We all know what opinions are like, but here's some anyway
Veiled Threats
--September
8, 2010
Lately,
I’ve become very disturbed whenever I see a woman in a hijab, the Islamic head
covering. I’m concerned about what might
be going through her mind. I don’t mean
that I’m worried she’s plotting a suicide attack. I’m disturbed because she has good reason to
believe that I, a stranger on her street, might hate her.
Such
a suspicion would not be unfounded given the incendiary rhetoric used by
demagogues trying to sell the ‘Ground Zero Mosque’ as a wholly owned subsidiary
of Al Queda. The Palins, Gingrichs, and
Becks have licensed the violently unhinged to slash Muslim cabbies and sane Americans
to simply hate.
The demagogues vilify
Islam in an attempt to revoke its status as a religion. They label it a death cult. This trick of language-policing allows the
bigots the serene pose of lip-servicing constitutional freedoms while spewing
hate from the other side of their mouths.
I
am not religious, and when I consider the sweep of history, wonder if religion
has done more harm than good by providing moral justification for
violence. I don’t think institution
atheism has done any better (see: Hitler, Stalin). What I respect about our nation’s founders is
how they recognized the toxic nature of religious prejudice, and created a First
Amendment that protects religious rights alongside the fundamental political
rights of speech and assembly.
But
the hysterical bigots screeching against Islam in America feel no compunctions
about keeping Mosques out of their communities.
Islamaphobia is too good a word for this bigotry, because true phobics
are helpless before their fears. The
madness of Palin, Beck, et. al. can’t be compared to claustrophobia. Its pathology is calculated and its source
unspoken.
The
source is impotence. For nine years, the
might of the American military has been unleashed on two Muslim countries with
little to show for the effort. As for
the Taliban—well, they still exist,
when our belief in American power tells us they should have long ago been
pounded into molecular debris. Iraq is
hardly a beacon of democracy, and our 50,000 non-combat troops remaining there
are only a couple of bad weeks from being caught in a civil war. American troops have labored heroically for
nearly a decade to eradicate terrorism, but terrorists are spineless enough to
hide under rocks even the Pentagon can’t overturn. Because of this impotence, the war has been
brought home by bigots who refuse to recognize that an esteemed American Muslim
community is a citizen-based bulwark against violent extremism.
Last
week while in Gainsesville, Florida, I saw a woman in a hijab walking down the
street, speaking with a man in lighthearted conversation. It was a pleasant evening, and without her
head covering, I wouldn’t have given her a second look. What amazed me was that she could seem
lighthearted, given that on September 11, Pastor Terry Jones, of Gainesville’s ironically
named Dove World Outreach Center, plans to build a Koran-fueled bonfire. This conflagration has been denounced by
General David Petraeus, who’s trying to turn around the Afghan war. "It could endanger troops and it could
endanger the overall effort in Afghanistan," said Petraeus of the plan,
adding that it could cause significant problems "everywhere in the world
we are engaged with the Islamic community."
Petraeus,
unlike preening ‘patriots’ like Palin, Beck and Gingrich, knows that his men
and women are dying overseas so that any woman, veiled or not, can walk down
our streets and smile.
Eggs and
Libertarianism
--September 7, 2010
How
do you like your eggs, Rand Paul?
If
you like salmonella in your scrambled, you’re all good. If not, well….
Thanks
to Rand, his dad and Tea Party types galore, we all now know that libertarians
are not only against big government, they are against ANY government, with the
exception of police agencies that prosecute crimes against persons and,
especially, property.
But
if the Paul-ites (Paul-ists?
Paul-o-holics?) take over, they may be able to eliminate the FDA, the
EPA, Sallie Mae and the DOEs (Education and Energy), but they will also preside
over the expansion of one branch of government they had not intended: the
courts.
Libertarian
rule would make litigation a growth industry, because without regulations to
keep businesses in check, citizens will be suing each other left and right over
tainted eggs, sticky gas pedals and a very slippery Gulf of Mexico. Not that civil court dockets aren’t jammed
now, but without any government regulations, corporate malfeasance will
skyrocket as the U.S. tries to compete with China in a race to the bottom of
consumer safety.
Now,
I know that the laissez-faire, invisible-handers will contend that caveat
emptor-ing will combine with market forces to drive shoddy goods and services from
the market. But I doubt it. Many mortgage mis-mangers were driven from
the market, but not before they helped toss the economy into the tank.
Of
course, I expect there will be one form of government intervention corporate libertarians
will embrace: so called ‘tort reform,’ which always seems to mean keeping the
little guy out of court, or at least limiting damages to a relative
pittance.
Because
of government regulation, BP is on the hook for at least $20 billion for poisoning
the Gulf of Mexico. A mechanism has been
developed for compensating those who suffered economic harm from the spill. If the aftermath had to be played out
entirely in the court system, few people would see a penny during their
lifetimes as a battalion of BP lawyers wrestled with plaintiffs in federal and
state courts. And many of the
aforementioned little guys and gals would be shut out of legal remedy from the
jump, because it is hard to hire a high powered law firm when destitute.
Miniscule-government
advocates talk as if federal regulations were imposed dictatorially, but in
fact, they arose politically. When
people got sick of rodent ridden meat, 16 hour work days and rivers that caught
fire, their representatives enacted laws to protect them. Caveat emptor is fine, unless you happen to
be the unfortunate mother who discovers that a particular brand of baby food is
fatally toxic. Sure, the mother can sue
Brand X, but that’s cold comfort.
Rand
and Co., I’ve got to hand it to you for your chutzpah, if not your vision. You’ve captured the American
imagination. So have an omelet on
me. I know where to get some eggs really
cheap.
The Goldman Rule
--April
29, 2010
I’ve
never been an investment banker, or even known an investment banker. I’ve had other dubious company, but I seem never
to have orbited in spheres occupied by the Masters of the Universe.
I
have, however, tried to make sense of our recent economic Armageddon and the
related fallout, all by the usual means of reading the paper and absorbing
broadcast news.
So
my remote position from the daily exigencies of High Finance may make me guilty
of the same sin I’m about to pin on the capitalist elite, but here goes anyway.
The
topic: accountability. Accountability
happens pretty first hand in most jobs. If
Price Chopper sells some tainted ground beef, the Golubs are on TV, if not in
court. When my mechanic only claims to
have silenced that rattle, I’m back in his shop the next day. If a surgeon botches too many hernia repairs,
his insurance company gives him the heave-ho, and the thorough and competent
doctors get his share of the work.
Most
of us have to deal with the consequences of our work, no matter how much we try
to sweep our mistakes under the rug, marble tiling or loose floorboards (That
reminds me—must call a good carpenter!) Most teachers know when they didn’t reach
that sullen sixth grader, and most police officers know when they let a drunk
dictate the level of chaos during an arrest.
But I think bankers live in abstractions that reduce the world to
numbers, especially when those numbers add up to big bonuses. Their decisions can mean an economic crisis
in Greece, industrial migration from Mexico to India, or whether those geeks in
the garage next door will get the capital they need to become the next
Google. But how often are our financial
titans on the hook for infuriating some regular Joe, whether he be a Joe Six
Pack or Plumber?
Sure, the big bankers
get called for the ritual tongue lashing before some finger-wagging
congressional committee, but they’re lawyered up and pretty much bullet proof,
knowing they can pull the rip cord and golden parachute into lavish retirement.
But
I think that those of us who’ve ever faced a customer angry about our shoddy
work know that these face-to-face or phone-to-phone face-offs keep the Golden
Rule in play. If you don’t do unto
others as you should, they will certainly try to do back at you. As far as I can determine, it’s not quite so
when you’re playing with bundled mortgages and credit default swaps. I imagine that truckloads of numbers can make
one quite removed from human experience, and even individual humans, except
perhaps for Dieter at Deutche Bank, who’s nagging you a few more basis points on
a deal only the two of you understand.
As
far as I can tell, the average Wall Street banker has as much sense of reality
as a guy trapped inside a casino in Vegas.
Except that the regular guy, betting his house, his car, or paycheck, is
gambling with his own money. He doesn’t
have the luxury of tapping into someone else’s pension fund, then rolling the
dice for fun and profit.
Now
if by chance some investment banker is reading this publication, I’m sure he’s
thinking, “This guy just doesn’t get it!”
Well, mea culpa. I don’t, and I’m
beginning to suspect that is not my fault of bypassing a shot at the Wharton
school. Sure, I get that increased
liquidity can be good for an economy, but it seems to me that our recent
liquidity had all the value of the liquidity produced by dysentery.
Ok.
So I don’t really understanding how finance works, and I don’t think this is a
fault one can lay at the feet of public education. I’m hoping that the same ignorance I’m
experiencing is a major cause of populist discontent; that would make the Tea
Party folks a bit less scary. Perhaps
finance is more complex than rocket science, but I don’t know that it is
(actually, in terms of consequences, NASA’s failures are spectacularly public
and easy to comprehend: something blew up).
I think the overwhelming majority of people believe that money is, and
should be, very simple: you do work that at least kind of benefits society, and
you get paid for it. If you do OK, you
can buy a house, a car--those big ticket items with long repayments and
daunting interest rates. But even those perplexing
interest rates are broken down into that little coupon that goes to the bank
each month. Very simple. None of us commoners have opportunities to
short the housing market or scam Price Chopper in derivative deals. Until someone explains in plain language how
Wall Street has been useful for society, I think people will be very, very
ticked off.
But
complexity aside, what is most galling about the recent trickle of news about
financial shenanigans is the amorality of the game. This is the “short” version, but: Goldman Sachs created investments for a
client who wanted to bet against those investments. It then sold those time bombs to other
clients. The justifications: ‘giving
clients what they want,’ and ‘we can’t predict the future, so we have no way of
knowing which client will get burned.’
Nonetheless, client by client, the Sacking Gold-Men got their piece.
This
kind of intellectual and moral neutrality (perhaps invented by those eminently
neutral, secretive, and banking-inclined Swiss) is appalling, an abandonment of
human conscience to greed.
Back to real life: teachers, cops, auto mechanics can’t operate
with such haughty neutrality. To these
and others of us, giving people what they want means having to deliver
something that works: an education, public safety or a new timing belt. If these goods and services don’t get
delivered, the purveyors are stigmatized as incompetent, or worse,
corrupt. If there is one shred of common
good to be found in moral-economic neutrality, I can’t see it.
The
banker’s neutrality is really another way of saying “There’s a sucker born
every minute,” which I suppose remains true.
The quote above is often attributed to circus master P.T. Barnum, although he
probably never said it, at least in so many words, or at least on any kind of
record. But even if he did say it, ole’
P.T. gave a good circus. People knew who
the clowns were, and they got three rings of acrobats, lion tamers and fire
eaters for their entertainment buck.
Under the Big Top, unlike the Big Casino, the skills and value of the wage
earners were open and obvious to everyone, and subject to very public booing if
they didn’t live up to P.T.’s hype. Wall
Street has now become the Greatest Show on Earth, but for the wrong reasons.
