Artist statement: I've felt for a long time my poetic forays are means to an end, 'deepening the chops' so to speak to render a more sublime quality to my prose. For example the lyric essay as espoused by The Seneca Review's Deborah Tall and John D'Agata intrigues me with its inexhaustible dialectic potential. I suppose it’s somewhere in this dialectic that I feel most at home.

Topicality is the bane of poetic endurance as the sacred and the profane cannot be chased simultaneously, certainly not to equal and maximum effect. Thus my interest in the affairs of the world precludes me from poetry in the ‘purest’ sense, even if I possessed the talent for it, which I don’t. However I think nonfiction reportage benefits from nonlinear creative forays. The greatest truths are subjectively derived. So I embrace the concatenation, creative-nonfiction.

Why not throw your writerliness into the most intractable frays? As I see it the immediate-term challenge on the planet involves trying to understand the macro-economic forces that currently have us all tossing about. The next occupant of the White House is, in many respects, a hostage to grim macroeconomic realities. Certainly his field of operation will be dramatically curtailed vis a vis his predecessors.

This diminishment is continually belied by the balloon juice of America’s endless campaign, an epic self-absorption harking back to a prior inordinancy. Our nation’s rhetoric, bristling with immodesty and triumphalism (we’re number one! et al), speaks to a post-WWII era that no longer exists. No doubt this will strike some as an ‘anti-American’ sentiment. But what exactly is anti-Americanism? A hatred for the Grand Canyon, contempt for the proud tradition of American dissent? The term is the rhetorical device of a bully, signifying little more than vague displeasure with another’s views. Which brings me to another point: writers have a duty to unearth empty, disingenuous language.

Having worked for a period in corporate finance and with an MBA in finance, I have some versatility in the current quantitative debates, though I am by no stretch an economist. Alas this lack of expertise does not prevent me from offering my two cents. There’s been too much of the invisible hand scooping up low-hanging fruit and not enough extending of hands to one another. When Adam Smith forged an equal partnership between benevolence and self-interest, he offered greed a legitimizing promontory from where it could launch ever more brazen attacks on benevolence: "It is not only from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self interest." This marked the early permissioning of today’s macroeconomic grotesqueries, chief among them a $513 trillion derivatives market.

If not moral authority, then what distinguishes America from other nations? At this late juncture, the only leadership the world’s largest debtor nation might provide is a march right into financial oblivion. Thus the near-term promises to get very interesting indeed as America --for the first time in a long time-- rediscovers its place among, and not above, the family of nations. I plan to do my best chronicling the denouement.

Bio: Norman Ball is a British-born, Virginia-based writer with over three hundred published poems, articles, essays, songs and videos in recent years. An Associate Political Editor for Wed Del Sol’s The Potomac, he is also a Virginia General Contractor, a Realtor and is involved in a number of businesses. He holds a BA from Washington and Lee University and an MBA from George Washington University.

His 2004 investigative report "Too Big To Nail: Why Size Matters in The Home Building Industry" was an early shot across the bow of the home building industry, in particular its unholy alliance with Wall Street. The resultant program, one of Point Taken’s most widely viewed, can be seen here. His essays "The Puppet Masters of Ball" and "It Takes One Child to Raze a Village" were included among eSCENE’s Best of the Literary Journals in 2007 and 2008, respectively. Another essay, "Big Government and the Big Easy" won Identity Theory's 2006 Social Justice Essay of the Year award. And his essay "In the Shadow of Celan" was nominated in 2007 by NOO Journal for a Pushcart Prize.

An ASCAP/Kennedy Center song writer finalist and performer, he is currently in the middle of a rock-blues CD of original music with some of the best musicians in the DC area, among them, "Fast Eddie" Galvin, Terry Lee Ryan and Dave Chappell. Something should come of it in 2009. This current effort is predated by two other music CD’s, Blue Train (country/Americana) and Desert Run (progressive rock with Australian Paul Millington). In 2001, his sonnet CD Return to One, read by DC Shakespeare Theatre’s Ed Gero (a four-time Helen Hayes award winner) was selected by CD Baby for an Editor’s Choice award. All are readily available --either the entire CD or individual tracks-- wherever fine mp3’s are sold!

It’s probably safe to assume that many of our readers are experiencing some anxiety over this economic crisis. In the deluge of negative headlines it has become difficult to discern where we are heading as a nation. Other than downward, that is. Can you give some concrete examples of what standard of living adjustments the average U.S. citizen might be facing in the long-term? Do you see families living three or four generations to a household again? Will U.S. citizens have to learn a second language like the rest of the world has had to do? Chinese, perhaps?

First of all John, I need to preface my responses with the earnest disclaimer that I’m not a trained economist. Hell I’ve never even played one on TV. That said, inter-generational dysfunction may be an accoutrement of affluence. The teenager is a relatively new invention spawned in large part by the affordability of the automobile. Prior to the fifties, there were only children and adults. Culture passed from generation to generation. Alienation was not yet a universal malady --more the narrow province of misfits. Thus Elvis snapped a crucial continuity. So I’d like to assure all toddlers that, while Grandpa’s dentures look scary, they don’t bite.

The US has an awful lot of housing stock. My guess would be that housing prices will continue to decline. For instance the affordability index, which is a sales versus rental metric, is still out of whack in many areas of the country. I don’t foresee us huddling en masse in Soviet era hovels --though potato vodka may become the fate for some. No, we built too many damn houses in the bubble. Scarcity is not an issue. I might add I’m a general contractor in Virginia. So I have some visibility here.

Part of the process of restoring America to a more vigorous meritocracy --as opposed to a stagnant Bushocracy-- may involve embracing education with gusto and not contempt. Yes I know, American Revolution part deux. I mean, maybe we’ve inflicted enough psychic pain on the nation’s nerds. To prove our renewed commitment, I propose visiting used car lot sales trailers across America and kicking the shit out of every captain of the high school football team we can find. As holders of the world’s reserve currency, we haven’t had to stoop to foreign tongues. If folks wanted to get paid, they had to learn how to say "I’ll take that in Ben Franklins." The Midas touch is a corrosive on intellectual dexterity. You could do a lot worse than learn Chinese. It’d be a stitch watching the looks you get ordering Cat Pao Chicken in Mandarin.

You don’t sound very optimistic. Other than a significant regime change, is there anything we have to look forward to economically speaking?

I could feel folks getting aggravated with me when I wouldn’t climb on the Obama-as-messiah bandwagon, like I was killing their buzz or something. Let’s face it nothing gets between an American and his buzz-du-jour. But I kept returning to the fact that three of his top seven corporate contributors were Wall Street investment banks. Number two was Hank Paulson’s alma mater, Goldman Sachs. As I write this John Corzine is among a handful of candidates on the short list for the crucial Treasury secretary position. He is a former Goldman Sachs CEO. As Obama opts to install not only seasoned Clinton operatives but retains even some key Bush people, he is looking less like the change candidate and more like the continuity candidate. I think there will be a lot of angry progressives in due course. Let’s just say I’m withholding my FDR imprimatur. However I remain hopeful despite the early signs. Should he perpetuate the Goldman line of succession at Treasury that would be a horrible symbolic gesture. There are over 300 million Americans. The US Senate has seats for only 100 of them. Jesus Christ is barred from the Senate chamber because he would not sell himself in the desert. Messianic figures just won't do what it takes to acquire power in America. This should surprise no one. I will add for the record that I voted for Obama. Not for canonization, but merely as the lesser of two evils. I think people overinterpolated Obama's transformativeness (if that is a word). Nor was the Obama campaign in a hurry to disabuse them of this misprision. Without question his success is transformative in a symbolic sense. And I don't mean symbolic in a superfluous way. America has made great strides in the election of an African-American president. We should be rightly proud of this achievement. But programmatically we're not getting a transformative, Huey Long progressive. He will be a Clinton/Blair centrist. Unless of course things get so dismal that he is compelled by events and circumstances --much like FDR was-- into a more radical agenda. The corruption is systemic in American politics. Transformative figures are bred out of the system. ‘Who will screw me the least’ --that’s the dispiriting question every America must now ask himself.

"Today’s screwy econometrics is the symptom of an existential collapse, a profound crisis in value --or is it in values?" You might have hit the bull’s-eye there. While capitalism—even in our perverted enactment of it—might have offered a solution to the problem of incentive, it certainly hasn’t granted us asylum from morality. How might our present calamity have been avoided had we kept the field of ethics at the vanguard of our evolving nation? How do you build morality into a "free-market" economy so that operating a business in a moral fashion doesn’t make it harder for one to compete?

I don’t want to come off sounding like Che Guevara. Main Street capitalism is a good thing. And last time I checked it isn’t Bud’s Hardware store that’s getting nationalized. The tragedy is that capitalism in general will get the black eye and the baby could get thrown out with the dirty bathwater. Wall Street practices a pathology steeped in greed, what you called in your question ‘the perverted enactment’ of capitalism. The sickening thing is that when you get huge and powerful and cry for mommie, mommie drops everything and comes running. Maybe we should call it too big to wean.

And what of the consumer? Do you believe we share some of the culpability? What values might we have to reexamine?

Who knows, a little deprivation may be good for the soul. The Great Depression generation turned out alright. I never liked the Boomers. Or was it that they liked themselves so much there was little room left for third-party admirers? Their fathers charged Omaha Beach and they charged American Express.

We have a government that operates under the presumption of a blank check. Given that the average U.S. family has $8,000 in credit card debt, a thirty-year mortgage, and a lease or two on a car, it would seem this attitude of buying now and paying later is ingrained in our culture. Are we on the verge of a cultural paradigm shift?

Actually John, it was more than the presumption of a blank check. The American consumer was the engine of world growth. Other nations were only too willing to lend to us so that we could buy their goods. So yes, the blank check was offered and we availed ourselves of it. This less-than-virtuous circle was unsustainable however. Credit is about to get "dis-ingrained" from our culture. That it became part of the cultural fabric doesn’t say a whole lot for the culture. I think last week BOA suspended credit cards for a year for all those with credit scores less than 750. I see no way around it. The transition will be painful and wrenching. But so are sit-ups. It might be good for us.

Let’s talk about credit. You state that "commercial credit is life itself." But our system of credit in the U.S. seems terribly awry. For example, our banks can create money out of thin air via the deposit expansion process at a ratio of 9:1 over their reserves. As creditors, this gives them a tremendous advantage over those receiving the loans. You and I can’t stuff a hundred dollar bill under our mattress and have nine more suddenly appear under our pillow, so how are we to compete with a golden goose? And where is the collateral for this hypothetical wealth? When a man asks for a mortgage, the house he buys becomes collateral. What are the banks anteing?

Well I think you’re talking about the fractional reserve system. Even at the best of times banks are full of sound and fury signifying about a 3% capitalization rate. There’s that hackneyed notion of trust which, in less turbulent times, allows us to gloss the 97% fudge factor. But yes, that’s a helluva lot of fudge. More than a few commentators believe the central banking system won’t weather the current credit debacle. Their parting legacy will be Weimar era hyperinflation. They will pump to stay relevant. Ben Bernanke has little power as the overlord of zero-bound deflation. Let’s just say I’ve greased my wheel barrow in case I want to dash out for a sandwich in 2011.

Then there’s the factor of interest. The rates offered by most credit card companies seem criminal. How high does an interest rate have to rise to become usury?

The greed of the credit card companies is matched like algebra by the gluttony of those who use them. So I think you may have off-setting deadly sins there. I’d order a mass exorcism but BOA cancelled my Visa.

In your artist statement, you refer to the lyric essay and I would certainly encourage readers to follow the link you provided. This approach seems to allow for a greater degree of reader participation, whereas the more traditional essay form sticks to a relatively one-directional, conversion-like approach. What do you hope to achieve as you continue to explore this form?

I say, let’s leave genre-based inhibitions and sundry garden walls to the store-room clerks. Artists toil in the mine of the sublime where their drills can be heard rumbling away beneath bank, grocery store, gallery and boudoir alike. I’ll grab the gestalt. You grab the silverware. Maybe the kitchen sink has something interesting to offer. We won’t know until we toss it in.

There are a great number of people who think of reading an essay as work. Do you believe the lyric essay will have a greater appeal with them?

Overtaxed readers? They should try writing them! This is sad indeed. House is a great TV show which offers truly sublime moments. Perhaps that’s all these poor bastards should attempt. Maybe the lyric essay will drag them kicking and screaming from the rim of their navels. Only the lint will know for sure.

You also mention that writing poetry has strengthened your prose. How has your experience with verse informed your primary craft?

My brain is like the mineshaft canary stationed at the doorstep of my heart. I’m a terminal thinker. It makes my poetry laborious and my heartbeat irregular. But poetry has always been a great exercise for me. Feelings, nothing more than feelings --it’s something I aspire to.

As you continue to "chronicle the denouement," do you have a strategy for increasing your audience?

Putting on my citizen of the world hat, I think a more sociable America would be a healthy development for the world at large. Let’s face it, America as lone superpower has led to a catalog of disasters. Checkmate can be your best mate. Unfortunately, see-saws are zero sum playground devices. We happen to be at the apogee and are about to equilibrate down ––there’s going to be much talk of ‘decline’ from the Pat Buchanan rarified civilization crew. Armageddon will lurk around every corner. But remember, the rest of the world is coming up to meet us. This is the inevitable unwinding of America’s post-WWII hegemony. Hopefully a rapprochement will occur somewhere in the middle. Thus I think ‘down’ in this context is a constructive development and not something to be feared.

A collection of my essays will be coming out next year from Del Sol Press. The book is called How Can We Make Your Power More Comfortable? I’m also working with a producer friend to do more public access TV. We’re lucky to have a state-of-the-art facility here in Northern Virginia and a lot of the programming gets piped around the country, not to mention Google video and YouTube. So tune in for tomorrow’s misadventures!

Now more than ever, it seems that a sizeable percentage of the population has lost all faith in this country’s major media outlets. Many of these folks are turning to independent journalism on the Internet for their news. What role would you like to see creative, citizen media play as we contend with this economic crisis?

Thank god for the Internet. It’s about the only subversive game in town. Though just barely. I’d like to think we’re moving away from conspicuous consumption towards a greater interiority. That’s where the artist lives, right? I think of the little girl who can play for hours with her bald, one-legged stuffed doll. She is lost in her imagination, and quite oblivious to the shortcomings of her ragged plaything. I contrast this with the Disney Store’s Dull Buzzcock Plastomatic Figurine III® which looks as though it could have walked straight off a CGI soundstage. It is rigid, with a frozen immaculate smile. It doesn’t yield to childhood imagination. It robs interiority, inviting the child as admirer only, not participant. I think we may be on the cusp of once again participating more fully in our own lives without corporate intercessors. I don’t know about you, but I miss me terribly. Let’s see what delights financial carnage holds in store, shall we?

Norm's digital resume is full of links to where you can find his poetry, prose, music, and film online.

Norm now has a blog he will be updating regularly.