October 24, 2008--Recessionistas
I don’t know if technically we’re in a recession. But with Alan Greenspan yesterday looking like a ghost of his former Delphic self, acknowledging that his free market mindedness blinded him to the economic tsunami headed our way, and the markets this morning crashing around the world, still I am looking for a brass if not a silver lining in all this cataclysmic news.
Maybe, just maybe they’ve got it figured out in England. Not only did they come up with the ideas we eventually embraced to bail out our faltering financial markets, but they also are talking intelligently about how the current situation may prove to be a tonic for some of our profligate ways.
Of course the Brits are well versed in austerity. During the Second World War nearly half the population of London moved for years into the subway tubes during the Battle of Britain to escape from Germany’s relentless bombing. And when they emerged they learned to live with very little. Food and fuel and even electricity rationing persisted for years even after V-E Day. Some claim it toughened the British mettle and thus enabled them to figure out ways to get through life after losing the last remnants of their empire.
Some now in England are saying that the current meltdown will force folks to emerge from the past 15 years of overleveraging and spending madness and come out the other side with regained “old values.” (See linked New York Times article.)
The Times of London columnist India Knight wrote:
I am happy to observe that the decades of vulgar excess are finally over. There is a strong collective sense of all of us coming back down to earth. It’s like a huge national reality check and, unwelcome as it may be, there is the possibility that it will result in our straightening out our realities.
We could use a little of that here.
Of course we need to do all we can to soften the landing for what both of our candidates call “average Americans,” those who are in danger of losing their homes and jobs and savings. But we should let the greediest and most vulgar come crashing down to earth and make sure that those who deserve it wind up in jail.
If that represents the “redistribution of wealth,” so be it. Enough wealth has already been redistributed by the current administration. In a perverse form of socialism more wealth than ever in our history has been redistributed--but upward from those average Americans to hedge fund managers and their ilk.
It’s reckoning time. And time to rediscover those old values of fairness and shared responsibility.
Can we vote now?
Maybe, just maybe they’ve got it figured out in England. Not only did they come up with the ideas we eventually embraced to bail out our faltering financial markets, but they also are talking intelligently about how the current situation may prove to be a tonic for some of our profligate ways.
Of course the Brits are well versed in austerity. During the Second World War nearly half the population of London moved for years into the subway tubes during the Battle of Britain to escape from Germany’s relentless bombing. And when they emerged they learned to live with very little. Food and fuel and even electricity rationing persisted for years even after V-E Day. Some claim it toughened the British mettle and thus enabled them to figure out ways to get through life after losing the last remnants of their empire.
Some now in England are saying that the current meltdown will force folks to emerge from the past 15 years of overleveraging and spending madness and come out the other side with regained “old values.” (See linked New York Times article.)
The Times of London columnist India Knight wrote:
I am happy to observe that the decades of vulgar excess are finally over. There is a strong collective sense of all of us coming back down to earth. It’s like a huge national reality check and, unwelcome as it may be, there is the possibility that it will result in our straightening out our realities.
We could use a little of that here.
Of course we need to do all we can to soften the landing for what both of our candidates call “average Americans,” those who are in danger of losing their homes and jobs and savings. But we should let the greediest and most vulgar come crashing down to earth and make sure that those who deserve it wind up in jail.
If that represents the “redistribution of wealth,” so be it. Enough wealth has already been redistributed by the current administration. In a perverse form of socialism more wealth than ever in our history has been redistributed--but upward from those average Americans to hedge fund managers and their ilk.
It’s reckoning time. And time to rediscover those old values of fairness and shared responsibility.
Can we vote now?
posted by Steven Zwerling at
7:10 AM
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