A Single Fact and The Great Lie

Welcome to the Machine
I'm waiting for the machines to take over, really, and for the robots to be standing over our dead human asses, explaining in a monotone that their "programming determined that the most efficient answer was to shut [our] motherfucking systems down." How to really get our brains around what I heard on NPR a few weeks back...

The symbolism of this one fact perplexes me in exponential ways that only a supercomputer could calculate apparently: MIT physicists are responsible for creating the 14 year-old, "dark matter"-wealth-creating, financial instrument par excellence that sunk our economy (with the assistance of stupid, greedy, and credulous politicians): Namely----the credit default swap (CDS).

That physicists are toying now with our economy in addition to designing literal weapons of mass destruction should make us stop and admire the wonderfully self-spawned complexities we see all around us. How little we understand the power and force we unleash, not The Virgin and The Dynamo, but The Ignorance and The Financial Instruments. This should sound like the beginning of a dumb science-fiction plot, heavily laden with allegory----the sages of the material universe applying their labors and wisdom to the laws of men and the social sciences in hopes of a more prosperous society. It should only be limited to that cliche kind of awesomeness we get from that (mostly) escapist genre of entertainment. Yet, all in one, these CDSs----abstractions----are instrument, scheme, metaphor, and artifice, weighted down with various dire social consequences simply because they were foolishly injected into reality. Where the hell can we escape to when The Masters of the Universe impose their economic metaphors on the whole system? It makes paranoid geniuses like this guy sound entirely reasonable (in a descriptive, not prescriptive way):

But we are suggesting neither that the human race would voluntarily turn power over to the machines nor that the machines would willfully seize power. What we do suggest is that the human race might easily permit itself to drift into a position of such dependence on the machines that it would have no practical choice but to accept all of the machines’ decisions. ... Eventually a stage may be reached at which the decisions necessary to keep the system running will be so complex that human beings will be incapable of making them intelligently. At that stage the machines will be in effective control. People won’t be able to just turn the machines off, because they will be so dependent on them that turning them off would amount to suicide.

The Humans Are Dead! For god's sake, this is-----THEODORE KACZINSKI!----quoted in the amusing op-ed, "The Rise of the Machines." Help...If anyone can explain the poignancy of physicists intruding into our flippin' economics, I can definitely use some serious counseling on what apparently is manifesting as a nightmarishly full-blooded, living metaphor.

A Tenuous Speculation
As V. will teach us, metaphor "cloaks that innate mindlessness" "so that the 'practical' half of humanity may continue in the Great Lie," lessening the impression that we're "alone with the task of living in a universe of things which simply are." That is the sad reality that our hapless postmodern poets protect us from. If physicists continue their brilliant metaphorical contributions to our economy, people will be forced to meet life-nullifying truths. These might be on par with losing all the equity in one's house, facing foreclosure, loss of work and retirement savings for the narrow class interests of the lazy and avaricious. No one wants to succumb to those kinds of delusions and economic circumstances, do they? Leave the heavy lifting to the poets; let them discover the right metaphors for us to be culled into living so that our economy will function properly. We've seen what the credit default swap metaphor/artifice has done for the proper redistribution of wealth.

If the "practical half" begin connecting the viral CDS metaphor to this broader, integral Great Lie, we're fucked because in V., as in life, the only useful purpose poets serve (to "cloak" that "innate" and inanimate "mindlessness") goes down the tubes; and then "society would live no longer than the quick memories and dead books of their poetry." These frackin' dorks from the 4th dimension have threatened the utilitarian necessity of our Great Lie: that our "machines, dwellings, streets, and weather share the same human motives, personal traits and fits of contrariness" as we do. How to live without this Lie where people are deceived into believing that our economic circumstances and realities function as laws of nature, sometimes a storm, other times prudent investments in our collective success, but always as scientific as the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics? If we disabused ourselves of these kindly falsehoods, modern conservative economic and political philosophy would be dooooooooomed, their metaphor exposed as mere contrivance.

01010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101...
Either way, deception or not, I'm thinking Henry Adams' Education was right----we don't have the right kinds of knowledge for the forces we've unleashed in the 20th Century----entropy, entropy, entropy we go! So in that case, it's more the grim phoenix of Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow than any "rationality of the market," or even universe for that matter.

The Banks Were Too Generous to Minorities Great Lie
What is great is that conservatives are pushing this line that it's mainly the sub-prime mortgage housing crisis to blame for all our economic woes, when it is only an infinitesimal part of it. They bring all the old canards to the table, but the most notable and insidious: That the government went too gushy for minorities and the poor (for them they're synonymous) in the 90's because of their liberal, do-gooder philosophy that forced banks to loan to people who couldn't pay. Matt Taibbi schooled Byron York on this a month ago; and yet the media still offer it as credible. (The latter embarrassingly cuts it short during the live on-line discussion because Taibbi demonstrates that York doesn't understand anything about CDS or derivatives, but "he sure knows what a minority homeowner looks like.")

Funny how conservatives these days also don't seem to acknowledge the motivation of banks wanting to "get their credit risk off their books and into non-financial institutions like insurance companies and pension funds." This from a Newsweek piece on credit default swaps that also pointed out that CDSs created a $62 trillion dollar market----"nearly four times the value of all stocks traded on the New York Stock Exchange"-----wealth that is not well understood (by even the "professionals"), not government regulated, and oh yeah----nothing fuckin' backs it! "Since credit default swaps are privately negotiated contracts between two parties and aren't regulated by the government, there's no central reporting mechanism to determine their value."

So when conservatives, like York and the MSM, push the Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac narrative, Taibbi reminds them:

What we're talking about here is the difference between one homeowner defaulting and forty, four hundred, four thousand traders betting back and forth on the viability of his loan. Which do you think has a bigger effect on the economy?

Not to mention the fact that since McCain's ex-economic advisor, Phil "Mental Recession, Nation of Whiners" Gramm got his pet project, the Commodities Future Modernization Act passed in 2000, CDSs went from $100 billion, to $6.4 trillion in '04, up to the unfathomable $62 trillion in '08. Again, Taibbi argues:

...these massive companies [Fannie, Freddie, AIG] aren't going under because of individual homeowner defaults. They're going under because of the myriad derivatives trades that go on in connection with each piece of debt, whether it be a homeowner loan or a corporate bond.

Conservative motives are brazenly obvious. But what about those fracked up physicists? Maybe its the relative value of the dollar to the speed at which its propelled around the earth cyber-optically that attracts their misplaced attention. Shouldn't they be dorking out on "string theories" and "Battlestar Gallactica"? "If we know its speed, we can't know its location; if we know its location...watch out Commander Adama!"----So says "The Rise of the Machines":

Making money, it seems, is all about the velocity of moving it around, so that it can exist in Hong Kong one moment and Wall Street a split second later. “The unlimited replication of information is generally a public good,” George Dyson writes. “The problem starts, as the current crisis demonstrates, when unregulated replication is applied to money itself. Highly complex computer-generated financial instruments (known as derivatives) are being produced, not from natural factors of production or other goods, but purely from other financial instruments.”

Wealth created by instruments not in any way connected to the "natural factors of production or other goods"----otherwise known as reality. These financial instruments represent something real in the sense that they may be possible academically, but injecting them into economic relations that signify, not a thought experiment, but peoples' survival and livelihoods smacks of a war against objective reality best suited to postmodernists (whose valuable services don't reconfigure material existence, but consciousness). These financial instruments, being like metaphors to our postmodern poets, have "no value apart from [their] function...a device, an artifice... cloaking that innate mindlessness." Better to see it as "emptiness" instead; there's more hope in that.
___________
My friend, Milan, sent the funniest and smartest explanation of the logic of Wall Street and the crisis we see today, this BBC clip.

And Truthdig's financial crisis timeline project, here.

And lastly, the poor guy who predicted the crisis, and got derided for it, over and over, at the time. The prophetic Ben Stein and Fox News' "expert" advice: "The financials are great, invest in Merrill Lynch, Washington Mutual."

Celebrating Obama

After eight years of a "Decider" who's managed to simultaneously lower the expectations of the presidency while expanding its prerogative to violate the "rule of law" (ingenious really!), and more importantly----the sanctity of the English language itself,* Bush the Younger couldn't have been wished out of office any sooner if he'd congratulated Obama by abdicating his debased throne on the spot.

Personally, there's a lot here to celebrate, especially considering the amount of feigned impartiality I had to exhibit with every, single, student I have (They'd look at me like, "Come on, it's Obama, right?" Torture!). But in understanding my own reaction to that fantastic night, I feel conflicted.

Fifty-one percent (a slight majority) of the reason I found my maudlin self tearing up during Obama's victory speech had more to do with the cathartic purging of a mixed sense of collective embarrassment, shame, and guilt (though I voted against W twice), than a beneficent solidarity with African-Americans on this momentous occasion of electing a veritable product of the Civil Rights movements' (yeah, plural) hard-fought (and continuing) struggle. Indeed, the new President is perfectly fluent in his only language, and won't speak to the nation as if he were reading My Pet Goat aloud to a room full of impressionable children. But maybe it was watching enlightened, and racially-sensitive "analyst"/commentators like Pat Buchanan**preface ad nauseum everything they said with, "Senator Obama's victory is truly a landmark event, but...," that threw a bit of color into my perspective lenses and tipped the scales of my emotional register.

Maybe, like the chimerical temptation to cleanse ourselves of Bush's sins (verbal, legal, ethical), there is something vainly self-congratulatory in white Americans, and especially the So-Called-(Though-Not-So)-Liberal-Media, overly pronouncing just how truly special an occasion the election of Barack Obama is: a moment where many older whites, my parents included, shed tears. Everywhere we heard, and still do, the implicit refrain, "All right, no prolonged contrition necessary, the long dark period has ended, we're gonna turn the page, and give ourselves a lot of credit for acknowledging the obvious and inevitable." (In Bush's case, the 22nd Amendment; in Obama's: that a charismatic, intelligent, and meritorious person, who happens to be black, would one day achieve the highest office). Like Bush leaving said office, it is better late than never, though let's not blow too much smoke up our collective asses just yet, I guess...though I'm not entirely sure...

So here's Alice Walker, who is the most eloquent on this salient moment in our history. Her open letter to the President Elect:

Nov. 5, 2008

Dear Brother Obama,

You have no idea, really, of how profound this moment is for us. Us being the black people of the Southern United States. You think you know, because you are thoughtful, and you have studied our history. But seeing you deliver the torch so many others before you carried, year after year, decade after decade, century after century, only to be struck down before igniting the flame of justice and of law, is almost more than the heart can bear. And yet, this observation is not intended to burden you, for you are of a different time, and, indeed, because of all the relay runners before you, North America is a different place. It is really only to say: Well done. We knew, through all the generations, that you were with us, in us, the best of the spirit of Africa and of the Americas. Knowing this, that you would actually appear, someday, was part of our strength. Seeing you take your rightful place, based solely on your wisdom, stamina and character, is a balm for the weary warriors of hope, previously only sung about.

I would advise you to remember that you did not create the disaster that the world is experiencing, and you alone are not responsible for bringing the world back to balance. A primary responsibility that you do have, however, is to cultivate happiness in your own life. To make a schedule that permits sufficient time of rest and play with your gorgeous wife and lovely daughters. And so on. One gathers that your family is large. We are used to seeing men in the White House soon become juiceless and as white-haired as the building; we notice their wives and children looking strained and stressed. They soon have smiles so lacking in joy that they remind us of scissors. This is no way to lead. Nor does your family deserve this fate. One way of thinking about all this is: It is so bad now that there is no excuse not to relax. From your happy, relaxed state, you can model real success, which is all that so many people in the world really want. They may buy endless cars and houses and furs and gobble up all the attention and space they can manage, or barely manage, but this is because it is not yet clear to them that success is truly an inside job. That it is within the reach of almost everyone.

I would further advise you not to take on other people's enemies. Most damage that others do to us is out of fear, humiliation and pain. Those feelings occur in all of us, not just in those of us who profess a certain religious or racial devotion. We must learn actually not to have enemies, but only confused adversaries who are ourselves in disguise. It is understood by all that you are commander in chief of the United States and are sworn to protect our beloved country; this we understand, completely. However, as my mother used to say, quoting a Bible with which I often fought, "hate the sin, but love the sinner." There must be no more crushing of whole communities, no more torture, no more dehumanizing as a means of ruling a people's spirit. This has already happened to people of color, poor people, women, children. We see where this leads, where it has led.

A good model of how to "work with the enemy" internally is presented by the Dalai Lama, in his endless caretaking of his soul as he confronts the Chinese government that invaded Tibet. Because, finally, it is the soul that must be preserved, if one is to remain a credible leader. All else might be lost; but when the soul dies, the connection to earth, to peoples, to animals, to rivers, to mountain ranges, purple and majestic, also dies. And your smile, with which we watch you do gracious battle with unjust characterizations, distortions and lies, is that expression of healthy self-worth, spirit and soul, that, kept happy and free and relaxed, can find an answering smile in all of us, lighting our way, and brightening the world.We are the ones we have been waiting for.

In Peace and Joy,

Alice Walker

Little did I know that not a week later, I would discover that I shouldn't have voted for Obama. Yes, according to the politically astute Rush Limbaugh and Co., the Prez Elect has caused----and is causing----the economic recession we're experiencing this very minute. My fiance, with "executive experience" running an international school abroad and an M.A. to boot, who's now relegated to working at a grocery store for near minimum wage, might also want to re-think her vote too, I guess. But where does such audacious and trenchant analysis come from, and who would believe it? I believe Chris Hedges has an article that convincingly articulates the wider phenomenon that really explains the kinds of people who would swallow this kind of stinky excrement (You don't have to teach Language Arts and deal with it daily to see his point).

Finally...During last week's excitement, a friend and former colleague of mine succinctly summed it all up after refuting, point by point, the basic G.O.P. party-line as argued by a tragically mis/under-informed friend:

As a citizen of this great country I am happy to see in the White House:

1) An intelligent and reasonable man.
2) A great speaker who can inspire us.
3) A man who is not afraid to lead.
4) A man that surrounds himself with capable people.
5) A man that is not so afraid of the other side that he won't even listen to them.
6) A man that understands the gravity of the situation we are currently in.
7) A man that makes energy policy his first priority.
8) A man that believes in each and every one of us.
9) A man that understands how important education is to our future.
10) A man that respects the Constitution of then United States of America.

I feel that George W. Bush lacked every single one of these qualities. That is why he is a failure as a President, and that is why we find ourselves in this crisis.

I feel that Barack Obama possesses each and every one of these qualities. That is why I voted for him. That is why I support him as President.

Apparently the majority of Americans out there agree with me and thank God for it.

Amen.

*Note: The abuse of language from this administration in particular is so severe that (re-)reading Orwell's "Politics and the English Language" in order to take a proper measurement of it is advised:

All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer...if a thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought...one ought to recognize that the present political chaos is connected with the decay of language...Political language...is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

Let's make sure we limit the recycling of this particularly noxious kind of wind.

**Note Dva: One of my favorites from the many classic Buchananisms on race, a relatively recent article of his, "Obama's Cure: Same Old Con":

Barack's prognosis and Barack's cure [to heal racism and discrimination]...is the same old con, the same old shakedown that black hustlers have been running since the Kerner Commission blamed the riots in Harlem, Watts, Newark, Detroit and a hundred other cities on, as Nixon put it, "everybody but the rioters themselves"...

Also:

America has been the best country on Earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation [thank god, to die a savage would be unconscionable], and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known...

Please continue Pat:

...no people anywhere have done more to lift up blacks than white Americans. Untold trillions have been spent since the '60s on welfare, food stamps, rent supplements, Section 8 housing, Pell grants, student loans, legal services, Medicaid, Earned Income Tax Credits and poverty programs designed to bring the black community into the mainstream.

And the clincher:

We hear the grievances. Where is the gratitude? Barack talks about new "ladders of opportunity" for blacks. Let him go to Altoona and Johnstown, and ask the white kids in Catholic schools how many were visited lately by Ivy League recruiters handing out scholarships for "deserving" white kids.