Now that same political and legal system for the elites has denied him his pension, his just reward. Howard makes his class rage explicit when he builds a triggering mechanism for one of his deadly bombs out of a cheap gold watch. Jack is thwarted in his efforts to dismantle the bomb underneath the speeding bus because he cant figure out if the watch is a decoy or a trigger. Jack senses that the watch is a symbol, meant as some kind of clue to the bombers identity. A bomb that doesn't explode is a cheap gold watch.
Moviegoers know that the gold watch is a potent symbol for postwar American workers.
As such, it is a powerful metaphor for the male American dream. At least, it was. Now, it has become something of a joke. Howard's comments seem to suggest that those that bought the lie and got shortchanged, people like himself, are pissed and ticking. For Howard, the cheap gold watch is the bomb of class rage, one that has yet to explode, but one which threatens to rip apart the circulatory systems of the social body.