THE BOGUS ECONOMIST
Eat Up
Thanksgiving Day. A day to go to your nearby place of worship - if that was your thing - or just think of all the blessings this country provides, like democracy, freedom or any of the others. If you were so inclined, you could reflect on the symbolism of people of different beliefs sitting down together in peace, sharing a meal and perhaps some rudimentary exchange of ideas. That was then.
Now we have Turkey Day, a holiday from work wherein you can stuff yourself to the point of nausea and then go out and start your Christmas shopping, despite the fact the ads have been going for over a month. Thanksgiving Day is all about reflection; Turkey Day is all about consumption. At the risk of destroying the reputation of the Bogus Economist as a jolly, humorous old fart, replacing it with the image of a dour, sour and humorless old fart, I want to point out this transformation is a metaphor for the whole transformation of the American economy from a wonderland of opportunity to the morass of greed in which we're currently wallowing.
Belatedly. even magazines like Time and Newsweek, to say nothing of Harpers and The Economist, are pointing out the failings of the supply-side laissez-faire philosophy of the Friedman-Reagan-Greenspan school while also noting the fundamental errors of trusting the "invisible hand of the market" to put America's welfare ahead of the stockholders' insatiable thirst for more profit or the incentive for CEOs to do almost anything to provide it. The cost of all this is becoming more obvious by the day. Sadly but predictably, the only answer we're getting from the gurus of the invisible hand is "Go shopping," the same thing we heard from George W. Bush after 9/11. Another way of expressing this sentiment is Turkey Day.
Instead of advising Americans to really get down to the ways we can curtail our endless appetites and start putting a little away, if not for the rainy day that's already here then for the hurricane that may be coming, we're hearing that without spending everything we have and then some, our business structure may well collapse.
I haven't read a lot about questioning the kind of structure that's built on such a phony, shallow and transparent foundation.
Turkey Day is a perversion of our history, a travesty of our culture and a creature of Madison Avenue advertisers in the same way the "American Dream" is a twisting of our ideals into a salt-water taffy vision of big houses, overly complicated electronics and cars too big for the carports. We've lost the capacity to distinguish between what we need and what we want and, worse, between what we want and what we're told to want.
I advocate celebrating this Thanksgiving Day by thinking of what kind of country we want Barack Obama to lead. This might mean junking a lot of what we've been led to believe America is all about in terms of consumables, but also recapturing what our grandparents were taught were the unique qualities of The Lady With the Lamp standing proudly in New York harbor.
Happy Thanksgiving Day.
-30-
Friday, November 21, 2008
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Report from Europe
THE BOGUS ECONOMIST
Letter from Europe
Nov. 11, 2008
Whatever you've read about Europe's reaction to Obama's election, it's probably right. Everyone we've met in Burgundy, Paris, Rome, Genoa, Nice and Cremona have expressed delight at Obama's election and even gone so far as to congratulate my wife and me on having such a great new president!!
Although I accepted the congratultions modestly, I couldn't help feel a lot of the sentiment we received was sheer relief at the prospect of someone who wasn't George W. Bush. Some of our after-congratulations conversation boiled down to "How could you Americans have elected him a second time?" Damned if I knew.
In my typical Bogus Economist fashion, I started to wonder about that question and came up with something pretty simple: If the economy is doing OK and if people aren't being asked to give up much, the voters are inclined to stick with whatever they have, no matter how incompetent. In 2004, thanks in large part to borrowed money, taxpayers were doing fairly well and it took entirely too much effort to investigate where the money was coming from and risk finding the solution to the country's problems involved cuttin back on spending, boosting savings and driving things that didn't need to go from 0-60 in under eight seconds.
At a friend's house in Rome, I happened on a copy of Business Week from 2006. I think it ought to be prescribed reading in every economics class to read and review analysis from two to four year-old business journals. This particular one had an article discussing the weak housing market (compared to a year before) and the main hope for the future which involved continued consumer spending and, consequently, debt. I did not read a word in any of four magazines that day about that other "S" word - savings.
When it comes to America's welfare, almost every expert in consumer finance agrees that without some kind of personal savings account, consumers will be caught with their pants down in the event of any kind of downturn. Guess what? They didn't and they were.
Reluctantly, while reading the old Business Weeks, I came to the conclusion that choosing between what's good for the United States and what's good for big, multinational companies, there isn't even a contest. The idea expressed by Robert McNamara - what's good for General Motors is good for the United States - has been expanded to every major corporation and it's just plain wrong. I don't see any corporate logo anywhere on the American flag, nor do I read much about Exxon or Goldman Sachs in the Constitution.
With a new administration, I suggest the way to regain our position in the world is to present the image of a country, not a pitchman. To act as if the United States was nothing more than the sum of its corporate parts is an insult to the Flag, our veterans, our way of life and, most obviously, our leaders. Maybe one of the reasons our image has gone down the tubes so much in the last four years is that George W. Bush has acted more often as a guy who's looking for buyers than a guy who's looking for backers. We do not need another salesman for corporate America; we need a salesman for the right to call our president a dope whenever we feel like it.
Just as we bought the idea that communism is the opposite of democracy (instead of capitalism), we've been buying the idea that America is a nation founded on the dollar sign. Maybe our next president will remember that, as nations built on the sword will die by the sword, so will a nation built on the buck die by the buck.
That's what I hope to keep hearing from Europe - and, when I get home, from America.
The Bogus Economist (c) 2008
Letter from Europe
Nov. 11, 2008
Whatever you've read about Europe's reaction to Obama's election, it's probably right. Everyone we've met in Burgundy, Paris, Rome, Genoa, Nice and Cremona have expressed delight at Obama's election and even gone so far as to congratulate my wife and me on having such a great new president!!
Although I accepted the congratultions modestly, I couldn't help feel a lot of the sentiment we received was sheer relief at the prospect of someone who wasn't George W. Bush. Some of our after-congratulations conversation boiled down to "How could you Americans have elected him a second time?" Damned if I knew.
In my typical Bogus Economist fashion, I started to wonder about that question and came up with something pretty simple: If the economy is doing OK and if people aren't being asked to give up much, the voters are inclined to stick with whatever they have, no matter how incompetent. In 2004, thanks in large part to borrowed money, taxpayers were doing fairly well and it took entirely too much effort to investigate where the money was coming from and risk finding the solution to the country's problems involved cuttin back on spending, boosting savings and driving things that didn't need to go from 0-60 in under eight seconds.
At a friend's house in Rome, I happened on a copy of Business Week from 2006. I think it ought to be prescribed reading in every economics class to read and review analysis from two to four year-old business journals. This particular one had an article discussing the weak housing market (compared to a year before) and the main hope for the future which involved continued consumer spending and, consequently, debt. I did not read a word in any of four magazines that day about that other "S" word - savings.
When it comes to America's welfare, almost every expert in consumer finance agrees that without some kind of personal savings account, consumers will be caught with their pants down in the event of any kind of downturn. Guess what? They didn't and they were.
Reluctantly, while reading the old Business Weeks, I came to the conclusion that choosing between what's good for the United States and what's good for big, multinational companies, there isn't even a contest. The idea expressed by Robert McNamara - what's good for General Motors is good for the United States - has been expanded to every major corporation and it's just plain wrong. I don't see any corporate logo anywhere on the American flag, nor do I read much about Exxon or Goldman Sachs in the Constitution.
With a new administration, I suggest the way to regain our position in the world is to present the image of a country, not a pitchman. To act as if the United States was nothing more than the sum of its corporate parts is an insult to the Flag, our veterans, our way of life and, most obviously, our leaders. Maybe one of the reasons our image has gone down the tubes so much in the last four years is that George W. Bush has acted more often as a guy who's looking for buyers than a guy who's looking for backers. We do not need another salesman for corporate America; we need a salesman for the right to call our president a dope whenever we feel like it.
Just as we bought the idea that communism is the opposite of democracy (instead of capitalism), we've been buying the idea that America is a nation founded on the dollar sign. Maybe our next president will remember that, as nations built on the sword will die by the sword, so will a nation built on the buck die by the buck.
That's what I hope to keep hearing from Europe - and, when I get home, from America.
The Bogus Economist (c) 2008
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
