Over the weekend I finished Niall Ferguson's The Ascent of Money, an economic history that examines the role of financial innovation as a prime mover in world events from 14th century Medici family in Florence, Italy to present (I picked it up on the "buy 1, get 1 half price" table at Borders). Given all that has happened in this area of human activity recently, it's worth reading, although it doesn't quite live up to the hype. Apparently the book was written as a companion to a PBS documentary of the same name.
As might be expected it's more anecdotal than comprehensive history. The picture Ferguson paints is a world where financial innovation (banking, bonds, insurance, etc.) alternates with financial crisis; yet, somehow, the arrow of progress remains pointed in the forward direction, a testament, I suppose, to capitalism's "creative destruction."
Ferguson addresses the current economic crisis, but I sense he wishes his book could have waited until the crisis played itself out (or maybe that's just another book). One factoid from his afterword that passed the 24 hour test (that is, I remember it 24 hours later): without the expansion of household debt associated with home equity loans, the real growth rate during the Bush presidency would have been about 1% per year. A 1% growth rate doesn't create enough jobs to accomodate the number of Americans entering the workforce every year.
Switching gears...I found myself sitting in my driveway Sunday afternoon listening to the story of Adrian Schoolcraft vs the NYPD on This American Life (aired 9/10/2010)/]. Schoolcraft was a New York policeman who found himself at odds with his supervisors over their goal to improve the precinct's crime stats by making more busts--justified or not--and reclassifying crimes.
There are two stories here. One is the perverse effect of the NYPD's use of the COMPSTAT program to track crime. Originally a tool to help the NYPD assign resources (with apparent success cutting crime), it morphed into a method for evaluating the performance of precinct commanders--no improvement in crime stats, no promotion. Precinct commanders responded by giving their police officers (illegal) arrest quotas. An almost identical practice was woven into the storyline of HBO's Baltimore police drama, The Wire.
[Note: this should be a cautionary tale for those who advocate using achievement test scores to evaluate teacher performance.]
...which leads to the human interest story. Adrian Schoolcraft, a footsoldier in his precinct, chose not to cooperate. He did this partly for moral reasons, i.e., it's wrong to wrongfully arrest an American, and partly because it undercut his ability to do good policing. If he harassed the local citizens with petty arrests to puff up his crime stats, then he was unlikely to win their cooperation when it came to a serious crime.
What makes this story unique, and also makes for great radio, is that Schoolcraft secretly recorded everything that took place in his precinct as this story unfolded, up to and including the moment when his precinct commander and a dozen cops arrive at Schoolcraft's apartment, after which he finds himself involuntarily committed to a pysch ward.
Lastly...Slate Magazine republished a remarkable story from 2002. It concerns the actions of David Karnes, a former US Marine staff sergeant, on the September 11, 2001 ("An Unlikely Hero," published 9/10/2002). Briefly, and I recommend that you read the original story, Karnes heard the news about the World Trade Center while working in his Connecticut office. He went home, put on his Marine uniform, which he kept pressed & ready, and then drove into Manhattan in his convertible Porsche 911. Apparently impressed by his uniform (or maybe the car), the police let him through the barriers around the WTC. Karnes spotted another Marine, Sergeant Thomas, near the burning pile of debris that was Building 7, the 47-story building next to the twin towers. Authorities had ordered rescue workers off the pile which they deemed too unstable. Nevertheless Karnes and Thomas began their own search & rescue mission and eventually located two Port Authority cops buried 20 feet under the debris.
A reporter (whose name I forget) imbedded with a U.S. Marine unit in Fallujah, Iraq some years ago observed that when gunfire erupted nearby, he dove for cover, while the young Marines he traveled with piveted in one motion and sprinted towards the developing firefight. Whether it's training, self-selection, or institutional culture...these Marines, including the aforementioned Sergeant sKarnes and Thomas, are wired differently than most of us. I'm glad they're on our side. Buy a Marine a drink the next time the occasion arises. Semper Fi.
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Friday, August 27, 2010
The Age of Foolishness
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness... --opening line of Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities
As I commence what I hope is an enduring journal about politics, policy, and the consequences thereof, my mind conjures Charles Dickens’s oft-quoted quote about it being the best of times and the worst of times…seems like most of us think it's the worst of times.
In the summer of 2010 just about every adult in America is looking for someone to blame. Usually that someone is affiliated with governance. Political ads are starting to clog the airways. We are only a few months from the mid-term elections when America invariably tells the new president that it’s not having as much fun as when the two were dating.
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| President Obama's Inauguration January 21, 2009 |
No sooner had one and a half million people gathered on the National Mall to welcome President Obama then an ostensibly anti-tax, hardcore libertarian movement emerged under the moniker The Tea Party in opposition to everything on the new president’s agenda (apparently it’s highly inappropriate to call them “Teabaggers.”)
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| Self-Explanatory |
The same optimism doesn’t apply to Afghanistan, where eight years after we defeated the Taliban on the battlefield, we face a reinvigorated insurgent enemy. At home we grow unsure about the best path to follow. I, for one, can’t fathom why any Afghan would wish to dwell in a land that resembles the 15th century with cell phones.
Both wars speak to the feud between Islam and modernity, with the United States and Europe the representatives of modernity. In New York City we debate the moral propriety of building an Islamic mosque/community center two blocks from Ground Zero. Who is financing a mosque on prime Wall Street real estate? And are we talking north-south or east-west blocks—there’s a difference?
About Iran…what can I say, President Ahmadinejad (pronounced afterdinnerjacket) would be a joke, but, you know, he, the mullahs, and their Brownshirt minions actually torture and kill people and verge on acquiring nuclear weapons. Somehow this sucks all the humor out of it.
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| Iran's Revolutionary Guards--I get teary-eyed when I see a good goosestep |
South of our border is a de facto war between organized crime and the Mexican State. The death toll of 22,700 over 3+ years suggests that it is more real war, similar to the insurgent conflicts of Iraq and Afghanistan, than police action. Today I read in the back pages of the Wall Street Journal that Mexican marines discovered 72 murdered migrants on a ranch in the state of Tamaulipas. No, that’s not a typo—seventy-two. Apparently it is the handiwork of the Zetas, the most thuggish of the Mexican gangs. It is particularly troubling (to me anyways) that these criminal enterprises are able to break down the institutions that create and maintain civilized society in Ciadad Juarez and the other border towns that control the flow of drugs into the U.S.
In the Gulf of Mexico a hole in the ocean floor spewed oil for 3 months. The corporate entities involved—BP, Transocean, Halliburton (hey, say hello to Dick Cheney for me), et. al.—demonstrated collective incompetence both on the day the rig exploded and for weeks thereafter. The only positive is America now appreciates (or should) the technical difficulties and risks inherent in deep-sea drilling. Predictably the industry opposes a modest 6-month drilling moratorium while we figure out what happened and how to prevent it from happening again.
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| Deepwater Horizon Oil Rig Fire |
Expect to hear the same thing from the Iowa industrial egg farms that recently recalled 500,000,000 salmonella-laden eggs.
A gay federal judge overturned Prop 8, which banned gay marriage in California. By most accounts the initial legal defense of the act was pathetic. Stand by for the fireworks as this case moves toward the Supreme Court.
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| Elin--Yea, I don't understand either |
Another omen…Tiger Woods finished 78th or thereabouts at Firestone Country Club earlier this month. Now he and Elin are officially divorced. Maybe Tiger can get back to having regular sex and see if it helps his golf stroke.
Which brings us to the Big Enchilada—the great financial crisis of 2008, or was it 2009, well 2010 ain’t turning out so hot…who knows exactly when it will end. With the passage of time we’ll come up with an appropriate name for it. I like My Big Fat American Recession. Suffice it to say, it’s fueling most of our political discontent.
This, in a nutshell, is our age. Arrogance, avarice, ignorance, incompetence, mischief, and plain old-fashioned evil dominate the headlines. Is it the worst of times? Certainly not. As Dickens suggested we rarely see our own times clearly—we want to speak in superlatives.
Behind the scenes there is evidence that the grown-ups among us, some of whom are politicians, are cleaning up our mess and putting the house in order. My goal with this blog is to promote the kind of civil discourse that helps people arrive at consensus behind policies that really promote the public good.
Let’s see if it works.
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