TheLoop21.com

By: Devona Walker (Add to your loop)
Wed, 10/15/2008 - 00:01

Joanne Golden, right, and her daughter might not be able to keep their business afloat.

(Read more of our stories about the Covenant with Black America.)

Suspended in the throes of one of the most severe economic crises since the Great Depression, the entire country is in distress. We worry daily about making the mortgage and car payments, the ever-rising cost of fuel and groceries. And what's worse is there appears to be no clear path for resolving the situation.

The financial distress has called into question the very premise of supply-side, trickle-down economics. It has also reaffirmed the age-old adage that all the trouble rolls down hill. The problem in this case is that it appears to be rolling back up again.

Rolling back up to touch even wealthy communities, like California's Baldwin Hills, a section of Los Angeles that's often been called the black Beverly Hills. (Read more about the community here.)

At the base of Baldwin Hills, on the corner of Hillcrest and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, is a thin, commercial strip mall without a marquee. Half its stores are vacant. The remaining tenants are struggling.

"I've made up my mind, I'm giving it a deadline. If it doesn't change by January 1, I'm giving up," said Joanne Golden, who owns the Golden World of Herbs in the strip mall.

Golden has been in business since Oct. 31, 1980. She was been at her current location, running it with the help of her daughter Andrea, 39, since 1995. It was the same year she bought the Jaguar she still drives.

"Bush was on TV saying everything is going to be alright, it just takes time. Well time takes time. I might be gone by then," Golden said. "And the sad part is, you can't even afford to advertise right now."

Besides the store, Golden's wealth comes from monthly dividends, representing a considerable "nest egg" in the stock market. This too, she knows, is at risk.

"I know I've lost money in the stock market, but I haven't even called the broker about it,  because there's nothing I can do, but worry," said Golden, 67. "At my age, the last thing I need is something else to worry about."

A crisis of confidence

The G7, the finance ministers and central banks of the top seven industrial countries in the world, met for an emergency summit in Washington Friday, looking for solutions to the growing international financial crisis and panic-stricken marketplace. But the panic continues.

"Nobody is trusting anybody," said Barry Bosworth, a former presidential adviser and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. "Even if you stop the collapse, it is not clear how you are going to be able to rebuild the system. I think the fundamental framework under a lot of modern banking has been called into question. By next week, we are going to end up with a lot of economic systems in many countries that are run by the government.