Your Steady Boy Says Ship Ahoy

Okay, maybe it's a tad premature for that title, though I'm unable to think of a better one. With less than two weeks until I leave, I suppose this is the point at which I am supposed to start summing up my time in Moscow and delve into the great insights I now have into Russia her people after having lived here for over a year.

I suppose the greatest insight I can offer is how much the Russians seem just like us. I recall, about a year ago, noting that Russians shared with Americans a haziness about geography, a fascination with Paris (the one with the sex tape, not the one on the Seine), and political apathy (ah, how quickly some observations date). At the time, this was a joke. But after a year here, I have seen that Russian people are like us in other, more meaningful ways. They want good government--even if they don't know how to get it. They want to build wealth and acquire real estate, even if there is as yet no "Russian Dream" to correspond to the American Dream. And they share our concern as the world's economy continues to crumble.

In other ways, being here has made me appreciate how good Americans have it--in many ways. Having to live without an American-style washer, capable of handling a week's worth of whites, colors, or delicates at a go, may have been my first inkling of this. But I came to realize it in more profound ways as well. We Americans are fortunate to have a government we can trust most of the time--and, when we can't, can work to change. Our economy may need an overhaul, but our nation's prosperity does not rest solely on the price of a single asset, however much some people may bitch and moan about what they pay at the pump.

Most of all, we still have a banking system we can rely on. This fact really came home to me the other night, when I was watching a 60 Minutes segment online about the FDIC's takeover of a small bank that had finally failed. It turns out that, these days, FDIC bank takeovers are a surgical operation. The FDIC never comes in during regular bank hours, when apprehensive customers might start a bank run. Instead, they come after the bank has closed and the customers have gone home. When the bank reopens under FDIC management, of course, bank customers have the option of removing their money from the bank (subject to the $250,000 ceiling of FDIC protection). Almost none do, because they are given quick--and accurate--assurances that their money is safe.

Spending a year in a country that has had so much economic upheaval not just in the past year, but for the past twenty years, has made my own country's problems seem minor. I really have no more patience for the people on Wall Street and the "fears of inflation" that seem to be wreaking havoc on the stock market at present--the fear being that inflation may go from almost nothing to almost nothing plus three percent. Not once in living memory has the United States had to devalue its currency, let alone issue a completely new one. Russia has done both, more than once, since the fall of Communism.

Gratitude for what America has--that's what Russia has given me. Now let's see how long I can keep it.