A Question From Lydia

A Question From Lydia By the time I got there last Sunday, the fireVitamin E Softgel at the Marfin Egnatia Bank on Stadiou Street here had been extinguished, but the charcoal smell of the torched bank interior still wafted out onto the sidewalk through the broken windows. Ever since Greek anarchists firebombed the bank on May 5, killing three employees who had defied a general strike, the Marfin bank has become an impromptu shrine. A huge pile of bouquets, teddy bears and scribbled condolence notes grew by the hour on the sidewalk out front, as Athenians kept on coming to pay their respects to the innocents killed inside. People would lay down a rose and then just stare at the building or read the handwritten messages pasted all over the facade. My own eye went to a colorful drawing, clearly done by a child, of a burning building and people screaming “help, help” from upper windows. Under it was written, in Greek: “In what kind of a world will I grow up? Lydia, age 10.”

A good question, Lydia.

The Marfin bank was ground zero for the global meltdown 10 days ago. As soon as TV footage of the bank employees trapped in the blaze hit the news channels, it sparked fears that Greece would default on its massive debts held by other European banks. That triggered a steep decline in the euro and the shares of European banks. That plunge was then exacerbated by news of the inconclusive election in Britain, and, finally, all of it together helped fuel the sudden 1,000-point drop in the Dow on Wall Street.

And that is where I would start to answer Lydia: You are growing up in an increasingly integrated world where we’ll all need to be guided by the simple credo of the global nature-preservation group Conservation International, and that is: “Lost there, felt here.”

Conservation International coined that phrase to remind us that our natural world and climate constitute a tightly integrated system, and when species, forests and ocean life are depleted in one region, their loss will eventually be felt in another. And what is true for Mother Nature is true for markets and societies. When Greeks binge and rack up billions of euros of debt, Germans have to dig into their mattresses and bail them out because they are all connected in the European Union. Lost in Athens, felt in Berlin. Lost on Wall Street, felt in Iceland.