From old Thanksgiving mythology to new?

On the day before Thanksgiving, I heard Mara Liasson talking on the radio about Thanksgiving. She described a few turkey day traditions as shared by NPR listeners. One woman's email described an after-the-big-meal family gathering around the TV to watch the entire Star Wars trilogy.
And so I was thinking about people sitting on the couch, unwinding after the feast, viewing movies that project a kind of modern mythology of interstellar diversity and fantastical space travel.
We've come a long way from celebrating the peaceful union of alien European settlers whose viands were combined, almost 400 years ago, with the amaizing native fare of "Indians." That whole turkey and pumpkins scene has become an idealized ritual of familial sharing and neighborly goodwill. It has become a part of our national heritage.
But it's slowly becoming our old mythology; now we're replacing it with a newer set of fables, like Star Wars, or football, or Twilight at the local megascreen, followed up the next day at the mall with sacrificial oblations of ecstatic acquisition. And now that we're in the Great Recession, those black Friday organized expeditions of spending become expressions of patriotic confidence. Consumerism and entertainment overshadow the quaint monotheism that once enfolded our gratitude into prayers of Thanksgiving to a transcendent God.
How quaint now are those old tales of Pilgrims and native Americans in New England.
While Mara read the email on the radio about the family watching Star Wars, she included a statement that in successive years other families or persons had joined in the popular after-turkey viewings. She used the phrase en masse to describe how relatives and neighbors were establishing this new tradition of gathering to celebrate the adventures of our new intergalactic heroes-- Obi-wan and Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader and all those other characters who never really existed.
Mythology, you know, en masse.
It's a little like going to mass in the old days, or prayerfully expressing thanks to an unseen Creator, or sharing bitter herbs and lamb while passing along ancient histories of deliverance from oppression.
Our ancient talebearers stand aside while a new cast of characters takes center screen. But what d'ya say we leave a place at the table for Elijah, for Abraham, Isaac and Jacob? Or for the spirit of those Pilgrims and Indians, or even Jesus. Maybe they'll show up again someday.

Life is worth living.

With the most vigorous economy in the world, and the greatest potential for expanding domestic consumer markets, you'd think that the party cadres in China would lighten up on their micromanaging just a little. You'd think they'd allow citizen moms and dads to jump in bed, have a little makin'-whoopee fun, and procreate that second or third child to thereby provide a sibling for their child already born.
But no, the population-control bureaucrats are still so intent on manifesting the postmodern thanatos zeitgeist that insists this world is not predictable and safe enough for children to be born into. On the other side of the Pacific Ocean...
"A woman pregnant without permission has to surrender her unborn child to government enforcers, no matter what the stage of fetal development."
These quoted words were written by Kathleen Parker last Wednesday in her
Washington Post column. They represent a statement from Reggie Littlejohn, founder and president of the Frontiers Group.
This statement from Ms. Littlejohn grabbed my attention when I read it in Kathleen's republished column today, Monday, 11/16/2009 in the Charlotte Observer.
I appreciate Kathleen's boldness in highlighting this issue, even as our President negotiates with Chinese leaders about important economic issues. In honor of her courage, and the courage of any women in the world who choose to give life to children and properly raise them, I include in this posting a pertinent passage from my novel, Glass half-Full.

From chapter 24:
"

But now the plane was landing, the time for reflection suspending. Life must go on.

The first familiar person that Lili saw on the ground was her housekeeper, Pao, who had dutifully secured a cart for their luggage. Pao was smiling broadly, glad to see them. After David had gathered their baggage and stacked it on the cart, she directed their attention to a Chinese woman who had watched their reunion activities while patiently sitting nearby. As the young lady stood up to be introduced to them, Lili could see that she was pregnant.

Wang Chuanxin had managed to do what few women have done: she had escaped the draconic bureaucracy that sought to extinguish the prenatal life of her second child. By the ministrations of a devoted husband and a few well-placed bribes, she had managed to board a plane out of China, to Honolulu, and so the child was still alive within her. Now she was in a foreign land with a foreign fear and nowhere to go. But at least her child was alive. She had been sitting in the baggage claim area for three hours, waiting for someone she didn’t know.

Pao introduced her as Wang Chuanxin, who had just arrived from Beijing that very day.

"Chuanxin is a friend of my friend Chen. She has eluded the party officials in her home province; they had conspired to abort her child."

Lili had not expected an encounter such as this in a routine airport arrival. She looked at the waifish mother with alarm and curiosity. "How did you manage to get out of there?" she wondered aloud.

"She speaks no English. I will translate," Pao said.

As Pao spoke to her in their language, Lili noticed the fearful look on Chuanxin’s delicate face as she responded to Pao’s question with rapid Mandarin.

"She says that her husband bribed some officials in order to get her on the plane that brought her to Honolulu. She still doesn’t know how the situation will be resolved, or how she will reunite with her husband."

"Ask her where she is going to stay."

Pao’s translation was followed by a quick, two-word reply.

"She doesn’t know."

Lili looked directly into her housekeeper’s eyes. "Pao, how did you know that she would be here today?"

"I received the phone call last night from my friend Chen. He asked me to help her."

"And who is Chen?"

"We are in church together."

"I see." Lili’s queenly heart was moving her toward a response of compassionate action. I was a stranger and you took me in.

"Ask her if she wants to come stay with us for awhile."

Pao spoke to their new friend energetically. Her plan was actually working out just as she had anticipated, for she knew her employer well. Chuanxin replied happily, with a large smile suddenly appearing on her formerly-strained face.

Pao did not bother to complete the verbiage. She grabbed Chuanxin's two bags and slung them on top of the loaded cart, there being just enough space for them.

Then David spoke to Pao, "We’ll wait here while you bring the car around."

"Yes, sir," she affirmed, and was off to get the car.

Lili sighed. It had been a long couple of weeks.

"

Slippery Slope of Securitization: poem

You, O America, are the nation of nations.

And wherever on earth the people dwell,

or the icons of the web do sell,

and planes of air descend,

you inspire their poverty to end.

Then do they bid you adieu, like they did the British

before you.

Your golden-headed ingenuity hath inspired them all;

still, do you evade the final margin call?

In days of old, your silver-shielded inclinations gave breath to greatness.

Not hateness.

With your strong-armed enterprise enabling masses to bust the hardscrabble,

O America! how your simple speech doth strive to overcome the Babel.

Back in the day, your bronzen halfbacks scampered,

unhampered

through smoke of kamikazis

past the ghoulish camps of Nazis

which now you accuse each other of becoming.

You're so cunning.

Not!

Oh iron-legged one, who runneth at the game

and at the mouth,

in all directions north and south,

what will you do now upon your feet of iron and clay?

Shall I compare thee to a tragic play?

Entropy doth assail thee like a worthless m-b-s,

which thou doth seek to unload before it can digress.

Yet it sachs thee to the ground, bearly stearns thee round and round;

with jolting, bofa torts, you fall like ponzied citicorpse.

Oh! quoth the raven evermore,

upon thy credit-defaulted shore:

Prosperity, prosperity, burning bright

in the newshours of the cabled night

what financial convoluting instrument

can forestall thy fateful detriment?

What prophetic lens or scope could foresee such slippery slope?

Upon what back of mortgaged securitee

will he who bailed the bank bail thee?

But wait! What light through yonder window breaks?

What hope, what blessing, for what

God's sakes?

Arise! and go, and fly with me

into uncharted

opportunity.

The Teachable Moment: a poem

What czarish beast stalks
by the schoolyard door,
and turns its big brother hand
upon the downcast eyes
of a child?
What insidious thanatos
inflicts sterility
with shameful spewing,
thus undermining daddy's counsel
and mommy's tender wishes?
Oh, It'll take a village
to deliver us from such misdirected trust--
the betraying of education
with a kiss
inappropriate.
Oh, may God help us.

Ben's bluff might work?

For several generations now, we've been gathering a pile of prosperity here in the richest country in the world. And most everybody has gotten at least some piece of the action. How many decades in a row now has it been that Americans have been steadily purchasing cars and washing machines, TVs and microwaves, air freshener and deodorant and movie tickets with popcorn? We're a pretty fat n' happy bunch. What we have here in the USA is a high standard of living, probably the highest in the history of the world.

I mean, how many people do you know who don't have indoor plumbing? How many in your circle of friends don't have a car or a TV? We are rich, I tell ya. Even the folks whose incomes hover around the poverty level all this stuff.

In the developing nations of the world, folks don't have all this booty yet.

In the formerly-third-world places--India, Brazil, South Africa, and even in China, the streets and malls and markets are teeming with millions of people who have yet to acquire the wealth-multiplying trappings of middle-class comfort. These are great, teeming markets yearning to be full. They're the next wave of aspiring consumers, like your kids in the supermarket with miniature shopping carts and little flags that read "shopper in training." So many of these minions have yet to buy that first washing machine, that first microwave, that first automobile.

But they will eventually, as their collective economic tides swell and their proverbial boats rise. Then the enterprisers among them will form companies and employ neighbors and friends to manufacture goods to meet the escalating demands of prosperity. But it's not likely their new acquisitions will originate in Dayton or Birmingham or Oxnard where the costs of affluent American labor render finished prices prohibitive.

We've got a high standard of living in this country that has propelled us, for lo these many decades, ahead of the the thundering herd. But now our opulent baggage has landed us in the dust as the pack passes by. We've priced ourselves out of the world market. But don't go blaming our politicians or our business leaders. This is just the way things work in a world where energetic workers and smart managers are free to make a better affordable mousetrap. It had to happen sooner or later; it's been a long time coming. We had an incredibly long ride on that post-wwtwo wave while it lasted; now it's time for us to paddle out and catch the next set.

Here's what needs to happen: find a way to pump some of the hot air out of our expansive, expensive American standard of living. Position us, once again, as lean and mean, efficiently productive contenders in the world marketplace. We've already, you know, burst one bubble. Can't we puncture another one? Dean Baker opined yesterday that economists should have identified our "over-valued dollar as a main cause of imbalances in the US economy."

As it turns out though, the reserved Fed has issued a prescription for our economic obesity. They have found a way to trim the fat real quick. And it just might work. It's called: the devalued dollar.

If Joe Sixpack and Jane Doe found, rather suddenly, their wallets full of greenbacks that had the purchasing power of, say, 60% of last year's dollar--the effect would be just like knocking our standard of living down by 40%. That might be enough of an overhead reduction to get us back in the game of competitive manufacturing. Then maybe we can again crank out washing machines or widgets or memory chips or hula hoops or solar collectors as inexpensively as they will in Manila or Mumbai or Mombasa.

Devalued Federal Reserve Notes will be a mixed blessing. On the down side, they'll mean less buying power for us yankee producers. But hey, we've got plenty enough stuff to last us for awhile anyway.

Folks would have an abundance of dollars again; everybody could get back in the game, pay off some debts, maybe take the kids out to eat.

Now, if that "over-valued dollar" could be knocked down a notch or two so that it is no longer so uppity, what would it take to accomplish such a feat? Everybody take a 40% pay cut?

No way. It'll never happen. Too complicated, and politically impossible. But there is a fix. It might hurt a little bit, but it would work pretty quickly, though not quite as fast as instant breakfast or drive-up food.

Make dollars. Print so many of them that Uncle Tim can push a big stack of chips out on the table to stay in the game. The bluff might just work if he keeps a poker face, although it's Uncle Hu's face that the world will be watching.

Carey Rowland, author Glass half-Full

Conflicting Signals?

Two days ago, Sold at the Top posed a profound question of present economic conditions on seeking alpha. The soldish blogger asked:

“Inflation or deflation… stag-flation, stag-deflation … hyper-inflation… possibly even hyper-deflation… or maybe just a bout of frisky-flation? Never has it been so hard for the consensus to agree on the coming trend in prices”

After pondering the subsequent content of Mr. Sold at the Top's puzzle, and after reading Klaus Vogt’s article mentioned below, as well as a few other analyses along the way, including a few here on TPM, I’ve reached a conclusion about the matter:

1.) Everything you don’t really need in this life will lose value in the days ahead. This is called deflation, and it's going to happen.

2.) Everything you do really need, like say, food, will gain price in the days ahead. This is called inflation, and it's going to happen.

Is this a contradiction? Yes, but it doesn't matter, because these economic indices are just human concepts.

What's real, and what is more and more real, is what it costs you, in labor and resources, to get a loaf of bread, a taco, or a salad, or whatever.

Are you playing the market? Consider this:

According to Klaus Vogt of Money and Markets, there are three ways to determine the of value stocks that you may consider buying:

1.) the Fundamental Valuation method, which calculates the dividend yield by dividing stock price into annual dividend

2.) the Macroeconomic method, which utilizes the broad statistical indicators to infer value

3.) the Technical Analysis method, which quantitatively compares short-term and medium-term trends in the context of long-term trends.

Mr. Vogt’s general projections on the stock market as a whole, based on these approaches, are:

1.) by the Valuations method: Long-term Negative, Medium-term Meaningless

2.) by the Macroeconomic method: Long-term Negative, Medium-term Bullish

3.) by the Technical Analysis method: Long-term Bearish, Medium-term Bullish

We can surmise here another set of conflicting signals, although (let the reader understand) the "long-term" projection in all three methods is Negative (Bearish.)

Klaus concludes his presentation with this observation: “This is no time for buy and hold investors. But there are attractive opportunities for medium-term oriented investors willing to buy now and get out on a moment's notice.”

“…get out on a moment’s notice”?

We see worlds of strategic difference here between the predominant, speculative modus operandi of many (most?) investors and the substantive, Fundamental Valuations approach of traditional investors. Furthermore, we do not fail to notice in this wide gulf of equity-worldviews an indicator of our present catastrophic, bubbular problem.

The old faithful Valuations method, using profit/price ratio, has been tossed out the window. Does a real, innovative company startup have a snowball’s chance in this heated environment?

Perhaps meaningful financial reform will require something much more apocryphal than just throwing devalued dollars and new paper regs at the problem.

How many speculators are sitting on a keyboard perch trying to decide when is the optimum moment to “get out on a moment’s notice?”

How many mortgage-holders are standing in line for a job?

As Ringo once said: “This is not your father’s Oldsmobile, ” although your dad may have been piloting this same vehicle in September of ’87, or your great-grandfather in October of ’29.

Conflicting interests, conflicting signals, conflicting emotions, conflicting people. . . Get ready. Watch and pray.

Carey Rowland, author of Glass half-Full

From Woodstock to Toxic stock

"Everybody talks about 'transparency' these days like they used to talk about 'free love' at Woodstock. What does it mean?"

This is a question posed by Andrew Butter a couple of days ago on the Seeking Alpha forum, in his article about securitization of mortgage-backed assets, many of which have come to be known as "toxic assets" in the financial markets.

After presenting the problem, Mr. Butter then defines transparency. It means, in the context of investment transactions, that "that participants need to be provided with sufficient information about the stuff they are buying in the marketplace to be able to make rational and well-informed decisions."

This need for transparency comes as a result of a convoluted mess in which investors purchased, during the years 2000-2007, about $14 trillion in securitized debt. But the buyers paid too much for these assets--probably somewhere between $2-5 trillion too much.

Securetized debt based on mortgage-backed securities had contributed largely to the stock market bubble that later burst in 2008, bringing the whole American economy down with it. The toxic securities are just about impossible to evaluate, and so they become a source of confusion, like having millions of little black holes that suck value out of the financial universe. That's my take on it anyway. I'm not a financial analyst, but I did learn a lot by reading Mr. Butter's report.

And Mr. Butter definitely added an element of generational interest in the comparison between transparency in money matters and free love at Woodstock. That's a stretch, but there are, you know, a few parallels.

Alex Garcia-Ditta reports in the Charlotte Observer that "an estimated 200,000 people bought $18 tickets to Woodstock." But then, hey, 400,000 kids showed up. The concert organizers, realizing that they did not have the personnel on hand to properly manage the situation, wisely declared the event to be a "free concert."

So as it turns out, about half the people paid to get in; about half did not. Do you think the paying celebrants cared? I don't think so. Most folks were just groovin on the music and passing joints, and were not interested in asking such questions. (questions like, "who's paying for this thing?") Or that's what I heard anyway. I wasn't there. I was back in Louisiana winding up my first semester of college at LSU.

So this went on for about three days. "Three days, man!" And while a great time was had by all, it was not what you'd call a sustainable situation. It was a euphoria not unlike the bubble that later kept our money floating around, intoxicated, for several years until we all had to come down, go home and wonder what the hell happened.

Many have said that Woodstock was that muddy weekend concert back in '69 where "everything went wrong but turned out right." Maybe so. Jimi's star-spangled finale brought an appropriate end. And it's a good thing it did.

Then Monday morning blues were probably twanging and jangling around in all those homebound hippie heads. And who could have then found, in Yasgur's field, a fresh flower with which to brighten their hair? The place had become a mudhole that would require a major cleanup. This is what humans do.

The coming-down was similar to, like, what we're in right now. The party's over. Time to clean up the mess. And I think, in spite of all the deflowering and deflating, things have gone rightly, because a bubble (there has to be a correction some time) cannot inebriate forever. Janis and Jimi later proved that, and so has our economy.

And I'm like, the coming-down-after-the-free-for-all has come to an end. We've learned a few lessons along the way. Don't eat the brown acid, and don't buy toxic stocks unless you're ready to do some serious cleanup.

Carey Rowland, author of Glass half-Full