At the same time I wanted to capture the actual "feeling," my expectation was to find grown men looking like this ragged, malnourished fellow:
Nothing of the sort. Press waiting outside Wall St./Broad st., where I parked myself for several hours, kept saying things like, "You should have been here yesterday. It was nuts!" I wouldn't call the mood skeptical exactly. Wary. Nervous, a little.
Other than that, things seemed pretty normal. Markets finished pretty evenly. It seemed as if the elephant in the room, imminent collapse of the financial world, was hiding behind a ficus. Overall, though, it was business as usual. The place was flooded with tourists looking to get their mug snapped in front of the big American flag and just maybe, to catch a little spectacle.
The few members of the press that were sniffing around turned their attention to this guy, a former muslim turned christian evangelist, who seemed to have the situation pretty well figured out. Before he began his shtick, he opened his arms and prayed facing Wall St:
I think a lot of men here might have prayed for salvation if it wasn't totally insane to do in public. Profanity prayers and private pleas are more Wall St.'s style. An Irish journalist asked the evangelist if there was a particular reason that he chose to preach in front of Wall St. I quote him liberally: "Here, more dan anywhere else, people need to hear de message of Jeesus Christ. Gott wants people to have money, trade, and be happy, but it's what dey do to get money dat is wrong. Peepol will do anyting for money. Anyting!"
I think, if we've learned anything from the last couple of weeks, it's a variation on his rap: the desire to make money has caused men to ignore the facts and their better intuition and rather, rely on a misguided faith in the system's ability to make things right in the end.
