Next Up . . .

There have been a lot of "other shoes" dropping in the economy lately. But there is one that is Yao Ming-sized: credit card debt.

Welcome to the next crisis. (Link 1) (Link 2)

Those arguments I've seen in other quarters that the absence of bread lines and the fact that Americans can watch football on plasma screens that project a clearer image than their eyes actually allow -- and, oh look, because of this the economy keeps growing, like clockwork, like nature -- proves the stagnation of real wage growth isn't a problem, those arguments are increasingly worth about as much as the balance transfer check I just filled out.

But don't fret, they'll always have their moralistic appeal to greed as the primary culprit (if we were all but a little more responsible, Bank of America couldn't take advantage of us like they do!). Why admit a systematic, materialistic deficiency when an abstraction alone will do the trick?

On Recent Developments in the Market

Huh ... all these years I was told socialism was not only un-American, bad enough, but that it was bad for business too.

Now, of course, the charge led by Gordon Brown to nationalize banks isn't socialism per se. Oh, but it is entertaining to poke fun at the free-marketeers. One thing to recall when you hear them say, as you certainly will if you are apt to listen to them at all, that the market's rise today (& likely beyond) is an indication that the economy's fundamentals are and were strong, and that all we ever need to do is wait for the bull market to return, is that the floor of this particular fall was established primarily because of governmental action. The "invisible hand," as it were, did not sprinkle its faerie dust and save the day here.

It is, in part for this reason, that it is wrong to assert that because the bull always wins it is somehow a more natural state for the market than the bear. Capitalism does what capitalism must do to survive: if that means incorporating aspects of socialism and/or authoritarianism (e.g., China), it will. That the speculative market craves profit and growth, and a non-speculative economy requires them, and that they will forcibly (if necessary) adapt in such a way to make this happen, is not necessarily the stuff of nature. Continual growth is, rather, the stuff of viruses and cancers, not the natural workings of a healthy body. The market, rather, and by that we must include governments, whose stake in the market is as speculative as any individual or hedge fund manager, responds to the natural -- that is to the vicissitudes & material limitations of time, death, and decay -- and evolves accordingly. The way in which it evolves, however, is not necessary. THAT it evolves can perhaps be said to be "natural" . . . into what it evolves and by what it means, not really. Adaptation and evolution are not singular narratives that explain after the fact how we got to where we are now and forecast where we are headed, as though there were no other courses possible. Rather, to speak of adaptation and evolution is to reflect on the full range of possibilities before us at any time, and to realize that possibilities (that are being) embraced are no more natural than those that were (or are being) rejected or ignored.

Owning up to the unnatural element of nature, as it relates to the market, seems essential in actually coming to grips with its declines and keeping its rises in perspective. More importantly still, it reminds us that thinking otherwise is not only acceptable but fundamental to the processes of nature.

Wall Street: We're Saved From Economic Doom!

.... or are we??

A Theology Post!?!

Lately I've been revising an essay of mine that addresses the differences between “righteousness” and “justice.” For most readers of Paul, the difference would appear mostly cosmetic. I've latched onto a contemporary analogy, though, that I think might be helpful in showing a distinction at issue that makes a significant difference.

Consider one of the most important economic issues facing the globalized economy today, debt. In the event of a crisis, whereby there is a person or a country whose credit is overextended, the normal response is to tweak the existing structure that imposes and enforces repayment, normally through some kind of legal reform or economic refinancing. The upshot is a realignment of one’s position with respect to the existing economic and legal structure, but not a complete reassessment of its legitimacy. This is generally comparable to how most traditional conceptions of righteousness is understood to work in, say, The Epistle to the Romans. If we were to extend the analogy, justice would then correspond to wholesale, worldwide debt forgiveness. The results of debt forgiveness are, in terms of the existing structures of political economy, unthinkable (and, inasmuch as the results are thought at all, with the probable collapse of present markets, economies and currencies, even horrific). Which is to say, because debt forgiveness and justice cannot in any way be made to square with the existing legal and economic order, neither can the results of their occurrence be fully anticipated or evaluated. This seems really striking to me, and ultimately very significant for a conception of theology that actually informs one's political disposition.

Oil!

Oh ... and Happy $100 Oil Day! Celebrate this historic occasion in style.

A Link

A little bit lighter on the posting this week. I started a full-time temp. job, and am only just now getting used to the jolt to my regular routine.

I did find the time to read this fabulous synopsis of the current market meltdown, how we got to this point and where it all might be heading & why. Much better than what you're liable to find in most newspapers. It's a bit long, but very worth your time. Surprisingly, even a good many of the comments are worth reading.

The Problem With Blame

I was responding to Gabe's comment to the previous post, and realized it might be fitting just to publish it here instead -- if only to keep up my streak of daily posting this week.

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Re: I think the bottom line is what James Kunstler and you have been harping on: we cannot continue to live as we have been living... but we are surrounded by fucking idiots.

What's worse, in my opinion, is that I don't think we can so easily look around and blame the "fucking idiots" for this mess. Consumption, be it the kind that rapes the environment or the kind that ignores reality (i.e., via credit & debt), is now fully engrained & inseparable from our contemporary culture. Which to say, it is almost impossible for most people to do live truly alternative lifestyles, let alone imagine something differently.

For example. One of the things observed about the decrease in gas consumption in California is that it is mostly because of California's wealth. I.e., in a very real sense, they simply can afford to conserve, either by living in urban areas, or buying cars w/ better fuel consumption, etc. For the vast majority of Americans, however, this is almost impossible. They have, for example, accumulated so much shit in their houses that to move to a smaller, urban area would mean they'd have to leave as trash a lot of the things they've picked up along the way -- enormous couches, a tv p/room, rugs fit more for the Tajj Mahal than Maple Avenue, dust-covered treadmills, pool tables, etc.

(And this is to say nothing at all of the neglected urban cores themselves, where we are asking people to move in order to consume less. They have become inhospitable places, due to a generation of poor maintenance, decayed family and doomed communities. Which is to say, it takes more to bring people to an urban area than opening a couple of bars. What's worse, the problems of urban living are mostly correctable for those who can afford it. The moment an urban area is "cleaned up," look around, and you'll likely find it has been "cleaned" of those who are blamed for making it dirty -- the poor, the homeless, the drug addicts. They are blamed for their irresponsible maintenance of their neighborhoods and the the poor stewardship of their exorbitant "government handouts," despite the fact far and away more government money (tax breaks, etc.) were extended toward the suburbanization of American cities than was extended to its core. Ah, but where there is suburban crime & decay, the blame is on video games and violent tv, not irresponsibility.)

There is also, and perhaps more fundamentally, the simple fact that most people shop at Wal-Fart or Shitkea because their budget forces them to do so. We know that we should buy a more expensive toaster or coffee table, or whatever, knowing full well the cheaper good will break down, forcing us to spend more on a litany of replacements every few years than we would on a one-time investment in something of quality craftsmanship, something that lasts. And yet, (a) most of us don't have the money on hand to make that one-time investment, so to buy the nice table means to put it in on the credit card, and thus to pay even more for it because of interest; and (b) if everybody stopped buying the cheap replacement-goods, this country's economy would shrivel & dry up faster than Betty White's vagina. When taken together, it is a powerful one-two punch that keeps us stalled, our imagination racing for an alternative we cannot conceive.

I write all this, hell, I think all this, I know that it comes off as defeatist. But I don't think so. Seeing our world as itself calling for -- groaning out for (as Saint Paul puts it) -- a fundamental change, not a "makeover" fit for ABC and that spikey-haired twat with the megaphone -- is the stuff of religion. The fact that those who consumed by this call, those who groan so often that they are finally ignored, are not always explicitly religious, and that most of those who are explicitly religious do not do so, is an indictment fit for another post.

Who Knew?

Wow... who could've guessed that an economic boom based on the denial of economic reality and propped up by hallucinogenic induced visions of dancing dollar signs was ripe for a jolt.

Relatedly, this has been making the rounds around the internet since Friday, but I can't help but link to the meltdown of CNBC's market cheerleader, Jim Cramer.

UPDATE: James Kunstler is one of the better popular voices in the growing chorus of people concerned about the present economy and where it is headed -- to what he calls "the long emergency." So, it is only natural that he has a nice bit up today about Kramer's tirade.

Cramer's histrionics were only a few clicks above his normal antics on the "Mad Money" show, but even so, they made a remarkable impression of someone in real, not mock, despair. He mentioned more than once during the tirade that he'd been on the phone all week with other interested parties who were begging him to do something about the rising bloodbath on Wall Street. And by "do something," they clearly meant that Cramer should go on his TV show and make an appeal to Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke to drop the prime interest rate at the Fed's meeting this coming Tuesday -- the purpose of which would be to make cheaper loan money available to the Wall Street players whose investment houses suddenly found themselves underwater in the churning straits off Hedge Fund Island, weighed down by bagfuls of worthless securitized non-performing mortgages.

Personally, I don't quite get how a financial industry based on bad loans would be helped by borrowing more money to bail out a hopelessly unwinding Ponzi loan racket of the type the industry had engineered for itself -- but maybe I'm lacking the gene for financial creativity that the Bear Stearns bonus babies were all born with.

In any case, apropos of Cramer's telephone marathon, one can only imagine the number of cell phone minutes racked up this weekend out in the Hamptons by players trying desperately to finagle their way out of the brutal fact that their firms and funds suddenly lay exposed to the cruel ravages of reality. A lot of catered crab tidbits and mini-quiches must have gone uneaten out along the dunes as weeping men in blazers realized that "marked to market" had come to mean the same thing as "holding a bundle of shit."

Marketable Religion

There is a general, running assumption that defines our globalistic political economy: if the market tanks, we're all fucked. By 'we', the assumption does not refer to the already impoverished. They are already fucked. All measures to save them now are efforts to assuage the collective first-world conscience. No, by 'we', this assumption refers to the workaday hoi polloi -- those of us with a little bit of 401-K stock, casual day-traders, or even those with no stock at all. The market, so goes the assumption, is so deeply inbedded into our experience of reality that the two are now now fully indistinguishable. When somebody imagines an alternative lifestyle, say, on a commune, most of us conclude that this simply isn't practical. When somebody else suggests that we individually try to 'opt out' of the market, or to 'escape the grid', we're told this kind of singular action isn't productive. Indeed, so goes the trump card, neither are they even feasible, for the market itself makes possible the the existence of its alternative -- even the thought of its alternative. E.g., those Europeans can enjoy their fancy universal health care, we're told, because Americans are the suckers stuck with the market-based health care, where billions of dollars are pumped into research and development.

On one level, this assumption rings true. For the sake of a blog post, I'll accept it as such anyway. Now the more interesting question: why is this true? Why exactly is the market the limit-experience by which which all other experience is defined -- the paradigmatic paradigm? Why exactly do we read with embarassment our religious texts, when they tell us to give away all we own, or when they indicate the implications of recognizing desire as the root of suffering, and recognizing our experience of life as one of vanity and/or illusion? Why do we then rationalize and/or spiritualize these texts into something more palatable -- something more marketable and productive?

The answer, of course, is as simple as the question is complex, and betrays a religious element to our political economies. Our religious myths almost universally, be they orthodox or heretical, speak of an original -- or immanently recurring -- lie. A deception at the heart of our experience of what we take to be real. A deception that is the original melancholic "fall" (or, for the philosopher, "being thrown") into existence. For some, this deception is an evil that never should've happened; for others, thinking beyond this original evil is impossible, for where there is no deception there is no creation, and where there is no creation there is nothing & nobody to gripe about the deception. It is here that we find an important analogue between the mythic/religious 'original lie', whether it be a deception that must be reversed or one redeemed, and our position with respect to the the market & marketable religion.

Almost across the board, religious myths are built around the notion that in some way the basis and limits to our lived existence (be they the lie or the market) can be overcome. However, to resist the lie (or, by extension, the market) or at least the degree to which it defines us and the possibilities for our future, is not a matter of coming up with transcendental or utopian alternatives, as though we might imagine some truth that is beyond or trumps the plane of existence (and thus of the lie / the market). We are, on the contrary, stuck with the great lie, to the extent that it forms the basis for all existent, marketable truth.

Nevertheless, in my view, our religious myths & cultic practices are not means of cooperation or compromise. (Such compromise is what we find in traditional formulations of sacrificial atonement -- i.e., Christ dying on the Cross to satisfy the penalty for guilt, etc. -- and various proposals now to use use the market to solve problems caused by the market -- e.g., carbon credits, etc. I do not find either very compelling.) To overcome the great lie, our religious myths remain fully a part of the lie they expose, and thus are prey to inherent weaknesses, flaws, and aporia, but inform a cultic practice whose power is not accessed by marketable efficiency. If, then, religion can be found to participate on the level of the lie, and perhaps even provide our political economy with its foundational myth, the cultic practice of religion might then also inform us of a means & aesthetics of our resistance.

I recognize that all this comes dangerously close to an apologia for fundamentalism. When Thomas Frank wondered, 'What's wrong with Kansas?', he failed to adequately explore the religious basis for many rural poor voters to go against their own temporal (financial) interests and instead home in on moral issues. While I affirm there are solid religious reasons for these voters to vote against their interests, and thus to reject marketabl efficiency, I fully reject their equation of morality and religion. Such an equation, in my estimation, requires little to no actual cultic practice -- and, thus, very little in the way of actual religion. Contemporary religion, in the east now as much as the west, has traded in the power of the cult that cannot be measured for the power of its marketable return. This need not be a the immediate return of, say, a bomb exploded in the name of a deity, for it could just as easily be done with a view to deferred eschatological future that never arrives. Moral civic religion is, in short, not simply a reluctance but a full-scale unwillingness to take traditional religious practices at their word -- that is to say, is to not really believe in their power or truth.

A point of discussion, I hope, is the the extent to which we have almost completely lost the sense that religious practice has been traditionally limited to minoritarian communities. Monks, of myriad religious stripe, for example. This never meant that an individual culture was without religion. Superstition has, of course, always been rife; we might even say there was enough inbedded religious belief that, to the outside observer, the culture itself was religious. But, for the most part, it seems that traditional religious practice consisted of patronage -- that is, supporting that smaller community who was seen as actually believing in, and thus practicing, the religious myth. In this way, the greater community reaped the benefit by cultic proxy. There is, perhaps, something to this sense of the true believers believing for you.

If that is the case, casting alternative religious visions & practices, in spite of the protests of some, is not an irresponsible apology or rationalization for the religion & religious ideology that exists (even if unknowingly) to maintain the lie / the market. It is, rather, one of our most essential tasks.