely, scarcely addressed – just recently the New York Times published yet another long lamentation from a writer who teaches at the university level and hates his jobs, hates his students, oh, but the health insurance and summers off are great …. Okay, I digress. Because it’s too, too irritating. I was taught screenwriting by men like him, men who would so vehemently and obviously rather be elsewhere … so much so that I never sought teaching as an option. I would never want to teach anything with such contempt.

So – the corporate world. And – law firms. Not just because that’s where the money is – although that was a big lure in the beginning – but because I like working with smart people (albeit insufferably smug ones, sometimes) and I like seeing how the real world out there, as opposed to the one in my head, affects my job.

Except for, well, lately.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote to a few friends to note that I saw a European tourist (in New York these days, almost all the tourists are European – who else can afford to travel?) photographing the sign in front of the Lehman Brothers building. Ha ha. Two weeks later, it was gone.

Labels: jobs

posted by Elizabeth at 8:03 PM   0 Comments