What happened to America? What happened to the streets paved with gold and opportunity for everyone? The stock market is down more that fifty percent. Unemployment is up. The housing market has tanked. Jobs are being lost daily. And so it is! Every day brings a new surprise.
America has sneezed and the entire world caught the cold. Who is suffering? Everyone. Up until now, in America, a recession affected the middle class and the poor. Now things have changed. Everyone is being affected. There are many stockbrokers, editors, and attorneys out of a job. All of the high powered Wall Street brokers are out of a job. Retail presidents and vice presidents of major store chains are out of a job. Huge corporations like Linens & Things, Circuit City, and many others have not been able to survive this crisis. All of these employees are out of work.
Many Americans are very sad about the state of their country. But to make things even worse, one of the largest Ponzi schemes in history was just uncovered. Bernie Madoff, “made off” with billions of dollars that belonged to others!
We had dinner a few weeks ago with several couples. One of the wives worked for Hadassah, a not for profit organization. She was sharing with us that she just joined the ranks of the unemployed. Hadassah had ninety million dollars invested with Bernie Madoff and he “made off” with all of it!
This has affected her life drastically. It also has affected the lives of all those who received benefits from Hadassah. Another situation happened to a ninety year old man. He lost his life savings in this scam. He is now working as a greeter at a grocery store for ten dollars an hour. Another elderly Alzheimer’s patient lost his entire life’s savings of one million dollars. His children are now paying for his medical care.
What is the point of all of this? America’s demise occurred because of the greed of humanity. It has developed because there is no love of the other. Can you imagine what this picture might look like, if each of us cared about our neighbor? We would be putting food on the other’s plate rather than taking money out of his pocket.
How sad for America and the world. Or, is it sad? Perhaps this is an opportunity to change our actions so humanity can continue. All I can say is that right here and right now, America is in crisis. If we do the same thing to get out of a crisis that we did to get into it, is insanity.
May we begin to move in love and courage and heal humanity. The pain is unbearable!
