Quotable: A Bailout by Any Other Name

from a Yahoo! article entitled "Lawmakers scramble to revise bailout bill":

"Bush noted that the maximum $700 billion in the proposed bailout was huge, but was dwarfed by the $1 trillion in lost wealth that resulted from Monday's stock-market plunge."

"'The first thing I would do is say, "Let's not call it a bailout. Let's call it a rescue,'" McCain told CNN. He said 'Americans are frightened right now' and political leaders must give them an immediate solution and a longer-term approach to the problem."

That's some quality presidential leadership for you. On both counts.

"Let's not call it a 'panic'. Let's call it a 'depression'." (True story and still it went down in history with a capital D.)

"Let's not call it a 'recession'. Let's call it a 'slowdown'."

"Let's not call it a 'bailout'. Let's call it a 'rescue'."

I suppose the important difference between bailing and rescuing is the latter implies that you have a watertight ship somewhere. But even the term 'rescue' is an admission of immanent danger. If you're resorting to euphemisms in order to lull people back into a false sense of security, you might as well come up with something inspiring. Performance-enhancing dope regimen? Triple-shot espresso federal injection?

The problem with the 'bailout' idea is the assumption that you have something on which to be floating once you have fixed the leak--water as well as a ship. Bailing an airplane or a hot air balloon wouldn't be terribly effective. Unless we take 'bailout' a different way: bailing out as in ejector seat. "Damn, we're a mile high and we've run out of fuel. There aren't enough parachutes even for the crew. Let's make sure ours are golden and whisper sweet nothings into the intercom just long enough to save our own skins and make our exit. Leave this thing running at 500 mph and put her on autopilot to keep the horizon level as long as possible. They won't even know what hit them."

The problem with the 'rescue' idea is the aforementioned watertight ship. The economy does not work like a ship. It's a bit more like a projectile, or maybe a vortex. Economic activity is not a matter of 'growth' so much as momentum. To stop (or even to slow down too much) is to fall apart completely.

Why?

Because money isn't there. It exists only in people's imaginations. The second greatest trick the devil ever pulled, after convincing the world he didn't exist, is convincing people that money does.

Back to the first quotation: "lost wealth." What was it made of? Where was it? Where did it go? People get nervous and try to hang on to it and 'Poof!' it disappears. Money appears only when it is moving, and if you are going to 'grow' it you have to keep it moving faster than it was moving before so that the vacuum it leaves behind does not catch up with it. Maybe it would make more sense (or at least less nonsense) to say that money is a negative phenomenon; it exists in the appearance of its absence.

Illustration: "See that fancy widget? It came into being of its own accord. The only thing between you and the widget is a little void in the shape of $99.99. If you run a piece of plastic through this machine the $99.99 will seem to exist, you can go home with the widget, and the balance of the universe will be restored."

This is how capitalism works. 1) You create a money-absence on one end by putting a price tag on an object. (Objects for sale are 'products' and are made of things called 'raw materials' that someone took from somewhere before it had a price tag, so you can take them without leaving a void, at least not one that you have to count.) 2) You create an existential or physical void on the other end by developing an imagined deficiency in the consumer's psyche or by arranging reality so that the consumer (for lack of skill or material access, or due to pride, laziness, or socially conditioned presumption of entitlement) cannot or will not meet his or her own natural physical needs and wants. 3) You then bless this arrangment as an immutable law of science and come up with equations to prove that as long as you don't include anything inconvenient in your calculations everything adds up right, and call it "Economics."

(The third greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing most of Earth's human population, who are theoretically intelligent enough to know better, that they could demonstrate their superiority and achieve 'progress' by resolutely building a civilization on such ridiculous premises as the immaculate conception of machines, the infinitude of extractable fuel, and the spontaneous generation of inanimate objects. This problem isn't exactly new. It just got more dangerous with the acceleration of technological power and more jumpy and volatile with the invention of credit and detatchment of money from its already fairly dubious and arbitrary foundation in (practically useless) shiny minerals.)

"Ladies and gentlemen, here in my hand I've got 1 trillion dollars. Now you see it, now you don't." (The American public is gullible; they will believe we really had that $1 trillion when Wall Street opened on Monday. If we say that we just need $700 billion to make that trillion reappear, maybe they will give it to us. They always have before.)

Where is the $700 billion going to come from? Our unborn great-grandchildren? The increasing population of theoretically employable college graduates who can't even earn enough to pay rent, let alone buy a home or save for the future? The corporations whose positive balance sheets and stock values are based on the assumption that money (and fuel and metal and rock and fiber and food and water) will keep moving faster forever? The taxpayers whose hope of retirement is based on the sticker price of stocks which is based on the ability of corporations to maintain the perception that money will start moving faster again sometime soon if the government gives the banks the privilege of pretending they have $700 billion of future taxpayer money?

The Economy is running out of fuel metaphorically as well as in obvious terms (the liquid and vaporous fossil stuff) and even the most skillfully spun political rhetoric can't keep it running on fumes for long. We have already squandered the real wealth - clean air, clean water, healthy forests, fertile soil, native cultural wisdom. All our current 'leaders' can give us is smoke and mirrors, flamboyant gestures, and empty words. We have nothing left to lose but our illusions.

Everything I Need to Know . . .

If I believed in standardized testing and were the benevolent dictator, these would be the requirements for graduating from kindergarten and having access to any amount of money and power:

1) Clean up after yourself.
2) Share.
3) Before you take something that's not yours, ask (and say 'please' and 'thank you').
4) Don't break things (especially if it's not yours).
5) No name-calling.
6) Keep your hands to yourself (unless someone wants a hug).
7) Say 'sorry' (even if it's less than half your fault).

If everyone lived this way, we would have a much lower incidence of problems like pollution, landfills, poverty, crime, divorce, and war. Imagine that!

Quotable: Consider the Lilies

by Soren Kierkegaard in Judge for Yourself!:

“But the Savior of the world says, as if it were a Sunday afternoon or a holiday, when there is nothing else to do, 'Look at the lilies of the field; consider the birds of the air.' How childlike! How sound and wholesome!”

“. . . Make use of the moment. Be quick to learn—as far as the lily and the bird are concerned, do not worry: they show no signs that soon it is all over. . . . What beneficent peace out there! It is just that for which a person has such a great need, especially that it would be within himself—the peace that is out there with you and is in you, you lily of the field, you bird of the air—the peace that so many real or imagined sorrows and anxieties and afflictions want to upset, the peace that is rest or resting in God.

Pay attention, then, to the bird! It sings and chirps, and chirps—oh, please hear!—in between what it is saying—pay attention to it!—to sorrow, what an old hymn says, 'Yes, yes, tomorrow.' And thus the bird is happy 'today.' Then sorrow thinks, 'Just wait—I will be on the lookout; tomorrow, before dawn and before you have left your nest and before the devil puts on his shoes (for I am up and about even earlier than he; I am one of his servants and heralds who arrive first in order to try to arrange entry for him), then I will come.' And tomorrow—the bird is no longer there. What! It is no longer there? No, it has left; it has gone. 'How could it go? After all, its passport was confiscated, and I’m damned sure it has not departed without a passport.' 'Well, someone must not have kept watch well enough, because it has gone. It left a greeting for you. The last thing it said was, "Say to sorrow: Yes, yes, tomorrow!"' You are indeed clever, you winged traveler, an unrivaled professor in the art of living! . . .”

“And the lily! It is pensive; it inclines its head a little, it shakes its head; it is for sorrow: Yes, yes, tomorrow. And tomorrow the lily has a legitimate excuse for absence; it is not at home, it has gone. The emperor has lost his rights, if he had any, and sorrow may just as well tear the demand to pieces at once—it is not valid. And this makes sorrow so furious that it says: That is not allowed! Ah, to be able to say to sorrow: Yes, yes, tomorrow; and then to be able to remain in that place so calm, lovely in its carefree joy, happier, if possible, over having its jest with sorrow: Tomorrow! To fool it not for a few days, a week—no, to keep on saying to sorrow every time it announces itself: It is too early; you are coming too early; to keep on saying it so long that when it does come it is—too late! What mastery in living! . . .”

“So pay attention to the lily and the bird! Surely there is spirit in nature—especially when the Gospel inspires it, because then nature is pure symbol and pure instruction for man; it, too, is inspired by God and is 'profitable for instruction, for reproof, for correction.'”

Fill In the Blank

Status symbols are timeless across cultures and species; contemporary consumerism has just taken the phenomenon to an unprecedented extreme. Our beloved Economy feeds on the religion of self-justification by one-upmanship. Pathological competition gnaws at the core of our identity. We will never have enough or be enough because we don’t know what ‘enough’ is, but we can always find people who make us feel less-than by comparison and others over whom we can lord a little ‘less less-than than thou.’ We make tremendous sacrifices to the god of More.

Steadily devouring anything it can turn to profit (or anything that gets in the way) and writing off its bad debt to the children, the Marketplace justifies itself based on the quack science of ‘economic growth’ in which all instances of money changing hands for ‘new’ objects (newly rearranged raw materials) and payrolled people-hours (which is not the same thing as ‘work’) are added as ‘product’ and presumed positive, and no consequences of the acquisition and consumption process are subtracted. The Marketplace counts every sale as gain regardless of the goodness or usefulness of what was created or destroyed in each transaction and whether something was worth more before it was measured in money.

Fill in the blank in the previous post with status symbols including but not limited to material objects (e.g. American citizenship, a penis, white skin, a six-figure salary, a paycheck, a spouse, a big car, bling, blond hair and blue eyes, a size D bust, a tan, a college degree, an Ivy League alma mater, a weed-free lawn, a snub nose (if you’re Caucasian), a Roman nose (if you’re Asian), above-average height, below-average weight, the latest gadget, this season’s brand name clothes). No matter how many trump cards you hold, chances are you still come up empty.

“But, in accordance with his promise, we wait for a new heavens and a new earth where righteousness is at home.” - 2 Peter 3:13

Welcome to the Kingdom Coming where nothing is earned, only given and received. The good news in the economy of grace is you have nothing to prove; you couldn’t if you tried. The first shall be last and the last shall be first but everyone is invited to the party. Lay down your treasure and come to the table, for all is ready and there is enough to go around!

Coming of Age

The Age of Enlightenment: "I think, therefore I am."

This is not exactly good Christian anthropology (notion of what it means to be human). 17th century philosopher Rene Descartes' statement is based on a false sense of individual autonomy and an improperly elevated view of Reason. However, it is at least dignified and implies some capacity for and interest in wisdom.

Fast forward a few hundred years . . .

The Age of Entitlement: "I deserve whatever I want," "I have _____, therefore I am better than you," and "I do because I can."

Is this 'progress'? It actually sounds a bit like the developmental inclinations of the average 2-3 year old, except that most toddlers are also given to spontaneous, uncalculating displays of affection and gratuitous acts of sharing. I suppose that the glorification or valorization of certain puerile tendencies is an eternal liability of the human condition. Even so, I cringe when I think about how this era in my so-called civilization's history will be remembered by those who come after.

What will it take for 21st century petit bourgeois society to grow up?

I am afraid I will live to find out.