I have this re-occurring dream. I’m in a large house with lots of rooms, that have long been neglected, and it’s my job to repair and clean all of it. The house is full of crumbling antiques, left-over messes, and dust—all seemingly abandoned by someone in a hurry, and discarded for another to clean up. In the dream, the house has somehow come into my care. I know I don’t own it, and I don’t get to keep it, but I have to live in it for a while. At some point, my Mom and Dad show up, and try to cajole me to stop the fixing-up process in time to go to church. After much angst and resistance, I sometimes give up and start preparing to leave for the Sunday service. But more often, I insist that there is simply too much to do, and church will have to wait for another day.
I’m convinced this dream is about the split I feel between politics and the spirit. The political world is the house that I, that we have inherited, which is in utter disrepair and needs focused help. It’s been abandoned by others, mostly good-hearted people, who have lost the will to keep fighting the continuous battle to save the house. My parents represent an inner voice, that encourages me to leave the feeling of being overwhelmed by the world’s problems, to focus rather on that still, small voice within—for renewal and awareness, and resources to win the day. They remind me that it’s in simplicity and reverence for what is important, for the spirit within myself and in the shared energy we can engage with others, that we find the greatest strength to go on and move through what seem like the insurmountable obstacles of this world.
We, as a nation, have a mutual house in need of much repair and even a new design. But can you save a “house of cards,” as so many have referred to the present state of our economy? Or is it doomed to continue decaying because its foundations were too shoddy to begin with? Do we have to let the worn out crumble? Are its antiques just relics of bad policies that need to be scrubbed, or are they left-over vestiges of a democracy-more-true, or an economy-more-sure that we need to bring again into the light of day? Where do we go, and to whom do we listen for renewal? Is there the possibility for “change we can believe in?” Does Obama have the courage to clean up this house? The simple truth is: collectively, we have to be active in fixing the system, while remembering what is important at the root—the spirit and vision behind our schemes.
What I know in my heart is that we need to pay close attention to what’s going on right now, at this moment in history. Another round of consolidation of the world’s wealth, and an outright rescue of the financial elite who got us into this economic calamity, is happening right under our noses. The nation’s largest banks, which of course all operate globally, are using U.S. taxpayer-funded bailout money to buy up smaller banks, saying that it rescues us from the risk of our loans and mortgages collapsing, and not telling the flip side, that it gives them unfair competitive advantage for years to come, locally and globally. And our elected leaders, rather than securing our nation’s vital resources and labor through social controls on these large banks, are instead socializing the risks of capital investment and consolidation spearheaded by these maniacal institutions, leaving the tab for our grandchildren to pay off in upcoming “better financial days.” (For those of you who don’t spend time researching where the U.S. gets its deficit dollars to pay for massive spending as an economic stimulus, it is predominantly loaned from Chinese banks on the back of future generations.)
And for what end? When you look at it up close, maybe with the eye of a scrubber, these bailouts are not set up to rescue the average citizen or taxpayer, or mortgage-holder, or even the national economy actually; they are designed in compliance with the same old trickle-down economic relic that we have never seemed to be able to scrub. The point, according to the financial institutions and our new Treasury secretary, is to rescue investors with the hope of creating a new “market bubble” (like the one that got us here) to stimulate more money-making for those willing to wager on another round of economic boom. Why? To make more money, which (they repeatedly mantra in order to keep the faith) the rich will then spend and therefore stimulate the economy in order to keep it working for all of us. Is anyone else about to scream? Wasn’t Reagan championing trickle-down economics like four Presidents ago?
The truth is, Ronald Reagan just had the guts to put to the American people plainly, what had been orchestrated and enacted by large financial institutions for decades, and still is. Even when Democratic presidents push for spending on the poor or middle class to generate opportunity, jobs and social services, they have all still had the other foot, tacitly or overtly supporting the deregulation of banking and financial services, allowing the global expansion and consolidation of wealth that has now become so rampant. President Obama, you have inherited a messy house! And I’m not sure why you presume that Timothy Geithner or Lawrence Summers will be able to lead us out of it. Without going into their past (and quite controversial resumes), they have in their present positions so far, shockingly expressed the same strategies that got us here as the remedy to get us out. While following the same-old, same-old may create a short-term fix for the financial crisis, or may not; it definitely will not generate a more sustainable and vibrant culture and economy for the children we wish to inherit it.
So many executives and financial advisors will only accept that we must first “shore-up” our economic institutions to encourage job creation, but this is an adage more rhetoric than substance in fact. Wealth creation and bailouts for the rich rarely translate into secure job creation or equitable social services for the poor, as the recent past should have so blatantly shown us. Private banks and investment firms only have the opportunity to make money in the midst of a manufactured boom-and-then-bust reality—a volatile market that is in their interest. In such a reality, jobs are temporary at best, and are often collateral damage for larger schemes. These corporate tactics aren’t idiocy; they’re calculated risks by people who know they’re more likely to recover than the rest of us when the boom returns; and the government, meaning you and me, will have buffered the worst part of the economic burden, meaning any monetary shortfall. It allows them to simultaneously buy up bad assets and accumulate broken institutions, with the federal government cushioning the biggest risk, while continuing to raise interest and fees robbing the poorest, in a way somehow “justified” by a bad economy.
A new round of borrowing based on an unpredictable future to make solvent the institutions whose unregulated risk-taking got us in this mess, will not repair and stabilize our economy. The less complicated and direct the strategy, the more likely it is to actually arrive as assistance to those in need, and to build the human economy. We need a commitment to renewal and a focus on the long-term to recover our situation from the grip of greed and corruption. There is strength in inner focus and simplicity, and it is possible to be inwardly focused, on improving our cultural models and realigning our financial house, without being protectionist about trade and exchange. We should keep jobs at home, and not borrow outside our borders, for our own sake. Retaining our nation’s wealth in labor, and our nation’s debt makes us strong, and not indebted and overextended to others, who have much less interest in our success as a nation, or as a global player. What is in our interest, is to keep our wealth in the family, so to speak, and to diplomatically and strategically develop ourselves as a good role model and innovator to the world. Then we can have a responsible role as a global citizen, not as a domineering superpower with no real “stability” to back it up, or as an international banking cartel willing to do anything, even rob the national treasury and the wealth of future generations, to retain “control.”
Every time I think about the potential of President Obama at this time in history, the poem from Dr. Seuss, “Oh, the places you’ll go!,” written as a cautionary tale to young people, comes to mind.
“Oh, the places you’ll go! …You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose… With your head full of brains and your shoes full of feet, you’re too smart to go down any not-so-good street…”*
It begins full of optimism and forecasting potential greatness. But it goes on to reveal what can happen to anyone who pushes too far, too fast, or who does not steer his/her course with wisdom and humble clarity.
“I’m sorry to say so but, sadly, it’s true that Bang-ups and Hang-ups can happen to you… You’ll come down from the Lurch with an unpleasant bump. And the chances are, then, that you’ll be in a Slump… Un-slumping yourself is not easily done… Simple it’s not, I’m afraid you will find, for a mind-maker-upper to make up his mind.”*
Mr. Obama, you are a mind-maker-upper whom we want to rely on, but we will trust you more if you listen to the citizenry that got you here, rather than giving in to the talking heads swirling about you now. A slump of public opinion isn’t easy to un-slump. And a renewed sense of the need for justice and fairness with our money is a primary concern echoing in the minds of
No true change ever happens without a collapse of the old. We sometimes have to let failures fail, especially when the reasons for failure are manipulative and corrupt, and choose instead to walk with the courage to innovate and create a more perfect union. How you navigate these important days, Mr. President, will determine much about whether your destiny is to become the leader of our future stability, or the caretaker of a relic already crumbling under the weight of its own hubris. You have to take risks that are beyond the parameters of the game as we have known it. As Dr. Seuss says, there are “games you can’t win ‘cause you’ll play against you.”* Quit letting these executives play against us, against our national economy. As Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz recently summed it up,
“The question isn’t just whether we hold them accountable; the question is: what do we get in return for the money that we’re giving them? …We got cheated, to put it bluntly. What we don’t know is that—whether we will continue to get cheated. And that’s really at the core of much of what we’re talking about. Are we going to continue to get cheated?”*
“Oh, the places you’ll go!,” Mr. Obama, if you take the risk we all need, to be a defender of the commonwealth, a statesman of the people, rather than another President bandaging a broken system, and deferring to the whims of politicians and executives. Seuss-the-sleuth wisely concludes with a warning, “So be sure when you step. Step with care and great tact and remember that ‘Life's a Great Balancing Act.’ Just never forget to be dexterous and deft. And never mix up your right foot with your left.”* Your right foot is the populist vigor, the call for fairness and transparency—the one that got you here; your left wants to keep you mired in the policies and predicaments of the past. Thankfully, I’m just one of a chorus of voices right now, telling you to keep your feet on the ground.
*(thanks to the brilliant insight of Dr. Seuss, Oh, the places you’ll go! from Random House, 1990.)
*(Joseph Stiglitz quoted from an interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now, 2/25/09)
Please, take the time to read what else is being written out there about this monumental transition that our national economy is facing.
Find good reading at:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/
Also, for a note of creativity and bravado, that is refreshing in this time:
Read what Rep. Marcy Kaptur of
1 comment:
Well said Angela! You should submit this to the NYT.
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