I'm vacationing in Honolulu, staying with relatives and just finished reading the Business section of the local paper, the Advertiser.
On the same page of the business section are two stories that seem to collectively summarize what has come of our exceptionalist American society.
Wall Street bonuses spur lavish spending on gifts
One New York wife is getting a $50,000-plus diamond ring thanks to hubby's Wall Street bonus. An executive is giving $1 million in private jet time, or 150 hours, so his family won't have to fly commercial. And plenty of $7,000 mink coats and $20,000 necklaces are being boxed up, too.
"I haven't seen such excess displays of wealth and extravagance during the holidays since the 1980s," said Samantha von Sperling, a New York-based image consultant and personal shopper. "This is the most prosperous, most lavish, most extravagant season I've ever seen."
Expensive gifts are flying off the shelves as securities firms prepare to award bonuses to workers in New York City that State Comptroller Alan Hevesi said will total a record $23.9 billion. That's up 17 percent from last year's $20.5 billion, he said in a forecast released this week.
The resulting New York splurge is part of a national trend that may push up November and December sales as much as 6 percent at U.S. luxury stores open at least a year, according to the International Council of Shopping Centers. That's twice the gain from last year's holiday shopping season that the New York-based trade group expects for all retailers.
For bankers, brokers, traders and other clients too busy making money to spend it themselves, von Sperling is happy to help — for a fee starting at $250 an hour. While most clients spend $5,000 to $20,000 on gifts, some shell out as much as $250,000, she said.
These are the financial choices faced by those who benefit from Bush's touted Wall Street recovery - record bonuses, conspicuous consumption, let the good times roll. The 80's redux.
In another part of the US.
Mayor Vic Ritter never thought Maytag would turn its back on this blue-collar town, where it operated a washer-and-dryer factory and enjoyed its status as the jobs king.
"I just thought they'd make it bigger, better," Ritter says.
He was wrong. The plant's 60-year run came to an end on yesterday, eliminating the roughly 1,000 jobs and casting uncertainty into the lives of many around this 11,500-resident community, just days before Christmas.
"These are just darned good people," Ritter says. "They didn't deserve this."
Ritter, like others in town, learned the plant would close by year's end when Michigan-based Whirlpool Corp. bought the struggling Maytag last spring. At the time, Whirlpool said keeping the Herrin plant open was not in its plans.
As Wall Street financial houses reap record profits, helped by relocation of blue-collar assembly jobs to lower cost labor pools, the holidays take on a distinctly bleaker tone in towns such as Herrin, Illinois, where the Maytag plant is being shuttered.
It is yet another blow to the manufacturing base of the U.S., quite possibly past the tipping point where it may now be unrecoverable.
Luxury consumers also are spending more on travel, dining and beauty services this year, because they often have all the material things they need, said Pam Danziger, founder of Unity Marketing Inc., a Stevens, Pennsylvania-based firm that tracks spending among the wealthy. Popular presents include gift certificates for fancy restaurants and spa days, she said.
Yes - all their NEEDS have been met - now what to do with all of that excess money?
Von Sperling said she gets three calls a day for makeovers, spurred by the popularity of reality-television shows. Hair, makeup and a new wardrobe may cost $10,000 to $20,000 in New York, she says.
Andrew Kornstein, a plastic surgeon with a Fifth Avenue practice, said he gets about 20 requests a year for plastic surgery or Botox anti-wrinkle treatments as gifts. One woman told her husband to stop giving her clothing and jewels. She's getting a $20,000 face lift, Kornstein said.
"If plastic surgery procedures are the meat, the Botox and other injectable treatments are like the marinade or the sauce," Kornstein said.
Meanwhile, as Herrin prepares for life after Maytag:
There's no denying Maytag's importance to this region. Ritter says not long ago the plant drew workers from 16 counties, and officials say the plant closure will wipe out an estimated $30 million payroll spread among nearly 100 towns within an hour's drive.
The loss of the jobs, which pay roughly $15 an hour, is expected to trickle through the region's economy, from restaurants and theaters to filling stations and real estate. And the closure has turned many lives topsy-turvy, forcing the newly jobless to either retire, scramble to find other jobs, consider relocating or — seeing the plant's demise as an opportunity — go back to school.
The plant's union-backed workers will be given some severance pay. They will get $650 for every year of employment, up to 26 years or $16,900. They're also getting one week of health coverage for every year at the plant — benefits ranging from four weeks to 26 weeks.
And just what does the future hold for some of these soon to be unemployed?
All of it is little consolation for 37-year-old Jo Anna Broom, after more than seven years on the plant's assembly line. She has lately worked fastening back guard shields on washing machines, and now finds herself feeling "uneasy."
Broom, a single mother of two teenagers, says the job had her household living comfortably — at least worth her 20-minute commute from her home in Benton, Ill. Now that she's out of a job, she plans to attend community college and eventually get work in a doctor's office or hospital.
"I never thought at this point in my life I'd be going back to school," living on unemployment checks along the way, she says. "I'm trying to be optimistic, but sometimes it's hard to be."
Pam Forbes knows how that feels. Since her husband got laid off from his job a year ago and was denied unemployment benefits, the 39-year-old woman — a Maytag worker for nearly eight years — has seen their once "pretty decent" savings account plunge by about $4,000 to pay bills and buy food.
"These are pretty hard times," she says. "I'm a little scared, just wondering what's going to happen. There's not much here, and (Maytag) is the best-paying job around."
Merry Christmas to All.