The XX Factor: What women really think.

The Economy Nosedives and One Man Turns to Prostitution

"Everything's falling apart." So begins the first episode of HBO's Hung, a new dramatic comedy that premieres this Sunday, June 28, at 10 p.m. The opening shots highlight downtown Detroit's urban blight, and the economic downturn serves as backdrop for the tale of a man who takes desperate measures to survive financial hardship. Because it's HBO, this particular red-blooded American man doesn't score a part-time position at Starbucks. He becomes a male prostitute.

Op-Ed Apocalypse

Recession-Era America: Rich in Love?

Jessica nails the millionaires-playing-at-poverty trope so beloved by the New York Times Style section of late. But for sheer editorial laziness nothing beats the recession-as-moral-uplift story. Here is Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson explaining that recessions might free us from the shackles of consumerism and "expand our horizons—like an escape from the dungeon of our own desires." Here is the New York Times' Shaila Dewan explaining that forced time off might "work as a kind of recalibration" for Americans who too often choose "money over time." Here is Main Street explaining that "recessions can often bring families together."

 I suppose that some downwardly mobile families really will rally around the campfire for a recession-fueled round of "Kumbaya." But the poverty-as-familial-bonding-mechanism narrative has some serious problems, the most obvious being that divorce rates tend to jump and birth rates tend to fall during economic downturns. (Gerson's column makes a very big deal about the fact that the divorce rate fell during the Great Depression, but this is atypical.) Self-reported measures of subjective well-being have plummeted since the start of the financial decline, suggesting that partners and parents are more anxious than they were in times of plenty. And, of course, less disposable income also means less spending on family vacations, day trips, and romantic evenings out. There seems to be some idea, lodged deep in the American psyche, that moneyed people spend all of their time alone in bathtubs full of cash. As it happens, Americans spend quite a bit on consumption experiences enjoyed as families. "Cutting back" surely means cutting back on these expenditures as well. I would not pin my hopes on an upsurge in family whittling.

Not Putting My Eggs in the Government Basket

Hanna, you may well be right that government is the only thing that can save us from this financial crisis. But like Abigail and Bobby Jindal and many of my fellow conservatives, I'm going to maintain a healthy skepticism. Because even if government is going to be our savior, I am not convinced that our government has yet taken the right steps. The stimulus package might indeed have some provisions that actually stimulate, but they're buried among the hundreds and hundreds of pages of pork and years-old Democratic Christmas wish lists. Only 23 percent of the money in the stimulus package will be spent in 2009 and 2010 (by estimate of the Congressional Budget Office), but it was so urgent to get it passed that members of Congress had no time to read it? The market tanked earlier this month after our new treasury secretary announced a bailout plan with no details, apparently because at the last minute he scrapped the plan he'd been working on for months. Chris Dodd—the chairman of the Senate banking committee—had to apologize earlier this week after claiming that maybe banks would be nationalized, causing the market to tank last Friday.

Believe me, I'm not rooting against the economy. I want nothing more than to see my friends and family who've been laid off find new jobs and for things I used to take for granted, like a modest summer vacation, no longer to seem like inaccessible luxuries. But unlike those poor folks who gave all their money to Bernie Madoff and watched it disappaer, I'm not going to put all my hope and faith in the government to sort this out by itself.

The Economic Terror Dream

For most of us, the 20s aren't the most financially stable decade of our lives. But it doesn't seem that bad, since we've been instilled with the sense that there is a way to practice what E.J preaches, to "figure out how to dive in and turn your education and talents into your own income." Eventually the instability will be a charming memory, and you'll be nostalgic for a simpler era when you ate scrambled eggs for dinner multiple times a week.

Except if you're in your 20s right now, you're likely to toggle your browser from your slim checking account to front page headlines not just about staggeringly high unemployment rates and the collapse of the financial system as we know it, but also the slow death of various industries, perhaps including your own. Building a sustainable career in certain industries starts to seem less achievable, even one that's not the sparkling husband-supported freelance romp we're all debating. So, on the one hand, the Samantha scenario seems coldly practical. But, as June aptly pointed out, it's also a delightful fantasy, one that seems tailor-made to counteract the scary front-page news these days. If, as Susan Faludi has written, that after 9/11 we collectively fantasized about cowboys and supermen, retreating to old-fashioned gender roles to comfort our terror, what fantasy are we going to cook up in this depression, when we're confronted not with death but with financial ruin? Maybe it's just that stable guy or girl who is just as much checkbook-affirming as life-affirming.

And of course, these fantasies aren't just coming from our isolated brains, as my sister pointed out in an e-mail to me this morning, "In romantic comedies that the heroine is always somewhat artsy or in publishing and 'independent' and powerful, but then the guy comes in and typically one of the plotlines involves her professionally and personally dissolving." There will probably be lots more film moments like the odd Mama Mia! one Dana noticed coming up, since naturally we love to see comfort fare when we're down. But what will be really interesting will be to look in ten years or so, when the Gen Y-ers have made more of our choices. Dahlia's right that it all seems a little theoretical now for most women my age (the Mr. Howell fantasy is at least in part a way of buying mental space and allowing yourself time to work on your career without making money your main motivation) but philosophy shapes practice. So how will the scars of this scary financial moment affect the way we structure our careers and marriages? Or will they—am I overblowing this?

Poor Little Rich Girl

EPIC FAILLLLL!!!!!!!????

Apologies for the caps, but this NINETY EIGHT POINT FONT Drudge EXCLUSIVE about the prediction of one Igor Panarin that the United States was going to collapse and break into six separate nation-states (not including Alaska, which he advises Putin to annex) DEMANDS TO BE READ if you haven't done so already. Who is Igor Panarin? I'm not entirely sure, I'm on an iffy internet bus connection and lacking the instawisdom I might gain from a Nexis search. But if you Google him the Facebook page of a guy named Igor Panarin leaning down and holding his mouth to a watermelon will appear on the first search page. I don't think that guy is him, but it's symbolic. Because it's pretty silly! As is the thought of China and Russia becoming the world's regulators and standard-bearers or that the Pacific Coast secession will be led by its "growing Chinese population."

 The big failure of Igor's logic, I know you'll be eager to hear because his case is so convincing, is that while he is right to point out that the people who have all the money control what happens in the world, they did not get that way -- not Putin nor the Chinese Communist Party nor the handful of plutocrats who profited off the mushrooming of that risk shift I was talking about -- by pretending they were Genghis Khan. They all have some interest in that money not suddenly turning out to be worthless. They do not think anarchy is that cool. I was looking for something to be thankful for!