economic crisis suicides

[rm]

I have a morbid fixation with the suicides that are being reported as due to the economic crisis.

I'm not sure why, other than as a measure of how bad it is -- not just in terms of the economy, and not even just in terms of consumer sentiment, but in terms of how our economic structure enforces for so many people the idea of no options, and, in terms of support systems, often provides no options.

Anyway, there was the old lady who was foreclosed on who failed in her suicide attempt; and the guy who got laid off from a tech company and then killed his wife and son at Stanford before shooting himself. There's been a couple of hedge fund guys (at least one of which was related to Madoff's ponzi scheme), and now this which is hands down the most horrifying one I've read about.

And chances are, there are a whole bunch more out there that none of us know about.

This is the measure of what's happening out there to people who, by and large, aren't that different from us. And sometimes it feels like Katrina (the only thing that's ever forced me to stop watching news coverage for even a day because I couldn't take it) happening in slow motion.

Comments

Re: don't forget the 93 year old man who froze to death in his own house

[rm.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah. That's a separate (and collective) tally that needs doing. And god only knows what's going on in rural Alaska with their food and heating oil crisis.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Yeah, and with states like California being unable to issue tax returns and, last I heard, even unemployment and other benefits checks (I'm on International news this week, so I'm a little behind), things are about to get a lot scarier for anyone on the margins.

[don-negro.livejournal.com]

I'm still getting my unemployment checks from the State of California - hopefully they won't have to go to IOUs. If they do, I'm thinking about leaving town for a while. The last time they did that, we got the Rodney King riots.

[feyandstrange.livejournal.com]

To the best of my knowledge, CA UI checks are not yet threatened. Yet. For UI, there is a Federal fund they can tap for a loan to keep paying those checks, at least. It's general assistance, Medicaid, and the like which are in the most danger (and coincidentally go to the most needy). State workers are in a bind; the governor wants to furlough them without pay, the union and comptroller say he doesn't have that authority.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/01/26/state/n154624S56.DTL

(Thank goodness my disability check is Federal.)

[rm.livejournal.com]

Yeah, my understanding is they are shifting a limited amount of debt around to keep paying UI and similar benefits, but that's only going to work for so long.

Sentiment is key in this mess, and I hate to be an alarmist, but our whole country is going to start to feel like NYC in the 1970s soon, and that is not a good thing.

[feyandstrange.livejournal.com]

State-only benefit checks which don't have anything else to back them up or borrow on are scheduled to run out in February. I have no confidence in the crazy state legislature passing a budget before April, or of Schwarzenegger helping very much. THey've talked about sending a budget to the voters, which is so many different kinds of crazy - but the average resident has a lot more confidence in his own ability to do so than in the Legislature. (Someone suggested we stop paying the Legislature first, especially if we have to do their jobs.)

And yes, sentiment - state, national, and international - is scarily dismal. I need to go read the Economist's special report this week, but I'm scared of it.

[darkrosetiger.livejournal.com]

(Someone suggested we stop paying the Legislature first, especially if we have to do their jobs.)

This.

Part of me wants to see the voters of CA pass a stupid budget and then have to deal with the consequences, but too many people would get hurt by that--including many of the people who don't want to pay a cent in taxes but expect all of the usual government services.

Meanwhile, I'll be over here being glad that the UCs don't fall directly under the governor's control.

[ladyofthelog.livejournal.com]

our whole country is going to start to feel like NYC in the 1970s soon

:| I have been doing a research project on NYC in 1970s of late, and that is indeed quite scary.

eta: man, I think this comment comes off as totally OMG LOOK IT'S IN A BOOK WOW, but really, all I mean is, NEW YORK WAS FULL OF FALLING APART TENEMENTS PEOPLE SQUATTED IN, wut.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Did you see this: http://yuki-onna.livejournal.com/417489.html

[feyandstrange.livejournal.com]

Credit's actually not what it used to be. I have, technically, a great credit score. However, these days, that isn't enough; they (sensibly) want to see your income as well, and if you don't have much income, you don't have much credit. (I'm on Social Security disability as my sole income.)

I've seen news and plenty of anecdotal reports about people having their credit limits reduced (in some cases forcing them into automatically being over the debt limit) as a result of new credit rules.

[chite.livejournal.com]

Actually that happened to me. One credit card company reduced my credit limit, thus changing my used-to-available credit ratio. In turn, other credit companies reduced my credit limit, citing that I did not have enough available credit. It's insidious.

[amberite.livejournal.com]

I'm optimistic, overall, about how things are headed from here, but I sort of had a mini-breakdown last night because I have no idea how I'm going to pay my taxes.

I described to my partners, "It's like that sequence you see in movies - you know the one, where someone's trying to land a spaceship or a plane and bits are falling off of it, sparks are flying, and you're just like, if we make it through the next hundred yards everything will be OK! come on now!"

I've been aware of how disposable we are for a long time. People used to laugh it off and say I was being a pessimist, or not trying hard enough, or whatever. I've done a lot more posting in the last few months about the state of things than I used to do, largely because people are more receptive, but I've known things were heading this way for years.

And I actually feel like there's more hope on the horizon than there was for a long time - we're actually hitting bottom now instead of deluding ourselves into thinking we can go on this way.

[don-negro.livejournal.com]

God Almighty. It's amazing to me how people can find themselves so mentally trapped that something like this begins to look reasonable. I guess I've survived having my reality shattered a couple of times, and so I'm less scared of that than I am of death.

[tru2myart.livejournal.com]

God....I don't know what to say. Maybe it's just me but I just can't imagine shooting myself, much less my family, over finances. My Dad taught me that there was always a way out. There was a time in my life where I was pregnant, in an abusive marriage, about to lose everything and starving to death and suicide never even crossed my mind. I guess it's all about how much determination you have to survive no matter what the circustances.

[tsarina.livejournal.com]

Not being able to fathom it is one thing, and a reasonable one. Everyone faces the long night of the soul in different ways and different places.

I'm going to assume you didn't mean it that way, but your comment comes off as goddamned condescending. It also perpetuates the stereotype that suicide is the choice of the weak and inferior, those people who didn't have enough determination.

[tru2myart.livejournal.com]

No it wasn't intended to be condescending or to imply that people who commit suicide are weak. I was coming at it from my perspective as having been in a situation that was that dire and wondering what it would have taken to get me to the point of suicide. I never considered that there was a stereotypical suicide personality. Different circumstances promote different reactions in people who you would never see it coming in.

[feyandstrange.livejournal.com]

This one, in LA, in which both parents were fired, the father may have actually been told to go blow his brains out, and he did - and his wife and several kids:

http://www.latimes.com/news/la-me-wilmington-slayings28-2009jan28,0,7388500.story

[rm.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's the one linked to above. The NYT and CNN has it too.

[feyandstrange.livejournal.com]

Ack, missed that somehow. Sorry.

[darthhellokitty.livejournal.com]

Completely unrelated to the motivations - poverty, despair, finances - it pisses me off so badly when I read about these family murder-suicides. The adults are adults, and (arguably) they have the right to kill themselves - but NOT THEIR CHILDREN.

“Why leave the children to a stranger?” Because maybe it beats leaving them dead?

(Sorry for ranting in your LJ.)

[torenheksje.livejournal.com]

mte

[drfardook.livejournal.com]

Look for fires next.

I expect that the exurban developments which are largely empty these days are going to be the first ones to go up in flames. They're too far out to have much in the way of coverage by the fire department so a good blaze could probably take out an entire cull-de-sac. Especially in the west.

California has enough problems as is but I wouldn't be surprised.

[rm.livejournal.com]

People looking for insurance claims or something else?

There's been a weird string of arsons in PA that's pretty clearly some random firebug.

[drfardook.livejournal.com]

Insurance I'm sure and probably a lot of the "if I can't have it, nobody will".

Anyone who could afford to spend half a million and up on a tract home in Fontana, CA (aka, Fontucky) is probably enough of a type A personality where they're not going to take foreclosure lying down.

[tsarina.livejournal.com]

Along with arson, one of the worst problems with all these foreclosed houses are the large number of stagnant, festering swimming pools.

[delicatetbone.livejournal.com]

i work in downtown houston and i would say in general there aren't a lot of suicides in public here (unlike when i lived in chicago and you could count on the train being delayed at least 2-3 times a winter due to train-jumpers), and in the past few months there have been at least 3 suicides that I have seen (well, the bodies anyway). It's been very very weird.

[britgeekgrrl.livejournal.com]

Okay, just deleted the entire comment I was going to leave (it was a bit much too dump on someone else's LJ and therefore, impolite at best).

I can understand the fascination. I'm just a bit terrified about being carried along by the 'tide'.

[starkyld.livejournal.com]

I can understand the fascination. I'm just a bit terrified about being carried along by the 'tide'.

It's hitting a little too close to home for me to constructively comment on as well.

[angelcityblues.livejournal.com]

I fear that all of this is going to get worse before it gets better. That's what scares me the most.

[jackarono.livejournal.com]

A man I knew when I first came to town (a long time ago) shot himself. He owned a car dealership that failed. It's a bit more complex than that-- his daughter died a few years ago, and I think he never got over that-- but he found out he'd have to close the business, and he drove (in one of the dealer cars) to a distant parking lot and shot himself. Left a wife and two daughters. Heartbreaking.

[shipchan.livejournal.com]

Yeah but at the same time not everyone who loses their job kills themselves. The kind of people who do this are different from most people because something's wrong with them mentally. Normal people don't do this sort of thing, they make do and don't shoot their kids. I dunno, maybe I'm ranting as this hits close to home, but still, I feel like people do this stuff at other times for other reasons as well, and it's just the media cashing in at the moment. The situation just isn't THAT dire.

[newsbean.livejournal.com]

True, shooting your kids does indicate mental illness. I'm not willing to say that just suicide does. In a lot of places, things *are* that dire. People who have $200,000 in debt, not including their house or student loans, who live in an area that has been particularly hard hit? Yeah, those people can legitimately feel completely trapped. It's not a case of moving somewhere else and starting over from scratch. They can't. They are facing a lifetime of debt slavery.

Would I kill myself? No, I wouldn't. Did/do plenty of people in slavery kill themselves? Yes. Absolutely. Sometimes things are insurmountable. I'm not sure it's our place to judge.

[shipchan.livejournal.com]

Yes, but as someone who has known quite a few people who have killed or tried to kill themselves I can tell you most of them are either depressed, bipolar, or worse. I'm not saying there aren't (extreme) situations where mentally well people would chose that, but most people in this sort of situation would not, or else we would be seeing quite a bit more of it. Suicide is never a good or fair choice especially to the people around you you end up hurting and leaving behind. Most people can see that and see that they can somehow carry on.

Sometimes thing are horrible and it seems like there's no way out, but it's not a 'if I was in their shoes I would do the same' situation like, say, being hurt in a plane crash is. It takes something in a person to go through with suicide and usually it's a sort of mental illness. I'm not trying to judge them, I'm just being realistic and speaking from experience.

[marzipan-pig.livejournal.com]

My own workplace is holding on and (b/c of the efforts of a few of us) even able to retain people, but, not everyone (including me) is getting planned promotions. There's been some crazy stuff here, though I'm not sure it's directly linked to the economy.

I don't think there's such a clear line b/c 'normal people' and 'people with something wrong with them mentally' - different kinds of stressors bring out different kinds of extremes in people.

[bodlon.livejournal.com]

I've got thoughts, but some of them are maybe a bit more e-mail safe than comment-safe. Hm.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Well, email then! (I would, but I'm in deadline hell, and if you email, then maybe I'll get off my ass).

[tsarina.livejournal.com]

It was pointed out to me today via more articles that there is a totally bizarre Freemason reference in the man's suicide letter. Adding another level of WTF to the picture.

Oh Lord my God is there no hope for a widow's son! is apparently the Masonic distress call.

[amberite.livejournal.com]

I'm wondering if maybe he expected his Freemason connections would help him and they didn't. I mean, why else would you put that in a suicide note?

[kathrynrose.livejournal.com]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090129/ap_on_re_us/family_dead_1

[brightflashes.livejournal.com]

I just wanted to let you know that I'm glad I'm not the only one interested in the correlation. I don't consider myself morbid, but I have always had a very strong desire to understand suicide better. There's a documentary called "The Bridge" about suicides off the Brooklyn Bridge. I haven't seen it, but I'm interested in watching it because they interview someone who attempted and failed. It's on my netflix queue.

[brightflashes.livejournal.com]

Oh gees - I should have read the article first. That's really awful. I wrote an awkward idol entry about "joking" about suicide very early this season. It wasn't a very good one but ... yeah one of my things. I don't understand why anyone would ever encourage someone to do that under any circumstances.

[hyrkanian.livejournal.com]

This makes me not want to go outside of the house for a few weeks, here in RTP. I really don't want to witness anything like this. And I'm already worried about all the people who were notified of "status change" the past week...

Google IBM Layoffs 2009 and you'll know why.

We dodged the bullet this round, but who knows in six months if we'll be in Shanghai permanently, or "resource action" fodder.