UP@NIGHT

1934  movie poster, United Artists

For reasons that you might easily be able to infer from our present collective financial woes, I recently had an urge to read (and listen to) a book that I have never read, The Count of Monte Cristo.   My more philosophical side says, avoid revenge.  No good will come of it.  My gut says, go, go, go.

Here is a short passage you might enjoy.   The Count is speaking to the banker Danglars, one of the guys who “done him wrong,” but is unaware of the Count’s actual identity.

“But what is the matter with you?  You look careworn; really, you alarm me; for a capitalist to be sad, like the appearance of a comet, presages some misfortune to the world.”  The Count of Monte Cristo, Modern Library Edition, 2002, p. 887.

Bernie M

Music to the rescue in the face of economic troubles….In this case some saxophonists.

Another reason to support the arts, even in times of trouble.

WPA POSTER

There has been a running debate for decades about the extent to which the government should support the arts.  It’s nice to know that Obama recognizes the contributions that the arts make to our communities, nation, and world.  Here is an excerpt from a recent piece in the NY Times.

New York Times, March 24th, “Problems Persist, but Arts Advocates See Progress Under Obama” (excerpt):

Given the battle in Congress to include money for the arts in the stimulus package, cultural groups say Washington officials still fail to recognize artists as workers. “The third violinist in a chamber orchestra goes out and buys groceries just like everybody else,” said Bill Ivey, a former chairman of the Endowment.

Teresa Eyring, the executive director of the Theater Communications Group, which represents the country’s nonprofit theaters, said: “Local and regional elected officials and community leaders are seeing and talking about the connection between the arts and the overall health of their communities. The same sensibility hasn’t quite landed at the national level.”

“In President Obama we have a leader who is making the connection,” she added, “who seems to understand both the spiritual and economic necessity of the arts to our nation’s strength.”

Mr. Ivey, who led the transition team devoted to the arts and recently met with Mr. Dale, said he expected the White House position to involve coordinating the work of the Endowment, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

“It’s great to have a direct West Wing connection,” Mr. Ivey said.

“I don’t think we’ve ever had an administration that thought about the vibrancy of our cultural life as a central public policy,” he added, “as a marker of quality of life in a democracy.”

In times such as these, our times, when unregulated capitalism has once again proven that it can bring down the house, literally, it’s worth reminding ourselves about the voices that have spoken so eloquently in favor of selfishness over the years.  (Not Adam Smith, by the way; he thought that sympathy was a basic feature of human nature.)  Here is Colbert discussing one of the leading lights of selfishness, Ayn Rand.

The Word – Rand Illusion | March 11th | ColbertNation.com

On Capitalism Run Amok, readers might want to check out Sullivan’s site today, March 23rd, “Are The Jacobins At The Gates?” Let’s just say, a bit over the top, but worth a look.  (Btw, Sullivan thinks of himself as a conservative.)

P.S.  Interesting fact:  Stephen Colbert was a philosophy major at Hampden-Sydney College.  Training in philosophy has its uses.

Spoiler Alert:  Do not read if you have not seen the final BSG episode.

Okay, we can all breath a sigh of relief.  BSG, which began in the shadow of 9/11, ended its last episode with images of a beautiful summer’s day in New York City.  We have, if you will, a degree of closure, and with humor.  Some, however, don’t appear to be clued in.

GINIA BELLAFANTE of the NY Times (March 20, 2009) writes in her review of the final episode, “Show About the Universe Raises Questions on Earth,”

But the show could not break with the genre’s tradition of hokey, hopeful earnestness. Landing finally on a pastoral facsimile of Earth, the human-Cylon partnership vows to start anew with pledges not to let science outpace soulfulness. One hundred fifty thousand years later, a city of neon stands on the green terrain — as well as the assumption that we won’t make all of the same mistakes over again.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.   The show does not end on a note of hokey, hopeful earnestness.  It ends on a comedic one that frames  questions that it raised about technology and the environment (especially in the last episode) in a satisfying fashion. How so?  Setting right two basic errors in Bellafante’s review will get us off to the races.  First, the crew of the BSG was not on a facsimile of Earth.  Had this been the case, the conclusion would have made little sense and lost its punch.  No, the crew had found good old terra firma.  Second, there is no assumption that our species won’t make the same mistakes all over again.  As a matter of fact, all we are told is that there is a chance that we will not do so, because not all complex systems behave identically.  And the possibility that the future might be different from the past is only offered after seasons of hearing over and over again about the myth of eternal recurrence; it has all happened before and will happen again.  Yada, yada, yada.  If anything, the latter was overplayed and hokey, not the “assumption” about the future in the last scene.

But what Bellafonte really misses, and which says a great deal about how we should now understand the trajectory of the show, is the sense of humor displayed at the end of the final episode, one that we had not seen sustained earlier in the series.  The remnants of the human race find an idyllic ancient earth and proceed to give up their technology (by sailing their ships off into the sun–yes, a bit corny).  All hope for humanity seems to lie in a kind of pastoral utopia.  But then a green Central Park appears and the “angel” versions of Balter and Six are found in present-day Times Square.  They are seen standing and looking at a magazine article at a newsstand (how New York/how urban!) about a 150,000 year old Eve that had been discovered by scientists.  This Eve is clearly supposed to be the child Hera that the crew of BSG rescued.  During this scene Ron Moore, in classic Hitchcock fashion, appears.  (Ronald Moore was the executive producer and a writer for the series.  He worked on the script for the finale.)  Baltar is wearing his oh so urbane sunglasses, and is in one of his dandyish outfits (which is pretty funny in itself given that it’s a hundred and fifty thousand years since we first saw him dressed to the nines).   Six is dressed in NY model mode.  They saunter off.  A discussion ensues about whether humanity will screw things up again.  Not necessarily is the word, but certainly no guarantees.  During these last eight or so minutes, we hear “All along the Watchtower” playing from a boom box, and we are shown playful toy robots, some of whom are dancing.  The scene is bathed in color.  I won’t go into any more detail.  Suffice it to say that it is in stark contrast to the deep darkness of almost all of BSG, and this darkness is stripped away not only by urban sights and sounds, but by humor.

There is a serious point here.  One can read BSG as an anti-technological jeremiad.  I mean, for gods sake, Adama wouldn’t even allow wireless communication on the BSG for fear that the Cylons could hack into the computer system.  And of course there are those all too deadly Cylons, etc.  Yes, the relationship to technology was always more complex than this in the series.  But in the last 30 minutes of the show they really had us going.  It looked as if the series had been hijacked by an anti-urban, technophobic wing of the Green Movement, offering us a pastoral utopianism in the tradition of Thoreau and friends.  Return to the land, build cabins, love nature, destroy your technology, leave your cities, etc.   Instead, by having the show end in the Big Apple (get it/Apple, Eve), after a clearly respectful treatment of the wonders of nature,  there is acknowledgment of the need to preserve nature and that human beings are social/urban creatures, that is, they “inevitably” build cities full of life, sound, fury, color, and playfulness.  The message is not especially hokey: we have to hope (and by implication, work) in order not to screw things up again given the powers that our species can unleash.  Here’s Moore on the topic:

TVGuide.com: Why did you choose to end the show with Six and Baltar walking through Times Square?
Moore: Two things: One, Dave Eick and I had the image of number Six walking through Times Square in her red dress a couple of years ago. We thought potentially that that was just a great visual note to end on. And that also came out of the idea that we eventually wanted the show to directly relate to us. That the show was always intended to be relevant and be current to our society and lives and that it wasn’t completely escapist — “Oh here’s a story about a bunch of people who are not related to us on Earth at all.” We wanted it to ultimately circle back and say look, these people were our forbearers[sic]; in a real sense what happened to them, could happen to us. Look around you. Wake up. Think about the society that you live in and we wanted to make that literal at the end. TV GUIDE March 20th, 2009.

My understanding is that this show was still being written during the American election.  The last sequence may have been shot after Moore knew Obama was going to get the nomination.   Perhaps we will hear from the people at BSG about whether the American election had an impact on the finale.

P.S.  This was a TV series that was broadcast and developed over some five years.  It can’t be judged by the standards of a two hour movie.  And science fiction, at its best a genre of ideas as well as action, is extremely difficult to pull off in a visual medium.  All in all, BSG had a pretty damn good run.  And the values of its cast are worth noting.  Here is Edward James Olmos, Admiral Adama, and members of the cast at the UN on March 18th, 2009.

At today’s Congressional Hearing:

“We are meeting today at a high point of public anger,” said Mr. Liddy, a former chief executive of Allstate who was installed as A.I.G.’s chief when the Federal Reserve announced its rescue package. “I share that anger. As a businessman of some 37 years, I have seen the good side of capitalism. Over the last few months, in reviewing how A.I.G. had been run in prior years, I have also seen evidence of its bad side.”  NY Times,  March 18, 2009.

I watched a good portion of Edward M. Liddy’s testimony before Congress today.  I hadn’t planned to.  I got caught up.   Liddy took on the job of CEO at A.I.G. for 1 dollar a year.  He appears to be a man sincerely dedicated to the service of his country.  However, while by no means clueless about the possible reaction of the American people to the AIG bonuses, he did not realize that his arguments amounted to telling the American people that we had been blackmailed.  If he hadn’t agreed to pay the executives of the compromised division their bonuses, they would have walked, AIG would have tanked, and our economy would have headed into a death spiral.  Or so he claimed.  Liddy needed to retain these folks.  And he could only do so by paying out millions.  (Yes, he made it clear time and again that there were contracts that had to be honored,  but as congressmen pointed out, the company could have chosen not to pay and accepted the possibility of being sued.)

“Of the 418 employees who received bonuses, 298 got more than $100,000, according to the New York attorney general, Andrew M. Cuomo. The highest bonus was $6.4 million, and 6 other employees received more than $4 million. Fifteen other people received bonuses of more than $2 million and 51 received $1 million to $2 million.” NY Times,  March 18, 2009

The danger to the nation due to a complete financial collapse is far greater than the danger of terrorism.  And this is just what Liddy was claiming might happen if these executives walked and AIG tanked. So we have people dying in the fight against terrorism, but we have others insisting on the entire amounts of their bonuses in order to cooperate and prevent financial ruin. As patriotic Americans (that is, those who are Americans), they should have offered to work for a small portion of what they were being paid, especially the top earning executives.

Each contract with each employee had its own unique structure, reported Liddy.   They simply couldn’t hold back the funds.  However, today he reported that he has asked the executives to return 50% of the money.  They don’t have to, but as good Americans they might.   (Why didn’t he ask this of them last week? or a month ago? or ask for more?) Think about this, as you think about all those who are on the street without jobs, including Wall Street people.  Think about the sense of entitlement that these AIG executives have.   Think about why so many of us didn’t see this sense of entitlement as dangerous to the well-being of our nation until very recently.

The American people have been sold a bill of goods for almost two generations now, and it goes something like this: if we take advantage of the magic of the market, if we just look out for number 1, the free market will reward us as a nation.  Yes, there are folks in the military who sacrifice, and there are those who volunteer for civilian service, but at the end of the day we serve our country and communities best by seeking our own fortunes.

I am putting this too starkly you say?  Perhaps.  But it became the mantra of Wall Street.  And as they once said about GM, what’s good for Wall Street is good for America.   Just watch those 401k’s grow, and never take any money out of them.  The market always makes a profit in the long run.   (Of course what they forget to tell you is that the long run can be very long indeed.)

The party’s almost over, as so many have declared.  The party, however, is not just about living the high life in good financial times.  The party is about having a set of beliefs that comfort and aid us in getting on in the world.  And one set of these beliefs has involved the goodness of capitalism and the free market.  We have spoken about them as if they are gods.  They are not.  Capitalism can be an exceedingly productive economic system, but only when operating under proper guidance and regulation.  There are no free lunches and there are no entirely free markets.   Believing so is exceedingly dangerous, especially when this ideology replaces our common sense about the sacrifices and labors required to build and maintain communities and a nation.

AIG, Bernie, foreclosures, housing bubble, -401K, recession, depression, global financial meltdown, Eric Cantor, Mad Money, etc.

It’s time for a break, if only a short one.    

Let’s return for a moment to how our grandparents (or perhaps our great-grandparents) kept their spirits up in the Great Depression. From “Follow the Fleet” (1936): 

The word is out.  Unless AIG pays their executives millions more in bonuses, they might lose the best and the brightest of their employees.  Corporate raiders will swoop out of the clouds and plunder their human capital.  And then where would AIG be?  And then where would we be?   (According to FOX, if AIG cannot retain their top execs, it has threatened to morph into a black hole and take the inner planets with it.)

But wait.  We may have nothing to fear but fear itself.   Let us not forget that AIG is in the business of insuring companies against their own incompetence.  The solution is simple.  AIG should insure itself against its own incompetence through one of its products, for example, FinancialGuard (see below).  So, even if it were to lose its best and brightest by not paying out the bonuses, AIG could still survive through the miricle of insurance.

……

Here is AIG/Australia hawking one “product” that can help save it (and us):

FinancialGuard™ Civil Liability Insurance

What is it?

Professional indemnity insurance on a civil liability basis

Why do you need it?

The activities of regulators, the changing distribution of financial institutions products and a more informed and litigious consumer environment lie behind the increase in the frequency of civil liability claims against financial institutions….

Our Civil Liability product provides blanket protection against the financial consequences of a legally enforceable obligation in which a civil liability is incurred arising from services provided. Covers includes defence costs and civil penalties.

Who needs it?

All Financial Institutions including Banks, Building Societies, Investment Management Companies, Insurance Companies and Stockbrokers.

…….

And under a discussion of assets on the AIG site we find the following pitch:

A company’s assets are vital to its operations. And protecting those assets is essential to the well being of a business. Assets can be tangible and intangible and can include a company’s corporate reputation, as well as physical assets such as property or goods. We offer standard or customised programmes on a domestic or global scale as well as a wide range of products covering more demanding and specialist risks.

Protection of assets!!  Protection for corporate reputation!!  Protection from the activities of regulators!!  AIG can save itself (and us). 

Up until now little beside blind greed and gross incompetence have been offered to explain AIG’s behavior.  Here is an alternative hypothesis: Someone inside AIG decided that the best way to stimulate the market for its financial insurance products was to come up with an example (AIG’s own failure) that would scare the daylights out of even the most confident of finance people, pushing them right into the arms of AIG’s financial insurance sales force.   Insanely diabolical, wouldn’t you say?

And if this hypothesis is incorrect, I have another:  AIG is a corporate comic genius.

P.S.  Here’s five bucks.   Feel free to buy yourself half a dozen shares of AIG.