Holiday Praise for Alan Greenspan, for Protecting the Rich (fwd)

[Frances Bolton (PHI)]

>
>   Praise to Alan Greenspan, for Protecting the Rich
>
>   by Michael M. Thomas
>
>   This column is being written in advance of the Great American Holiday
>   of Thanksgiving, but won't appear until afterward. Still, the sentiment
>   is there. Herewith, a few chestnuts which, in a just world, would be
>   stuffed up the orifices of the turkeys concerned.
>
>   Let us give thanks for the good fortune that enabled (so reports a
>   well-placed Greenwich, Conn., source in disgust) various, perhaps most
>   partners of Long-Term Capital Management to move key assets into their
>   wives' names before the firm's collapse. The sort of assets that keep a
>   lad and lady climbing in and out of limousines, the funds necessary to
>   call for the check opening night at Daniel, the golf club
>   subscriptions paid up, the Costa Ricans assiduously clipping the
>   manicured hedges and lawns, the money that lets the partners' wives
>   keep shopping without missing a beat. For His bounties to such as
>   these, thanks be to God.
>
>   Let us also give thanks for the New Deal, which set the precedent for
>   the Welfare and Family Assistance programs to which the immediate
>   victims of Long-Term Capitals failure can thankfully turn this holiday
>   season: the firms secretaries, its clerks and back-office help,
>   including the boy who made sure the caviar in the executive
>   refrigerator was the proper temperature (before the sturgeon eggs were
>   hastily redistributed along Round Hill Road, that is). For His mercy
>   in looking out for the little people, thanks be to God.
>
>   Let us raise our voices to give thanks on behalf of these people, and
>   their families, and the banks that hold the mortgages on their modest
>   houses in Pelham and Stamford, and the issuers of their credit cards.
>   They are probably in no mood to celebrate Thanksgiving themselves, in
>   no mood to rejoice that through the miracle of sheer good timing, the
>   children of John Meriwether's partners will still get their holiday ski
>   trips and BMWs while their own will go toyless (try explaining to a
>   7-year-old that food stamps under the tree is the way Christmas is
>   supposed to work in a proper postmodern capitalist economy). But it is
>   the will of God, as we have been told since 1982, that the rich set a
>   motivating example to the less fortunate. Such is the gospel of
>   Comparative Advantage. For giving even to the least among us the eyes
>   to see that it must be so, thanks be to God.
>
>   Let us give thanks for a system that permits the fat cats to strut in
>   Armani after failed trillion-dollar desperation bets on
>   mortgage-backed securities, and the bankers who financed those bets
>   with money backed by the taxpayers to get in their Thanksgiving paddle
>   tennis in Locust Valley, while the little people who availed
>   themselves of the mortgages that back those securities may lose their
>   houses, along with the (Van Heusen) shirts off their backs. No risk,
>   no reward: ah, yes, thanks be to God.
>
>   Let us give thanks that we don't have to trouble our own digestions by
>   demanding certain knowledge that we ought to have. Such as (this time
>   I'm going to put it in capital letters): WHAT DID GREENSPAN KNOW AND
>   WHEN DID HE KNOW IT? Or this one: Why has no list of the investors in
>   Long-Term Capital, the true beneficiaries of the bailout, been
>   published? Might anyone or any institution affiliated with The New
>   York Times or other major media have been an investor in Long-Term
>   Capital? For seeing that our minds not be clouded with such questions
>   (let alone the answers), or by silly, misleading terms like
>   "fraudulent conveyance," thanks be to God.
>
>   Let us give thanks indeed for our great media. An uninformed polity is
>   the key to global capitalism and those who pluck the sweetest
>   harmonies from its strings. People who know nothing can be made to
>   believe anything. The mystic chords of memory must be raised to a
>   frequency only dogs can hear. Such is the gospel of postmodern
>   capitalism, its Beatitudes and Commandments, as vouchsafed to Alfred
>   E. Newman as he slouched toward Bethlehem on his skateboard to be
>   born, unworried to the very last. Such is the gospel our media go
>   forth to spread; Such is the work of the Lord--apparently. There is not
>   one among us who should not daily kneel and say: For Barbara Walters
>   and our anchor people and our talking heads, for Peter and Tom and Dan
>   and Jerry (as in Springer), for newspapers that give us the skinny on
>   the latest in vulval depilatory fashions while children grow hungry
>   and white-collar criminals gorge, thanks be to God.
>
>   Let us indeed give thanks for the wisdom and vision of Alan Greenspan.
>   Is it thanks to Thy enlightenment, perhaps visited upon him in a
>   moment of awful clarity, as he paused from licking the boots of Wall
>   Street and raised his face to heaven, that he alone was vouchsafed to
>   gaze upon the secret, terrible face of the sibyl? That, alone among
>   men (and that race of beings we call "economists"), he was given to
>   see that it is possible to have inflation in the face of a worldwide
>   capacity glut? That the way to keep highly contingent inflation out of
>   the goods and services sector, and thus out of the statistics
>   confected for public consumption by an administration of charlatans
>   and liars and bought men, is to get the money out of the wallets of
>   the middle class, those greedy, inflation-inspiriting purchasers of
>   goods and services, and export it into the private banking accounts of
>   the well-to-do? That his mission on earth was to export the world's
>   wealth from the paychecks of the humble to the portfolios of the rich
>   by creatingwith the connivance of the media--a stock market which must
>   seduce the groundlings into pouring their treasure into it? For the
>   blessings of Thy wisdom, selectively bestowed, and on behalf of those
>   who especially enjoy His mercies (and Alans), thanks be to God.
>
>   Let us also give thanks that Thou hast seen fit to outfit the Blessed
>   Alan with the tongues of men and angels, so that he might go up the
>   marble mountain and speak to the people thus: "Some members [of the
>   Federal Reserve Board] were concerned that [the Oct. 13 interest rate
>   cut] might be misread as indicative of a degree of concern about
>   prospective developments in financial markets or the economic outlook
>   the easing actions under consideration were more likely to help settle
>   volatile financial markets and cushion the effects of more restrictive
>   financial conditions on the ongoing expansion."
>
>   What is spoken in the tongues of angels is intended only for angels to
>   understand, but let me give it a try. "The economy is tanking, which
>   is exactly what is wanted by the Street and the other big players, who
>   have nothing to do with jobs (jobs are something that clerks and
>   secretaries have; players have accounts). A decelerating economy means
>   easier money with which to leverage the Streets plays. Keeping those
>   plays solvent and liquid is the main, if not sole, job of the Fed; I
>   am Central Banker to the people in the same spirit that Bud Selig is
>   Baseball Commissioner to the fans.
>
>   "Besides, I sure as hell don't want any responsibility for the bursting
>   of the stock-market bubble my easy-money policies--targeted, through the
>   banks and brokerages, to end up in the right pocketshave brought
>   about. When, as will surely someday come about, they start to draw up
>   the passenger lists for the tumbrils, I don't want to see my name at
>   the top!" When the clarification has to be almost as incomprehensible
>   as the gobbledygook that produced it, we are in the presence of true
>   genius. For the visitation of such genius upon our humble house of
>   state, thanks be to God.
>
>   Let us give thanks for blessings still to come, or so we are told by
>   million-dollar-a-year anchor people whose Federal Communications
>   Commission-"comped" networks pick up their Visa bills. When the Fed
>   cut rates again recently, the evening news anchor people predicted
>   that the cut will soon show up in "our" credit card statements, auto
>   loans and mortgages. Don't hold your breath: It will show up in the
>   rate the Kohlberg Kravis Robertses and Forstmann Littles and Long-Term
>   Capitals pay on their leveraged investments, which are fully
>   tax-deductible, incidentally, as yours and my auto payments, credit
>   card finance charges, etc., are not. It will enhance the Long-Term
>   Capital bailout. But it will be a cold day in speculator heaven when
>   it shows up on your and my Visa bills. For giving us the patience to
>   endure this state of inequity without shooting someone, thanks be to
>   God.
>
>   Finally, let us give thanks that we the people have been blessed by
>   God with a forgiving kindness like unto His own, so that we stand at
>   all times ready to look beyond the quirks of our great men and women.
>   A people less godlike in their mercy might not forgive a President who
>   is a liar, a cheat, a philanderer and who probably sold military
>   secrets to the Chinese in exchange for campaign contributions. Or a
>   Central Bank chairman who is butt-boy to the rich and connected, and
>   who conducts bailout transactions with the Peoples Money without
>   telling the People what's going on. By forgiving these men, we forgive
>   ourselves for putting up with them, and thus bolster our collective
>   self-esteem. Such is the wish of the Lord, as read in the exit polls:
>   for which, thanks be to God.
><...>
>
>   This column ran on page 1 in the 12/7/98 edition of The New York
>   Observer.
>   <http://www.observer.com/cgi-win/homepage.exe?nyo1/MW120798>
>
>---
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