This financial crisis is more than what it appears.
It is symptomatic of a society that sometime over the last 30 years lost its way by seeking not the road less traveled, but instead the quickest route.
It is the culmination of a mindset that increasingly became interested in pursuing immediate gratification at any cost.
Look around you. In every area of modern life, the shortcut has become the rule, not the exception.
In sports, we substituted medicine for athleticism as steroids offered the quickest path to success (And I cheered as Mark McGwire belted homer after homer chasing down Maris’ record).
In entertainment, we substituted notoriety for talent as reality television offered the quickest path to fame (And I lapped it up as Richard Hatch ‘survived’ an island and dozens of out-of-control women wooed Flavor Flav).
In war, we substituted power for strategy as shock and awe offered the quickest path to victory (And I couldn’t pull my eyes away as CNN aired its little war video game, the pinball-like sights and sounds of buildings being destroyed and people getting killed).
In friendship, we substituted technology for intimacy as tweets and status updates offered the quickest path to communication (And I blog away, making facile analogies as dreams of writing the Great American Novel slip away).
It goes on and on and on.
We wanted it big, we wanted it all, we wanted it now.
Cheating, if not encouraged, was at least ignored. Just pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.
So is it really any surprise that in business, too, we fell prey to the same phenomenon? In hindsight, it almost seems inevitable that we indulged in this financial alchemy, pursuing policies and practices to make the quick buck while conveniently ignoring the potential long-term negative consequences of our actions. The no-doc loans, the credit default swaps, the collateralized debt obligations belong in the same metaphorical bucket as the anabolic steroid, Omarosa and gastric bypass surgery.
The funny thing is, the issue isn’t due to a loss of work ethic. Most of the bankers who concocted these weapons of mass destruction worked insanely hard at their jobs, just as our medically enhanced athletes put in long hours at the gym, just as our most vacuous reality stars went to incredible lengths to promote themselves (and just as I am spending way too much time trying to fine-tune this post).
And I’m not about to suggest that this eagerness to seek the shortcut is an entirely new development. People have of course always found ways to cheat or exploit the system – it’s just that in the past, the tools were more rudimentary and thus less dangerous (e.g. the spitball and the corked bat just can’t wreak the same havoc as the human growth hormone).
We became too smart and too powerful for our own good. We acquired knowledge and technology, but not the wisdom to use them productively, or to realize that sometimes we should refrain from using them at all.
And unfortunately, our primary solutions to this crisis so far – the stimulus plans, the bailouts, the monetary injections – offer more of the same. We are still seeking the quick, easy way out. Wanting it all, and wanting it now. Not willing to deal with the consequences of our actions.
Which of course makes perfect sense. In a world where man ultimately controls so little, including the time and manner in which he will depart it, how can we be surprised when he believes he has figured out a better way of accomplishing a goal and overplays his hand.
We have gotten what we deserved.
We have somehow lost our way.
We better find it back.
Over on dagblog, one of our writers DF posted an interesting post on the latest drama in our economic crisis called ‘Macroeconomics 101: Spending versus Stimulus, or ‘How I learned to stop worrying and love recession.” It basically discussed how silly some of the recent political commentary has been, particularly the claim by many Republican lawmakers that Obama’s stimulus package was full of programs that would do little to stimulate the economy. This is my response. I encourage everyone to read DF’s original post as there is also a fair amount of continued dialogue in the comment section.
So DF did a stellar job of getting to the heart of our economic crisis and the current debate over Obama’s planned stimulus package and spelling it out simply and effectively. I do, however, have some issues with his thesis.
Unlike DF, I believe there IS a difference between stimulus and pure spending, although where and how you draw that line is admittedly a subjective process. Stimulus is government spending that then encourages corporations and/or individuals to spend money of their own as well. Government spending by itself will certainly add to GDP, but without a stimulative component, it will have very little notable impact (the Consumer ‘C’ in GDP is almost 2/3ds of the total in the US) and certainly will be unlikely to reverse a recession.
Now you can have a legitimate debate about what types of policies are more stimulative than others, and that’s where things get subjective (for instance, giving people money, or tax refunds, would seem by its nature to be stimulative but that stimulus package last year ended up being nothing more than an ineffective short-term stopgap with most of the money going to shore up corroded balance sheets – not the worst thing in the world but not very stimulative).
And where I really disagree with you is that you seem to think government is in a better position to spend than consumers or corporations. With consumers, maybe you could argue the point, given how badly household balance sheets have gotten, but aside from the financial industry, corporate balance sheets are actually in very good health and they could probably invest a lot more capital in the system if they had confidence (and arguably lower tax rates).
Of course, any significant corporate investment also requires a free flowing credit system, which has been dramatically impaired because of our financial crisis. Resolving our toxic asset problem is at least as important as the passage of any stimulus package because not only would it allow credit to flow again (although hopefully in a more rational manner) it would also restore a bit of the confidence that is a necessary prerequisite for any lasting spending by consumers OR corporations.
But getting back to the government and its ability to help us spend our way out of this mess …. they’re in the worst shape of anybody to do the work! Obviously, the government CAN spend the money since they control the printing press, but that won’t mean it’s a good idea. At $1.2 trillion dollars (prior to any stimulus plan being passed), this year’s U.S. deficit alone equates to over $4000 per person in this country, and that exceeds the average credit card household debt of $3,235 (which you can easily argue is too high as well).
Increasing the deficit will only place a bigger burden on this country’s future generations – at some point, guess what, the Chinese and other foreign governments will stop wanting our debt because they’ll wake up and notice the crappy state of the balance sheet, and at that point, you will see and feel pain like you’ve never experienced.
If we are spending money on things that are needed, like long-decaying infrastructure or intriguing alternative energy technologies, then perhaps the additional onus on the country’s balance sheet will make sense. But I am very skeptical that we’ll be able to spend $800 billion without seeing much of it going to waste.
I guess when you get down to it, I have a problem with your main thesis
Recessions are necessary parts of the free market business cycle. Sure, we’d love to avoid or shorten them, but it’s my belief that without them you can’t have the good times. The key in my opinion is to pursue policies and regulations that limit the extremes on both sides of the cycles, but unfortunately, we threw ourselves one big consumption and credit orgy over the past decade, and we must pay the piper.
We need to be very careful we don’t throw good money after bad, and make the problem even worse by sapping oomph from any eventual recovery or setting us up for a bigger, more painful fall later.