Recently, a friend sent us a new definition of liquidity, a well known financial term referring to ease with which financial assets can be turned into cash. Assets are considered liquid if they are easily converted and usually some portion of a portfolio is cash or cash equivalent.

Here is the new definition. It is a little different. Liquidity is when you check your investment portfolio and wet your pants. The current financial fiasco has caused the incontinence or a lose of any sense of voluntary control over the relentless leaking of hard-earned retirement savings.

It is more than a leak; it is a flow, and not the kind of cash flow or liquidity one normally wants. It has called for austerity in spending habits and for us even more than our usual modest life style. It must be an incredible hardship for the many folks who substitute credit for cash flow. Oh for the warmth of an abundance of cold, hard cash.

Reaching for the wine bottle is another form of liquidity resulting from the crisis. That is, of course, assuming that wine can be included as part of an austerity budget, at least reasonably palatable discounted wine. I would prefer, of course, any kind of wine to wetting my pants, although there have been rare but notable exceptions in my wine consumption experience.

Spending money, even to buy cheap wine, is supposed to stimulate the economy. It is ironic that if enough people got busy drowning their financial sorrows (continuing the theme of liquidity) the economy would presumably begin to recover. The conundrum is, of course, that people are now being forced to come to their spending senses and live within their means which is less of apparently what is needed for economic recovery.

The solution of governments is to pour money into an de-hydrated economy that remains cold, hard and seemingly impervious to efforts of resuscitation. Ironically, we pinch our pennies while staggering amounts of dollars go down the drain or are simply absorbed by large financial institutions.

Mostly, we are confused by what has happened or how it could have happened, beyond the fundamental greed and indifference of shameless people who could and should have made a difference. We are experiencing not only a financial crises but a personal, existential crisis as defined by confusion in the face of an apparently meaningless and absurd world. What has happened and how it happened is truly absurd. Where did I put that wine bottle anyway?

© C O P Y R I G H T   2 0 0 9.  Gary Holdgrafer ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.