Category: Society

Lloyd Blankfein’s Enigma

“An impish grin spread across his face,” wrote the Times’ reporter about Lloyd Blankfein, the CEO of Goldman Sachs, responding to a question about excessive profits:  “we’re doing Gods’ work.”  What did he mean? (See, “I’m Doing God’s Work. Meet Mr. Goldman Sachs.”)

He did offer an explanation:  “We help companies to grow by helping them to raise capital. Companies that grow create wealth. This, in turn, allows people to have jobs that create more growth and more wealth. It’s a virtuous cycle.  We have a social purpose.”  This routine, grade-school style justification for financial institutions is surely inadequate to account for the massive dominance that banks like Goldman have achieved.  If they raise capital for business, why do they have to skim off so much for themselves?  And how does their excessive wealth create growth and wealth for others?

Maureen Dowd wrote in The New York Times: “Whether he knows it, he’s referring back to The Protestant Ethic and The Spirit of Capitalism.”  In her schoolmarmish, condescending manner, she is referring to R.H. Tawney’s  classic thesis about how the protestant reformation promoted the worldly discipline and drive of early capitalists.  That must be what he meant. (See, “Virtuous Bankers. Really!?!“)

Or is Blankfein alluding the Adam Smith’s invisible hand, guiding markets to perfect values.  Could be mean that Goldman offered a helping hand?

Perhaps is it about the guiding hand of evolution?  Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone memorably described Goldman as “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.”  At the top of the food chain, the giant squid has prevailed.  “Greedy, but long-term greedy,” is how the people at Goldman describe their investment and payment policies, according to The Times.  Built, in other words, to prevail and survive.

John Arlidge, the reporter who interviewed Blankfein and saw the impish grin, concluded:  “Call him a fat cat who mocks the public. Call him wicked. Call him what you will. He is, he says, just a banker ‘doing God’s work.’”

A fat cat, certainly, but we’ve seen that grin before — on the Cheshire cat, holding out an elusive but tantalizing promise of meaning.

Lewis Carroll understood how deeply we are trapped in our assumption that words are supposed to make sense.

An Even Darker Side of Unemployment

As the numbers of the unemployed continue to rise, so do the fears of those who are employed.

Psychologists are familiar with “survivor guilt,” the self-accusations that wrack those who have been a spared a trauma.  We know that those who suffer a reversal or injury often complain “Why me?”  Less well known but just as common is the anguished question, “Why not me?”  “Why was I spared?”  Luck is not an unmixed blessing.

BusinessWeek reported on a study to be published by the Yale Press:  Turbulence: Boeing and the State of American Workers and Managers.  Over the course of the six years of the study, 33% of Boeing’s workforce was let go:  “In the greatest surprise of all, the researchers discovered that the people who had been laid off often were happier than those left behind. Many had new jobs, even if they didn’t always pay as well.”  The authors discovered that “average depression scores were nearly twice as great for those who stayed with Boeing vs. those who left. The laid-off were less likely to binge drink, often slept better, and had fewer chronic health problems.” (See, “When the Laid-Off Are Better Off”)

There are several reasons for this.  Perhaps the most obvious is that the survivors expected they too would be fired eventually;  their temporary reprieve did nothing to spare them becoming a future casualty.  A second reason had to do with being powerless to change their fate; those waiting to be fired knew that it had little to do with their competence, and no matter what they did to reposition themselves, they would end up with a pink slip.  Management was determined to cut costs, and, for better or worse, they were a cost.  Finally, the anticipated threat is worse than the reality you can face;  once you know what you have to adapt to you can set about dealing with it.

This does not apply only to unemployment, of course.  One can also fear the threat of illness or infirmity, the risk of floods, earthquakes, hurricanes and accidents. The lack of an adequate, secure social safety net makes us all the more vulnerable, and as we watch our friends and neighbors succumb to foreclosures, indebtedness, illness, impoverishment, and bankruptcy we cannot but see and fear the danger to ourselves.

The survivor syndrome has been eliminated as a psychiatric diagnosis, but that might be in part because it has come to be seen now as normal, part of the stress of ordinary life.  Thoreau observed, “most men lead lives of quiet desperation.”  He captured something of the ordinary despair of those who see the suffering of those around them, and wait to be afflicted themselves.

Who Is He? and Why Did He Do It?

At this point, of course, we know very little, but that doesn’t prevent many commentators from speculating, and some from jumping to conclusions.

Newsweek sees it as a harbinger of more violence from our soldiers, exposed to the violence in Iraq and Afganistan.  It suggests that such post-traumatic acts increasingly will come back to haunt us. Along similar lines, colleagues of mine who have worked extensively with trauma victims point out that “treating PTSD is itself traumatic.”  Those who work with trauma victims are likely to suffer from the repeated exposure to the trauma of painfully damaged minds. (See Todd Essig’s comments, “Vicarious traumatization: PTSD is contagious and deadly,” on TrueSlant.)  This perspective gains backing from information suggesting Hasan was inadequately trained and showed, indeed, some significant limitations as a psychiatrist.

So, the liberal press and mental health professionals tend to see this as expressing a form of mental illness, albeit promoted by combat conditions.  On the other hand, there is the hypothesis of a terrorist attack.  The New York Times reported that officials are trying to investigate if Hasan worked with others.  Some politicians are quick to speculate that it might be a plot, but some conservative commentators, not waiting for evidence, have concluded that Hasan is a “trained terrorist.”  An interview with Dave Gaubatz on Frontpagemag quotes him as saying:  “Malik Nabal Hasan is a terrorist supporting the ideology of Al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, and yes, CAIR.”  (See “The Muslim Brotherhood and Ft. Hood.”)

Struggling as we all are to make sense of this tragic incident, none of us can help bringing our own perspectives to bear on it.  Interestingly, here, liberals tend to see this as an act of individual madness, which is how the right tends to think of liberals:  always explaining away such actions, blinding themselves to the real dangers of conspiracy.

But in the liberal press, I have also seen little reflection on the fact that Hasan is Muslim, and how is being Muslim in America may have contributed to his alienation and pent-up frustration.  Working in the army, moreover, handling veterans who themselves have been traumatized in the course of fighting Muslims in Iraq and Afganistan, must have been extraordinarily complex and difficult.  And then, of course, he was preparing to be deployed there himself.

The right, on the other hand, usually committed to the rights on individuals, sees no individuals at all in this scenario.  A Muslim is a Muslim and a likely terrorist.  They know what they know.

There is much to find out about Hasan and his circumstances, and no doubt we will find out much from the trial that almost certainly will follow on his recovery.  But, right now, it is fascinating to see what we already don’t know we know about him.

What Has Happened to Truth?

If we hadn’t gotten inured to the relentless outpouring of “crazy” ideas from the extreme right, we would be forced to wonder what is going on – and what it means.

By “crazy” I mean the birthers or those who see a fascist (or communist) take-over of the Federal Reserve Bank, or attempts to indoctrinate school children.  In America, we have always had conspiracy theories and exaggerated suspicions of political or economic plots.  Richard Hofstadter wrote “The Paranoid Style in American Politics” 45 years ago, but he was referring largely to fringe groups.  Now, however, these paranoid ideas are mainstream, retailed on Fox news and plastered over the internet, as Thomas Frank pointed out last week on The Wall Street Journal website (See “From John Birchers to Birthers.”)

Hofstadter was careful to point out that he used the term “paranoid” descriptively, as an analogy, not as an actual diagnosis.  But I think the pathological implications of the diagnosis are relevant.  Paranoia starts with virulent hatred towards others, who are seen to be thoroughly deserving of contempt.  The intensity of the hatred spills over, and the blurred object is seen as hating and attacking in return.  Hatred entirely fills the space.  That’s what makes it seem so out of touch with reality, so crazy.

It seems clear to me that those who spew invective and baseless accusations display the classic outlines of paranoia.  They are suffused with hate, and they feel persecuted.  But that is not all there is to this new proliferation of paranoia.  Something is changing in our culture, something that makes these pathological processes acceptable, even normal.

Today, intensity and conviction have acquired their own legitimacy.  In the dark 30’s of the last century, as Europe was strangling in the grip of fascism, William Butler Yeats wrote “The Second Coming,” his apocalyptic vision of the end of civilization, ending with these powerful lines:

The best lack all conviction

While the worst are full of passionate intensity.

But now, after several more catastrophes have afflicted us, unimaginable to Yeats, passionate intensity has become a kind of defense, a source of stability, a means of survival.  We are forced to respect it, admire it even, as an antidote to the helplessness that threatens us face to face with our world.  Certainly, that makes it harder to see that it is, also, a form of madness.

This is all the more true as traditional authorities have been so thoroughly compromised.  Politicians sell their services for campaign donations, regulators routinely approve questionable practices, priests abuse their trust, insurers scheme to deny coverage, brokers sell their clients dubious investments, and so on and on.

In this climate, truth itself has become questionable.  If it hasn’t been sold to the highest bidder, it is simply more and more difficult to find – or to believe in.

So, if we can’t have truth, at least we can have conviction

. . . and “Independents” Like Joe Lieberman

“I won’t try to psychoanalyze the ‘naysayers,’” wrote Paul Krugman in  the The New York Times,  “I’d just urge them to take a good hard look in the mirror. If they really want to align themselves with the hard-line conservatives, if they just want to kill health reform, so be it. But they shouldn’t hide behind claims that they really, truly would support health care reform if only it were better designed.” (See “The Defining Moment.”)

“Psychoanalyze?”  This looks like a case of ducking behind a psychological call when it is perfectly clear that a moral judgment is intended – and may well be deserved.

The simplest explanation for Joe Lieberman’s position on healthcare reform is that he believes it is in his interest to join the Republicans in threatening to filibuster the bill.  He successfully ran for re-election without winning the democratic primary in 2006, and he endorsed McCain in 2008.  True, the democrats allowed him to remain in their caucus.  But as an independent, alienated from his party and deeply unpopular in his home state following Obama’s victory, Lieberman needs a creative strategy for his next election campaign.

Connecticut is home to many insurance companies who bitterly oppose the public option, as well as other provisions of the proposed bill.  It health care reform goes down to defeat, it is hard to imagine they would not be grateful for Lieberman’s help and eager to reward him.  And, no doubt, there are other sources of support he could look forward to enjoying a result of his position on this issue.

Self-interest is the likeliest explanation, but if a psychoanalytic call is at all relevant, I would suggest narcissism.  As a class, politicians are prone to that disorder, constantly seeking external affirmation to shore up inner uncertainty.  In Lieberman’s case, switching sides allows him to enjoy the experience of being courted, relentlessly affirmed, while also allowing him the to feel, as John McCain’s daughter Meaghan wrote on The Daily Beast today, that he is one of the rare heroes “that dare to cross party lines, think outside the box and say what they truly believe?” (see “Joe’s No Traitor.”

It is a kind of tightrope walk, of course, but it allows him to present himself as courageously independent – without too much real risk.  What we don’t know we know here is how self-interest and self-promotion work together.