This is a blog of random thought, book & movie reviews, poems, stories, cartoons and short essays. It is probably the closest thing I'll ever have to a journal or dairy. The idea of recording everything I do, every day would make for pretty dull reading. My hope is that it will be a useful way of developing and holding onto my thoughts about what's going on in the world.
A lone boy kicks the ball, first to one side of the house and then to the other. Once he kicks it too far, and it flies over the edge of the hill, down among the workmen, many feet below, too busy to return it, indifferent, mildly resentful even, daring to be asked, although the boy is silent.
The boy stood above the ridge formed by the sand pit below, as earth machines undercut the hill, carrying away truckload after truckload of sand and gravel, to places the boy knew not where.
It is dinnertime. His mother calls him in, but times being hard, except for a boy who has known no other, they eat lentil soup cooked with spinach from the garden and bits of ham, and home bread born from the oven to soak up vestiges of soup, a trick his mother learned years ago, to make the most of the nutrition there, of every bite.
The boy’s father eats silently, quickly, and hurries on. Under lights rigged, turning night into day, he works two shifts now. But the boy is not of an age to know that that is his fate.
This was his father’s land. This house, built by his grandfather, planted high on the hill in prosperous, hopeful times, still standing, barely, shielding itself from the scene to the north with a narrow veil of trees, blind to what is coming.
After dinner, the boy returns to the crest of the undercut hill, trees precarious, a brow of grass ready to disengage, a precipice now, as hungry machines attack and retreat, again and again; the ball nowhere to be seen down below, lost.
Facing south, her favorite time of day, the boy’s mother, standing on the porch, the sun’s oblique rays warming her skin, witnesses alone a daily trick of nature; the sun nestling down among the soft fir trees for a good nights rest.
But facing north, at the verge of the hill, the boy buttons his jacket against the autumnal chill. For the first time, the boy sees.
When this book first hit the stores, I was inclined to ignore it as just another tell-all book designed to earn a quick buck and embarrass a few politicians and their handlers. This first impression was reinforced by Harry Reid’s hasty apologies for his now well-publicized “light skinned, African American with no negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one” comment and for a bevy of well-timed interviews of various political operators. Not a good start. But two things happened. To my surprise, my “this is a worthy book” filter, Joan, bought the book, read it and, yes, said, “this is a worthy book.” This arrangement works well, since she devours three or four times as many books as I do and filters the read-worthy from the pile we try to sell back to the bookstore for pennies on the dollar. The second thing that happened was that there was surprisingly little noise from the various campaigns disavowing Heilemann and Halperin’s attributions, and a deafening silence about the events they describe. Whether the players made a strategic decision to remain silent, in the hopes that it would all be washed away in the next news cycle – a safe enough bet – or that any refutation would be read as confirmation – another safe bet – it struck me that this was a book worth reading. I’m glad I did.
I’ll be brief (for a change.) The book is a narrative of the Democratic and Republican primaries and the subsequent 2008 Presidential election and, although it is 436 pages, which I consider short given the breadth of material they covered – after all, this campaign cycle was longer than any that came before it – it does a terrific job bringing the reader into the tent or, in some cases, slipping your nose under the tent. You become immersed in the high-stress game of politics at its highest level. Having lived through the events (especially here in NH), and having observed the candidates up close and personal, it is fascinating to compare that experience, still fresh in my mind, with what was going on behind the scenes. That a candidate could be raging in their campaign bus one minute, and then serene and on message as the doors swings open, is a marvel. Do you have to be crazy to put yourself and your family through this? Or is it a manifestation of the ultimate human challenge that few who found themselves in that positions could resist?
Oh! Another reason that there was so few complaints from the campaigns just might have been because the book was so well sourced and, hence, credible, that the candidates probably concluded that whatever counter narrative they put out would be contradicted by the public record and by the very people who knew the facts, their own campaign staffs. One indelible fact is that once a campaign is over, it’s every man and woman for himself. Hired guns work for themselves.
I guess Heilemann and Halperin had to leave something out, but I missed Joe the Plumber, whose name wasn’t even Joe. I remember one televised campaign stop when McCain called on Joe to take the stage, but Joe was nowhere to be found. I think that tells you all you need to know about how well managed the McCain campaign was. If you’ve seen the outrageously profane and funny comedy, In The Loop, that’s what I imagine the McCain campaign to have been like, especially after Joe the Plumber went missing. I can see McCain launching into scathing tirades of profanity and everyone around him blaming everyone else, with equally scathing tirades of profanity. As Obama said at one point to his press secretary, Robert Gibbs, when things weren’t going so well, “you know, this would really be interesting if we weren’t in the middle of it!”
My conclusion? We could have ended up with John Edwards as a candidate for Vice President. That would not have been good, making McGovern’s choice of Eagleton look brilliant in comparison. (Thankfully, Obama didn’t give it a moments thought, although Joe Biden has a few quirks of his own.) We could have ended up with Sarah Palin as Vice President. That would have been even worse. (Why did McCain choose her? At one point, when asked that question in private, Palin could only think of one answer. “It must have been Gods will.” What else?) We could have ended up with John McCain as President. Whatever you say about John McCain, Mr. Shoot-from-the-hip Maverick McCain is not executive material. He may have been an affective legislator once (past tense intentional) but he would have made a real hash out of the Presidency. Now he's just a bitter, angry, grumpy Senator. On November 4th, 2008, I think the electorate got it right. Of course I would say that. What do you expect? I’m just another flaming ass-hole liberal – which describes pretty much everyone to the left of Sarah Palin.
(a profile of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner)
This is a review of an article in the April issue Atlantic Monthly. Link to article>>
Historians will write the final chapters on whether the government’s response to the Great Recession was appropriate, and that may not happen for many years yet. After all, John Kenneth Gailbraith’s The Great Crash, 1929 wasn’t published until 1955. Even twenty years hence, it is unlikely that historians will agree. But about one thing everyone will agree is that Timothy Geithner, as President of the NY Fed under Bush and Treasury Secretary under Obama, was a central figure in this drama. Joshua Green writes, “The fact that most of the bailouts driving this anger occurred under George W. Bush has been easy to overlook, in part because Geithner is the most visible constant between the two administrations.” Along with Paulson and Bernanke, Geithner was part of the team that oversaw Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, and the bailout of AIG, Citi and Bank of Am.
In Geithner’s own words (from the article), “In the end, what people care about is, what did you do? Did it make things better or not? That’s what you’ll be judged by. Now, will it vindicate the president over time? It should, but I’m not sure it will. I think probably not. The country is dramatically better off today. People say the financial strategy was politically costly for us. And I say to them, relative to what? Would it have been better to have the stock market where it was in March, the economy still falling, and unemployment much higher?” (My italics)
Since the efficacy of every other road not taken is hypothetical, there’s just no way of knowing.
For those interested in context, of gaining insight into how and why choices were made, this article is excellent. While much is written today that simply recasts what we already know or confirms our worse suspicions, reading this article provides new insights, extends knowledge, and for some, will evokes admiration; for, no matter how you feel about it, to have faced the political storm and resisted the public’s calls for retribution, required an uncommon level of confidence and courage. To quote from the article, “It requires abstaining from moral judgments and pumping tax dollars into the same institutions that inflicted the pain, as part of an all-hands-on-deck effort to restore economic confidence.” And that took courage.
No doubt, some people think that moral judgment was, and is, exactly what was called for. But as satisfying as that would have been, for those who understood how close the world came to a worldwide depression that could have lasted a dozen years or more, with tremendous social costs, it is certain that history would have judged a political response with retribution as its goal as irresponsible and callous, when the inevitable disastrous social costs were taken into account.
When it comes to abstract thinking, the American polity does not do well with second and third-order effects.
What I appreciate most is Joshua Green’s elegant presentation of the opposing, yet coupled, philosophical underpinnings of the current crisis. Highly influential was the University of Chicago’s conviction that “regulatory capture” rendered regulation ineffective; that is “…if regulation couldn’t function as a disinterested public good, it should be abolished.” (No talk of how to make it work or the danger inherent in deregulation!) Then, from the liberal side, there was a drive towards “corporate liberalism.”
“Where conservative neoclassical economists and Marxist historians converged was in their desire to “sever the corrupting ties between industry and government,” as Eduardo Canedo, an economic historian at Princeton University, puts it.”
According to Green, a vast cast of characters played a role. Ralph Nader, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bush 41, Clinton, Bush 43 to name a few, perhaps unwittingly, worked to remove safeguards that had served us well since enacting the Glass-Steagall Act in the 30s, hastening the day when we would face another crisis, potentially worse than the Great Depression.
When it comes to history, Americans don’t do well with events occurring more than 25 years ago. Conveniently, they can rationalize abandoning safeguards by assuring itself the fundamentals have changed.
Green writes; “When Bill Clinton was elected, pent-up Democratic desire, gladly facilitated by the new Republican leadership in Congress in 1995, unleashed the wave of deregulation that culminated in 1999 with the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, the seminal New Deal banking reform.” Consequently, “The assets of securities brokers and dealers … which represented less than 2 percent of gross domestic product in 1980, grew to 22 percent in 2007.”
As Wall Streets grew, so did Wall Street political contributions. But, as Green points out, more than political contributions was a work. “…[The University of Chicago’s] George Stigler’s idea about regulatory capture was widely accepted” so regulations were replaced by repeating the mantra of “… faith in financial markets.” Green sums up the trend as follows: “…The regulatory philosophy of the last three decades—that the government should step aside…” took hold. “This consensus narrowed the parameters of respectable debate to the point that criticizing Wall Street came to be considered unsophisticated.” (My italics) After all, the thinking went, “…‘Where’s the harm in this?’ If banks are making a little more money to keep up with their international competitors, what’s the big deal?”’
Geithner became President of NY Fed in 2003. Green writes, “Once he’d settled in, Geithner chose to focus on derivatives, delivering over the next few years a series of prescient speeches about their risks.” “Geithner was warning of “fat tails,” a term that suggests that catastrophic events at the far end of a bell curve are more likely to occur than statistical models imply.” Quoting Geithner: ‘“I felt like my entire time in New York,” he said, “there was a fear that this was going to end badly.”’ Boy, did he get that right!
As Treasury Secretary, Geithner became the chief architect of the recovery strategy. Green goes onto explain Geithner’s recovery plan as having three “cannons”, address monetary policy, fiscal policy and recapitalize banks, which required a lot of international coordination. What is not well understood is that the plan was designed to minimize the amount of taxpayer money required, by drawing in as much private capital as possible. By and large that was successful, but at a high political cost for the Administration. At the heart of the strategy were “Stress tests” for the big banks. In Greens words, “…investors, uncertain of how bad the crisis could get, assumed the worst”. To attract private capital, it was important to counter this perception. “The basic strategy,” Geithner says, “was to dispel the cloud of uncertainty.” “Geithner’s plan was wildly out of sync with the public desire for swift, retributive justice against the banks.”
Geithner’s strategy was, essentially, attract private capital, rather than government funds, to the extent possible, to fix the problem. Like it or not, that required, in affect, the “coddling of Wall Street.” Green writes, ‘“In a crisis, you have to choose,” Geithner told me. “Are you going to solve the problem, or are you going to teach people a lesson? They’re in direct conflict.”’ Or maybe, to be addressed at different times. If laws were broken, they should be prosecuted. Sadly, aside from Bernie Madoff and others, and aside from fraud within the mortgage industry, technically, most of what occurred was probably legal. But, legal or not, reforms (below) must ensure that Banks invest, not speculate -- another word for gambling -- and certainly not by putting at risk depositors' or tax payers' money!
Green writes, “Geithner likes to point out that after a year on the job, he’s spent $7 billion recapitalizing financial firms while private investors have put up $140 billion. TARP money is being repaid faster than anyone imagined, and if Obama gets the $90 billion tax on big banks he proposed in January, it could eventually be recouped.”
As for reforming Wall Street, unbelievably, reform is still resisted by Wall Street and viewed as unsophisticated. Was this a missed opportunity? Should the Administration have pushed harder in the midst of the meltdown? Maybe there were just too many balls to keep in the air. Hopefully, memories will not fade.
The Administrations legislative proposal, drafted by Geithner, contains these elements:
1. Enforce leverage limits
2. Require higher capital reserves
3. Promote shareholder control of bank salaries
4. Establish a clearinghouse for derivative trading
5. Create a consumer finance protection agency
6. Require corporate “living wills”
7. Improve oversight of the entire financial system
(In my view, number five, the most controversial reform that runs the greatest risk of being gutted, is the most critical.)
While some believe bank size is a problem, Geithner disagrees. Green reports, ‘“It’s risk, not size, that matters,” Geithner told me.’
Clearly, this is an ongoing story. Whether Secretary Geithner and President Obama made the right decisions – or at least not too many bad ones – will become clear only if the economy fully recovers, including improved employment and lower deficits, both of which could take years. Let’s hope Doctor Geithner’s painful prescriptions prove a lasting cure; economically and politically. It's critical that the President press hard to ensure that the financial reforms pass without being watered down. It's important that Geithner makes this happen.
For a more critical view of Geithner and Wall Street, read Frank Rich's column in the NY Times at: Frank Rich
One could be deceived into thinking this is a book about a house and, in particular, the most prominent feature of that house, a dramatic, glass-enclosed space with sweeping views of a Czechoslovak city here called Mesto (pronounced mn-yes-to in Czech). The house is not a character in this story; it serves double duty as metaphor and stage; a physical constant in an evolving story reflecting, at the outset, the cheerful optimism of its owners and then, the gradual erosion of confidence as the future became progressively uncertain.
Based upon a real house – the Villa Tugendhat – built in 1929 in the city of Brno during an idyllic interlude of optimism and prosperity between the wars, this novel portrays the buoyant lives of its affluent owners, their architect, their family, and their closest friends from the late twenties through WWII and beyond. This is a novel loosely based on the lives of the Tugendhat family. The broad outlines of that family’s history, combined with the historic events and very real images of the house, anchor this story in a deeper reality than it might otherwise have achieved. That’s not a criticism – it’s an accolade to its author’s inspired genius.
This is an excellent book, written with great skill and sensitivity. You will certainly want to read it. If you want to discover its for yourself, stop here. Read the rest of my review, if you wish, after you’ve read the book, and then share your thoughts in the comments below. OK, “Fair warning”.
The story. For Liesel and Victor Landauer to have married in 1928 in the newly minted Czechoslovakia suggests an assured sense of invulnerability and optimism. After all, Liesel is Catholic and Victor is Jewish. It’s easy to believe optimism was the prevailing mood of the country, having emerged independent and energized in 1919, immediately following the Great War. Leisel is from an established, wealthy family, which owns the property on which they will build the “Villa Landauer”. Victor is a successful inventor and manufacturer of “Landauer” automobiles – at the time, a dynamic, nascent industry not unlike the computer industry of the 1970s and 80s. Reflecting the contemporary and widely shared desire to shed the ornamentation of the past and confidently embrace a certain future, Liesel and Victor are determined to build a very modern house. They contract with a Viennese architect named Rainier von Abt, who designs a strikingly modern house – considered by many, a work of art – highly influenced by the “Bauhaus” school, an architectural movement that took hold in Europe and elsewhere between 1919 and 1933. The house, with simple, unadorned horizontal lines, vistas, and verandas, was thought by critics to resemble a retail store or an auto dealership more than a home; but the Landauer House (now a museum) was nothing if not breathtaking in its execution; especially its huge glass enclosed room divided by a golden onyx wall that glowed to red orange when the afternoon sun struck it full on, and chrome pillars, a curved zebrawood wall, and exterior glass that could be retracted like car windows. It was furnished with custom designed furniture that we would recognize in any modern office today, but of exceptional quality and, in 1929, anything but common.
The Landauers built their house, settled in and had two children, Ottilie (their first) and Martin. Life progressed smoothly until Martin’s birth, which was especially difficult. Leisel barely survived – an event that cast a shadow on Leisel and Victor’s marriage; especially their sex lives.
Perhaps the most interesting character – the person drawn most vividly by Simon Mawer – is Hana Hanakova, Leisel’s best friend, who is also married to a Jew named Osker, several decades Hana’s senior. Hana, outrageously outspoken and driven by sexual desires and affection, is particularly sensitive to the vulnerabilities and dangers posed by Nazi aggression that is slowly overtaking them. At one point when the Landauers were entertaining in the Glass Room and at their most content, Hana remarks to Leisel;
‘“Well, it’s too good to last, isn’t it?
“What is”? replied Leisel.
“Everything.”
“What do you mean, everything?”
“The good times. All this. The world we live in.”
She is right, of course. They crowd into the space of the Glass Room like passengers on the observation deck of a luxury liner. Some of them may be peering out through the windows onto the pitching surface of the city below but, in their muddle of Czech and German, almost all are ignorant of the cold outside and the gathering storm clouds…’
Hana is a survivor who, in spite of occasionally reckless, desperate behavior manages to outlast the Nazis, labor camps and most of her friends. For Hana, men are useful, but women are her preferred companions. Eventually, having sown seeds of doubt about Victor’s fidelity, she seduces Liesel.
In this book, everybody has secrets and, at the same time, at a subconscious level, no one is betrayed.
As a Jew and a businessman in the heart of Europe in the ‘30s, Victor has a keen sense of his family’s vulnerability. In light of events in Germany and elsewhere, Victor decides to transfer ownership of the Landauer Autoworks to his father-in-law and to move most of his fortune into Swiss banks. Meeting with his father-in-law to discuss the transfer of his company:
‘It is one of those conversations that are the norm these days, partly apocalyptic, occasionally optimistic, usually full of foreboding. “We’ll come through,’ his father-in-law decides in the end, and Victor has to agree with him. “I’m sure we will. But who knows where we will be by then?”’
Of course, no one can see into the future, one can only sense impending doom and act on it, or not. (While reading The Glass Room, I couldn’t help wonder myself whether we ought to buy property in Canada as a hedge!) But, strangely, while keenly aware of the political storm that will soon sweep through Czechoslovakia, Victor is unaware of his own feelings about Liesel and his family.
During an early business trip to Vienna, a young prostitute, Katalin, an attractive, petite Jew, approaches him. Perhaps comforted and drawn to her by her familiar Jewishness, Victor falls in love. For most of the nineteen thirties Victor visit her often, and eventually, instead of meeting in hotels, Katalin brings him to her rented room over a bakery in the Jewish sector where Victor discovers that she has a 5-year old daughter, Marika. Confused and perhaps frightened by his own growing attachment to Katalin, he writes her a generous check and leaves. Did it mean he wouldn’t return? That may have been the implication; but at the time, Victor would not have been able to say. Victor misses her and returns to Vienna a few months later. But, to his shock and dismay, she has disappeared. A few years later, after the Nazi’s invasion and annexation of Austria, and forced to flee Vienna, Katalin and Marika reappear among a small group of refugee in his own living room in Mesto! There’s too much to explain to make this seem anything but the wildest coincidence, but, believe me, it works. Leisel, socially conscious and concerned for the welfare of refugees, arranges for Katalin and Marika to live in a small cottage on her parents property below the Villa Landauer and, shortly afterwards, when Liesel’s governess resigns, brings her into the family as their governess; events which Victor is powerless to prevent without exposing this own infidelity; events that astonish and bemuse him.
Katalin has few options. Under the circumstances, as a Jew without a passport or the means to escape other than to follow the Landauers, she must go along. She has the survival instincts of a cat, and we’re never certain what she feels or what she would have done, had she been able to act on her own. In this, she is like millions of others lacking the resources to escape.
Inevitable, as the Nazis move in and, one by one, the movements and privileges of Jews are curtailed, to be a Jew was to be in increasingly mortal danger. Victor urges Leisel to leave Czechoslovakia before they meet the same fate as so many other European Jews. As a Catholic, Leisel is not in danger, but Victor and her children are. At first she is reluctant to leave but, even one as seemingly unaware of the mounting danger as she seems to be, Leisel realizes that they must leave. So, the Landauers, their children and Katalin and Marika, depart, fleeing to Switzerland just as Hitler is making his grand entrance into Mesto.
In Switzerland they live comfortably for three years until 1941 but, as the war expands and France’s Marshall Petain collaborates with Hitler and Nazi troops occupy most of France, the noose tightens and Victor decides the time has come to escape to America. I’ll leave you with this. Not everyone makes it.
During the war, the Villa Landauer becomes the property of the Nazi state, and is converted into a eugenics laboratory; a Hitler inspired pseudoscience to identify race and ethnicity by measuring physical attributes.
As the war envelops Europe, Hana’s husband’s bank accounts are frozen, or worse, and he is unable to work or even leave the house. To survive, trading on her physical attributes and appetites, Hana becomes a eugenics subject-of-study and, quite intentionally, seduces the Nazi officer-scientist in charge, trading sex for money and for her and Osker’s survival. But, unexpectedly she becomes pregnant -- for years she had believed she was “barren.” In desperation, Hana informs her Nazi scientist, the baby’s father, recklessly insulting and angering him. He informed the SS, and Hana and her husband were arrested and sent to separate camps. We are left to imagine how Hana survives the next three years. Osker, her husband, does not.
During the final chapters of the book, set in the late 60s and again in 1990s, after being boarded up for several years, the Landauer house becomes an annex of a nearby children’s hospital; used as a gymnasium for children with polio, to receive physical therapy. The story shifts for a time to a doctor, Tomas, and the head physiologist, Zdenka. Hana resurfaces as a member of the historical society interested in restoring the property and converting it into a museum. Hearing rumors that the Landauers are alive somewhere in the Americas, a journalist is dispatched to track them down.
The journalist tracks the Landauers (now American citizens with a the name Landors) to Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Liesel, now blind, lives with her daughter and grandson. Her son, Martin is now a lawyer in Boston. They are invited back for the opening of the Villa Landauer Museum and it is there that Hana and Liesel are reunited.
To borrow a term from our current wars, books that “embed” you in a place and time during conflicts that we can only begin to imagine are particular appealing to me. When your response is an urge to visit the places described, and to want to know more about the real lives of the people that inspired the story, you know you have been affected. Add to that the architectural history lesson presented here – understanding how and why the Bauhaus movement took hold; as much a rejection of an oppressive past and devastating war as an expression of something fresh and hopeful – further enriches the story. Now I understand and appreciate the spirit behind those starkly angular offices and homes scattered across the landscape. And now I understand something about what is now the Czech Republic and its historic vulnerability, deep in the heart of Europe.
The response to global warming? Denial – and a well-financed campaign to obfuscate the difference between local weather and global climate. The response to the great recession? Less regulation, even though deregulation was to blame. The response to a healthcare crisis? Inaction, even in the face of spiraling costs and suffering. The response to deficits? Cut taxes, ‘starve the beast’; even after ten years of evidence to the contrary. And now a few deranged Tea Party-ers applaud a pilot who flies his airplane into an IRS building.
The Bubba response to serious attempts to solve America’s problems is 24-hr ridicule, denial, invective, threats and prayer. (What god would listen to such nonsense?)
To sober America up and burst this burgeoning Bubba Bubble, will it take Sarah Palin or Ron Paul becoming president, or is there a 12-step program designed to avert impending national calamities?
