On January 9, the stock market plunged another eight hundred points and three more insurance companies filed for Chapter 11. The last of these was a giant: Sequoia National underwrote $19.7 billion in premiums and was 3 percent of the market. Regulators could not allow it to fail. A rescue package was cobbled together by Treasury and the Fed, buying up some of its most toxic policies and putting the full faith and credit of the US government behind payments. The chairman of the Fed was appearing on TV so frequently to explain his motives, he felt like the de facto leader of the country. Vic Love had still not appeared in public since October. Stimulus packages were floated, though one needed a president to pass such a measure.
The housing panic chewed up and down the Eastern Seaboard, the Gulf Coast, and California. Banks had spent years off-loading risky mortgages to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which now owned so many that the two were effectively insolvent, and government rescues would be necessary. Yet the crisis extended well beyond the coasts. Owners like my brother were scrambling to get rid of property as far as twenty miles inland. People were walking away from their mortgages in droves, not willing to put another red cent into a property that was uninsurable and, they assumed, doomed to be washed away by the next hard rain. The foreclosure rate had hit 1.53 percent, its highest since 2010.
On January 12, The Pastor released a video addressing the American people. He sat calmly, legs crossed, pinkie ring with its diamond crucifix beaming brightly, hair carefully slicked back. In a measured tone, he explained that as president he would not be bailing out a single bank or insurance company:
“For too long, elites have led this country to ruin. You and I both know that. They have stolen from you to line their own pockets. They’ve mocked your faith, they’ve told you your opinions don’t matter, and they’ve behaved like you don’t matter. Well, I’m saying no more. All right? No more of this. The vote has moved to the House of Representatives, and I’m urging them to delay not one more day. When I’m president there will be an accounting in this country. Those who’ve suffered under the current regime, we will rise now. And those who’ve brought us yet again to crisis, they will pay the price.”
I could not sleep at all. In the middle of the night, I had an anxiety attack. I perched on my knees over the toilet in the guest bedroom and waited to throw up, though I never did.
“They’ve got to install him, right?” Fred Jr. said the next day. We woke to the news that the House had delayed the vote yet another week, and Fred Jr. had come to our place, basically to panic as his portfolio cratered. Mine wasn’t doing much better. “Right? Like what is everyone waiting for?”
Fred was fiddling with the cleaning robot, which had been doing circles all day after he’d mucked with the settings. “Peter doesn’t seem to think anyone actually knows how to stop this. Except his brother-in-law, but al-Hasan claims we have to socialize the entire economy, more or less.”
“Well, what the fuck does that guy know?” demanded Fred Jr.
Fred shrugged. “He did design our models.”
Fred Jr. put his face in his hands. “Okay, what about security, Dad?”
“We have it,” Fred assured him.
“I don’t mean at the offices, I mean everywhere.” Stupidly, he looked from side to side as if what he was about to say was any big revelation. We’d all seen the news from Chicago, where protests at the Board of Trade erupted in riots. The police were still battling protestors and rioters in the streets, looters were sowing chaos all over the city, and the governor had called in the National Guard. Twenty-four dead and countless injured so far. “People are looking for someone easy to blame. People don’t turn into animals; they were always animals just waiting for a chance to let it out.”
Fred gave him a disappointed look. He’d always resisted this absurd new trend, growing since the unrest of 2020, where even low-level traders employed security services and rode around in armored cars. Of course, all I’d cared about when Fred and I bought our penthouse with the Juliet balcony was the flood control. Yet the Realtor had assured us that the building contracted with a private security service.
To change the subject, I asked, “Do you want to stay for dinner, Freddy?” He looked at me like we weren’t living on the same planet.
“You’re not taking this seriously.”
Fred stopped fiddling with the robot. “Freddy, I’ve got things handled, okay? If this really gets nuts, we’re on a list for a resort. They fly you out there, it’s the middle of nowhere, there are armed guards, and it’s like its own self-sustaining city.”
“I can’t believe we’re talking about this,” I said, laughing.
“Dad, there was a story on those resorts in the Times—everyone knows about them!”
“Oh my God, Freddy, give it a rest. It’s not even going to come to that.”
He went back to punching the panel of the cleaning robot.
On January 19 with the economy in freefall, the House of Representatives met to vote on the next president. I went into the offices that day, passing our security guard, Lennox, who was reading on his phone with a look on his face like he was watching a VR torture xpere. “Everything okay?” I asked him.
“Naw. Definitely not. They’re doing it all again. Same old shit, nothing ever changes.”
But something might change now, I thought. Everything might change. All at once.
We spent the morning going through the motions, unable to stop checking the TV on our back wall, tuned to CNN. They left up an image of the mostly empty chamber where a man had set himself on fire more than two years ago. Aides puttered around, waiting for the vote. Everyone was filled with the dread of not knowing what the next day would bring, if we’d wake up in the morning and the country would be dissolved and money wouldn’t come out of the ATM and the water would be shut off. I pretended to peck around some work until the afternoon when Kate poked her head in.
“Hey, Wall Street, any interest in taking a walk?”
The two of us strolled down Hylan Boulevard, and then turned east onto Tysens, heading toward the water. She rambled on about nothing in particular, mostly describing the flooding that was slowly eating Staten Island alive, pointing to this or that marker where the bay had backed up the sewer lines, this or that property newly condemned. As we neared the beach, a line of abandoned homes had been left to rot, mold, and rust while they waited for the bulldozer. Pink fiberglass scraps from destroyed walls lay in the yards.
“Holly says the baby isn’t a good sleeper,” said Kate. “She and Dean are averaging about three hours a night. Which sucks. We need her. Other than you, she’s the only real voice of dissent.”
“Sometimes I feel like they all hate me. And I don’t really blame them.”
Kate beamed a smile and kicked a rock out of the road. She walked with her hands in the pockets of black pants that didn’t really fit her. She wore a light thrift-store corduroy jacket with elbow patches over a T-shirt that read YOU ARE SO MUCH LESS ATTRACTIVE WHEN I’M SOBER.
“Maybe you are a capitalist stooge, Jackie. But activists and capitalists have at least one thing in common: They all have tunnel vision. Thinking around and through things isn’t exactly their specialty. Maybe that’s why I’ve been such shit at activism.”
“Don’t fish for compliments,” I told her.
“No, for real. If I could go back to 2018 or so I can’t even start to list the things I would’ve done differently. The chances I missed. I would’ve been surgical, precise. Maybe we could’ve targeted state utility commissions like a laser and actually put a dent in our carbon load. That’s what I mean by tunnel vision. All we’ve ever had is the surety of our cause and that’s apparently not worth much.”