MORE RAIN

Gordon Prickett July 1993

At least in Nordland Township this morning - where we have a partial washout on the gravel road to our place. As I drove around it and viewed some of the culverts that are full and flowing, I recalled another time and place when the waters kept rising.

It was the summer of 1993 in St. Louis. The confluence of the Illinois, the Missouri, and the Mississippi Rivers. My employer was the electric utility, and we had serious difficulty generating and transmitting electric power in that 500-year flood.


MORE RAIN

Rain pelts a sodden earth.

Creeks rise and rush to swollen streams.

Streams spill over banks, rivers rise relentlessly.

Thunder booms while lightning’s eerie glow flashes.

Week after week we bear witness,

joined by president, governor, and mayors.

Those who lived at the edge of water

have fled its awful force.

Builders who made deals in river frontage

leave buyers washed out.

We see earth’s continuing creation

this soggy summer of 1993.

Across the Midwest seams of rock

once were formed with transported soil and sand.

Rain and flood reshaped dry land.

Today battered people pray - to stop the rain

and for strength through the storm.



Gordon Prickett July 1993

Market Crash 2008 by Gordon Prickett

MARKET CRASH 2008


"Credit default swap" - what's in a name?

Is it a loan or insurance, for stocks or bonds?

Does it signal risk or greed?

Will it be a slam dunk, a piece-of-cake?


The more words needed to explain it,

the murkier, the shakier, the weirder it is.


We are told the creators of credit default swaps put together

"securitized" sub-prime mortgage loans and insurance.

Their bosses understood little about this product,

but signed off anyway and cashed in.


Now, fellow victims, we all know the swindle that was.

We have our own names for this collapse -

bleeping deleted expletives.