the Gold Lady...
bob einung
i woke up to the Gold Lady this morning.
the economy is in bad shape. this is obvious. but it looks worse than we thought, or that's to say - we really have no clue what it is doing. Much like the previous ten years where we thought we knew exactly what it is doing (but then turned out to be nothing of the sort), and got confused when it didn't behave the way we assumed.
today, the world is reacting to the news that the American job market is shrinking. but hey! productivity is at a new high! but that's what happens when millions lose their jobs.
by now, many of you in America have seen the Gold Lady. the Gold Lady is the woman advertising on late night television for a gold distributor whom i have no memory of (fyi: advertising only works when you can remember the name after the fact - something called recall). She warms us with reassurances that the return of heavy investment in gold is a comforting thing, for Gold is a safe bet.
Gold scares me. Gold commercials are the final sign. You know you're in a depression when the Gold commercials start airing. While it cannot hold it's value as well as something like a Big Mac, it can hold value - or maintain it.
this is why people are drawn to gold as an investment. it's not a means of making money, so much as it is a means of preventing your money from disappearing. if enough people start doing this, then the people who hired our Gold Lady will make some money, but that's about all there is on the positive side here. the rest is one big fat indicator that innovation, growth, and new markets are hard for the market to see, if not completely absent.
"well, no shit bob", you might be thinking - what a genius eh?
two months ago i wrote a post on the web that was trying to get people to be aware and think about the possibility of a strong economy going into the presidential election season of 2004.
one might reread it and think me "chicken little" at this point - or one can take from it what was intended: an attempt to introspectively review our focus and effort. a call for self-awareness, if you will.
in 1991, equivalent to today, some 13 odd months before the next presidential election, one Governor William Jefferson Clinton was a complete unknown in national politics, despite being a governor.
last night, on bill maher's show "realtime", general wesley clarke virtually announced his candidacy for president, while simultaneously swearing his allegiance to the DNC.
but before he even gets involved - we have a major war breaking out among progressives who are fighting for either Kucinich or Dean. the only issue that really separates them is how to deal with the iraq situation from here on out, where dean will stay and clean up, kucinich will withdraw and commit the same error the US is now essentially guilty of committing for an entire century, and generally what has most people in the world outside our borders fearful of our involvement in anything.
i personally believed going to iraq was one of the biggest mistakes this country has ever made. i worked hard on developing themes all throughout the two years running up to the war that focused on this and must have generated some 100k+ words on internet forums trying to get the Dove's opinion heard.
i've written many threads since on how we need to get these folks home. but i do not think a quick retreat such a hot idea at this point. i think we need to ensure we do not leave a bigger mess than we found - which is to say the impossible given the destruction, but i think some attempt needs to be made and some kind of framework for assessment be put in place.
what i do think we need to do, is withdraw, immediately, all the contractors over there, making millions off this tragedy, soon to be billions. i think what we do in iraq from here on out, in fact, needs to overtly bar the CIA and any US commerce from the process. i'd include the military - whose command chain has essentially become a private business concern - if it weren't impossible. don't get me wrong, the enlisted men and women of the service are at the mercy of their commanders, as are most officers. but the hierarchical "ladder" of the military has too many at the top aspiring to achieve power via the same means any previous military/industrial complex commander has: by buying in.
i think this is what makes wesley clarke stand out as a potential presidential candidate. my father told me he imagined a clarke presidency would be something akin to an eisenhower presidency.
i still think we need to be preparing for the possibility of a strong economy or something that's just getting underway, come the actual election season. the reason i have this feeling is because i know too many investors who are just waiting for the next boom to break, and who are feeling really good about things, despite the job figures and other declines.
the reason for this, and while they'd never really explain it very well, is because they understand that the market is subject to the valuation of its participants. so the dot com bubble was only a bubble because we all agreed that it was valuable in that iteration.
then, when we all decided it wasn't, that value ceased to exist.
the american economy can turn on a dime, and historically, if you consider the time in between the market knowing this and the media knowing this, it can be anywhere between 2 years and 6 months.
everywhere we look, all previously known systems are being reevaluated and either destroyed or abandoned in favor of something new that deals with post-modern dynamics.
one of the slowest of these, has been the gradual shift in thinking in economics from a relatively stable universe of absolutist maxims, to one that can grasp the concept of relativity.
such is the way. understanding that value is relative to what we make it, is one of the world's most valuable possessions. for in this insight, lies true awareness. the "way" is a relative one, and its subtle maneuvers are easy to overlook in a universe of absolutes.
i do not adhere to the new absolute: this economy is screwed and will be the day we elect our next president. i still think that a great danger.
for those of you too young to remember clearly: bush is not his father.
his father was one of the most aloof politicians ever to grace the oval office. he refused to talk to anyone, and when he did he sounded like both an idiot and a silver-spoon doink who thought everyone should just eat cake, and couldn't understand why people weren't working harder for the Man, in the recession he'd inherited from reagan.
in this way, bush is entirely different from his father. dubya has done an excellent job of seeming concerned, and his lack of success in life actually endears him to his die-hard followers. so the dumber he gets in media clips, the more the people like him. i'm assuming they get a feeling that "anyone" can be president, if someone this slow can - at the same time, failing to see how Bush is the epitome of privilege and favor in this country.
privilege and favor that is less concerned about how job losses impact the historical consistency of the jobs relationship to the economy - and more concerned about it's relative importance today - post-bubble, where many had jobs that were both useless for the economy and that paid way too much.
that is one of the major problems with the bubble - it raised expectations to highs that were not justified, and the result was a lot of people upgraded their lifestyle (where the meat of the boom occurred while they all hit best buy every night for a new computer/tv/disc, or ordered their 5 dvds a night from the web), when they shouldn't have. see all those debt commercials on tv?
that's the other part that comes with the Gold Lady. the debt consolidator commercials. i spent a good portion of the late 90s having to remind people or educate them on the recession of the early 90s, as most of these folks weren't yet working. now they, and the graduating classes of 2001-2003 will have the foundational knowledge of recession i had throughout the 90s boom.
this education, while something i wouldn't wish on my worst enemy, is something that can make us all very much stronger in character. there has to be some water in the glass somewhere.
but my hope is that this time - assuming there is one - recovery might come with some retention. so that the next boom we face, we're not left with as many folks happy to ride things out unquestioned, setting themselves up in the process for a much harder fall.
while i have nothing personal against the actress, i hate the Gold Lady. |
