ken – Page 88 – Ken Eisold

OPTIMISM ON THE ECONOMY

Can We Believe It?

I am far from alone in my skepticism about the “optimism” being expressed about recent economic statistics. Bob Herbert in his New York Times column today noted how shallow and misleading the evidence for a recovery is, and even the lead article on the front page, subtitled “Some Economists Say Worst May Be Over,” quotes Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, saying, “This isn’t recovery. It’s a slowing recession.”

Clearly many, including the administration, would like us to be optimistic about a recovery because optimism (or “confidence” as it used to be called) encourages consumers and investors to reenter the market and that, in itself, contributes to a recovery. But this “optimism” seems to be done with mirrors. A slowing of the pace of decline hardly indicates a turnaround, as we have little idea how long this new slower rate will last. We could just as easily say that the recession itself is a harbinger of recovery as once we enter a recession will will have to come out of it. Right?

But people are not optimistic just because the administration or Wall Street wants them to be. We desperately want to be optimistic too — or many of us. That’s where we have to watch ourselves: believing what we want to believe.

Apart from deluding ourselves and making bad decisions, we have to watch ourselves because it introduces further divisions into out already badly divided society. We are all affected by this economic catastrophe but we are not all affected the same.

Remember that the sub-prime mortgage debacle came about because of the millions of poor Americans lured into fulfilling their dreams of home ownership or getting quick and easy cash from home equity loans. To be sure it was the reckless repackaging of those loans that touched off the crisis, and many rich or merely comfortable investors lost a lot of money when those securitized “assets” vanished. But then there were those who actually lost their homes. And those who lost their jobs and who are still unemployed — even though the rate of increasing joblessness is not increasing as fast as it was.

What we sometimes don’t know we know is how selective memory is, and how easily our wishes shape our perceptions.

STRESS TESTING

SOMEONE IN CHARGE — AT LAST

The stock prices rose dramatically yesterday of the banks that got negative marks in the government’s newly released stress tests. Indeed, most stock prices went up. (See Wall Street Journal) Why?

Some say that the news is not as bad as initially feared, while others say that the numbers suggest that another big government bailout does not seem required. Financial reporters are notorious for making glib interpretations of market behavior — but why should that stop me from trying to detect unconscious factors at play. Something odd is going on here.

I suspect that the relief now stems from the sense that someone is in charge. The passing out of grades suggest that the teacher has come back into the room. The authorities in charge seem to know what’s what — and what to do about it. They are acting that way, and they are being perceived that way.

This is a weak sign of confidence — but it doesn’t take many of signs of confidence to affect the market when everyone wants to believe in an imminent recovery.

AN EPIDEMIC OF HYSTERIA?

We Actually Can Protect Ourselves

The virus is spreading but not nearly as rapidly or as widely as the fear it arouses. As Elisabeth Rosenthal writes in Sunday’s Times, there is a simple, cheap and effective defense against it: “Wash Your Hands.” (see article)

Basing her experience as a doctor but also a mother who was in Beijing with her children during the SARS epidemic, she points out that frequent hand washing is an effective means of protection against all forms of infection: “No one got SARS,” she reported. “But more than that, the stomach bugs and common colds that are the bane of elementary schools all over the world disappeared as well.”

So why is the fear so great? No doubt the media, relentlessly searching for news to engage readers, has inflamed public concern. Reporters and editors may claim that they are simply reporting what is happening, but no news sells as well as bad news, and fear is a reliable way to attract attention.

But the underlying reason is that we have all come to feel dependent and vulnerable in the modern world. Epidemics – like hurricanes, earthquakes, fires, and other natural disasters – sweep through our ordered world, wreaking havoc, and we have become dependent on government to protect and rescue us. That is as it should be, since we cannot individually protect ourselves from catastrophes on such a scale.

But we have also lost a lot of trust in the organizations we do usually turn to. Are they telling us the truth, or just what they want us to believe? Does our government really care about our welfare? Perhaps the drug companies see an opportunity to reap profits from extra sales of Tamiflu, or other medications. At the more paranoid end of the scale are such thoughts as, perhaps, the government helped bring the epidemic about with lax safeguards, or is actually trying to obscure the existence of weapons of mass biological destruction.

We are dependent on our public agencies, to the extent, often, that we have lost the knack of doing what we can to protect ourselves. We tend to think that if our organizations cannot or will not protect us, then we must resort to drastic measures. We must flee or withdraw from life, while we start to consider who is to blame for our misfortune. As Dr. Rosenthal reminds us, we easily forget what we can do ourselves.

This is the story behind the story. Yes, Swine Flu is a worry, and we should know what we can about how it is spread and how to treat it. But perhaps we need to worry also about our worry. At least, we can try to think about the fears so easily aroused, what we don’t know we know about our ever-present vulnerabilities and suspicions.

GAY MARRIAGE

Is There a Line to be Crossed?

We seem to be at an interesting point in our history where same sex marriage – once virtually unthinkable – is becoming not only widely accepted but a legal fact. Iowa and New Hampshire have just legitimized it, and other states seem to be on the same path.

Obviously there are arguments on both sides: gays claim that denying them the right to marriage is a form of discrimination; traditionalists argue that marriage has always been between a man and a woman. Can one reconcile these arguments? Is there a middle course? Can a line to be drawn that is not at one pole or the other?

I don’t think so. People do argue, of course, and occasionally an argument will change someone’s mind. But the change we are going through now amounts to a vast, unpredictable and uncontrollable cultural change of heart, a tectonic shift in social attitudes, and many factors have contributed to that. It is not a matter of logic, and it is not grounded in law. It is a matter of what people don’t know they have come to know about themselves and others over the past several years, irreversible because it is grounded in unconscious knowledge and thought.

Over recent years, a thousand invisible threads have been snapped: gay children have come out to their families, TV shows and movies illustrating gay lives have become popular, gay politicians have been elected to office. Slowly, steadily, the categories that organize our minds have been changed. Communities have risen in protest against hate crimes, gay communities have stood up to demonstrate their political and economic muscle, knee-jerk prejudices have been challenged, hundreds of marches have been held, thousands of anti-discrimination suits have been filed and won. Activist groups on college campuses provoked debates and discussions, magazines and ads routinely came to show gay couples leading ordinary lives, famous athletes came out, gay couples moved in next door, planting gardens and raising real estate values, gays volunteered in soup kitchens and cleaned up parks. In a 2004 ABC/Washington Post poll of Americans, just 32 percent favored gay marriage, with 62 percent opposed. In a poll done this week, 49 percent support gay marriage versus 46 percent opposed.

Potter Stewart, the Supreme Court justice, is famous for having observed that hardcore pornography is hard to define: “but I know it when I see it.” It announces its presence viscerally – and that is the same with many other issues that arouse strong emotions and underlie fixed opinions. In this case, the opposite is happening: visceral reactions are being calmed, revelations no longer shock, and surprises are smoothed out. Slowly, inexorably same sex marriage has come to seem normal.

And once it is normal it takes its place as an unremarkable part of life – and, eventually, there will no longer be polls on the subject.

Comment:

I want to thank Anthony Brown for correcting my facts: Vermont and Iowa have approved gay marriage, and it remains to be seen if the New Hampshire Senate’s action will be signed by the governor. I also appreciate his endorsement of my analysis.

WHY TORTURE?

The Fascination and the Reality

Sunday’s Times raised the question again of what is our fascination with torture. (See article) The recent release of the CIA memos forces us to think again of what it is about. Ostensibly, of course, it is about gaining information, but there are so many things wrong with that argument, starting with the fact that the information gotten through that means is likely to be unreliable. Aristotle made that case 2,500 years ago, and still today many practitioners believe that the victims of torture will say anything to gain relief.

But torturers get very engaged in it, and the public gets fascinated with accounts of it. The man in the street gets flustered when asked to think about it, and the bureaucrats who authorize it can’t seem to get enough.

Partly it’s about revenge. If you can’t get to the perpetrators themselves, at least you can get to their compatriots, their families and friends. But the deeper answer is that it is about power — perhaps compensating for the feeling of powerlessness that terrorism evokes in us. Torture puts one person completely under the control of another in a way that all find disturbing and many find irresistible.

The accounts of torturers themselves, whether those recruited in childhood to serve genocidal campaigns in Africa or simple US soldiers who land the assignment in Iraq, suggest how compelling it can be — and how difficult to get over. Not only does it profoundly affect its victims, it leaves an indelible imprint on the perpetrators.