Published 1/09 this is a first-person account of my ride on the economic rollercoaster in bank-dominant Charlotte, NC. I rode the initial crest of the stock market at then-First Union, survived the dot-com boom/bust at LendingTree, then had to liquidate my company when customers moved overseas. I offer a Zen-like perspective.

1. First Person
Breathe In.
Breathe Out
I’m just waiting for the
tide to flow back in
By Tamela RIch
It was supposed to be all upside for Char-
lotte, especially for financial services pro-
fessionals. I remember when the Dow hit
and crossed 10,000 in March 1999. Work-
ing in a cube farm at then-First Union
with overhead TVs tuned 24/7 to CNN
and CNBC, it was the moon landing of my
adult life. A shared cultural experience. My
co-workers and I knew, just knew, that our
stock would rise with the tide.
OK, so that didn’t happen. First Union
buckled under the weight of The Money
Store, fired its CEO, and eventually merged
with Wachovia to escape its tainted brand.
I jumped ship. By January of the next
year I got an insider view of going public
during the dot-com boom while working at
pre-IPO LendingTree. Our CEO was fea-
tured on CNBC’s Squawk Box and treated
us to e-mail missives from his road show.
Merrill Lynch, the offering’s underwriter, tering for good. The Alliance for American a comeback. Sure, I could have foreseen the
provided a series of wealth-management Manufacturing reported that in the last six death of the country’s manufacturing base,
programs, which the company advised years 91,400 jobs were lost in South Caroli- just as bankers and real estate profession-
everyone to attend, on company time, no na and 211,600 in North Carolina, of which als could have foreseen the finite pool of
less. Managing a windfall isn’t for sissies or 29,900 and 77,200, respectively, were in creditworthy buyers.
the unprepared. manufacturing.
Although it was treason at the time, I I succumbed in 2008. If I had bought a
flipped most of my LendingTree shares on
the first day. Most everyone else was pull-
McMansion, I could have taken in some
boarders and continued paying the mort- The truth is
ing for a higher payout over the long haul
and treated me as though I was unfaithful
gage. Instead, I hired an attorney to guide
me in dealing with the IRS, former cus-
that things
to our mutual endeavor. Six months later I tomers, and creditors, and a psychiatrist don’t really
looked like a financial genius.
It was the first and last time I would be so
to help me manage the stress and depres-
sion. Thank God I have health insurance, get solved.
mistakenly labeled.
Unlike the rest of Charlotte, I didn’t buy
because I can’t afford full price for both es-
sential services. They come
a McMansion at the top of the market. I Those of you waiting to see if you’re together and
they fall apart.
bought a company that cleaned chemical getting a pink slip as a New Year’s present
tanks and handled environmental waste. or holding your breath for your 401(k) to
With an eye toward financial security out- make a comeback, I feel your pain. I lost ev-
side corporate America, I set out to live the erything but my soul in that business. Fam-
American Dream as a business owner. But ily relationships are strained and my credit We could have made different choices,
my customers, including but not limited to is ruined. Financially, my family would be but we didn’t. And now we have to deal with
textile-related firms, immediately started better off with the proceeds of my life in- the ebbing tide and all the detritus it left on
offshoring, filing for bankruptcy, and shut- surance policy than with my trying to make the shore. Funny, no one ever talks about
JANUARY 2009 n CHARLOTTE 51

2. First Person
the natural ebbing of tides. Every time
the tide rises some cheery booster goes
on the circuit to proclaim that we’ve for- The
Comeback
ever broken free of the cycle of the former
age. Impossible.
I’ve read and reread Buddhist nun Pema
Chodron’s Comfortable with Uncertainty.
She reminds us, “That nothing is static or
Charlotte has lost its mojo,
fixed, that all is fleeting and changing, is
but we can get it back, if
the first mark of existence....Yet at the level
we look in the right places
of personal experience, we resist this basic By KenneTh S. allen
fact. It means that life isn’t always going
to go our way. It means that there is loss as as the dust begins to settle (we hope) from pit bull Bill Diehl, setting up a clash that will
well as gain. And we don’t like that.” the financial whirlwinds that swept through be public, embarrassing, and expensive for
Elsewhere she writes, “We think that the Charlotte last year, the events are beginning the United Way. The 2008 fund drive came
point is to pass the test or to overcome the to coalesce into a single question: up $20 million short.
problem, but the truth is that things don’t Has Charlotte lost its mojo? As corporations retrenched in the face
really get solved. They come together and For as long as most of us can remem- of mounting economic bad news, NASCAR
they fall apart. Then they come together ber, Charlotte has seemed a magical city sponsorships dried up. Car teams consoli-
again and fall apart again.” where the seemingly impossible became dated and shed thousands of workers and
We had an unregulated boom in the commonplace. watched in dismay as the domestic automo-
1920s that led to a bust in the 1930s that led Get an NBA franchise in a town that bile industry, which forms the very founda-
to Glass-Steagall. Things fell apart then could barely support minor league base- tion of the sport, went into a death spiral.
came together. ball? Never happen. Charlotte, of course, has faced challenges
We created financial products unfore- Get an NFL franchise in a town that before. A lawsuit by the NAACP Legal De-
seen by jazz era regulators, which in turn didn’t even have Division I college foot- fense Fund questioned Charlotte’s com-
produced fake wealth. Breathe in. This year, ball? Never happen. mitment to school desegregation. Retail
things fell apart. Breathe out. I hear prog- Create a unified arts organization in a flight into shopping malls and strip centers
nostications that we could be twenty years town where the symphony is always broke emptied out Charlotte’s downtown, leaving
climbing out of the global financial melt- and the best-known painter is a portraitist? only office buildings and parking lots that
down, and I obsess that I don’t have twenty Never happen. formed a ghost town after 5 p.m. The textile
years to save for retirement. Breathe in. Turn two banks that weren’t even the big- industry, which has always been driven by
Then I remind myself that it’s that kind of gest ones in the state into national financial the lowest possible labor costs, moved to
obsession and anger that make me suffer. powerhouses? Never happen. Mexico and China, leaving behind hulking
Breathe out. I’m learning that I don’t have Turn a regional electric company into a brick relics of a bygone era.
sufficient mental or emotional resources national energy behemoth? Never happen. In each of these instances and more,
to waste on obsessing about the things that Build a unified, national model of public Charlotte was able to regroup and make
can’t be changed. Instead I remind myself transportation in a town that pretty much something even better out of what was
the tide is out and look for the salvage that defines suburban sprawl? Never happen. left. Although the forced busing that arose
washed up with the garbage. Turn a redneck activity that involves cars from the lawsuit was and is controversial,
When Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis driving around in circles all Sunday after- for a while Charlotte had one of the most
appeared on 60 Minutes last October, Les- noon into a national sports and marketing integrated school systems in the nation.
ley Stahl asked him, “Have we now taken a phenomenon? Never happen. An aggressive urban redevelopment effort
huge step away from the freewheeling capi- But then with shocking rapidity, things spearheaded by what is now Bank of Amer-
talism that we’ve known for the last thirty began to fall apart. Wachovia started report- ica brought people and life back downtown,
or so years?” ing ever-widening losses, and the heretofore creating a vibrant residential and entertain-
“I don’t know what we’ll call it, but it will much-admired CEO was summarily shown ment district. Developers, who are probably
be different,” he said. “And there will be the door. And then in a flight to avoid being the most optimistic businesspeople on the
more regulation. The golden era of financial taken over by regulators, Wachovia sold it- planet, saw a future for the abandoned tex-
services is over, in my opinion.” self to Wells Fargo for pennies on the dollar. tile mills, turning them into hip office spac-
As Tolkien said through the wizard Gan- In a fit of apparent brain death, the board es and trendy condos and apartments.
dalf, “Even the wise cannot see all ends.” of directors of the United Way of Central It could happen again, and the Charlotte
Carolinas gave its president a $1.2 million way is to believe that it will. However, for
payday. Then, when public outrage over that good things to happen, people have to make
largesse became too much to tolerate, the them happen.
Tamela Rich is a Charlotte writer. For the
November issue, she wrote about a local group board did the only honorable thing: it fired School desegregation came about be-
of Iranian refugees. the president. She has retained noted legal cause of the courage and leadership of
52 CHARLOTTE n JANUARY 2009