The Ramblings of An Eternal Student of Life

Thursday, March 19, 2009

◊ Let ’em Have Their (Undeserved) Bonuses

Current Affairs ... Economics/Business ...

It looks as though President Obama has got the country all riled up about the infamous AIG bonuses. To be honest, I’m not terribly upset about them, and I find the current level of public indignation to be rather ironic. Over the past 20 years or so, our politics have become more and more pro-capitalist and a good bit less socialistic. We elected leader after leader who promised to free the business class from the bindings of government regulations and controls; and those leaders made good. As a result, our nation experienced a lot of economic growth over that time. It hardly seemed to bother most people that the lion’s share of the expanding wealth was going to CEO’s and hedge fund managers and others already quite well off, with barely a few crumbs falling down where the most needy reside.

But now, those tigers of industry, who the public willingly unleashed over the past generation, have fallen into a pit and need the public’s help to get out. And in the process of helping them, we are noticing that they are still acting just like — just like unleashed capitalists! Well OK, so what should we expect? We loved them during all those years when unemployment was low and mortgages and credit cards were plentiful, when entertaining and affordable new consumer products were flooding the market. Who cared if the CEO made almost 1,000 times what the janitor was making? Or if your cousin lost her job because she was making 10 times what someone in India wanted to do the same work? Back then, she could always get another job.

Now our economy is in a pit, a pit that almost no one foresaw and most everyone, rich and poor and in-between, participated in digging. Despite all the frustration and inequality, it’s not a good time to get very angry at the investors and industry leaders (like AIG’s management) who seemingly got us into this mess. Angry reactions such as the 90% taxes on management bonuses, and restrictions on free trade, may preclude our economy from rebounding anytime before the third digit on the calendar turns from 1 to 2; just as they once made the 3 turn to a 4 before things got better. And just the sheer hypocrisy of a public that embraced capitalism so unquestioningly when times were good (which was for a long time), and now is bringing out the torches and pitchforks because of a crisis partly brought on by its own stupidity, is quite interesting. Hey, no one forced so many people to take out crazy mortgages on the assumption that housing values would forever rise faster than economic growth rates.

I myself did not previously believe that unchecked capitalism was a boundless source of good in the world, and I still think that we need to move toward a greater role for the government in our economy (albeit, a more intelligently placed role than with past attempts at government regulation and direction). But to suddenly lash out at the capitalists for doing things that we and our government have known about for a long time — that just seems stupid to me. Such lashing out doesn’t get at the real problems, and maybe even makes those real problems worse. I say let the AIG people (and the management of other financial and industrial firms now under federal bail-out) have their 2008 bonus money, so long as they know that it’s their last taste of the good old days. Mr. Obama, Mr. Geithner, Mr. Frank, Mr. Cuomo and their like should be putting full time into solving the present crisis and into designing a viable economic future; and not into punishing the fat cats for a bad twist of fate (especially after the voters who elected those now-indignant leaders embraced the fat cats for many years, when the twists were good).

◊ posted by Jim G @ 9:44 pm Read Comments (3) / Leave a Comment

Sunday, March 15, 2009

◊ Reza Alsan and Religious Timidity

Religion ... Society ...

I’m presently reading Reza Alsan’s “No god but God”,subtitled “The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam”. Here is my preliminary report, from about half-way through.

First off, Aslan is a good writer. I’ve tried to read Islamic history before, but it always bores me to death. There’s a huge volume of detail about Muhammad himself. With Moses all you get is a little clip of his childhood and then the big march from Egypt; similarly with Jesus, there’s a birth story then a year or three of preaching adventures. Even the resurrection is cut short to but a few months. But with Muhammad it goes on and on; there’s this revelation and then that one, there’s this wife and later that one (or two or three), there’s this battle and then the next one. And forget about the night journey to Jerusalem, I get that all confused. Then Muhammad dies and there are lots of Caliphs and battles and a hidden Imam or two. The Sunni and the Shia split and then keep on colliding. You get to Spain for a time, and then there’s an Inquisition. The Crusaders arrive in the East, and the battles go on and on. The Turks come in and gloriously expand things, as the Byzantines finally fall and the Hagia Sophia becomes a mosque. But eventually even the Ottomans fall apart and the west muscles its way in to get at the oil. I never get much traction with the grand sweep. But Aslan does a pretty good job of keeping your attention. I must give him credit for that.

Aslan is also good at developing interesting meta-concepts regarding Islam. Ah! Finally some Islamic meta-concepts; every western writer (except the hide-bound conservatives) is afraid to present any meta-concepts on Islam. One of Aslan’s meta-concepts is that Islam is currently undergoing something akin to the Christian “Reformation”. But that reformation is still in process, it’s a fluid thing, no one is sure where it will lead. OK, that one seems important.

Another Aslanian concept is that certain of the Prophet’s teachings were over-interpreted and mis-interpreted by some of the scholars after his death through a long series of “hadith”, so that women are given less respect than Muhammad intended. Well, that tries to appease the feminists, and at least opens the door to the popular western passtime of questioning the originality of various segments of the Christian Bible (although I doubt if such a view, along with feminism, has gotten very far yet in the world of Islam). Aslan also considers the traditional willingness of Muslims to accept centralized leadership (e.g., the Grand Ayatollah for Iranians) as being rooted in Arab notions of tribal society, the social context from which Islam emerged. (Just as Catholic Christianity co-opted the political context of the Roman Empire in which it was incubated; an all-powerful Pope makes sense if you came from a place and time where the Emperor was the “Maximus Pontiff”.)

That’s all interesting. But at some point Aslan’s intended “clarifications for westerners confused about Islam” start sounding a little bit too good, a little bit contrived. Regarding the historical tensions and sometimes hatred between Islam and the Jews, Aslan attempts to establish Muhammad as having originally considering himself a Jew, or nearly so (certainly a co-son of Abraham). Per Aslan, Muhammad considered himself and his followers to constitute a Jewish reformation movement (perhaps like early Christianity).

It makes some sense, but then there’s the matter of Muhammad’s own dealing with Jewish tribes in Mecca and Medina. In some of his early battles, the local Jews joined with the foes of Muhammad, but after victory Muhammad avoided the slaughter option (so frequently exercised in ancient world) and let the Jews go into exile. But eventually it was “no more mister nice guy”; there was a group called the “Banu Qurayza” who were going to get involved with the anti-Muhammad forces at the Battle of the Trench, but in the end decided not to show up. Muhammad won that one, and after going through the motions of a trial proceeding, he decided to slaughter about 500 or so Jewish tribesmen. Aslan puts a good face on it, and says that it doesn’t reflect an anti-Jewish attitude within the Quran and Islam. But you can still find a lot of arguments out there that the slaughter wasn’t justified and does represent the start of an anti-Semitic attitude within the heart of Islam. I’ll tiptoe away from that one, simply pointing out that not everyone buys what Aslan tries to do in this book.

With regard to Christianity, Aslan takes a somewhat amusing tact. He says that Muhammad and Islam were never anti-Christian; they were just offended by the moral hypocrisy and laxity of many Christians in Muhammad’s Arabia. Aslan also takes pains to point out that Muhammad really liked and respected Jesus, and Islam still gives Jesus a big spot in its teachings. (However, it appears that they have ignored Jesus’s words regarding casting the first stone.) Aslan says that Muhammad was convinced that Jesus was a prophet, but not the theological “Son of God” or Christ. Well OK, that would fit in with Aslan’s discussion of Muhammad as semi- or quasi-Jewish. But it gets comical when Aslan explains that the Quran never condemns Christianity, but only goes after those who believe in the Doctrine of the Trinity, i.e. God as Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Those who do so cannot even be considered “People of the Book”, i.e. the “second prize” that the Quran allows to those who don’t follow Islam but still believe in God and the prophets of Biblical Judaism.

I’ve got a hot newsflash for Mr. Aslan. Every Christian faith or sect that I’ve ever heard of since Emperor Constantine helped squeeze out the Nestorians and their like has the Trinity at the core of its teachings. I feel that Aslan needs to be a little bit less politically-correct himself; Islam and Christianity have a really fundamental disagreement that exists today. That disagreement can’t be stepped around. What can be stopped is the idea that either side has the right to use force against the other, be it physical or economic or academic hubris, in the pursuit of its doctrine. And even better: perhaps both sides might consider the notion of dialectic, that “I could possibly be wrong, and we both could be wrong, even though we both still believe ourselves to be right; and someday, the better idea will emerge”.

Well, my second idea is probably a bridge too far for both Christianity and Islam. But if there could at least be a cease-fire declared, if the Christian soldiers and Islamic jihadists would all stand-down, together with the Israeli army and settlers, we might have a better world. I’d like to see Aslan say something along those lines in the rest of the book. I hope to finish his book before too long; but I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for him to say that. Aslan is still a good read, but you can see in his writing that Islam is still much too timid in applying the medicine of critical self-analysis; although Christianity still has a long way to go in that too, admittedly.

◊ posted by Jim G @ 5:33 pm Read Comments (3) / Leave a Comment

Friday, March 13, 2009

◊ Ash Wednesday in the Hospital

Personal Reflections ... Religion ...

As noted in my recent blog entries, my mother spent about 7 weeks in the hospital over the past 3 months. As a result, I spent a fair of number of hours there myself during that time. One of the hardest things to get used to was being surrounded by broken, decaying bodies. Yes, I mean the patients. Most of the patients in the intensive care unit and the recovery wards were old. And those who weren’t old were often in pretty bad shape anyway. Each day as I strolled past the rooms, I occasionally peaked in; a bit of entropic voyeurism (everyone does it). It’s like whistling past the graveyard, trying to ignore the fact that all these sick and weak people are ultimately no different from me; that in all too few years, I could be where they are now. It takes a bit of the bounce out of one’s steps.

During the long hours watching my mother slowly heal (mostly while sleeping), I occasionally gave in and watched some TV with my brother. TV is a celebration of youth and vigor; what with all the sports coverage and all the shows and commercials that try to lure one’s attention with sex (or at least sexual innuendo). It’s quite a juxtaposition; pretty women and men with taught, fully potent bodies on the screen, and broken old bodies everywhere else you look. It’s quite a reminder that youth and strength are temporary, fleeting things; that decay is inevitable and eternal.

The Roman Catholic Church has a ritual that acknowledges this. It’s called Ash Wednesday. Interestingly enough, my mother got out of the hospital on Ash Wednesday. The rite of ashes is accompanied by one of the most wisdom-packed incantations that I’ve every heard in a mythical / mystical ritual: “remember man that you are dust, and to dust you shall return”.

As much as I hate to admit it, the Catholics are on to something there (although they lose points for the fact that Ash Wednesday is a relatively minor occasion for them). I can’t dig all their stuff about salvation and god / man trinities and transsubstantiation and deposits of faith. It’s all too complex, all too disanchored from what we now know about the universe and ourselves from critical thinking and observation (i.e., from modern science). But on Ash Wednesday, which is not a mandatory holiday, “the Church” latches on to a really big truth. I remember Ash Wednesday ceremonies of my youth being rather solemn and dignified affairs; no gold chalices, no fine linens, no embroidered vestments. Just ashes and a bit of wisdom. Yea, too bad that the other 99.9% of ecclesiastical life isn’t like that (although some of the Catholic monastic rituals also have an austere beauty to them; flickering candles and chanting during a 3 am vigil service is not a thing easily forgotten).

Well, I don’t attend any Catholic rituals these days; I seek wisdom in other ways. Seven weeks on hospital grounds is not an easy path to wisdom, but wisdom is certainly there, if you take it in a certain way. As I’m trying to do, on reflection.

◊ posted by Jim G @ 11:00 pm Read Comments (2) / Leave a Comment

Saturday, March 7, 2009

◊ Alcuin — Eternal Soul of an Eternal Student

History ... Personal Reflections ...

I have proclaimed myself on this web site to be an “eternal student”, which means that I have an affinity for the ideals of learning and scholarship, even though I’m neither a student nor an academic scholar. Some people are sports fans; I’m a learning fan, a fan of academic prowess and advancement. Even if I’m not in the big leagues, I still like to participate as I can. So I read a lot, I look things up, think things thru, and write about them (mostly on this web site; I just can’t get myself together to write a big article or a book, as I’m just not ready for all the publisher rejection). But I’m not an “eternal student” as the term is mostly used on the Internet; it is generally a self-reference used by 20-somethings who are in grad school and don’t want to get out into the real world; or who do want to get out into the real world but aren’t having much luck.

People like me (i.e., old people; at least relative to the great majority of people using the web) are also called “life-long learners”. But I don’t like that term either. It sounds too quaint and too lame, sort of like “senior citizen”. Besides, when I say “eternal”, I really mean eternal. I believe that learning is something existentially profound, something with metaphysical bite to it, something that will still have meaning when our earth and our universe are no more. But aside from the ontological aspects, perhaps “learner” is a better term than “student”. Student is a passive word, whereby learner seems more active. A learner is a person who wants to learn, not someone forced to sit in a classroom. You can certainly be a student, in the modern sense, and not be a learner. In fact, the colleges and universities are filled with students whose main inspiration is getting a good job, and not learning and understanding important things about the world.

So maybe I should call myself an “eternal learner”. But hey, what’s in a name. What matters most is what you do in the world with your learning. I was reading the other day about an all-star “eternal learner and educator” from the past, and I thought I’d give him his due. His name was Alcuin, and he lived in Europe back in the 8th Century. Those days were known as the Dark Ages, and learning was a tough sell at the time; most people kept busy trying to avoid famine, plague, and roving vandals. But King Charlemagne decided that there was more to life than war and plundering in the name of the church, and so he decided to use the religious infrastructure of the time to spread learning throughout his kingdom (what we now know as Italy, France and Germany).

The religious infrastructure of affiliated monasteries was about the only infrastructure going at the time. So Charlemagne recruited Alcuin, a church deacon and scholar from England, to set up a school within Charlemagne’s court, and to follow up with a system to spread learning throughout the Frankish Kingdom. Before long, Charlemagne himself was taking classes. And priests were being trained and sent far and wide to work with the local monasteries to set up abbey schools, as to offer elementary education to both the nobles and the common folk.

Alcuin did a pretty good job in making education commonly available in Europe once again, setting up curriculums and teaching methods and tending to many bureaucratic issues. One of his contributions to the teaching of mathematics was the classic and often-hated practical math exercise. You know, the ones that go like this: “a man drives due east at 50 miles per hour, while from the same starting point his wife leaves 30 minutes later and drives due west at 40 miles per hour . . . ” Alcuin was interested and involved in many things, including theology, historical research, and the writing of poetry; he was a Renaissance man well before the Renaissance. His arguments for freedom of conscience helped to convince Charlemagne to abolish the death penalty for paganism.

Alcuin died in 804, and on his tombstone it says: “Alcuin my name, wisdom I always loved, Pray, reader, for my soul.” Alcuin thus assumed that he had an eternal soul, and that learning was at the root of its being. I’d like to think that he’s right, and that all true “eternal learners” like him never truly die.

◊ posted by Jim G @ 6:43 pm Read Comments (2) / Leave a Comment

Thursday, March 5, 2009

◊ Restless Capital in the Real World

Current Affairs ... Economics/Business ...

About a year ago, just as the “sub-prime crisis” was starting to make the news, I wrote a note on this blog musing about the economic paradox of “restless capital”. I said that most students in economics classes (and I was once such a student, as I have a masters in economics from Rutgers) are taught that capital is a good thing, a helpful thing, a thing very much needed for a successful economy. The notion that too much capital could be a bad thing was almost unheard of (and besides, free markets would quickly correct any such capital glut — interest rates would go very low and people would cut back on their savings, they would consume more). And yet, despite low interest rates, the Asians and other big players around the world kept on saving money and offering it to America. So America got stupid. Totally against what’s in the economic textbooks.

The main reason why I didn’t go forward with my academic training in economics after getting a masters degree, despite encouragement from various teachers to pursue a PhD, was that advanced economic classes delved deeper and deeper into abstract math and esoteric concepts. I originally thought that the basic microeconomics classes would be followed by detailed studies on how these concepts actually develop and function in the world of trade, industry, finance, government, etc. The macroeconomics classes would, I imagined, segue into a detailed analysis of what has happened over the course of history as nations and central banks sought to administer policies to stabilize prices and employment and output. When I found out that it would just be a lot more technical language and multiple-regression models, I lost interest.

The current economic crash confirms my hunch that the guys who DID stick it out and gain their economics doctorates never did learn all that much about how things really work. This certainly includes all those Chicago-school economists who said that de-regulation was the greatest thing since sliced bread; but it also includes the liberal Paul Krugman, who often opines in the NY Times that big government is the only way to go.

Krugman (who can be a bit too socialist for my tastes, although he is still a talented academic, a smart cookie) had an article the other day discussing the capital glut and how it helped lead to the economic disaster that we are now in. Per Krugman, what happened was that China, Japan, Korea and the other industrializing Asian countries decided in the late 1990s to discourage private consumption, and encourage thrift and savings on the part of their citizenry. All of their saved money could not be put to work in Asia, so much of it flowed into the world credit markets. (Also add in the capital flows from the Middle Eastern oil nations, who don’t have any good ideas on what to do with all the money they earned again as oil prices rose after 2000; Allah forbid that they might actually try to expand their economies and improve the lot of their common folk).

Interest rates went way down, as plenty of money became available for borrowing and investing. And you know what nation took greatest advantage of this — yea, the good old USA. Soon after the start of the century, we Americans had access to all the cheap capital we like. Sure, it could have been better used to help the poor lands of Africa and South America; but the people who were saving all this money felt that the USA was the safest place to put their excess funds. So what was done with this boon? Well, as Krugman explains, our free market economy and conservative politics collectively decided that it should go into a middle-class consumer binge, including access to gas-guzzling SUV’s for most anyone with any sort of job; and to support deceptively easy terms on real estate financing, i.e. sub-prime mortgages. It all helped to fuel a real estate and consumption spending bubble, which finally got too big and burst. And now we’re paying the price. BIG TIME.

So it’s interesting for me to see just how right I was about the unexpected evils of “wrestless capital”, and to have my suspicions confirmed by a professional economist like Krugman. It’s too bad that all that capital didn’t go into hi-speed rail, green industry, biotechnical research, education, sturdy roadways and bridges, and other investments that would make our country better off in the long run. The Obama administration is now trying to direct some of that wrestless capital into such investments through deficit spending financed by greatly expanded government borrowing. If the Chinese decide to keep their huge flow of savings directed towards US Treasury debt, we might be OK. If they start getting a taste for the good life, like us, then interest rates will shoot way up and the Obama plan will die on the vine. If that happens, WE’RE SUNK.

Bottom line here: economics truly cannot be divorced from politics. That’s why the whole topic of money and trade and commerce used to be called “political economy” in the universities. The free market would have matchless advantages for social welfare, in a test-tube situation free of political forces. But the real world is not like that. As such, the academic world needs very badly to get back to studying economics in the context of politics, and society, and government, and history. I.e., the real world. If it had, then perhaps America wouldn’t have given up on governmental economic leadership just when other governments were offering us the huge gift of overly cheap capital. We let our free markets feast on this irresistible gift until they got sick and broke down. (I believe that will be how the Bush-junior years will be remembered fifty years from now). We can’t give up on open markets and capitalism, they do provide a lot of innovation and choice; but we also need a collective mechanism to keep it from getting drunk and stupid. Let’s hope that the economists and the academic institutions that train them start focusing a bit more on the real world and the lessons of history.

◊ posted by Jim G @ 8:13 pm Read Comments (2) / Leave a Comment

Sunday, March 1, 2009

◊ Hospitals — Bring Your Own Healing

Health / Nutrition ... Medicine ...

As I discussed in my last entry, there’s just something about hospitals, some kind of bad karma attached to most of them. I guess that you can’t expect many good vibes from a place where most people are sick and suffering. But still, there seems to be some sort of “feng shui” problem, some type of institutional coldness, some brand of bad thinking that everyone brings to the place on top of all the problems of the patients. It seems to go all the way back to the people who designed and built the hospital. I’ve heard that modern hospitals are becoming aware of this and are trying to overcome it. (The British NHS even hired a feng shui expert to help their hospitals.)

Unfortunately, my mother’s hospital is stuck with the old look and the old feel. Here’s a shot that I took from the outside. Even from this distance, you can just feel the hospital vibes. You know that this is a hospital; and even if they get all the medicine and therapy right, both patients and family members are in for a rough ride. Also, from what I heard, the folks who work there aren’t exactly crazy about the place either (but most of them still do their best out of sympathy for the patients).

Thank goodness that my mother is now out of there, and let’s hope that she doesn’t need to go back again. I now understand why my brother was so frantic to have someone there with her at all times; you have to bring your own healing atmosphere. Medicare doesn’t pay for it, so the hospital doesn’t provide it.

◊ posted by Jim G @ 11:23 am Read Comments (2) / Leave a Comment

Thursday, February 26, 2009

◊ Smiles For Getting Home

Personal Reflections ...

If you’ve read any of my recent posts, you know that my mother has been in and out of the hospital of late. In early December she had a severe respiratory arrest which landed her in the ER and then the intensive care unit, hooked up to a ventilator via a breathing tube. She managed to cheat the angel of death, though, and after 39 days was sent home. My brother is very dedicated to my mother, and each day put in 8 or even 10 hour vigils at her bedside. I tried to keep working half-days at my job, but still spent an average of 6 hours in the hospital. I was there on the day she was put on a gurney for the ride home; she looked as happy as a kid being pulled for a ride in a Radio Flyer wagon (or flying downhill on a Flexible Flyer sled). It was great to see that smile, and it was also great to get my life back (admittedly my brother bears the brunt of her home care needs, which increased because of what happened).

Things seemed to settle down nicely over the following three weeks. Then suddenly, my mother had another attack and was back in the ER with the ventilator pipe back in her throat. She survived the hit once again and was soon back in the intensive care ward. And for me it was back to working half days and spending long hours in a hospital room doing nothing (my brother again went the extra mile and pretty much stopped going to work).

Right away, it was apparent that this was going to be worse for me than the first time (although my mother regained consciousness fairly quickly, so it was not as bad for her — albeit, it was still bad). It seemed like being put in prison. Your freedom is taken away; hospital staff tell you when you can and can’t be in the room, and you’d best take their orders. If you stay past visiting hours, sometimes a guard comes over and tells you to leave. There are no computers to get things done on, no gym to work out in, no interesting places to walk, and not much in terms of eating places offering food that’s worth eating (I mostly brought my own snacks to survive on). I really dreaded all the hassle in driving to the hospital every day, trying to find a parking space, then just sitting there until ordered to move by a nurse or doctor, with little solace other than a book to read under dim, eyestraining light. (The one consolation was that I did get some reading done.) Yes there’s TV, but most everything on was uninteresting.

After a week it wasn’t so bad. You can get used to most anything, I suppose. And my mother started getting better once again. She was finally transferred to a private room in the recovery ward, where things are quieter and you don’t get bossed around as much. And then yesterday, the guys with the gurney and the van came again to bring her home — alive, and if not completely well, at least a good bit better. She was pretty sleepy this time, but once she got home and was back in her room, she managed to break into a beatific smile. And that was my reward once more. It all makes some sense once you see that.

Of course, I don’t want to do this again anytime soon! Thus, my brother and I purchased a home breathing machine for my mother, a bi-level “P.A.P.” with timed breathing options (just like the hospital ventilators). We’re hoping it will forestall another respiratory inflammation attack and keep her home.

Barack Obama has expressed regret that he wasn’t with his mother in her final days (which were largely spent in a hospital ward). My inbred reaction to that is “yea, right; a skilled politician like you will say anything to get sympathy and keep from appearing cold and heartless, which you probably are, like most other politicians”. But for now I’m going to put my cynicism aside. President Obama is right to regret never having seen the relieved and satisfied look on the face of an aging relative coming home after a grueling hospital stay. And also never having had the knowledge that he had something to do with it. They also serve who only stand and wait, as John Milton said; and on rare occasion we waiters even get to feel good about it.

◊ posted by Jim G @ 8:09 pm Read Comments (2) / Leave a Comment

Sunday, February 22, 2009

◊ The FWREC Economy

Current Affairs ... Economics/Business ...

This past week was pretty bad for Wall Street. The stock market dropped around 7%. Analysts believe that investors are losing hope of our economy making a comeback within the next year or two (my favorite source of such analysis is Bloomberg radio). The soaring price of gold indicates that a lot of people with money are thinking “great depression 2”.

I don’t have any cheerful thoughts to offer in response to that. Unfortunately, the American economy doesn’t seem to have an “engine of growth” ready to go right now, set to pull all the other sectors out of the ditch. (Wall Street has obviously lost confidence in the Obama Administration’s ability to do that, despite the financial stimulus package.) Over the past 10 years or so we had the real estate sector, personal consumption and the internet/technology fad to keep things bubbling. In the long run, America still has some cards to play: it still has the best education infrastructure and a strong tradition of creativity and innovation. We can still sell those strengths to the world — once the world is ready to buy again. Remember, this economic crisis is world-wide. For now, the fizz is gone, the economic champagne has gone flat.

All I can contribute right now is a semi-witty acronym meant to summarize how we got here (some might say it’s “quasi-witty” or “pseudo-witty”, or not witty at all!). That acronym is FWREC: Finance, World-wide, Real estate, Energy, and Consumer demand. Economic analysis is a dime a dozen these days, so I’ll just give a quick synopsis of our current “FWREC’d” situation.

F – Finance: Our generally unregulated financial system came up innovations like mortgages without income checks, down payments, and for the first two years, without principal and full interest payments. And credit cards were given away like candy. And then there are the secularized investment instruments that spread such mortgage and credit card debt over thousands of investors according to complex rules; these are now known as “toxic assets”. And mix in all those default swap agreements from the insurance companies. It all seemed so safe, so solid, so interconnected. Unfortunately, no one could see that all taken together as one, this was a house of cards ready to collapse once the right gust of wind came along. And come along it did.

W – World-wide: America and the world are now extremely tied-in and co-dependent. In many ways that’s good. But when America, the biggest source of global economic demand and the biggest receiver of global investment, goes down, the whole thing goes down. Again, the system had a tipping point that hardly anyone foresaw. Until the “black swan” landed.

R – Real estate: Real estate brings out the best and worst in people. Families that own their own homes tend to take more pride in the neighborhood and contribute more to civic life. HOWEVER, real estate also brings out a lot of greed and short-sightedness, both on the local and national level. Our political system assumes that real estate is an unlimited good, and encourages it (via tax deductions and money supply expansion and lending incentives to banks) beyond the point of economic rationality, both on the part of homeowners and mortgage lenders. And now the chickens have come home to roost — the dark side of real estate has reared its ugly head; i.e. foreclosures, bank failures, toxic assets, and rapidly declining consumer consumption. Unemployment is boosted because workers in declining cities like Detroit can’t sell their homes and move elsewhere in search of jobs. Furthermore, the hunger for large real estate plots in the exurbs has locked us into development sprawl and the high energy demand that comes with it — the next FWREC factor.

E – Energy: Oil prices are pretty low, at the moment. However, this recession began over a year ago, when oil prices were at record levels due to supplies leveling off while demand increased in the developing world (China, India, Brazil, etc.). That no doubt helped to drag our economy down. Experts say that as soon as the world economy starts picking up, oil prices will skyrocket once again, slowing or possibly stalling a fledgling recovery. Life and business in today’s USA was designed around cheap oil; due to suburbanization and development sprawl, you need a car (and preferably an SUV) to get to most offices, homes and shopping places. It will take many years to redesign the USA landscape in favor of denser urbanized settings, where mass transit (or cycling or even walking) can be used to accomplish the basics. For the next decade, we’re trapped in a high energy consumption mode that will sap a lot of strength from our economy.

C – Consumer demand: With all the easy money and chimeral real estate wealth (everyone assumed that real estate prices would continue to rise come what may), families assumed that there was no need to save money, and no problem with taking out more debt to spend on the finer things of life (vacations, SUV’s, entertainment systems, home improvements, etc.). Hyper consumption was caused by finance (easy loans), the world (below-cost consumer goods from Asia), energy (oil was relatively cheap until two years ago) and real estate (no need to put aside for a rainy day if your home value rises significantly each year); and each of those institutions in turn grew because of that consumption. It was an upward spiral based on good impressions; but it was not backed up by real economic productivity.

And so the party is now over, and we all face a lot of uncertainty. I’m still employed at present but will have my salary cut via furloughs. As to my hopes to retire comfortably in 10 years, that too is up in the air, given that the current value of my retirement funds have been cut in half. I’m not sure what I will do if it all gets worse. All I can do right now is to curse the FWREC that our economy has become. But as to blaming any one person or institution, e.g. George Bush or the Federal Reserve or the big banks or the CRA — no, it was collective stupidity. Let’s hope that some collective wisdom seeps in because of all this.

PS, here’s a good article from The Atlantic on what the long-term effects of the FWREC will be.

◊ posted by Jim G @ 9:49 am Read Comments (3) / Leave a Comment

Thursday, February 19, 2009

◊ Les Cason Memories

Photo ...

I’ve noticed that the only monthly archive page from this blog that gets a decent amount of attention from Google customers is January, 2004. During that month, I talked a bit about a kid back in my high school class who had a chance to become a pro basketball player. That kid was Leslie Cason. Les was a tall, lanky guy who made a great center, propelling our high school basketball team to an undefeated season and a regional championship during my senior year.

Unfortunately, Les did not have a disciplined personality and could not capitalize on the various sports scholarships that were offered to him. He eventually dropped out of college and finally wound up on the streets of Manhattan selling drugs. He finally died of AIDS in 1997. His story still attracts attention from sports fans, probably because of the role that Dick Vitale, the former high school basketball coach-turned-ESPN college sportscaster, played in Les’s life.

I don’t have much to add to Les’s story. Back in school, Les was a celebrated jock and I was mostly an anti-social nerd (mea culpa, but it’s really hard to be a sociable nerd!). To say the least, we ran in different circles. But I do remember having Les in my senior English class. In fact, he sat one row over from me. Les was a likable fellow; he never joined in with the other jocks who found me an easy target for bullying [but I got through it, and it might have even made me stronger; I’m not sure that I could have survived working in a law enforcement office later in life had I not learned how to get roughed up a little].

But Les wasn’t much of a scholar either, and given his rising fame, he saw little need to concern himself with stuff like geometry, Shakespeare and American history.

I have some proof that I sat next to the semi-famous Leslie Cason in high school. There’s a tiny picture in the ERHS 71 yearbook taken in my English class during a test. I scanned it and did my best with Photoshop to make some sense out of it. The red arrow points to Les, and the blue arrow is for me. Yes, I know this isn’t solid proof; it has the same quality level as a purported UFO shot. As with the X-Files, it only makes sense if you want to believe.

But if you do believe me, you can see that I was approaching the test like a true eternal student, pouring out the words with all my heart and soul (and much of my brain, hopefully). As to Les . . . well, he looks to be holding up the test page, wondering what to do. I suppose that he eventually did write something, that it wasn’t all that good, and that it didn’t matter. Our English teacher, Mr. Luterzo (who looked a bit like James Karen, i.e. Mr. Pathmark), knew that he had to play a game (school politics) as much as Les had to play his game. The school basketball team needed Leslie Cason and the basketball colleges wanted him. It would all work out, he and Coach Vitale thought.

Too bad that it didn’t.

P.S., the Wikipedia article on Dick Vitale used to say that Les Cason wasn’t really interested in basketball as a kid; he liked baseball instead. (The Daily News confirms that Les was originally a baseball kid.) I do recall that Les played Little League in East Rutherford for the Caughey’s Restaurant team, and was considered quite a player. My brother also played in the E.R. L.L. at the time (but on a different team), and I vaguely remember going to games and seeing Les. He was a very good baseball player; I wonder if things would have been different for him had he stuck with his first love.

◊ posted by Jim G @ 9:33 pm Read Comments (7) / Leave a Comment

Sunday, February 15, 2009

◊ Some Jewish Questions (and Admiration)

History ... Religion ...

I’ve been pondering the huge topic of Judaism and Israel lately (i.e., the “big concept” of Israel, not just the modern nation), after watching some documentaries and listening to some lectures on Middle Eastern history. I am not from the Jewish heritage, and I am not a professional historian. But still, I’m entitled to my thoughts and impressions. And here they are, for what it’s worth.

(With the footnote that my paternal grandfather may have come from a Jewish family that went Christian during the pogroms.)

The way I see it, Judaism is the result of a theologically-inspired “retrojection”, i.e. the re-arrangement of history by an ancient people trying to find meaning and identity after failing at the Middle Eastern “empire game”. This response to their failure was a success; while many nations and ethnic groups have come and gone over the two millennium of Jewish history, the Jews are still going strong. Nonetheless, the origins of “greater Israel” appear to be grounded in the humiliating failure to mimic what the Egyptians and Persians did way back when — i.e., select a dictator (a king), organize a group of unruly tribes into a submissive collective, carry out great public works, and form a mighty army to conquer other peoples and expand the collective’s wealth and power.

David and Solomon gave it a good try, but in the end their subjects were just a bit too unruly. As a kingdom, Israel just couldn’t cut it. It was thus over-run by other, more effective kingdoms (the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Greeks and the Romans). It was rather humiliating and depressing. The Caanan high-country tribes of early Jewish history needed a very good reason to stick together and not dissolve as other conquered peoples had over the centuries (e.g., the Ammonites, the Meades, the Hittites, the Dacians … the list of defunct nationalities is long). And over time — not all at once, as the Old Testament claims — the “tribes of Israel” came to believe in a national identity and a national relationship with an all-powerful God. Those beliefs were based on even more ancient stories, passed on amidst their members, regarding how some parts of the tribe had experienced and escaped slavery in Egypt with the help of a God who demanded exclusive loyalty.

The proto-Jewish tribes in the Canaan hill country had worshipped multiple gods long after the time of the Exodus, but by the time of the Babylonian exile they started taking the demands of “El” or “YHWH” seriously. They gave up on Baal and the female fertility gods and started building their identity around an agreement, a “covenant”, with the exclusive God of Old. These tribes, now captured and subjected to foreign power, forged their identity around 20-20 hindsight, around an historical explanation for their troubles (i.e., that YHWH was punishing them for wayward conduct). All that false gods worship over the years had gotten YHWH angry; if they could get back to living by the covenant, they might be given another chance.

Well, guess what. The gambit worked, even though it was entirely sincere and not imagined as a “political strategy”. Strategies are what we cynical 21st Century people do. And yet, the ancient tribe of Israel is still a viable nation, very much with us. I believe there is a lesson of wisdom to be seen in all of this. The Persians, Greeks, Romans, Assyrians, Babylonians and Egyptians are either gone or but a shadow of their past greatness. But the Jews just keep coming.

And what is to be said about that? I must admit to mixed feelings; it depends on how you look at it. My feelings get tangled up on the topic of modern Israel. In many ways, today’s Israel is a light in the desert, a haven of democracy and civilization in a land all-too-tied to early human history. But the often-vicious things that the nation of Israel has to do in response to its often-brutal neighbors can be very unsettling. Israel survives only by participating in a never-ending war, just as in Biblical times. Only today, Israel gets the military tactics right (for the most part). It even sends its settlers into conquered territory to crowd out others with ancestral claims. But no matter how brilliant its generals or tenacious its colonizers, the wars just go on and on. Peace treaties are made with certain groups, but other groups arise to continue the battle. Not a pretty picture.

But as to Judaism as a larger, world-wide phenomenon: the historical legacy is nothing short of brilliant, truly amazing. The Jews have been a true leavening to all the peoples on this planet. Where would you even start? Art, science, theology, entertainment, academics, commerce, leadership, music, humanitarianism . . . the list could go on and on regarding Jewish achievement. I have two questions about all of this; for one, I have some thoughts; the other I find ultimately vexing.

My first question is whether the greatness of the Jews reflects an existential truth behind the mythologies that have sustained their identity over the many centuries of recorded history. I.e., are they “powered by God”? I believe that they are. I’m not saying that all of what the Old Testament professes about God is true; if God is really as great as those old stories teach, then how could any human writing, however inspired, capture what is beyond our inherent frailties and limitations? But the greatness of the Jews must, in my view, owe something to the “glue” that holds their identity together. That glue must be real, not just a human mythological notion. Plenty of nations had powerful myths but are now long gone. The Jews had God, and are still here. All those brilliant Jewish atheists like Einstein (and Dave, my former boss) notwithstanding!

The more confounding question for me is whether Judaism needs that dry tract of land along the eastern Mediterranean Sea for its identity, much as it needs YHWH. I’ve heard people, both Jewish and non-Jewish, argue that modern Israel is absolutely necessary to Jewish identity and survival. Without it, arguably the Jews could perish; either through genocide (as has been tried, more than once), or by assimilation, or some combination. I cannot glibly respond to this point.

However, I can’t help but wonder if the ultimate failure of the ancient Caananite tribes to hold land against the mighty world powers, their repeated exiles and repatriations and diasporas, formed the setting from which their unending strength was derived. I can’t help but ponder whether in geopolitical failure the ancient Jews brought forth the best within them, and the best in all humankind. The core of the Old Testament, i.e. the Torah, which acts as the Constitution of Jewish identity, can be read to require both God and the ancient homeland as Jewish necessities. But the later parts of the Hebrew Bible extend Judaism into something more than a land-based concept, into a more ethical, moral and intellectual form of strength. God remained the God of the Jews even in the most horrible places so far from . . .

OK, I need to stop. I have no warrant to talk about those horrible places; I’m way outside of my league. But the Israel / Jewish identity connection is an awfully confounding question, and I respect those who have strong feelings about it. For now, I cannot offer a conclusion.

◊ posted by Jim G @ 10:25 am Read Comments (2) / Leave a Comment

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