22 January 2008

How Deep? How Long?


J. Pierpont Morgan

Under democracy, one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule--and both commonly succeed, and are right. - H. L. Mencken

I accidentally watched part of the debate between the two and a half Democrats who squared off in some state or another in a hard-hitting and nasty exchange. One or more of them seemed to be male, and one or more seemed to be female, or some new cross. Everyone's hair was good, for which we are all blessed.

The smart money is saying that the nomination is going to be wrapped up in six weeks, which is a grim prospect, since that will leave, by my hasty calculation, an almost unbearable eight months of mud-slinging between the major parties, whoever it is that they pick as their champions.

It started last night. One of the candidates, who seems to be female, produced some information that another of the candidates, who seems to be male, accepted campaign contributions from a “slum-lord,” whatever that might be.

The worst accusation I was able to ascertain was that one of the candidates apparently had been on the corporate board of the WalMart. Everyone loves the WalMart, including most of the millions of people it put out of well-paid blue collar jobs. The prices are so low that the unemployment checks go much further.

Since it is Sam Walton who opened up the Chinese Pandora's box of cheap overseas labor in Main Street America, I guess it all makes sense. It was a relief not to hear a mention about any of the tired old scandals that are associated the candidate who has all the experience. There is plenty of time for that, though, and we will be going down the white rapids of that soon enough if that is the way it works out.

I find it curious that it has taken this long to get to the heart of the campaign, which has nothing at all to do with the real issues confronting all of us.

That was happening overseas, as the financial markets took the day off to celebrate the sacrifice of Dr. King, for whom many of the subtleties of this campaign would have appeared quite surreal.

The market in London freaked out, dropping the greatest distance in value since 9/11. The Asian markets jittered, too. A senior official at JPMorgan, whose corporate name has now been compressed into one word, said the question now is not whether there is going to be a recession, but rather, “how deep, and how long” it is going to be.

I imagine that J. Pierpont is rolling in his posh tomb somewhere, rustling in the dim light filtered through the graceful foliage of the Cedar Hill Cemetery in Hartford, Connecticut. He saw his share of panics in a largely unregulated financial market, and did pretty well with it. His generation of capitalists understood risk, something our kinder and gentler generation has been encouraged to forget.

It is a lot easier to mark a significant date when something kinetic and real happens. There was a world before the attack on Pearl Harbor, of course, and the one that came after it had many similarities. When the airplanes flew into the tall buildings, it was easy to point and say that it was a moment that transformed everything.

This morning there were no airplanes. Apparently people in distant yet linked places woke to realize that what has been going on for more than a decade is not supportable, and does not make sense. I knew it when the bubble began to leak on my condo.

These things do not “pop” like soap-bubbles. They soften more like an air mattress with a slow leak that is comfortable enough when you lie down, but leaves your butt hard on the ground in the smallest hours of the night.

I signed the paperwork at the realty office, I was pretty sure I had made $25,000 on the spot. I whistled a happy tune in my car on the way home.

Only weeks later, I was disconcerted to discover that I was even-money at best. A couple years later, I am resigned to the fact that I have done the equivalent of tossing nearly a hundred grand out the window. It is like going on liberty in the wild-west town of Olongapo in Philippines years ago, only the party was on a much grander scale.

A wise old sailor told me once that you could save yourself a lot of trouble if you just went out to the catwalk and threw your wallet overboard, banged your head on the steel bulkhead steadily for a couple minutes and slammed the hatch on your genitals before retiring to the rack. Less muss and fuss in the long run.

Apparently that realization just came to a lot of people over the long weekend they did not share.

I don't know if this is The Moment, or not. Too soon to tell. I would spend more time on it, but thank goodness I have a job to go to. I am going to take just a couple moments to bang my head on the bulkhead before I get on the road. I know just how long I have to do it, and how hard.

It will save a lot of trouble later.

Copyright 2008 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

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