First Thanksgiving in New Zealand... Anne cooked pumpkin soup, mashed potatoes, stuffing, a mushroom-and-bean dish, pumpkin pie. No turkey, in light of the fact that there aren't any turkeys in New Zealand. We had dinner and copious wine with the flatmates, and a great night in general.
Pumpkin pie is apparently almost unknown in New Zealand.
I am thankful for this wonderful life.
27 November 2008
24 November 2008
Panaceas
Finance capital again. One of the big questions, to my mind, around finance is this: Does it create value? That is to say, is finance capital an input to the creation of some end product, one that a consumer is willing to pay money for and get some satisfaction out of?
Financiers tend to think so - they see their role as creating value either obscurely, through the circulation of interesting new financial products, or directly, by channeling money to firms and startups so that they can operate smoothly. These are obviously two very different scenarios, and it's become quite clear that the former one produces nothing but the leprechaun gold of fictitious capital. But it was the source of all the rapidly-evaporating riches.
To quote the former head of Citigroup, a company that is now applying to suckle at the federal teat after its value collapsed badly due to its bad bets:
Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism provides an alternative view:
I heartily support the goal of de-indoctrination. Basically, the question is this: Where is the Left? We are now in a situation where unregulated, unrestricted finance capital is wrecking the world economy and nobody is saying, whoah, hold on a second here, why are we propping up these idiots? Nobody is articulating a comprehensive alternative view. At best there is tinkering at the margins.
And I think, oh well, Rome wasn't burned in a day.
One of the other big questions that's in my thoughts a lot lately is this: How does one keep perspective in an age of mass derangement? Herd panic is the international economic mood. Don't you want to be the buffalo that, instead of stampeding over the cliff, stops to look at the flowers?
Big pictures, small pictures. Walter Benjamin tells us that in his Arcades Project there is "no belief in periods of decline." [Arcades Project, N1,6] His project is no view from the top, no macroscopic picture - indeed, he derides such efforts as sitting magisterially atop history's rubble-heap rather than sifting through it. Instead, Benjamin tells us to assemble bits and pieces, tiny fragments, kaleidescope lenses. In his microscope, the "decline" of the 19th century, the broad sweep from Napoleon's world-building ambition to the century-ending Long Depression, appears instead as a cluttered junk-room laden with tiny glories. The attitude of the collector.
As in all things, I try to take Benjamin's approach. So here are some of the recent window-panes of my Crystal Palace:
Anne and the giraffe at the Wellington Zoo.
The new shoes, and one of pair of bookshelves we bought. (The first bookshelves we have purchased.)
Government intervention may not get us out of this crisis. But giraffes, painting shoes, ice cream, tuis on the walk to work, the fries-and-chess at Ernesto's, a clear day and a sunset over the water, meat pies, discounted vodka, novel-writing girlfriends... these things might just work.
Financiers tend to think so - they see their role as creating value either obscurely, through the circulation of interesting new financial products, or directly, by channeling money to firms and startups so that they can operate smoothly. These are obviously two very different scenarios, and it's become quite clear that the former one produces nothing but the leprechaun gold of fictitious capital. But it was the source of all the rapidly-evaporating riches.
To quote the former head of Citigroup, a company that is now applying to suckle at the federal teat after its value collapsed badly due to its bad bets:
“People can look at the last 25 years and say this is an incredibly unique period of time,” Mr. Weill said. “We didn’t rely on somebody else to build what we built, and we shouldn’t rely on somebody else to provide all the services our society needs.”
“I think that the results our company had, which is where the great majority of my wealth came from, justified what I got,” Mr. Weill said.
Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism provides an alternative view:
Finance Has Lost Sight of Its Role
Why are we in the mess we are in? There are lots of proximate causes: overleverage, global imbalances, bad financial technology that lead to widespread underestimation of risk. Readers can no doubt improve on that list.
But these still are all symptoms. Until we isolate and tackle fundamental causes, we will fail to extirpate the disease.
I will confess to not having addressed this particular line of thought directly, even thought it has crossed my mind plenty of times. Many readers have noted, and I agree completely, that the financial sector has become too large relative to the real economy. But many commentators, your humble blogger included, have failed to probe deeply how such a distorted economy came to be seen as a good policy outcome.
In 1980, financial firms accounted for 8% of S&P earnings. During the peak of our last stock market cycle, their profits were over 40% of the total.
Now consider: finance is a necessary function, but is represents a tax, a drain on the productive economy, just as defense and lawyers do...
...Willem Buiter has chastised the Fed for what he calls "cognitive regulatory capture," that is, that they identify far too strongly with the values and world view of their charges. But it isn't just the Fed. The media. and to a lesser degree, society at large has bought into the construct of the importance, value, and virtue of the financial sector, even as it is coming violently apart before our eyes. Why, for instance, the vituperative reaction against a GM bailout, while we assume Citi has to be rescued? A GM bankruptcy would be at least as catastrophic as a Citi failure. but GM elicits attacks for the incompetence of its management and the supposedly unreasonable posture of the UAW (the same free market advocates recoil at a deal struck by consenting adults). The particular target for ire is the autoworker pensions and health plans, as well as their work rules. But the pension plans being underwater is the fault of GM management for not providing for them in the fat years; I personally have trouble with the idea that health care should vary by class; and for the work rules, German and Swedish automakers have strong unions and yet can compete. I see the UAW as having correctly seen GM management feeding at the trough and doing a good job at extracting their share.
And yet the specter of incompetent, and worse, DISHONEST management elicits far less anger. GM may not make the best cars, but Citi and other banks sold products that were terrible, destructive, that resulted in huge losses and are wrecking economies, damage crappy cars could never inflict (environmentalists might quibble, but never has so much seeming wealth evaporated in so little time, and with the main culprits readily identified). They paid huge bonuses, yet their 2004-mid 2007 earnings have been wiped out by subsequent losses. But while UAW workers will have to give up on deals cut earlier, in terms of health care and pension promises (entered into, by the way, to bridge difference over wage levels), I guarantee no Wall Street denizen of the peak years will have to cough up one penny of his bonus from those days.
I don't know how to convey a sense of how deeply indoctrinated we all have been.
I heartily support the goal of de-indoctrination. Basically, the question is this: Where is the Left? We are now in a situation where unregulated, unrestricted finance capital is wrecking the world economy and nobody is saying, whoah, hold on a second here, why are we propping up these idiots? Nobody is articulating a comprehensive alternative view. At best there is tinkering at the margins.
And I think, oh well, Rome wasn't burned in a day.
One of the other big questions that's in my thoughts a lot lately is this: How does one keep perspective in an age of mass derangement? Herd panic is the international economic mood. Don't you want to be the buffalo that, instead of stampeding over the cliff, stops to look at the flowers?
Big pictures, small pictures. Walter Benjamin tells us that in his Arcades Project there is "no belief in periods of decline." [Arcades Project, N1,6] His project is no view from the top, no macroscopic picture - indeed, he derides such efforts as sitting magisterially atop history's rubble-heap rather than sifting through it. Instead, Benjamin tells us to assemble bits and pieces, tiny fragments, kaleidescope lenses. In his microscope, the "decline" of the 19th century, the broad sweep from Napoleon's world-building ambition to the century-ending Long Depression, appears instead as a cluttered junk-room laden with tiny glories. The attitude of the collector.
As in all things, I try to take Benjamin's approach. So here are some of the recent window-panes of my Crystal Palace:
Anne and the giraffe at the Wellington Zoo.
The new shoes, and one of pair of bookshelves we bought. (The first bookshelves we have purchased.)
Government intervention may not get us out of this crisis. But giraffes, painting shoes, ice cream, tuis on the walk to work, the fries-and-chess at Ernesto's, a clear day and a sunset over the water, meat pies, discounted vodka, novel-writing girlfriends... these things might just work.
23 November 2008
Squid v whale
The past week had seen a plague of new black high-top Converse knockoffs throughout town. Everywhere I turned: Somebody shod in immaculate new sneakers.
Had the yearly black high-top shipment arrived in New Zealand?
In the bathroom in between bouts of dancing to a Balkan folk band (I had bloodied my nose on the back of Anne's head. I'm not a very good dancer.), I asked one bar denizen where his shoes came from, and why everybody else seemed to be wearing the same. Oh, he said. There's a sale on at the Warehouse [local Target/Wal-Mart equivalent]. $15.
So that was that.
After our Sunday farmers' market trip, Anne and I took a detour to the big red box. The shoes were even cheaper than expected: half off for the second pair. In gestation were cunning plans by a cunning Anne and her cunning man. At home we had stencil paper, fabric paint in cornflower and chocolate, two sponge brushes. A trip to the art store yielded white paint marker.
At home: derailed by digestive disorder. I had, earlier and unwisely, medicated Anne with heavy-duty antibiotics to prevent a broken glass from becoming an infection. The cure was worse than the disease: All her stomach bacteria died, and we have since bought new bacteria (25 million per capsule) to replace it. But things are touch and go when eating.
After figuring out that a hot water bottle (a ubiquitous item in cold Kiwi homes) was needed to settle her stomach, I completed my design. On the left: Architeuthis, giant squid. On the right, Physeter macrocephalus, sperm whale. Mortal enemies, deep-sea taniwha, and now denizens of my footware.
Had the yearly black high-top shipment arrived in New Zealand?
In the bathroom in between bouts of dancing to a Balkan folk band (I had bloodied my nose on the back of Anne's head. I'm not a very good dancer.), I asked one bar denizen where his shoes came from, and why everybody else seemed to be wearing the same. Oh, he said. There's a sale on at the Warehouse [local Target/Wal-Mart equivalent]. $15.
So that was that.
After our Sunday farmers' market trip, Anne and I took a detour to the big red box. The shoes were even cheaper than expected: half off for the second pair. In gestation were cunning plans by a cunning Anne and her cunning man. At home we had stencil paper, fabric paint in cornflower and chocolate, two sponge brushes. A trip to the art store yielded white paint marker.
At home: derailed by digestive disorder. I had, earlier and unwisely, medicated Anne with heavy-duty antibiotics to prevent a broken glass from becoming an infection. The cure was worse than the disease: All her stomach bacteria died, and we have since bought new bacteria (25 million per capsule) to replace it. But things are touch and go when eating.
After figuring out that a hot water bottle (a ubiquitous item in cold Kiwi homes) was needed to settle her stomach, I completed my design. On the left: Architeuthis, giant squid. On the right, Physeter macrocephalus, sperm whale. Mortal enemies, deep-sea taniwha, and now denizens of my footware.
19 November 2008
Bad Debt
Slavoj Žižek, who I quote far too much, on the financial crisis:
I will not address his point here directly - other than to say that he's right. Capital is the Real; all else is illusion, fabrication, thin material tissue to be slashed apart when Reality compels it.
I would also like to say something on the bank rescue. It has the structure of an obligation. Hank Paulson says "Save the banks!" The arguments in favor of that proposition all come down to the feeling (expressed or not) that we need the investment banks, that they provide a valuable service in providing liquidity (or fast-flowing capital), giving out loans to businesses and householders. In short, we owe them something for this service; we should front up billions of dollars when necessary to save them from the consequences of their own actions.
Or so the argument goes.
Paulson (a former CEO of Goldman Sachs who earned millions fostering the temporarily lucrative but unsound behaviors that led to the crisis) has requested ever-growing amounts of money to prop up the banks. The taxpayers (meaning you and me) have an ongoing, and possibly unending, debt to the banks. In addition to the penurious interest rates on adjustable-rate mortgages for houses whose prices have crashed, we owe them unlimited sums to ensure their continued existence.
That is the argument being made.
(Here, one might remark that unlimited obligation is a key characteristic of extortion relationships.)
The facts of the situation are quite different from the argument I have detailed above. More than $350 billion of taxpayer money (read: yours, mine, our children's and grandchildren's money) has been disbursed to the banks to ensure their stability. As a result of that transfer of funds, the banks owe us. This is not an unlimited obligation; it is a $350 billion debt that should be called in a variety of ways.
Firstly, it is relatively easy to identify the people who benefited from the orgy of greed that led to the crisis, and determine how much money they got away with. Take that money off them, either by clawbacks of bonuses or punitively high taxes. (In this case, I think that we can dispense with the notion that high taxes create a disincentive to wealth creation, because it's now clear that investment bankers weren't actually creating any.)
Secondly, the government should take an ownership stake in the banks - and it should be in preferred shares with a dedicated interest rate. If they are not going concerns, they should be liquidated in orderly fashion and their functional pieces reorganized. If they are, they should eventually get a chance to buy their shares back. Either way, the debt to society will be repaid.
This is all blindingly obvious to anybody who has not accepted the perverse argument I described above. To those people, I have another anecdote:
The Bush years - and Paulson is working hard to squeeze them to the last drop - have brought primitive accumulation into the mainstream of the (post)modern capitalist economy. When businesses find themselves incapable - whether by "the law of the tendency", industry maturity or simple incompetence - to secure an acceptable rate of profit, they fall upon the public sphere, demanding a ransom from the state and citizenry. Give a Somali pirate a business suit and an MBA, and he would fit right into this milieu...
The financial meltdown has made it impossible to ignore the blatant irrationality of global capitalism. In the fight against Aids, hunger, lack of water or global warming, we may recognise the urgency of the problem, but there is always time to reflect, to postpone decisions. The main conclusion of the meeting of world leaders in Bali to talk about climate change, hailed as a success, was that they would meet again in two years to continue the talks. But with the financial meltdown, the urgency was unconditional; a sum beyond imagination was immediately found. Saving endangered species, saving the planet from global warming, finding a cure for Aids, saving the starving children . . . All that can wait a bit, but ‘Save the banks!’ is an unconditional imperative which demands and gets immediate action. The panic was absolute. A transnational and non-partisan unity was immediately established, all grudges among world leaders momentarily forgotten in order to avert the catastrophe. (Incidentally, what the much-praised ‘bi-partisanship’ effectively means is that democratic procedures were de facto suspended.) The sublimely enormous sum of money was spent not for some clear ‘real’ task, but in order to ‘restore confidence’ in the markets – i.e. for reasons of belief. Do we need any more proof that Capital is the Real of our lives, the Real whose demands are more absolute than even the most pressing demands of our social and natural reality?
I will not address his point here directly - other than to say that he's right. Capital is the Real; all else is illusion, fabrication, thin material tissue to be slashed apart when Reality compels it.
I would also like to say something on the bank rescue. It has the structure of an obligation. Hank Paulson says "Save the banks!" The arguments in favor of that proposition all come down to the feeling (expressed or not) that we need the investment banks, that they provide a valuable service in providing liquidity (or fast-flowing capital), giving out loans to businesses and householders. In short, we owe them something for this service; we should front up billions of dollars when necessary to save them from the consequences of their own actions.
Or so the argument goes.
Paulson (a former CEO of Goldman Sachs who earned millions fostering the temporarily lucrative but unsound behaviors that led to the crisis) has requested ever-growing amounts of money to prop up the banks. The taxpayers (meaning you and me) have an ongoing, and possibly unending, debt to the banks. In addition to the penurious interest rates on adjustable-rate mortgages for houses whose prices have crashed, we owe them unlimited sums to ensure their continued existence.
That is the argument being made.
(Here, one might remark that unlimited obligation is a key characteristic of extortion relationships.)
The facts of the situation are quite different from the argument I have detailed above. More than $350 billion of taxpayer money (read: yours, mine, our children's and grandchildren's money) has been disbursed to the banks to ensure their stability. As a result of that transfer of funds, the banks owe us. This is not an unlimited obligation; it is a $350 billion debt that should be called in a variety of ways.
Firstly, it is relatively easy to identify the people who benefited from the orgy of greed that led to the crisis, and determine how much money they got away with. Take that money off them, either by clawbacks of bonuses or punitively high taxes. (In this case, I think that we can dispense with the notion that high taxes create a disincentive to wealth creation, because it's now clear that investment bankers weren't actually creating any.)
Secondly, the government should take an ownership stake in the banks - and it should be in preferred shares with a dedicated interest rate. If they are not going concerns, they should be liquidated in orderly fashion and their functional pieces reorganized. If they are, they should eventually get a chance to buy their shares back. Either way, the debt to society will be repaid.
This is all blindingly obvious to anybody who has not accepted the perverse argument I described above. To those people, I have another anecdote:
Somali pirates hijacked a giant Saudi supertanker with a cargo of crude oil hundreds of miles out in the Indian Ocean in a dramatic escalation that showed their expanding reach, puncturing a security web of warships trying to protect vital shipping lanes.
It was the largest vessel seized yet in a surge of pirate attacks, and the farthest out to sea that the well-armed fighters, bolstered by millions in past ransoms, have successfully struck...
With most attacks ending with million-dollar payouts, piracy is considered the biggest economy in Somalia, a country that has had no stable government for decades. A report last month by a London-based think tank said pirates have raked in up to $30 million in ransoms this year alone.
The Bush years - and Paulson is working hard to squeeze them to the last drop - have brought primitive accumulation into the mainstream of the (post)modern capitalist economy. When businesses find themselves incapable - whether by "the law of the tendency", industry maturity or simple incompetence - to secure an acceptable rate of profit, they fall upon the public sphere, demanding a ransom from the state and citizenry. Give a Somali pirate a business suit and an MBA, and he would fit right into this milieu...
17 November 2008
Elephant guns and enemies
Last night we watched Gus Van Sant's Elephant, a film indirectly about the Columbine shootings. It was an elegant, tense and human film that made effective use of teen-cam - shots focusing almost narcissisticly on one character as they moved around the school, other teens blurred in the background.
Everyone seemed plausible and the dialogue was honest. The two shooters were equally realistic: both gun-obsessed outcasts. One played piano, had spitballs thrown at him in physics class, and by the end exuded a deranged desire for control. The other, a bleached-blond angry young man, was obsessed with shooting games and revenge.
Unsettlingly, the latter looked strikingly like my middle- and high-school nemesis, Justin J. When he started to raise my ire in 6th grade, he must not have been too much further up the social ladder than I was. I was at the bottom, largely due to my studious ignorance of social ladders, and my classmates confusion at dealing with a bright-eyed kid from Nigeria. His slightly elevated position in the pecking order depended upon a puerile imagination and a sharp tongue. He knew dozens of ways to call you gay or denigrate your mother. I took it in stride when I was called a queer - after all, I thought, there's nothing wrong with being strange.
And so it went. When I began to decipher the things he was saying to me, my blood boiled. Dislike simmered down into concentrated hatred over the course of seven years. My parents tried to convince his (separated) parents to rein him in - his mother ignored any suggestions that there was something wrong with her darling Justin. I punched him several times in 9th grade (he didn't hit back), and the taunts slackened off. Finally, I went away to college, to Argentina, to New Zealand, and he just stayed there. Last night, I got curious and checked - and he's still there in the same dull town. I've seen him flipping burgers and driving his dad's truck, buying a beer bong on a Friday night. I haven't seen him for years at this point.
When I was eighteen, I thought that my blood would boil forever. I had a (short) enemies list. When I was twenty, it was one or two people longer. Now, I'm not so sure. Those years are full of arrogant universality, carelessly-generated eternity: I will love you forever. I will hate you forever. Yes, to the ends of the earth, until our bones turn to chalk.
Nowadays, space and language seem more important. If he spoke, would I care? Would he speak in the same harshly adolescent tone, with the same words: faggot, queer, gay, homo? I doubt it would have the same effect. If I replied, would he understand or care? (You've seen how I write. I talk like this too.) It's not exactly the same language. Moreover, we no longer inhabit the same halls and highways. In such a context, it's hard to define hatred.
We hate those who are most similar to us, not those who are different. Hutus and Tutsis, Serbs and Bosniaks, and so on down throughout history. Justin and I are no longer very similar. We don't live in the same place, we don't speak in the same way, we probably don't think about the same things.
I will, bewilderingly, allow him to have the last word, courtesy of Google:
Everyone seemed plausible and the dialogue was honest. The two shooters were equally realistic: both gun-obsessed outcasts. One played piano, had spitballs thrown at him in physics class, and by the end exuded a deranged desire for control. The other, a bleached-blond angry young man, was obsessed with shooting games and revenge.
Unsettlingly, the latter looked strikingly like my middle- and high-school nemesis, Justin J. When he started to raise my ire in 6th grade, he must not have been too much further up the social ladder than I was. I was at the bottom, largely due to my studious ignorance of social ladders, and my classmates confusion at dealing with a bright-eyed kid from Nigeria. His slightly elevated position in the pecking order depended upon a puerile imagination and a sharp tongue. He knew dozens of ways to call you gay or denigrate your mother. I took it in stride when I was called a queer - after all, I thought, there's nothing wrong with being strange.
And so it went. When I began to decipher the things he was saying to me, my blood boiled. Dislike simmered down into concentrated hatred over the course of seven years. My parents tried to convince his (separated) parents to rein him in - his mother ignored any suggestions that there was something wrong with her darling Justin. I punched him several times in 9th grade (he didn't hit back), and the taunts slackened off. Finally, I went away to college, to Argentina, to New Zealand, and he just stayed there. Last night, I got curious and checked - and he's still there in the same dull town. I've seen him flipping burgers and driving his dad's truck, buying a beer bong on a Friday night. I haven't seen him for years at this point.
When I was eighteen, I thought that my blood would boil forever. I had a (short) enemies list. When I was twenty, it was one or two people longer. Now, I'm not so sure. Those years are full of arrogant universality, carelessly-generated eternity: I will love you forever. I will hate you forever. Yes, to the ends of the earth, until our bones turn to chalk.
Nowadays, space and language seem more important. If he spoke, would I care? Would he speak in the same harshly adolescent tone, with the same words: faggot, queer, gay, homo? I doubt it would have the same effect. If I replied, would he understand or care? (You've seen how I write. I talk like this too.) It's not exactly the same language. Moreover, we no longer inhabit the same halls and highways. In such a context, it's hard to define hatred.
We hate those who are most similar to us, not those who are different. Hutus and Tutsis, Serbs and Bosniaks, and so on down throughout history. Justin and I are no longer very similar. We don't live in the same place, we don't speak in the same way, we probably don't think about the same things.
I will, bewilderingly, allow him to have the last word, courtesy of Google:
This is going to be a rant against all hate mongers. In specific, the Westboro Baptist Church, lets call them WBC to keep it easy. Also known for their controversial website (in no way is this a plug for them) http://www.godhatesfags.com. [...] As far as homosexuality goes. I am not a fan, but I don’t despise these people at all, unlike the WBC. I took the time to listen to a few of the WBC sermons and I felt nothing but hatred from their priest about “Jackass fags” as he so blatantly put it.
15 November 2008
The Zoo
My cousin Ross turned five today - a memorable day. I called him up and had a semi-intelligible conversation about it. He is growing up!
Anne and I went to the Wellington Zoological Gardens this afternoon. Later on, we went to a bar called Zoobar, which totally sucked. It was full of slot machines and a small gaggle of people watching horse races. One of them called out to us, "You lost?" They cackled like hyenas; we decided not to stay. Next time, we're going to reply with "Your dad was killed by a fish!" - the incomprehensible tagline of the villain of Tongan Ninja.
You had to be there.
Second burrito of the Southern Hemisphere (after one in Buenos Aires) at a place called Mexican Cafe. Decent. We would eat again.
I enjoyed the family of giraffes in the zoo quite a lot. I admire tall animals, and also animals that I can stand on. (I am now thinking that giraffes may be at the root of a lot of dragon myths - the long neck, the horns, the long horse-like head. A creature that must have seemed mythological to European ears.) We also saw a kiwi, which was a little round butterball with a long beak lurking around in a darkened environment. It was a fruitful few hours.
I suppose there is always an element of ambivalence to zoos - while I enjoy seeing animals, it's always sad to see them caged. What are they thinking? The lions seemed bored, while the chimpanzees, which had surprisingly muscular arms, cavorted intermittently. The tigers seemed quite frustrated - such high fences, and such tasty morsels outside! The ostriches paced. The smaller animals seemed content, for the main part. I couldn't help but wonder where they all would rather be.
I am of the opinion that there should be less humans, and more habitat for animals. But who will decide which human stay? One would be right to point out that, given current development patterns, the costs of preserving remaining unspoiled land will fall disproportionately on poor people in sub-Saharan Africa and the Amazon. (It's also worth pointing out that the benefits of despoiling and developing that open land will not accrue to those poor people - they will end up proletarianized, driven into slums or penurious wages, and multinational corporations and rent-seeking elites will profit.) So we're left with zoos; another imperfect solution in a world perhaps trapping itself in a bad equilibrium point.
Anne and I went to the Wellington Zoological Gardens this afternoon. Later on, we went to a bar called Zoobar, which totally sucked. It was full of slot machines and a small gaggle of people watching horse races. One of them called out to us, "You lost?" They cackled like hyenas; we decided not to stay. Next time, we're going to reply with "Your dad was killed by a fish!" - the incomprehensible tagline of the villain of Tongan Ninja.
You had to be there.
Second burrito of the Southern Hemisphere (after one in Buenos Aires) at a place called Mexican Cafe. Decent. We would eat again.
I enjoyed the family of giraffes in the zoo quite a lot. I admire tall animals, and also animals that I can stand on. (I am now thinking that giraffes may be at the root of a lot of dragon myths - the long neck, the horns, the long horse-like head. A creature that must have seemed mythological to European ears.) We also saw a kiwi, which was a little round butterball with a long beak lurking around in a darkened environment. It was a fruitful few hours.
I suppose there is always an element of ambivalence to zoos - while I enjoy seeing animals, it's always sad to see them caged. What are they thinking? The lions seemed bored, while the chimpanzees, which had surprisingly muscular arms, cavorted intermittently. The tigers seemed quite frustrated - such high fences, and such tasty morsels outside! The ostriches paced. The smaller animals seemed content, for the main part. I couldn't help but wonder where they all would rather be.
I am of the opinion that there should be less humans, and more habitat for animals. But who will decide which human stay? One would be right to point out that, given current development patterns, the costs of preserving remaining unspoiled land will fall disproportionately on poor people in sub-Saharan Africa and the Amazon. (It's also worth pointing out that the benefits of despoiling and developing that open land will not accrue to those poor people - they will end up proletarianized, driven into slums or penurious wages, and multinational corporations and rent-seeking elites will profit.) So we're left with zoos; another imperfect solution in a world perhaps trapping itself in a bad equilibrium point.
12 November 2008
All that is solid melts into air
In a New Yorker review of several books on the financial crisis, John Lanchester suggests that we have recently passed out of modernist finance into postmodern finance. "[F]inance, like other forms of human behavior, underwent a change in the twentieth century, a shift equivalent to the emergence of modernism in the arts—a break with common sense, a turn toward self-referentiality and abstraction and notions that couldn’t be explained in workaday English." This happened in the 1970s, when derivatives contracts were invented and mathematical methods developed to price them.
The recent financial crisis came about thanks to derivatives, whose value is based on some underlying asset. As it turned out, unregulated derivatives systematically obscured the risk of the subprime mortgages that they were based on. And, as a result:
When reading Derrida alongside Marx a year ago, I noted a similar analogy. Derrida describes meaning as an infinite deferral - tree means arbol means leafy thing with a trunk means... The meaning of a word can only be described in terms of other words, whose meanings are, similarly, not anchored in anything fixed.
Marx performed a similar analysis with exchange value a century before Derrida rose to fame in English departments. A commodity only has "worth" in the market insofar as it can be exchanged for another one. So one coat is worth ten loaves of bread is worth three fishes is worth thirty dollars is worth...
[Note that I am only providing a partial and unsubtle analysis of Marx's points in the first chapter of Capital. There, he describes a feedback loop between use value, exchange value and value - I discuss only exchange value here.]
As the above suggests, humans aren't totally comfortable with values that run all over the place. So a money-commodity is invented to provide a universal measure of value. The value of everything can be expressed in dollars and cents. But the money-commodity is not a fixed thing; it has its meaning only due to its relationships with other currencies and, indirectly, through the amount of other values in the economy. So the value of money is deferred back, in a complex way, on the commodities whose value it claims to anchor. Value, like meaning, is a snake biting its own tail. This creates the strong possibility of crises and systematic devaluations.
One closing note from Lanchester:
The recent financial crisis came about thanks to derivatives, whose value is based on some underlying asset. As it turned out, unregulated derivatives systematically obscured the risk of the subprime mortgages that they were based on. And, as a result:
If the invention of derivatives was the financial world’s modernist dawn, the current crisis is unsettlingly like the birth of postmodernism. For anyone who studied literature in college in the past few decades, there is a weird familiarity about the current crisis: value, in the realm of finance capital, evokes the elusive nature of meaning in deconstructionism. According to Jacques Derrida, the doyen of the school, meaning can never be precisely located; instead, it is always “deferred,” moved elsewhere, located in other meanings, which refer and defer to other meanings—a snake permanently and necessarily eating its own tail. This process is fluid and constant, but at moments the perpetual process of deferral stalls and collapses in on itself. Derrida called this moment an “aporia,” from a Greek term meaning “impasse.” There is something both amusing and appalling about seeing his theories acted out in the world markets to such cataclysmic effect.
When reading Derrida alongside Marx a year ago, I noted a similar analogy. Derrida describes meaning as an infinite deferral - tree means arbol means leafy thing with a trunk means... The meaning of a word can only be described in terms of other words, whose meanings are, similarly, not anchored in anything fixed.
Marx performed a similar analysis with exchange value a century before Derrida rose to fame in English departments. A commodity only has "worth" in the market insofar as it can be exchanged for another one. So one coat is worth ten loaves of bread is worth three fishes is worth thirty dollars is worth...
[Note that I am only providing a partial and unsubtle analysis of Marx's points in the first chapter of Capital. There, he describes a feedback loop between use value, exchange value and value - I discuss only exchange value here.]
As the above suggests, humans aren't totally comfortable with values that run all over the place. So a money-commodity is invented to provide a universal measure of value. The value of everything can be expressed in dollars and cents. But the money-commodity is not a fixed thing; it has its meaning only due to its relationships with other currencies and, indirectly, through the amount of other values in the economy. So the value of money is deferred back, in a complex way, on the commodities whose value it claims to anchor. Value, like meaning, is a snake biting its own tail. This creates the strong possibility of crises and systematic devaluations.
One closing note from Lanchester:
[Yale economist Robert] Shiller’s basic idea is that there should be more market activity... It seems loopy that the cure for a disaster caused by a headlong dash in the direction of ever freer capital markets should be even freer capital markets; but that is part of Shiller’s point. When it comes to the free global movement of capital, there is no plan B.
11 November 2008
Zombie movie review: Black Sheep
New Zealanders made a zombie film. It was about sheep that went flesh-eating after exposure to some bad genetic material. The most likable character was a farmer who ended every sentence with the word "bro" - as in "No worries bro, it's just a sheep." There were buckets of gore as many people were attacked by the bloodthirsty fluffy things.
Oh, yes, there was a bestiality subplot.
Oh, yes, there was a bestiality subplot.
09 November 2008
Motocicleta
In my dream, I was living on the second floor of a Wellington house. It was a rainy day; I was sorting through the cluttered attic on a rainy day. Some things in there were mine.
I found the bicycle, standing dustily behind stacks of antique boxes. I had put it there five years before, asking my cousin Greg to care for it on a previous visit to New Zealand. I thought of my other bicycle, ridden through saline slush at Williams until the gears jammed, and then brought back to California, where I stripped the rust off and re-oiled the chain. In Wellington, where there is no snow and no salt on the roads, my bicycle was in fine condition.
But where was the second-hand motorcycle I had asked Greg to keep? As Anne slept in our room below, I finished searching the attic. I had waited five (or was it four?) years to ride it. I walked out into the rain and searched the street nearby. After a time in which the motorcycle was stolen, I found it across the road from the house.
It was heavy and gray, a clean-looking bike. I produced the keys and turned the ignition. I remember the way raindrops glistened on the gas tank and leather seat. I kicked it into gear and drove down the steep, curving Wellington road, the town glistening through the haze down the hill to my left. I turned a corner, the wheels lost traction on the wet tarmac, and the machine slipped away from me.
I picked it up and got back on. Around another corner, I wiped out again. Up and down hills in the rain, through the darkening Wellington afternoon, on a dreamed-up motorcycle that slid away from me at every opportunity.
I found the bicycle, standing dustily behind stacks of antique boxes. I had put it there five years before, asking my cousin Greg to care for it on a previous visit to New Zealand. I thought of my other bicycle, ridden through saline slush at Williams until the gears jammed, and then brought back to California, where I stripped the rust off and re-oiled the chain. In Wellington, where there is no snow and no salt on the roads, my bicycle was in fine condition.
But where was the second-hand motorcycle I had asked Greg to keep? As Anne slept in our room below, I finished searching the attic. I had waited five (or was it four?) years to ride it. I walked out into the rain and searched the street nearby. After a time in which the motorcycle was stolen, I found it across the road from the house.
It was heavy and gray, a clean-looking bike. I produced the keys and turned the ignition. I remember the way raindrops glistened on the gas tank and leather seat. I kicked it into gear and drove down the steep, curving Wellington road, the town glistening through the haze down the hill to my left. I turned a corner, the wheels lost traction on the wet tarmac, and the machine slipped away from me.
I picked it up and got back on. Around another corner, I wiped out again. Up and down hills in the rain, through the darkening Wellington afternoon, on a dreamed-up motorcycle that slid away from me at every opportunity.
08 November 2008
Capitalism and democracy
A jumping off point: In the New York Times, economist Alan Blinder counsels us to Remember that capitalism is not a spectator sport.
His article is directed at the upcoming Obama administration. Obama's first task, he says, will be to change a system in which "Americans watched helplessly as the economic world passed them by, the top dogs prospered, and their national government either sat by passively or intervened to help the 'haves'." Under Bush, we have been advised to continue consuming, buy ever-more in a growth-making orgy of greed. As far as his administration was concerned, consumption was the sole civic duty of an American citizen. In the wake of the Sept 11 terror attacks, he induced us to spend more - and nothing else.
While Blinder takes capitalism to be essentially participatory, and the Bush years to be, ironically, a statist perversion thereof, I might take a more Tocquevillean perspective on it. Alexis de Tocqueville, in his pioneering study of America (read it here), set out certain conflicting tendencies within the country. On the one hand, representative democracy thrived when it promoted excellent people to leadership; on the other, social and economic conditions created leveling tendencies. He perceived a drive towards the lowest-common denominator.
Although all of that is slightly orthogonal to my point, it's worth noting that the same forces were still at work in the recent US presidential election - notably in the nasty prospect of Sarah Palin as the vice president.
Picking up Tocqueville's spirit rather than his direct point, I would argue that Blinder is falsely identifying capitalism and democracy. This is nothing new - "free minds and free markets" have been rhetorically tied together ever since Reagan. (Who supported a series of vicious capital-friendly dictatorships across Latin America, but never mind that inconvenient fact.) Specifically, Blinder identifies capitalism, rather than democracy, as having a "participatory" ethos.
Strictly speaking, this is not correct. A (representative) democracy works best when all eligible members of society have a share in decision-making. By contrast, all currently-existing market economies restrict serious decision-making to small groups of shareholders. Attempts to expand decision making powers through union bargaining are resisted; collectively-run enterprises (such as the fabricas recuperadas in Argentina) are opposed with force.
In that respect, capitalism and democracy have incompatible properties. As I suggested earlier, the State is the site in which the popular public sphere and the market sphere interact. (Blinder implicitly acknowledges this by pointing to Obama's role in restoring "participation" to capitalism.)
This incompatibility is suggested, in uterine form, by Adam Smith. In his famous metaphor of the pin factory, he gives a double significance to the division of labour. The producer is impoverished in his/her working life, as tasks become more repetitive and mechanical. Making a pin is an interesting and challenging task. Performing one of the numerous gestures that go into that pin is stultifying.
Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus: "A face that toils so close to stones is already stone itself!" Similarly, as Smith (followed by Marx) notes, a man that toils so much with machines is already an automaton!
Smith generously admits that, were this all there was to capitalism, it would be intolerable. However, at this point he pivots, considering the pin-maker not as a producer but as a consumer. With division of labour, his job is worse, but more pins are made. If the same occurs throughout the economy, there will be more for everybody. As a consumer, his life is measurably richer: his coat finer, his boots firmer, his food cheaper. He reaps the rewards of his dull working-day.
In short, Smith sells capitalism through an ideological shift. The costs are paid by the producer. The benefits are reaped by the consumer. As each man and woman is both, a weird schizophrenia emerges. Different behaviours are beneficial for each half. In working life, one must abstain, delay gratification, and adopt the Protestant work ethic. In consumptive live, one must disseminate much currency, spend with wild abandon, and consume the lot. And to fully accept capitalism, one must see society as primarily composed of consumers.
One feature of late-capitalist developed economies, I would argue, is a deliberate emphasis on the human-as-consumer, to the exclusion of the human-as-producer. Bush's post-9/11 appeals to consumerism were perhaps the apex of this ideology. But, as we are finding now, there are limits to this social model. Three decades of unpaid debts will bring the edifice crumbling down. In the coming years, Americans will be forced to accept - after a long consumption-driven binge - the role of self-abnegating producers. If not, decline and fall.
This return to production, at the possible cost of our overinflated consumption habits - not "participatory" capitalism - will be the hard sell that Obama must put forward.
His article is directed at the upcoming Obama administration. Obama's first task, he says, will be to change a system in which "Americans watched helplessly as the economic world passed them by, the top dogs prospered, and their national government either sat by passively or intervened to help the 'haves'." Under Bush, we have been advised to continue consuming, buy ever-more in a growth-making orgy of greed. As far as his administration was concerned, consumption was the sole civic duty of an American citizen. In the wake of the Sept 11 terror attacks, he induced us to spend more - and nothing else.
While Blinder takes capitalism to be essentially participatory, and the Bush years to be, ironically, a statist perversion thereof, I might take a more Tocquevillean perspective on it. Alexis de Tocqueville, in his pioneering study of America (read it here), set out certain conflicting tendencies within the country. On the one hand, representative democracy thrived when it promoted excellent people to leadership; on the other, social and economic conditions created leveling tendencies. He perceived a drive towards the lowest-common denominator.
Although all of that is slightly orthogonal to my point, it's worth noting that the same forces were still at work in the recent US presidential election - notably in the nasty prospect of Sarah Palin as the vice president.
Picking up Tocqueville's spirit rather than his direct point, I would argue that Blinder is falsely identifying capitalism and democracy. This is nothing new - "free minds and free markets" have been rhetorically tied together ever since Reagan. (Who supported a series of vicious capital-friendly dictatorships across Latin America, but never mind that inconvenient fact.) Specifically, Blinder identifies capitalism, rather than democracy, as having a "participatory" ethos.
Strictly speaking, this is not correct. A (representative) democracy works best when all eligible members of society have a share in decision-making. By contrast, all currently-existing market economies restrict serious decision-making to small groups of shareholders. Attempts to expand decision making powers through union bargaining are resisted; collectively-run enterprises (such as the fabricas recuperadas in Argentina) are opposed with force.
In that respect, capitalism and democracy have incompatible properties. As I suggested earlier, the State is the site in which the popular public sphere and the market sphere interact. (Blinder implicitly acknowledges this by pointing to Obama's role in restoring "participation" to capitalism.)
This incompatibility is suggested, in uterine form, by Adam Smith. In his famous metaphor of the pin factory, he gives a double significance to the division of labour. The producer is impoverished in his/her working life, as tasks become more repetitive and mechanical. Making a pin is an interesting and challenging task. Performing one of the numerous gestures that go into that pin is stultifying.
Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus: "A face that toils so close to stones is already stone itself!" Similarly, as Smith (followed by Marx) notes, a man that toils so much with machines is already an automaton!
Smith generously admits that, were this all there was to capitalism, it would be intolerable. However, at this point he pivots, considering the pin-maker not as a producer but as a consumer. With division of labour, his job is worse, but more pins are made. If the same occurs throughout the economy, there will be more for everybody. As a consumer, his life is measurably richer: his coat finer, his boots firmer, his food cheaper. He reaps the rewards of his dull working-day.
In short, Smith sells capitalism through an ideological shift. The costs are paid by the producer. The benefits are reaped by the consumer. As each man and woman is both, a weird schizophrenia emerges. Different behaviours are beneficial for each half. In working life, one must abstain, delay gratification, and adopt the Protestant work ethic. In consumptive live, one must disseminate much currency, spend with wild abandon, and consume the lot. And to fully accept capitalism, one must see society as primarily composed of consumers.
One feature of late-capitalist developed economies, I would argue, is a deliberate emphasis on the human-as-consumer, to the exclusion of the human-as-producer. Bush's post-9/11 appeals to consumerism were perhaps the apex of this ideology. But, as we are finding now, there are limits to this social model. Three decades of unpaid debts will bring the edifice crumbling down. In the coming years, Americans will be forced to accept - after a long consumption-driven binge - the role of self-abnegating producers. If not, decline and fall.
This return to production, at the possible cost of our overinflated consumption habits - not "participatory" capitalism - will be the hard sell that Obama must put forward.
05 November 2008
I wish we were in Chicago
Today was Guy Fawkes Day in Wellington (and the Commonwealth in general), so there were fireworks and large crowds out on the street. I imagined that they were all there for the same reason as us:
03 November 2008
End hits
I promised not to do this any more, but this article Dad sent along was just too perfect an epitaph to the Bush era:
The state of America after Bush
Seven American writers reflect upon the disasters of the Bush era:
While Wolff's feelings are, shamefully, justified ("Our economy is in freefall, our public school system a disgrace, our military exhausted, the wounded and traumatised dying of neglect, yea, the very earth groaning for relief - and he's optimistic!"), it's a grim judgment that they exist in the first place. Bush has deranged us all; everybody on the left, many in the middle, and even a handful of principled conservatives. It's a national obsession, morbid and probably driven by schadenfreude and deep guilt that we couldn't stop him.
With luck, it will start to disappear tomorrow.
The state of America after Bush
Seven American writers reflect upon the disasters of the Bush era:
Tobias Wolff:
When we meet for dinner we do our best to take up other subjects - books, gossip, movies, our children - but then, like the addicts we've become, we sneak back to the drug of outrage, shooting up the latest barefaced lie and squalid revelation, not forgetting to list yet again the national and global catastrophes brought about by the incompetence, hypocrisy, muddleheadedness, venality, truculence, mendacity, callousness, zealotry, machismo, lawlessness, cynicism, wishful thinking, and occasional downright evil of the administration of George W Bush.
While Wolff's feelings are, shamefully, justified ("Our economy is in freefall, our public school system a disgrace, our military exhausted, the wounded and traumatised dying of neglect, yea, the very earth groaning for relief - and he's optimistic!"), it's a grim judgment that they exist in the first place. Bush has deranged us all; everybody on the left, many in the middle, and even a handful of principled conservatives. It's a national obsession, morbid and probably driven by schadenfreude and deep guilt that we couldn't stop him.
With luck, it will start to disappear tomorrow.
Fortuitousness
Today at work I wrote up a brief summary of the US election chances: The summary is that McCain is well good and screwed, unless something bizarre happens. If he shows up on television tomorrow with Osama bin Laden's head on a platter, we know the fix is in. It may be in anyway, due to flaws in the voting machines.
In short, I'm sick of the subject. What's done is done. It's either another four years of mismanagement, callousness and the banality of evil, or a chance for something different. I have voted. You should vote too. We'll know all about it in two days.
I am done reading about it. I am done thinking about it, for now. It can all wait until the inauguration in January. Let's get on with our lives, and hope that the madness surrounding American politics abates slightly in the future.
[Note: this is not very likely, with the deranged extremist right solidifying its control over the Republican Party, and an African-American possibly ascending to the presidency. All we can hope for is that the Republicans regain some whit of common sense and move back into the slightly less corrupt center of American politics. Or that they doom themselves through out-of-touch economic policies and decreasingly relevant "family values" rants.]
In other news, Anne and I sampled a bottle of delicious free liquor: Barrel 51 bourbon and cola mix. We obtained it from the sidewalk the previous night - somebody had apparently tossed a twelve-pack of the 51 out of a car window, and one survived.
It was totally vile. But Anne has learned how to make tortillas from flour, milk and olive oil - pennies on the dollar compared to the rapaciously overpriced tortillas sold in supermarkets. Moments like this, I miss America's Hispanic influence.
In short, I'm sick of the subject. What's done is done. It's either another four years of mismanagement, callousness and the banality of evil, or a chance for something different. I have voted. You should vote too. We'll know all about it in two days.
I am done reading about it. I am done thinking about it, for now. It can all wait until the inauguration in January. Let's get on with our lives, and hope that the madness surrounding American politics abates slightly in the future.
[Note: this is not very likely, with the deranged extremist right solidifying its control over the Republican Party, and an African-American possibly ascending to the presidency. All we can hope for is that the Republicans regain some whit of common sense and move back into the slightly less corrupt center of American politics. Or that they doom themselves through out-of-touch economic policies and decreasingly relevant "family values" rants.]
In other news, Anne and I sampled a bottle of delicious free liquor: Barrel 51 bourbon and cola mix. We obtained it from the sidewalk the previous night - somebody had apparently tossed a twelve-pack of the 51 out of a car window, and one survived.
It was totally vile. But Anne has learned how to make tortillas from flour, milk and olive oil - pennies on the dollar compared to the rapaciously overpriced tortillas sold in supermarkets. Moments like this, I miss America's Hispanic influence.
02 November 2008
Fabulous mussels
A fine day culminates in a fine evening. Late wake-up followed by leisurely bus-ride down to the farmers market. The smell of chives followed us around all afternoon. We commemorated the previous night's thunderstorm-watching of The Motorcycle Diaries with a long sit in Ernesto's on Cuba St. She wrote letters; I read Keynes. We both played chess. Strolling ensued.
Anne promises that she will buy me a tortoise. Walter Benjamin comments that it was once a Parisian fashion to promenade with a tortoise.
We walked up to the wind turbine at the end of the Karori Sanctuary, just in time to see the sunset, and walked back in the dark. Hearing nightbird cries - two owls, and jumping at every noise on the other side of the fence, as it could be a kiwi.
Finally, back home to cook up our first greenlip mussels. A Kiwi classic that I had proselytized for previously. Olive oil, garlic, onions, white wine, tomatoes, mussels, and simmer down. It was a great meal.
We are truly living in new Roman times; the new decadence is here with us, and it is cheap. Delicious NZ ice cream, farmers markets, movie rentals ranging from the unwatchable (Final Destination II) to the sublimely hilarious (Life Aquatic), and mussels for $4 a kilo.
Anne promises that she will buy me a tortoise. Walter Benjamin comments that it was once a Parisian fashion to promenade with a tortoise.
We walked up to the wind turbine at the end of the Karori Sanctuary, just in time to see the sunset, and walked back in the dark. Hearing nightbird cries - two owls, and jumping at every noise on the other side of the fence, as it could be a kiwi.
Finally, back home to cook up our first greenlip mussels. A Kiwi classic that I had proselytized for previously. Olive oil, garlic, onions, white wine, tomatoes, mussels, and simmer down. It was a great meal.
We are truly living in new Roman times; the new decadence is here with us, and it is cheap. Delicious NZ ice cream, farmers markets, movie rentals ranging from the unwatchable (Final Destination II) to the sublimely hilarious (Life Aquatic), and mussels for $4 a kilo.
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