During the height of the panic over Wall Street that led to the bailouts, TARP and the rest, I had the good sense to say on several occasions that while the details of the crisis were beyond the grasp of my personal ability to understand economics and finance that "either this was a monumental failure of the capital market system or the greatest hoax since Piltown Man." After all the estimated value of the shadow banking industry and its various instruments was set at a number close to the GDP of the entire planet for a year. And since it was generally agreed that these instruments had little "mark to market" value then one could ipso facto conclude that the crisis was gargantuan. I confess my caveat that it could all be a hoax was more intended to support my notion that the crisis was profound than to offer an actual alternative explanation. However I am too long in the tooth to ever completely discard the possibility that I am being duped. No great insight here of course. Recent political history makes it a droll disclaimer.

There were loose threads to the story of course and third and fourth and fifth explanations that had merit. Today I came across this summary by Mike Whitney: Lehman Died So TARP and AIG Might Live. Whitney asserts:

Lehman was a planned demolition (most likely) concocted by ex-Goldman Sachs CEO Henry Paulson, who wanted to create a financial 9-11 to scare Congress into complying with his demands for $700 billion in emergency funding (TARP) for underwater US banking behemoths. The whole incident reeks of conflict of interest, corruption, and blackmail.

A few weeks ago Paul Krugman wrote an eight page op-ed in the NYT in which he tried to describe an explanation for why economists had so totally missed the largest downturn since the Great Depression. It is somewhat contrite in tone. The op-ed meanders around the subject with just enough inside baseball references to give it the tack of substantiality but after reading it I was left without a clue as to what was his point. I am temped to say it was something along the lines of "Well Economics is unreliable but we have already printed the class schedule so we might as well continue to teach the courses. And we don't want to just add to the unemployment problem." Toward the end of his op-ed, Krugman speaks about "salt water" economists and "fresh water" economists. I did take away from this that even the most notable experts in a field like Economics or Anthropology must reduce the blizzard of details to some simple formulation for the purposes of understanding and communication. The danger of course is that "the devil is in the details."

For me then the devil has the upper hand. As someone not erudite in these fields, I can at least imitate this one practice of the cognoscente and contrive a simple formulation. To wit: This economic crisis of our time may be profound or it may be a hoax. Either way I'm screwed and should concern myself with solving the problems of my nano-economic world. I wonder how much Powell's Books will give me for my copy of William Greider's "Secrets Of The Temple"?

"But even if Obama fails, there is an art to losing, too -- in a way that can tee up the issue for future presidents."

"An art to losing." If your art is losing doesn't that just make you a "bum?" I want to write more but I can't get past this movie scene. I'm sorry. I'm no Dickday. But for the record I am not a bum. This is a conversation I want to have with the Democratic Party: It was you Charlie.

Well maybe I can say a little more.

My cat knows when her bowl is empty and she knows what to do about it. What I wouldn't give for just a moment of that kind of clarity.

Does the farmer sit on the edge of his field and mull interminably whether to plant wheat or corn, beans or squashes, food or fodder? Does the fisherman sail out upon the ocean only to drop anchor and meditate on the vast largess of the sea and never drop his net? Does the hunter sit quietly with his weapon in his lap and marvel at the variety of fauna that surrounds him in the forest? No. The farmer farms and the fisherman fishes and the hunter hunts. He does so because his bowl is empty and he knows what to do about it.

Lately the marvelous Mr. Dickday has been quoting Lao Tzu as a way to launch discussion of some current affairs. Big Zu, as I affectionately call him, is hard for the Western mind to understand. We read him as we would read Socrates but while they were almost contemporaries they had a much different approach to wisdom and understanding. Socrates admitted himself that he had no ideas and that his only intent was to be a "gadfly" who stimulates ideas in others. In the end he hoped to engender some body of wisdom unknown even to him. Big Zu was all about a body of knowledge which he summarized with the title The Tao, The Way. "He who knows the Tao does not speak the Tao and he who speaks the Tao does not know the Tao." How could these two men be more different?

This difference reminds me of my youthful considerations of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. Each man appealed to me but for entirely different reasons. I so admired the rigorous rationality and manly firmness of Malcolm. Martin was less appealing to a callow youth but the spiritual power of his "way" was undeniable. In the end it turned out that in the morning, when you are buttoning your shirt and thinking about the demonstration that you are about to take part in, the rigors of reason and the manly poise are unsustaining. Doubt and fear will invade and distract and dissuade. There is a need for clarity if this thing is to be done. Martin offered that clarity.

When my cat can sees the bottom of her bowl, she knows what to do. At first she comes to me with what I deem as affection which I return by petting her head. Determined as she is she continues these friendly gestures until I come to say to her "I love you too but I am busy thinking about something now so go away." She persists and eventually begins to speak, first quietly and then more firmly. And persist she does until I finally realize that she is not overcome with kind regard for me but rather she has seen the bottom of her bowl and she knows she must move me to answer her need. Finally I get it.

And in this way I am approaching my moment of clarity. I am beginning to see the bottom of the bowl. I know what to do. I will ask, I will insist, I will demand that those who hold the scepter of authority respond to my need and if they refuse then I no longer have any use for the relationship. I will plow other fields, fish other waters, hunt other forests and forget them and all their disputations.

There was an interesting exchange yesterday involving several posts and lots of comments critiquing the content and character of the participation here at the Café.  It set me to wondering how different this site might be if it lilted right instead of left.  These are my conclusions about those contributors and their efforts:

Richard Mellon Day:  A retired billionaire who is seldom seen in public and is reputed to have the most extensive collection of loungewear since Louis XVI.  He lives mostly in flight in a luxuriously appointed Boeing 767, landing only to purchase his favorite brands of cigarettes and a custom version of Cheese Doodles prepared under contract by a gourmet bakery in Minnesota.

Day's articles characteristically focus on his lifelong love of tyrannical leaders from the Early Middle Ages whom he memorializes in what can be only characterized as romanticized versions of these historical despots.  He is particularly fond of using the barely historical character, Archibald the Merciless, a semi-mythical Welsh king whose court and kin were renowned in their time for their mendacity.  Richard celebrates this ethic of self-indulgence in allegorical stories about Archibald that examine and enthusiastically promote such autocratic sentimentality. Day also writes about contemporary issues in which he consistently argues that it is the few wealthy and well placed who must dominate the masses of untermenschen.    

Phyllis Godsend:  TheraP as she is affectionately known is a televangelist and head of the largest mega church congregation in Southern Montana.  Her extraordinary fund raising ability allowed her to launch her own telecommunications satellite using Chinese aerospace assets.  She has her own cable network and appears daily for several hours advising and counseling her teleflock. 

Godsend's contributions to the Café are sporadic but the theme is always the same.  "I will share your pain with you if you will share your cash with me. Pass it on."  There have been several attempts to prosecute Ms. Godsend for this as being a classic "Pyramid scam" but all were settled out of court or were dropped after the untimely deaths of the complainants.

Angelina Beau l'Homme:   Angelina uses the handle LisB in honor of her lifelong relationship with Liz Cheney. 

Angelina writes as a staunch defender of the stay at home stay-at-home.  She is the only woman elected President of the all-male Promise Keepers because of her tireless efforts promoting the notion of "Equality In Subservience", that women can rule by acquiescence. 

Nancy Luntz: Aka Stratofrog: A retired CIA cryptologist and speech writer for Republicans like President George Bush; considered by Conservatives as the dean of political rhetoric and phrasemaking.  William F. Buckley Jr. said in his auto-obituary that he always wished he could write like Stratofrog. 

Her most notable contribution was when she worked tirelessly with Sarah Palin to train her to end every sentence with "and also."

Quintilius Bubkes O'Hare: Writing as Quinn Esq. is the scion of a wealthy dynasty of Canadian Seventh Day Adventists.  His grandfather, Sean Caligula O'Hare, served as a missionary to the King of Siam in the late Nineteenth century where he convinced the King that the excrement of a rare species of Canadian raccoon had aphrodisiac properties.  The subsequent trade agreements made the O'Hare family enormously wealthy.

A recluse, Quinn bursts on the Café scene unannounced from time to time in defense of inherited wealth.  His unique style of discourse is partly the religious fervor of a preacher and partly the circumspection of a man whose wealth is the product of trading in animal poop. 

This is just a small example of the caste of characters that I imagined might populate the TPM Café if it wasn't so liberal.

(Author's note: Caffeine is an amazing drug.)

In the legendary science fiction movie "Forbidden Planet," the plot is very simple.  A highly evolved race of beings (the Krell) on a far away planet mysteriously disappeared without explanation.  This species had evolved to such a state of knowledge and technical skill that they were able to harness immense  power to materialize their every want and need using only telepathic control of that immense power - "without instrumentality' as the movie explains.  The mystery of why they disappeared is unraveled when a group of human astronauts arrive on the planet to rescue another group of humans who found the planet years before.  The rescuers are at once attacked by some impossibly powerful "creature."  It seems that the last surviving human from the first landing, Morbius, had tapped into the system that the Krell had created.   He had the telepathic command of that great creative power.   The rescuers puzzle out that, as the dialogue reads:

Rescuer to Morbius: Like you, the Krell forgot one deadly danger... their own subconscious hate and lust for destruction.

Morbius: The beast. The mindless primitive. Even the Krell must have evolved from that beginning. And so those mindless beasts of the subconscious... had access to a machine that could never be shut down.  The secret devil of every soul on the planet... all set free at once to loot and maim... and take revenge and kill!

My poor Krell! After a million years of shining sanity... they could hardly have understood what power was destroying them.

- - -

I submit this for your consideration as you and I try to puzzle out the phenomenon of Bush, Cheney, the torture policy and the rapid collapse of the foundational precepts of our culture.  Of course we can continue to diligently examine the thoughts of those who wrote our Constitution and review the history of our past treatment of enemies and even look to religion, philosophy and ancient history to find clues; but perhaps we need to step back and see that Bush and Cheney may be  hard to fathom because they reside inside each of us.  They are the "mindless primitive" that most of us conquered in our formative years and placed under the firm control of our higher selves.  Control it we did, but we could never destroy it.  It is always there, in the shadows, and now in our forgetfulness we have allowed it access to the power of our civilization. 

It may not then be a problem of us vs. them.  Rather it may be a matter of one part of us saying "No" to another part of ourselves.  Growing up the first time was not easy.  This will not be easy either.

The wizard hurried down the corridor with his heavy robes rustling and his heavy breath panting. "It is never wise to keep the king waiting" he thought as he pushed on the heavy doors of the king's reception hall.  "Ah wizard.  I almost forgot I sent for you."  The wizard was relieved.

"Tomorrow is the Lord Narrator's birth remembrance day and I would like you to conjure up a special potion as a gift from all of me to him.  Something he can use and enjoy."

The wizard, never slow to appreciate the politics of any situation, began to quickly compose a list of possibilities in his thoughts but not yet speaking them to his liege.

"My Lord" the wizard said slowly as he bowed in a symbolic obedience.  "My god" is what the wizard actually was thinking.   That Lord Narrator needed a potion all right.  He could use about a hundred. He needs one for:

His abysmal taste in clothes:  Does the man even own anything but bed clothes?

His interminable laughter: His "Ahahahaha" that continually interrupts the serious affairs of state that he is forever sticking his nose into.

And that nose:  It has poked into so many places where it didn't belong that it has become a common epithet. "By Dickday's nose" as the commoners now say when they mean to voice some objection to the wise policies of their betters.   

His happy demeanor:  Does he not realize that we are in the darkest of the dark ages?  It is a time of dragons and plagues and black knights.  This is no time for his frivolous injections of humor and, worse, sympathy. 

His irrepressible impulse to talk:  The man has more stories than a Prince has vices.  None of them are quite true and none of them ever end exactly and none of them make any sense to the august assemblies of the royalty or the clergy.  Only the servants seem to understand him.

The wizard realized he didn't know how long he had been thinking about this.  He looked at the king whose head was nodding slowly and whose eyes were half closed.  The wizard decided it was time to speak.

"Since Your Grace places such value on the contributions of the Lord Narrator I will conjure a potion that will energize him in his efforts for the benefit of all."

"Well thought wizard" responded the King. "A balm for my Lord Narrator it is.  Make is so."

The wizard bowed and retreated from the chamber.  As he strode down the corridor, the wizard already knew the two ingredients he would use:  viagra that is taken from the sweat of a rutting hedgehog and caffeine from the coffee plant.

 "And what will I call it? mused the wizard.  "How about just "Dickday." 

"Ah this wizard stuff is just too easy" he thought to himself and began to improvise on a favorite old tune on his way back to his chamber.

It's been a hard day's night, and I've been working like a dog
It's been a hard day's night, I should be sleeping like a log
But when I get home to you and  that bottle of goo
"Dickday" will make me feel alright

(Happy Birthday old darling)

I recently suggested in a post that the U.S. may be about to jump the shark.  Then I asked, "Are we rapidly becoming a parody of ourselves?" Perhaps I should have said Paraguay and not parody.

As I listened to President Obama's speech on national security I kept asking myself "Who is the audience for this talk?"  It was an unfocused and unstructured effort.  There was no central theme that might be taken for a new "doctrine." If those in attendance were national security experts then there was nothing in the speech for them on which to hang their powdered wigs and compose detailed analyses.  It was a lump of words like a lump of clay.  You can't really dissect something this amorphous and discover any hidden detail. References to "Rule of Law" described a "ruler," in this case "the Law," that seems a weak monarch whose suzerainty comes only at the pleasure of other interests.  Moreover the language was undisciplined and a most un-ambitious effort to explain. Our principles are our strength he says but we may at times follow other principles to secure that strength, or something like that.  The speech had a plaintiff mood more suited to a New Year's resolution than a statement of Executive policy.  And then there were all the references to the prior administration's misjudgments that had such a sound of excuses.  

All of these flaws can be found in just one sentence from the speech. "There is also no question that Guantanamo set back the moral authority that is America's strongest currency in the world."   First of all it ducks the issue.  Ask former vice-President Richard Cheney. There is in fact a raging political question.  It is weak. "Set back?"  More like "broke" I think.  And using a term like "Guantanamo" is just plain evasion of the whole subject. 

In the entertainment world, when a TV series is said to have "jumped the shark" it means that the producers have exhausted the premise of the series and are proceeding to go over the top on their way out.  The series is then canceled and the viewer is left to look to other cable channels for new distractions.  I am beginning to wonder if the U.S. is not about to "jump the shark" and leave the citizenry to find another way of understanding their commonweal, their social contract.  If so then how exactly does one "surf" for a new social understanding?

Two things I have noticed here in the past few days at TPM have led me to this thought.  The first is that the Café, led by the indomitable Mr. DickDay,  has been having some fun with demented speculations.  That in itself is not such a surprise since there are a lot of talented and imaginative contributors here.  The other thing I noticed is the dominance of "deep thought" entries and other snarky headlines on the front page.  It is as if both the creative spirits here and the diligent experts have come to some mutual realization that perhaps the U.S. as a whole has as they say "jumped the shark."  Are we rapidly becoming a parody of ourselves?

 The Justice Department staff has concluded that other Justice Department staff should not be prosecuted for even the clearest violation of the laws governing the behavior of its staff of lawyers.  So what exactly is a Justice Department all about, outside of law enforcement?  I won't even get into the "We don't torture any more except we still do." thing.  It has just become a macabre play on words. Then there is party affiliation.  Senator Specter, a Republican has become a Democrat, except he hasn't, except he will, and on and on.  It raises the question of how would a new citizen of the U.S. rationalize his/her choice of a political party  if the most senior incumbents in those parties can not? And while I am on the subject of citizenship, without Habeas Corpus how is the U.S. not a despotism rather than a democracy as we are fond of claiming?  Under what political philosophy is it my right not to have rights?

There is also the matter of the banks not having any money.  Well I don't have any money.  Does that make me a bank?  If so can I get a zero interest loan from the Federal Reserve?  And anyway if a bank has no money is it a bank or just a store with nothing for sale?  There are two wars going on in pursuit of some unstated purpose other than they have been going on before today.  Or are they even wars any more?

I'll stop.  It seems the poets are laughing and the expert analysts are laughing.  Maybe the whole thing has become laughable and it is time to move on.  I wonder what is on the Animal Planet channel.  Oh god no.  It is probably worse there.  I think I need a vice.

The assistant presented this reply to the magician with certain trepidation.  The magician was not an intemperate man but it seems that physically punishing a servant for the disappointments or discomforts suffered by a master did not violate any rule of Chivalry or Natural Law.  The assistant could only dream of a better day for his ilk. 

"Harumph," was the magician's only reaction.  He turned to his table and scattered the fire that was burning under an iron pot that contained several bats, a mouse, various herbs and a volume of table wine that had begun to turn to vinegar.  There was no need to continue brewing the potion intended to re-animate the court at Camelot.  The king was awake but simply not inclined to discourse.  The magician slumped back into his chair.  The assistant having waited long enough upon his master's wishes returned to the opposite corner of the chamber and resettled himself in the musty clump of furs that was his bed. 

"I can only imagine" the magician thought to himself, "what manner of difficulty the King and his Court are silently brewing in their own pot of conceits and ambitions. It is hard enough to undue the damage to man and beast caused by their self-absorbed carrying on, but when allowed to simmer and steep into one of their pungent brews of mayhem, even a magician of my abilities is at odds to find a remedy."

'Will it be a woman again?" he wondered.  The Ladies of the Court had long ago tired of overwrought declarations of devotion.  Such declarations inevitably emanated from the gaggle of Princes and knights following one of their indulgent visits to the castle wine closet.  The Ladies were not averse to compliments, but a pledge of honor and service from the same knight three times in the same week, well, that perfume loses its charm.  Disentangling all these commitments was the work of a Papal Legate, not a magician.

"Or would it be another fire breathing dragon?"  The last one turned out to be a tired old milk cow that had disturbed a carelessly unattended lantern, setting fire to a small barn and out building.  But that was not the story repeated with flourish and copious amounts of fermented liquids at the "victory" celebrations that followed the demise of the poor cow.

"Or would it be a quest?"  Quests were the inevitable follow on to the habit of profligate spending that was the hallmark of the court at Camelot.  Once the bottom of the coin purse became visible it wasn't long before some imagined slight of honor by a neighboring kingdom would lead to a great clamor for the return of that honor along with the spoils of some retributive invasion.  Was it ever thus with rulers?

The magician realized that the sooner he learned the details of the court's current endeavors the better for him.  "Where the hell is the Lord Narrator?  I need to know what they are up to."

Sometimes it is hard to remember what it is like being a child and so it may be hard to recall why a game like this was such fun. To be a child is to be full of the élan for life and its many excitements and distractions. Self-control is one of the hardest tasks for a child and this game is a tease about the conflict between self-direction and self-control. And it is a bit of farce on the theme of dealing with adults, who are creatures full of rules and directions and forever insisting on good behavior, on following the rules.

Eventually we all grow up and slowly, inexorably loose that internal voice of self-direction in favor of the utility and even benefits of following the instructions of others. "Good behavior" becomes simply "behavior" as the child in us goes to sleep and the adult, that creature of self-control, takes up the role of "Simon."

It never occurred to me quite this way before but yesterday as I read President Obama's statement accompanying the torture memoranda, I started to think of "growing up" as a moral failing. As a child there was a loud inner voice that contended with the various directives from others. As an adult it seems I should be content to wait and listen for the phrase "Simon says." Without that inner voice this game is no longer any fun.

The sound of a bell tolling in the distance distracted the magician. He looked out the window, saw that the sun was high in the sky, and noted that it was the ringing of the noontime bell he was hearing. He thought to himself that this makes the third noon that has passed without a single visitor from the castle's assemblage. Never had he been left to himself for so long a time. Usually there was a prince's nasty hangover from the previous night's banquet to treat or a knight with a wound from some jousting contest or a high Lord or the King himself with some dream to be explained or some anxiety to be relieved. Now for three days there was nothing. The magician thought the goings on at Camelot was the work of fools and lunatics but it now occurred to him that he had taken a certain pleasure in following these affairs. He considered himself the most educated man in the realm having studied under several wizards. He had always thought of himself as a above the sort of things that consumed the attention of princes and knights. This noon however found him uneasily missing the hubbub of the royal circus. Strange, he thought to himself, that he should be so discomforted.

And with this the magician arose from his chair and moved to his wall of books. He determined that he would research this unusual quietude. Perhaps there was a potion or ritual that might release Camelot from its torpor. The magician wished to again here the knock on his chamber door and be entertained by the noble silliness that was the court at Camelot.

Clump shifted his rough tunic from loose about his shoulders to more tightly bound with a single pull on a leather thong, this being the sum and substance of his morning toilette. He stepped out of his mud hut and into the commons, a circular clearing around which stood in humble slouches the similar abodes of his villein neighbors. In the center of the circle a fire burned and several men and women were warming themselves, fussing with a boiling pot of some kind of tea or just standing still, struggling to grapple with the awakening consciousness that is the lot of all peasants in all times. Clump grabbed a green onion and began to chew, hoping to replace the flavor of duck that currently inhabited his mouth.

"Morning Clump," one of the elders gummed, his teeth having fled long ago along with his youth.

"Morning Throd," Clump returned.

Several other "Ugh's" and "Morn's" rose from the assemblage, intoned in that guttural timbre of their shared Germanic mother tongue. Clump acknowledged in kind.

"Un Moor Balott Clump." someone said.

"Oh my god. Un Moor Balott" Clump thought to himself. Suddenly Clump longed to be back in his hut, laying in his straw and clutching the duck, dreaming of great mountains of potatoes and onions. "Un Moor Balott."

The mere sound of that phrase was like a dull pain in the knee or elbow, like the pain that comes with too many hours in the fields rooting and planting and otherwise tending the earth. Everyone in the village had this same reaction and so this phrase was never intoned except on the actual day of the ritual. In these times the ritual was being observed more and more frequently but still no one uttered the phrase except on the day itself.

It had not always been so. Clump remembered that his father's father had spoken of a "Balott" but it seemed as though the memory was of a happier ritual. And the father's father had described only one Great Balott, not the serial repetitions of the now times. Clump's father had spoken of three or four re-enactments of the Great Balott which in his father's time were called "Un Balott." These rituals were not as happy as the original but were unremarkable compared to the Great Balott and the details had been easily lost to memory. It was Clump's fate that observance of the ritual was becoming a commonplace, and thus the villeins called it "Un Moor Balott."

The contemporary ritual was not rigidly proscribed but its major elements were always the same. First the King would herald an upcoming Balott. The day of the observance was named in the herald. The place was always the same, the great open plain that stood before the King's fortress. The peasants were commanded to assemble on the plain at the hour of maximum discomfort, the high hour of the day. Of course the day's work had to be compressed into the few morning hours that were free before this convocation formed. So the crowd once assembled was already tired and shall I say acquiescent in mood thinking as much about an afternoon nap as about the goings on right in front of them.

First to emerge from the fortress were the well to do merchants and highborn relations of the real princes. Dressed in finery that glinted in the sunlight and rustled with soft sounds never heard in the village commons, they strode in a long procession before the assemblage. The crowd seemed to shrink in size as the shoulders of the peasants shrunk down and any stiffness in the back was replaced by the curved bow of some hapless supplicant.

Next came the knights with their shinning armaments. Sunbeams danced from their swords and dotted the crowd with speckles of yellow and white. Such a show of force of arms had the effect of shaping the crowd as if an invisible fence had been erected around it. The crowd was now still and in the shape of a trapezoid with smoothed sides.

Finally the King, flanked by the princes, emerged. They took up a line in front of the wellborn and the knights and, as the king stood in the center in silence, the princes began to speak, all at once. Their speaking intonation was soft, lacking the native guttural harshness. And the words were soft with endings that drifted off like "ience" and "ent" and "oise" and "illions." Some gestured as if to give a warning. Others showed open hands as if asking for help. Yet others wrung their hands with anxiety or gripped their foreheads as if in deep thought. Clump, like all the others in the crowd, could make no sense of the words but the message was clear, and the same as it always was with this ritual. Some great danger threatened the realm. It was very complicated and even mysterious. There was much cause for worry.

This display went on, as it always did in the ritual, for some time until the king stepped forward, raising his hand. The princes fell silent. Facing the princes and in a voice loud enough to be heard by all in the crowd, the king inquired "Un Moor Balott?" The princes responded in an affirmative tone "Un Moor Balott" The king then turned to the crowd and again asked "Un Moor Balott?" The crowd knew its part. As one they responded like the princes "Un Moor Balott." This call and response between the king and the mob was repeated three times. Then the king raised both hands and this time in his own affirmation said "Un Moor Balott." And it was over. The rulers disappeared into the fortress and the ruled turned and began their journey back home.

As he walked home, Clump wondered about this now oft repeated ritual. "What is the point?" he thought. If they want a "Balott" then have a "Balott," one big one and get it over with, as it had been with his father's father. Why serial "Balotts," and why always Un Moor Balott. "You are right" Clump heard someone behind him say. It seems Clump had been thinking out loud. He turned around and it was one of his fellow villagers, Krug. "There should be a great Balott like in the before times. The gods will not take kindly to being nagged repeatedly. The outcome of all these incantations may be very bad for us all."

Clump wasn't sure if Krug was right or the princes were right or the king was right but Clump was certain that his daily work would remain unchanged and that soon again there would be "Un Moor Balott." Such was the wisdom of the ordinary man in the age of knights and chivalry.

Every morning I get up and follow a ritual of making a latte and then sitting down to browse my list of twenty some news and commentary sites. It takes a while depending on the content of the sites. I leave TPM Café to the last because I know I will linger here. It is the real pleasure of my internet day. I save the best wine for last. Not today.

Today I made my latte and came directly here. I want to comment on his new post. I'm tired of seeing a post by Dickday after it has been up for a few hours. His posts themselves make me think and dream and laugh and mumble obscenities, all the while furiously petting the cat and explaining to her each pun and joke and allusion. That takes a while. Then I set to reading the comments and thus begins another journey, an odyssey really. Like Odysseus I just want to get home but the journey around this Mediterranean Sea of Dickday comments takes me to all kinds of exotic places. Sometimes I forget home altogether.

Eventually I come to the end. I would like to comment but by this time any good thought I might have has been taken by someone else. There isn't much left for me to say. It reminds me of when I would arrive late to the pastry shop down by my office. After the morning rush there are no donuts left. The baker offers to sell me the little sheet of waxed paper that has the drippings of glazed sugar and little drops of fruit filling and a few sprinkles of chocolate, but no donut. I want a donut. I need a donut. All the donuts are gone. So I have determined to be the first in line at the pastry shop. I will have my donut, er, I mean my comment.

All of this made me think of the Peter Faulk character in an odd little movie called "Castle Keep." It is an allegory about war made by Hollywood, a place that really doesn't have the subtly for allegory but the movie kind of works. It is set in WW II. An American military unit is assigned to defend an old castle that sits at an important crossroads. The soldiers in the unit are tired of war and the movie is mostly dialogue expressing their discontents. Peter Faulk, a sergeant, goes into the town, takes up with a woman and helps her run her bakery. Eventually the Germans appear and a battle is in the offing. It is at this point that the sergeant launches into a tirade about the absurdity of the whole enterprise that is the war. He wants his work, his life, to have some meaning and he finds it in the bakery. He just wants to make bread.

Of the many things that Dickday is these days, he is also like this sergeant. He makes my bread. So I sit at the door to his bakery and wait for it to open. I will have my bread and thank god for the baker. It may not seem like much but there are those who say that the French Revolution began as a riot over bread.

Lets see now $4.34 Trillion divided by 330 million, carry the seven and...

Oh sorry.  I'm a little distracted.  Spring has sprung and

In the Spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love .

Love and money.  Love and money.  Two powerfull forces both of which are swirling these days.  One, Love, resides within and has the positional advantage as it were.  The other, money, is external and has great mobility.  It can approach from many sides and appear in many forms.  A person struggles with the elemental forces all the time but in Spring there is one that sits on the throne, a fact that should be keep in mind.  These days the tug of that ancient tide pulls on everything that is thought, said and done.  Economists and critics take note.

In the poem Tennyson speaks to our current crisis in these words:

What is that which I should turn to, lighting upon days like these?

Every door is barr'd with gold, and opens but to golden keys.

 

Every gate is throng'd with suitors, all the markets overflow.

I have but an angry fancy; what is that which I should do?

And then the contending answers:

I had been content to perish, falling on the foeman's ground,

When the ranks are roll'd in vapour, and the winds are laid with sound.

 

But the jingling of the guinea helps the hurt that Honour feels,

And the nations do but murmur, snarling at each other's heels.

 

Can I but relive in sadness? I will turn that earlier page.

Hide me from my deep emotion, O thou wondrous Mother-Age!

 

Make me feel the wild pulsation that I felt before the strife,

When I heard my days before me, and the tumult of my life;

 

Yearning for the large excitement that the coming years would yield,

Eager-hearted as a boy when first he leaves his father's field

More war debates and political fighting? Maybe.  Remanage my portfolio?  Perhaps. Hear the voices from my beginnings, from my Mother-Age, and start anew? Hmmm.

You may think this is an effete and distracted lump of words.  But I ask you "Is there not a little hop in your step that was missing a few weeks ago?"  Even if you are standing in line at the bank or the supermarket, is there not something nagging at you a little?  Are you a little on edge?  And if you were called to testify at a Senate hearing on the bailout, would your toe be tapping?

Welcome to Spring 2009.  It is time to rediscover Love.

Inherent in the notion of "bailout" one can find two principles.

The first: One must determine whom one is attempting to rescue.

The second:  One can only "bailout" a smaller volume into a larger one.

Take the familiar example of the life boat.  It is assumed but not necessary that one would "bailout" the lifeboat to save its occupants.  Logically the reverse could be true.  One might wish to feed the sharks, in which case one would place more water into the lifeboat.  Determining whom one wishes to rescue provides what Aristotle would call the Final Cause of the act of "bailing out," its purpose.

If the Final Cause is to rescue the occupants, one is still constrained by the second principle.  It is not in the nature of things that one can "bailout" a larger volume into a smaller one.  That would be properly termed a "bail-in." Again for Aristotle, the Formal Cause of 'bailing out" is moving the smaller volume into the larger.

In light of this let us consider our present economic circumstance and the policies that are meant to address it.  Which is the larger volume - the debt of the financial institutions or the wealth of the Federal Government.  We have tended to think in terms of individual institutions, but that is like thinking of the ocean one bucket full at a time.  The total volume, the sea of debt, is most likely larger than the wealth of the Federal Government.  I have seen numbers suggesting that the total value of the "bad paper" equals the GDP of the entire world for one year.  I suppose stretched into eternity, the sea of debt is less than the wealth of the Federal Government.  After all, given enough time, one person could drink the oceans dry. In practical terms however the reverse is actually the case - the debt is the larger volume.

And so I conclude that what we actually have is a policy of "bail-in," in which case the occupants of the lifeboat are not the Final Cause.  In fact the Final Cause, the "purpose" of the "bail-in" is to feed the sharks. QED.

I grew up fascinated with many of the things my uncle did and especially his élan for doing them. It was infectious. I often tried to copy both his deeds and his optimism. I succeeded in copying only some of the deeds but he never stopped being my inspiration, until lately.

I first noticed the change in my uncle in his conversation. Since I was little we always talked. I would ask many questions and he would always give me answers. Often I didn't understand his answers but I could always come back and ask more questions and he would have more answers. Then a few years ago his answers started to get shorter and if I asked more questions he would just say "That's the way it is." I was getting older and for a while I just concluded that he thought that I should be answering my own questions and not keep coming back to him. But he was my uncle, no, The uncle. I had come to depend on our relationship as important in my life and anyway, he did so much that I knew he knew a lot of things that I still needed to know.

Then I began to notice that while he still did many things, he acted more like they were chores that he would just as soon avoid. His many smiles were one by one replaced by sighs, an occasional curse, and eventually silence. I won't get into the details but at some point I found myself wondering if he didn't want to be my uncle any more. Maybe he didn't even want to be himself anymore. I made a few attempts to cheer him up but that didn't really work. I am his nephew and he is my uncle and I can't make it the other way around.

Over the past few years I have thought about this a lot. I have read a lot about things like mental health, dementia, and even nutrition and cancer. In the end I think my uncle is depressed. I love my uncle and I love his children, my cousins, and their children. I have concluded that I cannot replace my uncle but I must learn to live without him as he was. It is a hard thing. I will keep his wisdom from the past. I will remember the joy when he was there for me. But as I plot my future along with the future of my relationships with my cousins and their families, I will have to look elsewhere for the answers and the joy. I wish I could help my uncle more. He was so good to me. That will always be my memory of my uncle.

(This post is a musing on JMM's question about why, if Geithner couldn't answer Senator Cantwell's question, at least he could explain why he couldn't answer.)

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