Our Collective Wisdom

Collective Collapse: It Takes A Village To Implode

Robert Moffat, senior vice president of IBM systems and technology group, was recently arrested by the FBI for conspiracy involving insider trading. The arrest sent shock ways through Wall Street exposing illicit, back channel dealings between prominent high tech executives and hedge fund managers. My information comes directly from Fortune Magazine, also seemingly shocked by it all, and reminding me of the policeman character in Casablanca played by Claude Rains who closes Rick’s Café by telling Humphrey Bogart, “I’m shocked, shocked to find out that gambling is going on here.”

Robert Moffat apparently was a hard working and respected executive considered a potential successor for CEO at IBM. The Fortune article describes him as a numbers cruncher, former Eagle Scout, and a man weighing in at 6-foot-2 and 265 pounds – a solid guy on all fronts. He had become sexually involved with a woman who worked for a hedge fund and she was quoted saying that trading business information was for her “like an orgasm.” The tale becomes more complicated as she was in love with her married hedge fund boss but it didn’t work out. Shocking.

One of Moffat’s attorney colleagues summed it up best: “There was no planet on which I could have understood what was being said about Bob. I just shut down.”

So we have insider trading among millionaires and billionaires, an Eagle Scout who seems to have it all risking everything, a woman who finds stimulation rubbing shoulders (at least) with powerful men, and another man who simply cannot comprehend how a straight shooter like Bob could go wrong. Well, there certainly is a lot to be shocked about. What we have here is a collective collapse. Most disturbing to me is the notion expressed by Bob’s colleague that he knows of no planet to understand what happened?

Chapter Nine

 

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A serial journal of cogent reflections and irreverent insights on the social effects of capitalism and the roots of partisan politics. Pairing prose with HDR photography and “flash points” drawn from current and historical perspectives, the author seeks to recover lost wisdom and courageous action beyond the shouting and noise of today's headlines. 

Chapter Nine
Wages Decline, Credit Expands, Rapidly
Time Range: 1978-1985

What I did not know, setting my sights on creativity and meaning, was that the economic rocket ship we were on was about to sputter and go sideways. For 150 years, capitalism in the United States had functioned, despite its busts and booms, to move in an upward spiral. Working people, on average, saw their real wages rising decade after decade.

Until the 1970s, every generation had a reasonable chance to expect a better life than the previous one. Imagine if my father had not believed that. If he had believed that his sacrifices would make little positive difference for his children’s circumstances. Yes, he was disappointed in me and likely wondered if my crazy talk would ever lead anywhere, but I was in college. I would have a degree that was never an option for him. Anti-Semitism was on the decline. He had no reason to fear that roads would be blocked in front of me. And they were not, but wages for the average worker hit a wall.

From 1978 to 2011, real wages after adjusting for inflation went flat, nada, nothing. I’ll say it again. As best as we know from our economic models, there have been no wage increases for the average worker since the year I finished working at St. Johnsbury prison in 1978. This means that many of the inmates who found jobs in lumber mills, retail services, maintenance, and construction would be earning exactly the same amount today, once adjusted for inflation, as when they began. Or they might be unemployed. How did this come about?

Dr. Richard Wolf is an economist with an impeccable professional pedigree. He received his undergraduate degree at Harvard, his master’s at Stanford, and his doctorate at Yale. He was educated at institutions with a reverence for capitalism but supplemented his studies with a curiosity about its critics, most notably Karl Marx. He argues that beginning in the 1970s, there were at least four trends that help us put today’s circumstances in perspective.

HDR (High Dynamic Range) Photography by Alan Briskin: multiple shots at different exposures are combined into one image in order to show "more of what's there".

Chapter Four, Part Two

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A serial journal of cogent reflections and irreverent insights on the social effects of capitalism and the roots of partisan politics. Pairing prose with HDR photography and “flash points” drawn from current and historical perspectives, the author seeks to recover lost wisdom and courageous action beyond the shouting and noise of today's headlines. 

Chapter Four, Part Two: 
Out of Depression and War, a New Vision of Wealth Distribution
Time Range: 1929-1944, 2012

The economic bill of rights highlighted a scar in the American psyche. Roosevelt’s time in office, which included a failed coup d’état directed against him, deepened the resolve of factions opposed to government intervention.  From this moment on, a widening split would cleave those who believed in federal intervention from those who perceived arrogance in a government that addressed questions of economic distribution. 

HDR (High Dynamic Range) Photography by Alan Briskin: multiple shots at different exposures are combined into one image in order to show "more of what's there". 

 
FLASH POINT
The Obama Economy–and Ours
Government didn't build that.
By Patrick J. Buchanan, July 24, 2012

“If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.” Mitt Romney fell on this Obama quote like an NFL lineman on an end zone fumble during the Super Bowl. And understandably so.

For this was no gaffe, said Romney, this is what Obama believes. This is straight out of the catechism. Obama thinks that had not the government created the preconditions, none of us could succeed. We all depend on government. None of us can make it on our own.

Had Obama been channeling Isaac Newton–”If I have seen further than others it is because I am standing on the shoulders of giants”–or John Donne — “No man is an island, entire of itself”–many would have nodded in agreement.

But what Obama seemed to be saying–indeed, was saying–was that, without government, no business can succeed.

Realizing that statement rubs against a deeply ingrained American belief–that the people built the nation–Obama and his acolytes are charging that Romney ripped his words out of context.

Here is Obama’s full quote:
“If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made it happen.”  

Chapter Three

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A serial journal of cogent reflections and irreverent insights on the social effects of capitalism and the roots of partisan politics. Pairing prose with HDR photography and “flash points” drawn from current and historical perspectives, the author seeks to recover lost wisdom and courageous action beyond the shouting and noise of today's headlines. 

Chapter Three:
Ghosts of Past, Present, and Yet to Come
Time Range: 1911, 2011-12

Would not progress and economic growth lift all ships? Rather than economic cycles leading to greater economic division and social fragmentation, would there not transpire higher levels of educational attainment, greater entrepreneurial opportunities, and increased social mobility? In time, isn’t it logical to think that an investment class would value knowledge and motivation for its workers, leading to better working conditions, not worse? How could it be otherwise? With time, progress would surely come.

Like the ghosts of Past, Present, and Yet to Come in Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, recently published as Marx trekked his way toward the Red Lion Pub, Marx’s portrait of the rich and poor tweaks the imagination and conscience. With little sentimentality, he predicted that society would repeat a pattern of boom and bust, with causalities counted, surprise voiced, and renewed commitment to the same pattern over and over again.  His writings suggested that we would all be caught in a matrix of exploitation and protest already calculated into the design, until the final act — Judgment Day. Is it true? Are we simply trapped in a version of the movie Jerry Maguire, with the Cuba Gooding Jr. character shouting, “Show me the money!”?

HDR (High Dynamic Range) Photography by Alan Briskin: multiple shots at different exposures are combined into one image in order to show "more of what's there".

   

FLASH POINT
New York City, March 15, 1911

 In the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, 146 garment workers died. The doors and stairwells to the exits had been locked to prevent theft and employees’ taking unauthorized breaks. Most of the workers who died were Italian and Jewish immigrants aged 16 to 23. Many died leaping from the eighth, ninth, and tenth floors.
 

In the 20th century, with the exception of one other fire and the destruction of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, it was the deadliest disaster in New York City's history.

There were no eight-leaved clovers here, only actual working people. The fire stirred public outrage and forced city agencies to initiate safety reforms. The devastation also stimulated the growth of the International Ladies’ Garment Union in their efforts to battle sweatshop conditions.