Everybody’s Business - Fear and Loathing in La Jolla - NYTimes.com

Everybody’s Business - Fear and Loathing in La Jolla - NYTimes.com

I lived with them on Montague Street

Skip to next paragraph

Enlarge This Image

Philip Anderson

In a basement down the stairs.

There was music in the cafes at night,

And revolution in the air.

— Bob Dylan,

“Tangled Up in Blue”

A FEW days ago, I spoke to a large gathering of investors in the San Diego suburb of La Jolla, and was startled by the audience’s furious anger at the powers that be. The Wall Street-Treasury-Federal Reserve axis is hated, loathed and feared by these people, who were, as far as I could tell, largely Republicans, almost all well to do — or formerly well to do. They are in a state of extreme agitation about how the current mismanagement of our financial system has played havoc with their own personal financial situation.

In fact, they are among the angriest upper- and middle-class people I have ever seen. And the most frightened and worried. (In a way, they are now feeling the way ordinary workers have been feeling for years.)