My bi-polar self

I cannot remember in my life ever being so torn between such totally different political positions.  Last night when the news was announced that Congress had voted down the bail-out plan, I experienced two diametrically opposed feelings.  One was a kind of vicious delight:  “Fantastic!  We ‘ordinary people’ as you in Washington so like to call us, we working taxpayers, will not bail out Wall Street just because, you, unlike us, are too big to fail.”

My other feeling was profound concern.  Wall Street plunged 777 points, searing into the savings put aside for a first home, a wedding, college tuition, or decimating a life’s earnings and pension plans of millions of Americans who are not getting a golden handshake from their banks or anyplace else.  Already, it is not just the bankers and their minions who are going to work to find that their offices are closed as the result of bankruptcy.  Unemployment is already soaring – the auto repair shop worker, the sale person at the local drug store, the secretary, the workers in small businesses – are already trying to figure out how to feed their families on one instead of two salaries, or maybe on none at all.  Tent cities are already being erected by people whose houses have been foreclosed and who can’t get a job.  And it can get worse.  Much much worse.  For ordinary people, for taxpayers, many of whom were among those who shared in the trillions of dollars lost when it plunged 777 points yesterday.

Tonight I still do not know what I hope Congress will – or won’t do.  I suspect serious papers will be written for many years to come discussing what could have been done, what would have been better or worse, quite possibly with no more agreement among the experts then than we have now. 

I do hope Congress will pass a bail-out bill of some kind on Thursday.  However good it may be, it won’t make everything easier and better with one easy gigantic dollop of money.

But I will, I think, always feel a spark of delight when I remember that Congress, at the behest of the voters, refused at least once, to be railroaded by the fear-mongering that the administration used to get us into the Iraq war.  There might be a lot of hard times ahead, but at least we didn’t go in fear and dread on our knees asking the Powers of Government and Finance in their wisdom to save us.

PS:  A few morsels to maintain a pretence of sanity:

• Apparently Palin thinks Biden might be too old to run for vice-president.  This is so unbelievable that in any other campaign I would dismiss it outright as untrue.
• The paper here also said that McCain announced in Ohio that he’d been responsible for getting the bail-out plan through Congress.  That was before it didn’t get through, of course. 
• The Wall Street Journal accidentally published a McCain advertisement a day early.  Unfortunately, it was due out the morning after the McCain-Obama debate, and announced that McCain had won.
• www.intrade.com, a website that takes bets on who will win the next election today gave Obama a 62.5% chance of winning, McCain 37.5%.  People are putting real money on these bets, so it might reflect what they actually think will happen, rather than merely hope.  Or not.

Sleeping thru it all

I woke up again last night about 3 am and instead of going back to sleep, spent the next two hours worrying before finally getting up and going to my computer.  This is becoming a pattern, though when I start worrying about where to tell my husband to bury my ashes if I die before he does, I think things may be getting out of hand.  If this is the lengths to which I am going worrying about the current state of world affairs, it has got to stop.

Being a researcher at heart, I will test the following hypotheses to see if I can restore my usual 8-hours of uninterrupted sleep.  If none of them work, I might have to consider changing my citizenship to a remote island untouched by American influence.  Or is that going back to my ashes problem?

• Hypothesis 1:  Stop drinking caffeinated coffee with lunch.  Difficulty rating:  Heroic
• Hypothesis 2:  Limit my pre-dinner gin & tonic to one a week.  Difficulty rating:  Courageous
• Hypothesis 3: Do not skip my four o’clock exercise routine more than once a week.  Difficulty rating:  Extreme
• Hypothesis 4:  Take a 15 minute afernoon nap so I can stay up until midnight in at least a semi-coherent state.  Difficulty rating:  Superhuman.

Well, I’ll start with the easiest one first and work my way up.

For everyone caught in the middle

Well, Congress seems to have agreed some sort of rescue plan, for what it is worth.  The more I read, the more sceptical I am, but since the details of the final package haven’t yet been released, I can only hope it is not as self-serving as I fear.

It is the end of the day here as I write, and as I prepare for another day, I am resolved not to live my life in perpetual mental conflict with the political system for which I increasingly have so little regard.  I am not in a position to influence the outcome, and even if I were, I am not wise enough.  But I can remember that there are many people being crushed by this crisis, not merely squeezed as I am.  As DJC says in yesterday’s comment, if you are neither too big nor too small to qualify for help, one must somehow survive on one’s own.

This is not meant as a consolation prize or an expression of sympathy for those caught in the middle with nothing.  For people in real need, I admit this is a bitter irony, but a hidden benefit of not getting help is that at least one is not corrupted by the system of hand outs. 

That’s what worries me about giving $700 billion to the banks.

PS:  The best analysis so far that I’ve read about what to do about the financial crisis is by Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel-prize winning economist at Columbia University in an article in The Nation.   If you’ve not already had enough, there’s a decent summary at http://www.truthout.org/092808D

“You can’t fool all of the people all of the time”

If I were not worried about the effects on my personal income, I don’t know if I would be as exercised as I am about the plan being debated in Congress which, even as I write, is meant to save the World Economy.  But first and foremost, the American Economy. 

Or is that what we’re really talking about?  Are we, as so many “ordinary people” think, merely bailing out the Fat Cats who got us into this mess in the first place?  The claim is that the financial mess is too complex for us everyday mortals to understand, but the more I read, the more I have my doubts.  I am not a dumb person nor am I uneducated, nor am I uninformed about this crisis.  I’ve read economists’ opinions from around the world on as many sides of the issue as I can find.

Most popular articles explaining the problem focus on the complexity of the loan bundling that has distributed dodgy loans throughout the global financial system, like cancerous cells hiding from view until they erupt to destroy the institution harbouring them in a weekend.

But I think there is another problem which is just as big, and that is Trust:

First:  How trustworthy is human expertise?   Do you remember the great computer crash that was supposed to happen when the date changed to the year 2000?  All that money spent on software by businesses and individuals convinced by the experts that if they didn’t, airlines, trains, traffic lights, banks, insurance companies, government offices and businesses everywhere along with all our personal computers would cease to function properly.  I think the experts were probably sincere in this case.  They were just wrong.  I’m sitting here now thinking of hundreds of examples when experts have been wrong, but this is a mere blog posting, not a book, so I will stop giving examples.

Second:  How trustworthy is our government?  How about the Weapons of Mass Destruction that Saddam Hussein had and was a major justification for America’s launching the Iraq war?  Whether this was incompetence or deliberate lies on the part of our current administration in Washington doesn’t seem relevant.  For whatever reason, they got it horribly wrong.  I’m wondering about trusting this same incompetent and/or lying government again about the need for an immediate $700 billion bailout.

Third:  How trustworthy are the banks?  We’ve been told for months that the crux of the credit crunch problem is that the banks won’t lend to each other because they don’t trust that other banks are telling the truth about the full nature of the debt they hold.  Washington Mutual Bank which went bust this weekend was found to have been fiddling the true nature of the equity loans it held.  Bankers obviously think all the other banks are doing as much hiding as they can too.

Fourth:  How trustworthy are the politicians?  Which ones have enough integrity to pass legislation they think the country needs even if the people who elect them don’t like it? 

So as an “ordinary person,” here are the questions I’m asking myself:  Will the world as we know it really end if no package is passed by Monday morning?  And if the package is passed, will it really start to solve the problem?  Does it matter that on my last reading of the proposed bill, there is nothing in it to help people facing imminent foreclosures?  Does it matter that in Black and Latino communities, nearly half the mortgages are subprime?  Does it matter that almost by definition, the banks that are going to be helped the most by this proposed bail-out are the banks who have been the most irresponsible in their lending practices? 

I dislike the term “ordinary people” intensely.  It’s a subtle way of putting people down, of suggesting that their opinion is sub-prime, if you will.  Whether they are right or wrong, I don’t think people are ever ordinary.  What “ordinary people” think is often a source of great insight.  But as one of our wiser predecessors once said “You can fool some of the people all of the time; and you can fool all of the people some of the time; but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.” 

My problem is that I don’t know which it is in relation to this bail-out.

My grandfather’s reading glass

I heard a busker on the street in Cambridge yesterday playing “My Grandfather’s Clock,” a folk song from my childhood, to which, unusually, I remember most of the words.  “My grandfather’s clock was too big for the shelf, so it stood 50 years on the floor.  But it stopped dead never to go again when the old man died.”

Today I was sewing, and as I always do, I used a small magnifying glass no more than 3/4″ in diameter to thread the needle.  This glass belonged to my husband’s grandfather who used it to read as his eyes changed with age.  Today, in similar circumstances, I have reading glasses placed in strategic spots throughout the house, with an extra set for my coat pocket.  But Peter’s grandfather did not have that luxury.  His mother died in childbirth, and six months later his father died.  He was raised by sundry relatives, and by the age of eleven was working in a brick factory.  He had come from generations of pharmacists and doctors, but times were rough in the north of England in the first part of the 20th century and within five years he was down the coal mine.

But he was a reader, and that made him something of a rebel.  Unemployment was high, and so when men were let go, he was one of the first to be fired.  His daughter Annie – who became Peter’s mother - went out to work as a store clerk, and he and his wife made buns and got up at 5 a.m. to sell tea to miners on their way to work.  And he kept reading.  When he died, he left behind notebooks of records of the weather and the price of wheat and government policies and the plight of the workers. 

When Peter was a child, his own father worked the night shift managing a coal mine – essential war work.  Peter’s grandfather in many ways took his place.  He might have left school at the age of six, but he read so voraciously that he was truly well-educated.  He took Peter on long walks and talked to him about economics and social class and workers’ rights.  He taught him to love poetry and hiking and music.  When he died, along with his notebooks, he left his mouth organ and his reading glass. 

We still have them both.  And every time I pick up his reading glass, I feel a surge of gratitude to this man who owned so little and left behind so much.  I know because I’m married to his grandson. 

I never met Peter’s grandfather, but I would be proud to leave a legacy as rich as he has.

Worry Management

I wonder how many people like me are wishing we could get back to Life as Usual.  Those by-gone days when whole days were filled with worrying about what to have for dinner, whether the local team won the big game, or even what to wear.  Somehow it feels shallow to worry about when to have my hair done when there are much much bigger things to worry about.

Is the world’s financial system going to crash, taking us all with it?  Is McCain going to duck out the debate with Obama with the lame excuse that he’s too busy with important matters?  Will the American voter buy it?  Then there’s global warming and food shortages, and torture and almost all of Africa including AIDS and sickle cell anaemia and malaria, along with swathes of Latin America, not to mention the nuclear ambitions of Iran and North Korea .  And course the present occupants of the White House.

Looking at it from that perspective, I wonder if the good old days of everyday manageable worries are gone forever.

I have the niggling feeling there is something about life for me to learn here, but I don’t know what it is yet.

Not knowing if I know

“The world is governed more by appearances than realities, so that it is fully as necessary to seem to know something as to know it.”
Daniel Webster

The truth is that I am rarely sure of the difference.  Even when I’m talking about myself, which might be why I girate regularly between certainty and doubt.  But I do spend most of my time on the doubt side of the swing.

Or do I mean teeter totter?

A dish better eaten cold

I have been talking about food all week, but this post isn’t about food.  It’s about revenge.  And about the $700 billion the Administration says Congress must give it before the end of the week to Save the World as We Know It.

To tell the truth, I don’t know how much 700 billion dollars is.  I do know it’s more than $50 dollars for every single year the universe has been in existence.  It’s about $150 for every year our solar system with the sun and earth and all the other planets have been in existence.  But I can’t get my mind around that kind of money.  I know it’s a lot and that the value of the dollar on world markets has been dropping as people who do understand these numbers take it on board.

I do understand, though, that the world’s financial system is in a seriously precarious condition and that it is not out of the question that we might all be hurling headlong over the precipice that could make the 1930’s depression look like a chilly spring day.  And I’m sure that the only source for enough money that might avert this catastrophe is the taxpayer.

Which is where the cold dish comes in.  Revenge is the dish better eaten cold.  Because eaten hot, revenge often destroys the avenger along with the avenged.  And in this case, the destruction will be terrible for millions and millions of people around the world.  And so I am torn between resenting being asked to help bail out the Bankers, the Makers of the Universe, who have already personally enriched themselves by millions and millions of dollars, and no doubt want more golden handshakes and mega-bonuses for helping to clean up the mess they have helped create with their greed and arrogance.  But if we let our banking system fail, the little people – the middle classes and poor – will suffer far more than the Makers of the Universe.

And so I am trying mightily to resist my desire for suicidal revenge, and to support a rational plot which might help the bankers in its attempt to help everyone else who is not responsible for this disastrous mess.

On the other hand, I am grateful that Congress is not willing to give Paulson et al. a blank check with no accountability, no oversight, and no bottom to the amount of money they can spend in bailing out America’s financial institutions.  The possibilityof ceding to Paulson’s two and a half page request without qualification strikes me as terrifying as not doing anything and waiting for the bridge to fall.

But I do hope they act before they leave to go home for the election campaign, because the system cannot wait until after November 6th for something to be done.

Growing food mother nature’s way

For a relatively small number of people, there is an alternative to industrially-produced food using commercial fertilizers, and to organic food mass-produced in monoculture fields for our supermarkets.  Omnivore’s Dilemma describes Polyface Farms in Virginia, making it probably the best know alternative in America.  The approach used there began in New Zealand and is based on copying nature’s template as closely as possible.  Animals are not treated like machines, but their natural habitat and feeding are respected as completely as possible. 

If you are lucky enough to live in Virginia or Maryland, you can actually buy produce from Polyface Farm, and if you are driving through, there are restaurants that serve food from Polyface.  They’re listed on the Polyface website  http://www.polyfacefarms.com/default.aspx

If natural food and the integrity of how it’s grown matters, do check it out.  Just reading about them has changed my attitude toward our own little garden.  And I do not begrudge the extra expense for getting food as close to pasture-fed produce as I can.

And I’m wondering about the pros and cons of buying strawberries from Kenya in the middle of winter.  Being able to access food from other climates is of nutritional benefit in the winter when you live in a climate like Great Britain’s.  On the other hand, it looks to me as if there are huge benefits to encouraging people to eat locally-grown foods.

Another morsel of thought about food

Until the 1950s, there wasn’t such a thing as commercial fertilizer.  Then a German scientist figured out how to “fix” nitrogen, one of the three essential components needed in the soil to make plants grow.  The traditional way of getting nitrogen into the soil was to rotate crops that alternatively took nitrogen out or put it back in the soil.  Corn which uses nitrogen had to be rotated with a crop like legumes that put it back in, for instance, making it impossible to grow corn in the same field more than twice every 4-5 years.

“Fixing” nitrogen combines nitrogen with hydrogen gasses under intense heat and pressure provided by fossil fuel.  The resulting synthetic fertilizer by-passes the need for crop rotation and makes monoculture possible.  As Pollan points out in Omnivore’s Dilemma, this trade-off ultimately demands a potentially dangerously high price in soil erosion and depletion.  But in the meantime – and this is critically important – it increased the world’s food supply sufficiently to feed a rapidly growing population.  Without chemical fertilizers, millions of people would never have been born, or would have died of starvation.  Without chemical fertilizers today, more than half the world’s present population would not have food.

I’m thinking about the problems of fixing nitrogen that will inevitably one day become too big to ignore at the same time as I have been reading an analysis predicting a world-wide shortage – not first of food – but of water.  Water to drink, to cook and wash with, to keep one’s animals alive, but above all, water for the plants that are grown to feed us.

At the same time, our financial markets are being shaken world-wide to their very core, and another terrorist bomb exploded, destroying a Marriott hotel in Pakistan.

And I am remembering that the fourteenth century in Europe was wracked by the plague which wiped out whole villages, and eventually killed one out of every three people in the entire population.  On top of this the weather was changing and led to almost a decade of famine in which another 15% of the population died.  The Catholic church was in the midst of a schism in which rival popes set up courts in Rome and Avignon, and France and England fought a war on and off that lasted a century.

When it was over, the old order of medieval Europe had been overthrown, and the foundations of the modern world were in place.

I wonder if the 21st century will result in a similar dramatic upheaval and change our societies as profoundly.