Q: You were in the thick of it. In the fight.
When Lucent Technologies went Enron.
A: Yes.
They sold the factory where I worked because it was the last
They sold it to pay for money-losing deals they had made. And to keep doubling-down their bets.
Q: How many books did you post at The Daily Bugle?
A: 18.
12 with Lucent and six more with OFS.
After six months OFS laid us off.
But the whole 18 months we could see this coming.
We knew our fate.
Q: Just mindless jabbering?
A: Series of related books.
Q: Written in extremis.
A: Well, yes. I was losing my job.
In a recession.
I had bills. I had debt.
It was horrible.
Q: The American dream had turned into an American nightmare.
You had done
everything right, and here you were. In
the shit.
A: Again.
It was like when
we lost our house to the bank during Bush’s father’s transition to a post-Cold
War economy, after the
Q: When asymmetrical warfare was the new enemy. Before the War on Terrorism.
A: Bush called it the War on Totoism, but we knew what he meant. Run, Toto, run.
He wanted to be a war president. A war president.
Q: He was a war president, all right. He caused the greatest economic collapse since the Great Depression.
A: We’re not out of it yet. We may not be able to get out of it.
We may be stuck.