Barack Obama and the Unforgettable Fire

At that hour one wondered where things stood.

This wondering.

fitting its forgetful fight under reactions favor,

was hard for all.

nobody believes what time it really is,

we know when we decide.

Not time to waiver

After two days of torturous contemplation over whether to kill the disintegrating senate healthcare bill; after restless nights, manic angry and wierd phone calls to friends and family, depression,rage, despair, and simmering, bitter licking of my progressive wounds I have taken a deep, deep breath and now say.... the healthcare bill should be passed even with all of it's flaws for these reasons:

1.The bill does almost nothing to improve the state of health insurance in this country but it will meaningfully improve the state of health care.

2. Subject of the bill aside it is critically important that congress overcome the gridlock and obstructionism which have threatened it's basic functions, and show that it can pass a major piece of forward thinking legislation, despite it's flaws.

....Copenhagen however is completely different story, a sham and a major letdown. Still we must take the good and move forward. we don't have any other choices

Banks: Let's keep them small and boring...If they're too big to fail, they're too big to exist. This and other thoughts from the year 2009.

In his Op Ed piece Making Banks Boring, Paul Krugman today talked about three distinct phases of banking and finance which he sees occurring over the last century. Krugman's analysis does correctly shed light on recent history, but does not go far enough to tell the real story. This leaves one to guess, can the Obama administration pick up the story and get it right? That is uncertain.

In the first phase, from 1909 until the 1930's Krugman says we see banks growing large, powerful, and monopolistic; while debt, much like today, exploded as a percentage of US GDP. Then the burst of 1929. In the second phase beginning in the 1930's and lasting until the 1980's the banks were small, and we experienced unprecedented prosperity. In the third phase beginning in the 1980's (I may pull it back to Nixon era deregulation; the counterpoint to the culturally doomed LBJ style big government, which was distinctly different from FDR era big government), Krugman points to the growth of Wall Street, and the renewed intimacy between it and Washington. The checks and balances regulating the separation of commercial and investment banking dissolve and financial careers for the first time since before the great depression become hugely lucrative. Then in the 90's an emerging world market, hungry for American investment instruments begins it's meteoric, debt fueled ascent. As it grows it is blinded, largely by greed, to the systemic risk which lurked, grew, and finally fulfilled itself in the recent collapse. The return logic being that growth based on debt has about as much use as monopoly money.

Krugman's triad is accurate but overly simplified, due of course to the countless unaccounted for other variables which the 20th and early 21st centuries have presented. What does seem correct however is the notion of pendulum swings, with the current crisis starting the next turn of the pendulum. But to suggest that the next swing will follow the simple pattern already presented is very naive. The world's current state of change is more advanced, exponential, and unprecedented because of it's global interdependence. This is not something which can be understood by simply projecting another change in a left/right orientation. Here it might be more apt to compare the current global situation to a knot instead of a pendulum swinging. In this situation it is also more likely that the economic futures will not be immediately predictable.

More specifically compounding the potential vagueness of economic outcomes are the Obama administration's anxieties over bank restructuring and nationalization. In this scenario the only resolution is time, where a kind of wait and hope the market can fix itself, by fixing itself mentality, has emerged. This is an uncomfortable chance to be taking if economic indicators remain bleak. The prospect of "troubled" assets becoming profitable relies, the US Treasury hopes, on capital investment in these assets. But this investment will likely remain too scarce to be effective on the required scale. In this climate of economic protectionism, fidelity to a plan of this kind would require huge risk on the part of investors who are already increasingly wary of the new regulatory strings attached to the purchase of these toxic assets. A clear picture of economic health could take years to emerge.

A more suitable response would be to fix the market by taking the burden off of it's hands by allowing government, which is the only company that can run at a loss ( it already does) and have chance to be successful, to intervene and nationalize faltering industries for a period of time. Government can carry the burden while investing in a more sustainable society, where healthier, educated and empowered people, communities and institutions emerge; thus allowing the conditions for a healthy market to come back. There would be clear benchmarks set for knowing when these conditions had been met, and upon which government would quickly relinquish it's interventionist role. Through this broad action, say over a 10 to 15 year period, a redefinition of profit could occur which would lay the framework for long term global sustainability. This plan would also be more attractive to our lender countries, notably China, which will be looking less at specific dollar figures, and more at the clear steps taken by the US to make lending credit to it in the years to come a good investment for China. There is little doubt that this "credit worthiness of countries" will take its shape globally in the years to come, in the form of healthy, well educated workforces, which can innovate faster, use energy more efficiently and adapt to the rapid pace of information change. Obama's 2009 budget seems quite savvy to this thinking.

However it cannot be emphasized enough, getting back to government intervention, how important it would be to wisely follow benchmarks. History tells us that creating and adhering to benchmarks would temper the emergence of another long term, lateral political shift, at a time when the US needs to be moving forward and not side to side. In the US post WWII, a 60 year left/right feedback loop has spurred the paralyzing chasms of political identity which we see deepening more than ever today. Failure to set clear benchmarks after World War II led to an overstay of New Deal government style which ran it's course in the 1960's with the emergence of the perceived "welfare state" of the LBJ era. Losing focus on good governance in the face of racial and cultural upheavals associated with this welfare system, deeply divided sides emerged. The reactionary movement of this era galvanized itself in the emergence of the modern Anglo~American nationalistic identities. Conversely emerging were the 60's era countercultures and the vital victories of the civil rights movement. Amidst the tumult of these competing forces were slowly depleted the populist and upright civic values of the FDR era which had fostered the then peaking middle class. In its place the culture wars of the 60's and 70's emerged. In this identity change also came much of the modern antagonism to government, taxing and regulation. This gave rise to the modern conservative economic movement, and signaled the beginning of the end for many of the practical government mechanisms of the 30's and 40's and 50's (See: The Ever normal Granary.) Spurred by the Cold War fears to increasingly avoid any statist (socialist) identities this rightward shift itself lacked any benchmarks for it's own temperance. Mismanaged by the ideas of radical market theorists like Milton Friedman , we went barreling headlong through the stop sign that was the fall of Soviet Russia and emerged alone as a hungry and bewildered titan, swinging in the ring at nothing. Until finally, irresponsibly, we lost the balance provided in the dichotomy with our former opponent, and monolithically fell headlong into the new contender's uppercut: terror, globalization, and the confusion of the early 21st century.

Throughout the campaign of 2008 the notion of regaining some sanity from all of this loaded history is what many understood to be the change promised by President Obama. Though I don't doubt that the president remains intent on creating this change; his investment initiatives in health care, education and clean energy are laudable, the real change will not happen if the underlying assumptions of the market's singular preeminence are not challenged. Unfortunately the administration does not want to go near that role, and certainly lacks the political will to do so openly at the present. Though it may be the right thing to do, the political vacuum that is Washington devours many such efforts, and Obama is realistic. If the Obama administration took on this challenge and failed, the political consequences for the "left" could be disastrous for decades to come. This makes it a very hard play for them and though there is a chance we could see more aggressive attempts at broadly reforming economic culture in a second Obama term, it remains unlikely.

Tragically for the world and its people (which seems like it may have a century at most to get its act together) the market in it's current form remains the only true global institution. As far as choices go, it really isn't one. We end up living as several billion disenfranchised humans, collectively watching the esoteric and all powerful economic indicators forecast our future. That once undefeated boxer now staggering on the ropes, facing a fierce and agile new opponent (Read: global warming, potential breakdown of traditional state structure and possible emergence of new global tribalisms consisting of oligarchic corporate entities, fundamentalist theocracies, xenophobic enclaves, waste zones; etc.), gets up for one last round despite the option to hand things over to a more able and ready teammate. 

In doing so, by granting economic events an all powerful status in describing our reality, what we really do is fail to capture our human story lines, of which the current economic situation is not the story itself, but a variable in that story. If we could, just identifying different collective story lines as priorities, like global sustainability, would be a huge start. We certainly now have the tools of communication to  start doing that on a global level: For better or worse we are all connected. It seems Obama has shown the ability to describe an effort like this, with his narrative capabilities. But the real question is, will he do it? He seems to be trying, but I believe that if he is unsuccessful it would be, ironically, the fear or unwillingness to change, where his administration falters. 

If this happens it does not relinquish the need for the story to be told, and for us to tell it right.

The Possibility of Hope

"The Possibility of Hope"

I wanted to share this documentary that accompanied the movie Children of Men. The documentary includes various thinkers discussing the real world state of the themes addressed in the movie.  The most powerful idea that the documentary presents in my opinion, is that our ability to dream of a better world has been stunted primarily because our organizing principles have increasingly galvanized around fear and profit.

Children of Men - The Possibility of Hope @ Yahoo! Video

Framework

In the infancy of the new millenium the world is experiencing exponential change. Here, looking at the world in its systemic totality underscores how human civilization, increasingly victimized by its own designs, is struggling to understand and adapt to the enormous change.

On it's current trajectory civilization becomes like a tightening knot.

The sovereign earth idea is a perspective AND remedy to this problem. It suggests ways in which a steady human hand held collectively over time can undo the knot. We can achieve sovereignty from binding systems, and equilibrium can be restored to our planet.

By encouraging a range of communication styles, both normative and technical, and utilizing the interdependence of agreement and disagreement, this forum seeks to become a node of the "steady human hand."