They're Not Jumping Out of Windows, But They're Trying to Die

The stories I'd read on the failed attempts of a midwestern financial manager to fake his own death weren't terribly detailed. On the surface, they were downright funny. But there's more to the story and I'm not laughing now.

Marcus Schrenker apparently did try to fake his own death, did call in a false mayday from his single engine plane; did parachute out. But his journey nearly ended in a small tent as he tried to make his death a reality.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/01152009/news/nationalnews/butchered_lam_150254.htm

There will be more of these pitiful stories - I know of two confirmed recession-motivated suicides in downstate New York so far. These are people who had it all - and now they're losing it.

Part of me sneers - they can't handle living like the rest of us? But the better part of me hurts for them - it's not just money. It's their reputation, their self-esteem, the lives they knew that they feel they're losing through their own mistakes. Money is more than currency - it's who they once were.

President Obama wants to jump start a dead economy. There may be more riding on him than we realized.

*UPDATE* Let the Games Begin - Second Depression II-

Our roving boy has been found - here's the background, or skip to the end if you know it already:

As the ripples from Bernie Madoff's scam become a tsunami washing over global investors and carrying away their money, as the body of a European financier is removed from his Manhattan office, here's a little slice of reality from the BBC. They're watching.

38 year old Marcus Schrenker is missing after his plane crashed. It appears he did it to fake his own death.

Schrenker's financial management companies are in trouble. They're under investigation and are said to owe half a million dollars to an insurance company.

He took off in a single engine plane from a small Indiana airport this past weekend, bound for Florida. He was alone. Somewhere over Alabama, he made a distress call. His windshield, he said, had imploded and he was bleeding.

The rescue effort began - apparently a little more quickly than Mr. Schrenker anticipated. Military planes intercepted his little Piper and found it on autopilot, with the door hanging open. No pilot.

It soon crashed into an Alabama swamp, near a neighborhood. Police say there was no blood, no pilot, and no smashed windshield.

But our hero isn't totally missing - a man matching his description checked into an Alabama motel and explained his appearance as the result of a canoeing accident. He later was seen running off into the woods.

Do they have alligators in Alabama?

Apparently if they do, he dodged them, too.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7829868.stm