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Published on Thursday, January 29, 2009 by TomDispatch.com<http://www.tomdi
spatch.com/post/175027/nick_turse_desperate_times_and_desperate_measures>
Meltdown Madness: The Human Costs of the Economic Crisis
by Nick Turse
The body count is still rising. For months on end, marked by bankruptcies,
foreclosures, evictions, and layoffs, the economic meltdown has taken a hea
vy toll on Americans. In response, a range of extreme acts including suicid
e, self-inflicted injury, murder, and arson have hit the local news. By Oct
ober 2008, an analysis<http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174991> of press rep
orts nationwide indicated that an epidemic of tragedies spurred by the fina
ncial crisis had already spread from Pasadena, California, to Taunton, Mass
achusetts, from Roseville, Minnesota, to Ocala, Florida.
In the three months since, the pain has been migrating upwards. A growing n
umber<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/07/business/worldbusiness/07merckle.ht
ml?_r=2&th&emc=th> of the world's rich have garnered headlines for high
profile, financially-motivated suicides<http://www.portfolio.com/news-mark
ets/national-news/portfolio/2009/01/08/Financial-Suicides>. Take the New Ze
aland-born "millionaire financier" who leapt in front of an express train<h
ttp://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1063356/Credit-crunch-banker-leaps-d
eath-express-train.html> in Great Britain or the "German tycoon" who did mu
ch the same<http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/jan2009/gb2009016
_945115.htm?chan=globalbiz_europe+index+page_top+stories> in his homeland
. These have, with increasing regularity, hit front pages around the world.
An example would be New York-based money manager René-Thierry Magnon de
la Villehuchet, who slashed his wrists<http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/WallSt
reet/story?id=6518968&page=1> after he "lost more than $1 billion of cl
ient money, including much, if not all, of his own family's fortune." In th
e end, he was yet another victim of financial swindler Bernard Madoff's $50
billion Ponzi scheme.
An unknown but rising number of less wealthy but distinctly well-off worker
s in the financial field have also killed themselves<http://www.thedailybea
st.com/blogs-and-stories/2008-12-31/suicides-on-wall-street/> as a result o
f the economic crisis -- with less press coverage. Take, for instance, a 51
-year-old former analyst at Bear Stearns. Learning that he would be laid of
f after JPMorgan Chase took over his failed employer, he "threw himself out
of the window" of his 29th-floor apartment in Fort Lee, New Jersey. Or con
sider the 52-year-old commercial real estate broker<http://thelede.blogs.ny
times.com/2009/01/06/the-high-cost-of-losing-money/> from suburban Chicago
who "took his life<http://www.baltimoreexaminer.com/business/0111emsbizSUIC
IDE.html> in a wildlife preserve" just "a month after he publicly worried o
ver a challenging market," or the 50-year-old "managing partner at Leeward
Investments" from San Carlos, California, who got wiped out "in the markets
" and "suffocated himself to death."
Beverly Hills clinical psychologist Leslie Seppinni caught something of our
moment when she told Forbes magazine<http://www.forbes.com/lifestyle/2009/
01/12/women-economy-health-flew-cx_kb_0112suicide.html> that this was "the
first time in her 18-year career that businessmen are calling her with suic
idal impulses over their financial state." In the last three months, alone,
"she has intervened in at least 14 cases of men seriously considering taki
ng their lives." Seppinni offered this observation: "They feel guilt and sh
ame because they think they should have known what was coming with the mark
et or they should have pulled out faster."
Still, it's mostly on Main Street, not Wall Street, that people are being d
riven to once unthinkable extremes. And while it's always impossible to kno
w the myriad factors, including deeply personal ones, that contribute to dr
astic acts, violent or otherwise, many of those recently reported are undou
btedly tied, at least in part, to the way the bottom seems to be falling ou
t of the economy.
As a result, reports of people driven to anything from armed robbery to fin
ancially-motivated suicide in response to new fiscal realities continue to
bubble to the surface. And since only a certain percentage of such acts rec
eive media coverage, the drumbeat of what is being reported definitely qual
ifies as startling.
Breaking the Bank
<http://www.amazon.com/dp/0805078967/ref=nosim/?tag=nationbooks08-20>[c
id:id:image001.gif@01C982CF.72A5CF00]<http://www.amazon.com/dp/0805078967/ref
=nosim/?tag=nationbooks08-20><http://www.amazon.com/dp/0805078967/ref
=nosim/?tag=nationbooks08-20>In September 2008, a 23-year-old woman fro
m West Norriton, Pennsylvania, robbed a bank<http://www.pottsmerc.com/artic
les/2009/01/10/news/doc4968db973cf06257456908.txt>, police reported, to pay
her rent. According to East Norriton Detective Sgt. Peter Mastrocola, "She
said that the reason that she went to PNC Bank and committed the robbery w
as because she was two months behind in her rent and she was going to be ev
icted." In fact, after stealing $1,410, the young woman reportedly told pol
ice that she "took the cash from the robbery and went to another bank where
she purchased a cashier's check for $1,410 made payable to Westover Villag
e Apartments..."
The next month, in Northampton, Pennsylvania, a 49-year-old woman reportedl
y robbed a bank and, just 18 minutes later, "arrived at a check-cashing bus
iness and arranged for several money orders -- totaling $1,090 -- to pay a
portion of the rent she owed her landlord." According to court papers, a "c
onfidential informant" told police the woman had confided that "she was goi
ng to rob the bank to satisfy about $1,800 in back rent." The police report
ed that she was "in the process of being evicted."
This, however, is no Keystone State phenomenon. As the Los Angeles Times re
cently reported<http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/01/bank-robberie
s.html>, "Another sign of the bad economic times... [b]ank robberies, which
had been declining for years, rose in 2008 in Southern California... [by]
22% compared to 2007." In Orange County, the spike was especially acute, a
jump of 41% to 145 robberies. Similarly, Inland Empire News Radio reported<
http://www.inlandnewstoday.com/story.php?s=5925> that authorities attribu
ted a 13% rise in bank robberies in Riverside and San Bernardino counties t
o a "poor economy."
"We've certainly seen a rise in bank robberies across the country particula
rly in our metropolitan areas," FBI Special Agent Scott Wilson recently poi
nted out<http://www.wkyc.com/news/local/news_article.aspx?storyid=104502&
catid=3>. "The bank robbery rate has risen dramatically."
Last year, according to the New York City Police Department, bank robberies
in that city jumped to more than 430, a 54% rise over 2007. On December 29
th alone, CNN noted<http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/12/31/recession.robberies
/>, "robbers targeted five banks in the Big Apple, some striking in broad d
aylight and near famous landmarks." Interviewed by the New York Times, a cu
stomer in one of the robbed banks put the obvious into words: "It makes me
think that the recession is making people go to extreme measures." Illinois
Wesleyan University Economics Professor Mike Seeborg agrees. Commenting on
a similar local spike in crime, he told<http://centralillinoisproud.com/co
ntent/fulltext/?cid=40861> a Central Illinois TV station, "There's a clea
r linkage nationwide that when the economy is in bad shape, when unemployme
nt begins to increase, if people lose their jobs and output falls, that cri
mes against property especially increase."
Suicidal Tendencies
At least 33 people chose to commit suicide in national parks in 2008. And t
here seemed to be an economic component to at least some of the cases. For
example, an Associated Press report<http://news.aol.com/story?id=n2009010
2095009990001> noted that a "49-year-old builder blamed the economy in a no
te he left for his ex-wife and attorney before killing himself at the edge
of the woods at Georgia's Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park." Sim
ilarly, in October, Bruce J. Colburn, a "[f]reshly unemployed, former busin
ess executive" from Reading, Pennsylvania, traveled to Montana's scenic Gla
cier National Park where "he shot himself in the chest with a handgun, acco
rding to park officials."
Others stayed closer to home.
On October 14, 2008, a woman in Bogart, Georgia, was "supposed to go to cou
rt for an eviction hearing." Instead, she called the police<http://www.onli
neathens.com/stories/101608/cop_344588459.shtml> and informed them that she
was thinking of killing herself. Not long afterward, she shot herself in t
he head. On October 29th, a 47-year-old man from Blount County<http://www.m
yeyewitnessnews.com/news/state/story/Police-Tennessee-Man-Facing-Eviction-K
ills-Self/nbq8o_VLKEq5yxjSwOvSTw.cspx>, Tennessee, "killed himself when she
riff's deputies tried to evict him from his rented home." The next month, a
ccording to Mike Witzky<http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/sto
ries/2008/11/25/CASHCLASH.ART_ART_11-25-08_A1_D6C0EKF.html?sid=101>, the
executive director of the Mental Health and Recovery Board in Union County,
Ohio, two local men committed suicide due to financial problems, while ano
ther failed in his attempt.
On December 5, 2008, Ricky Guseman of West Palm Beach, Florida, was to be e
victed. Instead, local officials told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, he "b
arricaded himself in a mobile home... set the place on fire and then shot h
imself in the head with a shotgun."
In December, coroner's investigators in Kern County, California, revealed<h
ttp://www.kget.com/news/local/story/Economic-downturn-leads-more-people-to-
suicide/WhD9RU2l1ECfOY7J3yYcVA.cspx> that they were "seeing a wave of peopl
e committing suicide because of financial stress," a 5-10% increase over 20
07.
An analysis<http://www.wisn.com/news/18282613/detail.html> of 2008 "death r
eports" in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, by local ABC television affiliate W
ISN-TV found "[f]inancial pressure in a difficult economy has led to desper
ate measures." Of 108 suicides -- a 20% jump over any of the last three yea
rs -- at least 25% of the victims "were struggling financially." For exampl
e, Wauwatosa resident Tom Brisch, a married father of two, fell on hard tim
es after his wife of 20 years, Sherry, lost her job. At the same time, his
job as a commission-only Ford car salesman fell victim to the sluggish auto
market. As Sherry summed the situation up after his suicide, "[T]he econom
ic picture with a kid going to college, another one starting high school...
was pretty grim and we were struggling." She returned home one day to find
that her husband had hanged himself. In his shirt pocket was a suicide not
e in which "he asked for forgiveness and wrote that he could not get it tog
ether to provide for them."
WISN-TV uncovered a host of similar tragedies including:
* A 21-year-old Milwaukee man who shot himself in the face after "he ran ou
t of unemployment [insurance]."
* A 43-year-old West Allis man who hanged himself in his basement with a be
lt. "[T]he mortgage payments are behind," his girlfriend told the police. "
There are astronomical medical bills."
* A 40-year-old Milwaukee woman who overdosed after having "financial probl
ems."
* A 24-year-old Milwaukee man, "fired from his job three weeks before," who
suffocated himself with Saran Wrap.
* And a 38-year-old Milwaukee man who shot himself in the head. He'd lost h
is job six weeks earlier.
In January, less than an hour's drive south of Milwaukee, 37-year-old Staci
Paul's car was pulled from Lake Michigan, but they couldn't find the body
of the Kenosha, Wisconsin, woman. As an article<http://www.kenoshanews.com/
news/search_continues_for_woman_whose_car_was_pulled_from_lake_michigan_414
7303.html> in the Kenosha News noted, however, friends "said they knew thin
gs hadn't been easy for Paul. A single mother, she worked hard to find jobs
and as the economy worsened, friends speculated, Paul might have run into
some financial trouble. Court records also show Paul had been evicted from
her home in October."
Distress Signals
Paul apparently felt she had to deal with her problems on her own. Others,
however, have called for help. According to a January 9th report in the Pit
tsburgh Post-Gazette<http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09009/940631-54.stm>, l
ocal police received a phone call concerning a 64-year-old resident of West
view, Pennsylvania, who was "apparently distraught over losing his house."
When they arrived at the home, they found him "sitting in a lawn chair in h
is driveway with a rifle under his chin." He was later taken into custody a
nd sent to a psychiatric clinic for "evaluation."
Increasing numbers of desperate souls have also called the National Suicide
Prevention Lifeline, which logged a record 568,437 calls in 2008. (There w
ere only 412,768 such calls the previous year.) Similarly, a recent investi
gation<http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2009-01-11-suicide-hotlines_N.ht
m> by USA Today's Marilyn Elias found that suicide hotlines in Dallas, Pitt
sburgh, suburban San Francisco, Hyattsville (Maryland), Georgia, Delaware,
and Detroit have all reported "increases in callers since the economy slid.
" The report added:
"In Boston, more hotline callers with mental health problems mention job lo
sses, evictions or fear that they'll lose their homes, says Roberta Hurtig,
executive director at Samaritans Inc. [a not-for-profit volunteer organiza
tion dedicated to reducing the incidence of suicide.] In Kalamazoo, Mich[ig
an], and other locales, callers with mental illnesses such as bipolar disor
der say loss of insurance and cutbacks in public health programs are preven
ting them from getting medications.
"At the Gary, Ind[iana], Crisis Center, suicidal callers with economic worr
ies are increasing, and their depression is more severe, says Willie Perry,
program coordinator for the hotline."
In Franklin County, Ohio, suicide hot line volunteers are "logging more cal
ls from people in financial distress, says Mary Brennen-Hofmann, coordinato
r of suicide-prevention services at North Central Mental Health Services in
Columbus." She continued, "We have seen a lot more calls dealing with fina
ncial problems, evictions, foreclosures and job loss."
Similarly, the Hopeline of North Carolina Inc. in Raleigh saw a 50% jump in
calls in October and November. "We get calls from people who are suicidal
because the stock market is down," said<http://www2.journalnow.com/content/
2008/dec/27/crisis-lines-busier-in-08/> executive director Courtney Atwood.
"They have lost money and are not able to provide for their family."
In Los Angeles, calls to the city's "busiest suicide hot line" increased by
as much as 60% last year. "A year ago, many of the calls we would get were
from people with mental illnesses," commented Sandri Kramer<http://www.pre
ssdemocrat.com/article/20081226/BUSINESS/812260337/1036/NEWS07?Title=Suic
ide_calls_snowball_as_economy_struggles>, the program director of the cente
r that operates the hot line. "Now many of the calls are from people who ha
ve lost their home, or their job, or who still have a job but can't meet th
e cost of living."
Domestic Disturbances
Not surprisingly, the economic meltdown has also strained marriages and, ac
cording to experts, is contributing to a rise in domestic violence. Retha F
ielding, a spokeswoman for the National Domestic Violence Hotline, notes th
at calls increased 18% between October 2007 and October 2008 and attributes
the spike to the poor economy. "It is bringing increased stress and violen
ce into the home. Domestic violence is about control. If you lose your job,
that's control you don't have, so you may want to have more control at hom
e."
Sometimes economically exacerbated violence can turn deadly.
On December 9th, for example, 59-year-old Thomas Garrett of Midwest City, O
klahoma, murdered his wife. According to Midwest City Police Chief<http://w
ww.ksbitv.com/community/35871479.html> Brandon Clabes, "Garrett told office
rs he shot his wife because he didn't know how to explain that they were ev
icted from their home while she was in the hospital." He apparently planned
to kill himself too, but was stopped by the police.
Thirty-one-year-old Eryn Allegra had lost her home as well as her job, and
had, according to press accounts, been thinking about suicide for weeks. On
Christmas day, the Port St. Lucie, Florida, resident reportedly checked in
to a hotel, gave her 8-year-old son over-the-counter medicine<http://www.tc
palm.com/news/2009/jan/10/mother-charged-with-05/> to put him to sleep, and
then smothered him. She subsequently slit her own wrists in a failed suici
de attempt.
Noting a man's pickup truck parked in his driveway at a time when he was no
rmally at work, neighbors in an "upscale neighborhood" in Manteca, Georgia,
entered his home which a bank had recently approved for a short sale. (A s
hort sale often takes place when a buyer in default is trying to avoid fore
closure.) According to the Manteca Bulletin<http://mantecabulletin.com/news
/archive/349/>, they found him "lying in the foyer of the home... dead of a
gunshot wound." Arriving at the scene soon after, police discovered the bo
dy of his wife nearby "and located a firearm near the two bodies."
On January 11th, Pinole, California police responding to a domestic disturb
ance call found<http://www.mercurynews.com/crime/ci_11437210> 43-year-old K
imberly Petretti sitting on the curb in front of the home. She was being ev
icted that morning. Inside the house, which "showed no signs of a preparati
on for the move," they found the woman's mother, 62-year-old Claudia Petret
ti, dead -- shot in the head with an assault rifle. According to Deputy Dis
trict Attorney Harold Jewett, a two-page letter on the scene indicated a mu
rder-suicide plan linked to the family's financial difficulties. "It was a
significant event in their lives that may have precipitated this tragic and
desperate act," he said<http://www.contracostatimes.com/ci_11453094>.
Last October, a man in Los Angeles, beset by financial troubles, shot his w
ife, mother-in-law, and three sons before turning the gun on himself. An ee
rily similar scene replayed itself this week, when another Los Angeles resi
dent apparently killed his wife and five children -- an 8-year-old girl, tw
in 5-year-old girls, and twin 2-year-old boys -- before faxing a letter to
a local television station and then killing himself. "This was a financial
and job-related issue that led to the slayings," Deputy Chief Kenneth Garne
r http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/01/4-children-moth.htmlsaid. "
In these tough economic times, there are other options. In my 32 years, I'v
e never seen anything like this."
As the World Burns
On December 15th<http://www.kcrg.com/news/local/36997909.html>, a 41-year-o
ld Dubuque, Iowa man "used liquid pre-shave to set his apartment on fire be
cause he thought he was going to be evicted."
On December 21st, a 31-year-old woman who had been evicted<http://www.clayt
oday.biz/content/620_1.php> from her Orange Park, Florida, apartment, "star
ted a weekend fire that caused an estimated $500,000 in damage" to the comp
lex that was her former home. That same day, a woman<http://www.jacksonvill
e.com/news/metro/crime/2008-12-26/2nd_evicted_woman_charged_with_arson_of_f
ormer_home_this_one_in_st_augus> in St. Augustine, Florida, "was charged wi
th arson... after vacating a house she was evicted from that was later foun
d burning."
On January 5, 2009, Bobby Crigler, the property manager for Holly Street Ap
artments in Fayetteville, Arkansas, said, "I went over and had a confrontat
ion with [tenants about an eviction notice], and they got belligerent." Aft
er that, he sent the property's maintenance man, his son, 49-year-old Kent
Crigler, to change the locks at another tenant's apartment. When friends of
the tenant facing eviction spotted Kent, they assumed, according to Bobby,
that he was there to evict their buddy. They set upon Kent, punching and k
icking the father of four to death, according to a report<http://nwanews.co
m/nwat/News/72793/> in the Northwest Arkansas Times.
Generally, however, if you weren't a multimillionaire intent on suicide, wh
at you did to your house, your husband, your wife, your child, your bank, y
our neighbors, your landlord, or yourself remained a distinctly local story
, a passing moment in the neighborhood gazette or a regional paper. And for
the range of such acts, unlike sports statistics, there are no centralized
databases toting up and keeping score. Every now and then, though, a spect
acular act of extreme desperation makes it out of the neighborhood and into
the national news.
One of these occurred this January, although the media generally played it
as a sensational screwball story rather than another extreme act stemming f
rom the economic crisis. In December, Marcus Schrenker, a money manager and
sometime stunt pilot, penned a letter that read, in part: "It needs to be
known that I am financially insolvent... I am intending on filing bankruptc
y in 2009 should my financial conditions continue to deteriorate." They did
.
As the Indiana investment adviser grew more desperate to escape mounting fi
nancial difficulties and legal issues stemming from accusations of investor
fraud, he reportedly hatched a plan that was splashed all over national te
levision as it unfolded. According to news reports<http://www.cnn.com/2009/
CRIME/01/14/pilot.investors/?iref=mpstoryview>, he staged a Hollywood-sty
le getaway from his rapidly deteriorating life, complete with a fake mid-ai
r mayday call, a parachute jump over Alabama, and a faked death from a plan
e he put on autopilot that crashed in a swamp near a residential area in th
e Florida Panhandle. Schrenker then raced away on a carefully pre-stashed m
otorcycle, before being discovered by federal marshals just after he had sl
ashed his wrists at a Florida campsite. He recently pleaded not guilty in f
ederal court to charges that he willfully destroyed an aircraft and made a
fake distress call.
Going to Extremes
Across the United States, people have been reacting to dire circumstances w
ith extreme acts, including murder, suicide and suicide attempts, self-infl
icted injury, bank robberies, flights from the law, and arson, as well as r
esistance to eviction and armed self-defense. And yet, while various bailou
t schemes<http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iOV_Wc4lXlwh6ES
PKlCPYmKnM-dgD95DTJ200> have been introduced and implemented for banks and
giant corporations, no significant plans have been outlined or introduced i
nto public debate, let alone implemented by Washington, to take strong meas
ures to combat the dire circumstances affecting ordinary Americans.
There has been next to no talk of debt or mortgage forgiveness, or of an en
hanced and massively bulked-up version of the Nixonian guaranteed income pl
an<http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/10/04/specials/moynihan-income.html> (wh
ich would pay stipends to the neediest), or of buying up and handing over t
he glut of homes on the market, with adequate fix-up funds, to the homeless
, or of any significant gesture toward even the most modest redistributions
of wealth. Until then, for many, hope will be nothing but a slogan, the bo
dy count will rise, and Americans will undoubtedly continue going to extrem
es.
[Note: A special bow should be offered to undervalued small-town newspapers
and local television stations across the country that have done the grunt
work in covering the tragic results of the global economic crisis in their
own communities. They continue to offer a real service to the public by doc
umenting how individuals in cities and towns across America are suffering a
nd just what that suffering drives them to do. By way of a Newsweek article
<http://www.newsweek.com/id/179422/output/print> on the "Killer Economy?" I
recently became aware of an excellent resource on some of the human fallou
t of the financial crisis, "Greenspan's Body Count"<http://wcvarones.blogsp
ot.com/2009/01/greenspans-body-count-steven-l-good.html> an ongoing feature
on the W.C. Varones Blog. Since early 2008, it has provided an invaluable
record of "mortgage-related suicides"<http://wcvarones.blogspot.com/2008/03
/greenspans-body-count_09.html> and other "victims of (former Chairman of t
he Federal Reserve) Alan Greenspan."]
© 2009 TomDispatch.com
Nick Turse is the associate editor of TomDispatch.com. His work has appeare
d in many publications, including the Los Angeles Times, the Nation<http://
www.thenation.com/doc/20081201/turse>, In These Times<http://www.inthesetim
es.com/article/3803/>, and regularly at TomDispatch. His first book, The Co
mplex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives<http://www.amazon.com/dp
/0805078967/ref=nosim/?tag=nationbooks08-20>, an exploration of the new
military-corporate complex in America, was recently published by Metropoli
tan Books. His website is Nick Turse.com<http://www.nickturse.com/>.