January 20, 2012--Occupy Delray Beach

We were hanging out at the counter in the Owl nursing our third cups of coffee when Ted burst in. It was obvious that he was more agitated than usual.

"Did you see this?" he asked, skipping "Hello," waving what looked like the Wall Street Journal.

"Come join us, Ted," Rona said, patting the empty stool next to her. "Sit here with us. You need to calm down. Aren't you on all sorts of meds?"

"I'm calm. I'm calm," he said not very convincingly. "But this is making me crazy." He punched the newspaper her was holding.

"What's that?" Rona asked, placing her arm around him as he slid in next to her.

"Actually, it's from the Guardian." I get that as well as the Journal. They have a good business section and as you know I have quite a few international investments."

Indeed he does. Mainly stocks in South African gold mining companies and hundreds of gold coins. He is devoted to the apocalyptic idea that the global economy is about to implode and the only things that will be worth anything will be his gold bullion and the hundreds of pounds of dried beans he has stashed in his second bedroom. These beans, he says, will become his full time diet once everything "goes to hell in a hand basket."

He sees this cataclysm to be imminent, especially if Barack Obama is reelected. He doesn't have a favorite alternative candidate but one thing he is sure about is that Obama is a "total disaster."

There has been no talking with him about this nor have I been able to get him to see that blame for our economic conditions is widespread. Even though he is someone who follows the stock market closely, and through the years has been taken advantage of by a series of brokers, I have been unsuccessful in getting him to acknowledge that most of the large financial institutions have contributed to the mess at least as much as government, as he would put it, "interfering with the free market."

And so he waits for the beginning of the end with sacks of gold coins, investments in his mines, and a room full of pinto beans and bottled water.

"Read this," he stammered, passing the Guardian business section to Rona.

She squinted at it and read out loud:

Goldman Sachs Sets Aside $12bn to Pay Staff in 2011

The Wall Street investment bank reported full year revenue of $28.8bn--down 26%--while earnings almost halved to $4.4bn

The investment bank's staff will get on average payout of $367,000 including bonuses and benefits.

Goldman Sachs set aside $12.2bn (£8bn) to pay its staff in 2011--an average of $367,000 each--sparking criticism that the Wall Street firm was living in a "parallel universe."

"To tell you the truth," I said with a sense of triumph, "This is what I've been trying to tell you for years. How places like Goldman have been raking in billions while living as if the party is still going on and the rest of us pay the price for their greed and corruption."

Rona jumped in to add, "But at least they're cutting back on the bonuses they plan to give employees. I recall that the year before the average payout was about half-a-million. Though $367K sounds pretty good to me."

"It sounds too good to me," Ted shot back.

"What?" I said, quite surprised. "Don't you believe in capitalism? Isn't this just another example of the free market?"

"I'm starting to get sick of it. Maybe I'm beginning to see things your way. Not everything," he winked, having calmed down somewhat, "but a few things. I'm not ready to move into a tent on Wall Street, but this business about Mitt Romney's money and this Goldman Sachs story has me good and ticked off."

Rona nodded and kept rubbing his back. "I'm an old fashioned kind of guy. I believe that you should do something productive to be entitled to make the big bucks. What these guys at Goldman did to earn their $367 thousand per is not productive. They're just a bunch of money manipulators. And the way Romney made his money at Bain and put half of it in the Cayman Islands, as they're beginning to say on TV, is not my idea of the way American should be."

"So what do you think should be done about it?" I asked.

"To tell you the truth I don't know." He took another sip of his iced tea and looked out toward Atlantic Avenue. His voice softened, "I don't know. I really don't"

"Maybe you should . . ."

He cut me off before I could complete my thought. "Don't even try to get me to think about your boy, Obama. Sorry about the 'boy.' It was just an expression." I smiled back at him. "I don't go for what Gingrich said the other day about him being a 'food-stamp president.' That's code. Especially in South Carolina and even here in some parts of Florida. But I don't have a boy of my own to get behind. We have some mess on our hands."

"Indeed we do," Rona said.

"Maybe I should get a tent," Ted said, "and consider . . ." He trailed off.

"And a Coleman stove," I suggested. "To live in, I mean, when everything crashes. You already have the water and beans."