No One Is Entitled to Anything

The unreality of a stock market in freefall, from the NYT:

A year ago, Robert Paynter was comfortably retired and looking forward to years of refurbishing old cars and boating from his dock on Lake Norman in North Carolina. Over a 17-year career at Wachovia, he amassed a pile of stock and options from the bank that he had assumed would be worth more than $600,000.

But now the options are worthless, and he watched the value of his Wachovia shares shrink to about $15,000 before he sold all of them this week after the bank succumbed to the financial crisis and its stock fell to fire-sale prices. The rest of his investments are in free fall.

“It’s like having an out-of-body experience,” said Mr. Paynter, 61. “It’s like being in a hospital bed and watching yourself dying. Whatever the bottom is going to be, I wish it would just get there. It’s the every day, watching the blood drain out of it, that’s hard to take.”

Based on interviews around the country last week as the market continued its steep slide, many people say they are sensing losses beyond the short-term hits to their portfolios. Some feel a loss of faith in the United States and its government. Others are lowering their sights for the kinds of lives they expect to lead in coming years.

“Maybe we have to readjust our expectations,” said Nicholas Gaffney, a partner in a San Francisco public relations firm. “No one is entitled to anything.”