The Panic of '89 [antikvár]

Chapter 1It was the first week of December and the weather in Georgetown was chilly. It was not, however, just the first blasts of winter air that were causing some of the more prominent residents of that élite community to shiver when they got out of bed that Tuesday morning. In this year of 1988 it was also the growing mood of apprehension that had begun to grip Washington since the first week of November. The fear that had been mounting during those thirty days was that everything would start to unravel - soon - and that the United States in 1989 could find itself dumped into a situation where the economy, the dollar, the banks, Chrysler and, yes, even IBM would all go into a dive, one after the other.The troubles had been gathering since the beginning of Reagan's second term. But since he was the luckiest man to hold the office of presidency, they never got to him. He was like a quarterback who had never been sacked during eight years in the National Football League.But the Gipper was going to be gone on January 20th of '89.Paul Mayer, one of the more prominent of Georgetown's residents, was thinking just such thoughts as he skimmed through the papers in the upstairs bedroom of his house at 3514 Dent Place. They included the Washington Post, the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, the Handelsblatt of Düsseldorf, and, to