American Values Redfined?

The more I read in the media these days about a secular, cultural shift away from the greedy and wicked ways of the past to a more practical way of life- rooted in simple Yankee austerity and time spent around the dinner table with family, the more I am reminded of the zeitgeist following the Crash of '87. For that is exactly what some wondered aloud in its aftermath. "As long as we have a roof over our heads, food on the table, family and our health then does the money really matter?"

Yeah, sure. "Maybe we can forget about the Hamptons and start a gift card business?" Right! I realize that at the age of 48 my speaking about the Crash of '87 to the 20 and 30 "somethings" of today I must sound like a guy who spoke about the Crash of '29 to the 20 and 30 "somethings" in 1987 (me). Yet as the subsequent bubbles and bursts have shown, the money does matter. We are only human. History does not repeat itself- it is the nature of humans which is constant.

After the fall of Rome someone might have wondered if the age of obscene self-indulgence and mob blood lust had passed forever into history; after all the barbarians were quite literally at the gate. The lost empire extant only in partially ruined marble, surely lessons had been learned! Been to a hockey game lately? Or any sporting event, for that matter? Please tell me that the mobs who pack our stadiums today are really any different than those who packed the Coliseum in imperial Rome.

Ancient Romans had no Blackberries and fantasy sports teams but I am quite certain they ate peanuts, tried to sit in the shade and went wild when their "team", or man either prevailed in the arena or was eaten by a lion. Forgive my cynicism (I warned you in my blog title!), but if the law today allowed for gladiatorial battles to the death in public arenas, there would be season tickets available on eBay. We have cage fighting though!!!

And clandestine dog fighting. Of course "Wall Street" has created far more than just citadels of money- it has helped create new businesses that have transformed our lives for the better in every field- from health care, to education, to communication and transportation. But just look at what the unfettered excesses of "Wall Street" have wrought: after witnessing the demise of "the financial world as we know it" comes the grim acceptance that the "too big to fail" crowd enriched themselves so far beyond what ordinary people can even imagine.

It's staggering; and as it now transpires, they did it in part with "our" taxpayer money or at least with the reassurance that they could always get bailed out. I cite the pension funds that were destroyed by the so-called "custodians", firms such as Lehman Brothers, who gambled it all away at 40:1 odds. I do not got to sporting events. I have no team, but I just might buy season tickets, peanuts and try to sit in the shade to see some of the Wall Street "oligops" fed to the lions!

Perhaps it's little more than a platitude, or statement of the obvious to say: there will never be an end to fear and greed, as long as the population of humans exceeds the material resources necessary for supporting itself in relative luxury. I realize this sounds quasi Marxist, but I am a capitalist! I don't like big government; but I also don't like revolting self-indulgence, especially when 97.825% of our citizenry lives in comparative poverty.

You have 7 houses, a helicopter (or 2), a Gulf Stream, 5 kids in elite private schools, eat out at the most exclusive / expensive restaurants in Manhattan almost every night of the week- maybe you even have a second family on the side, a personal fitness trainer, 17 in staff and gobs of money in the bank; yet even when you are full at the sushi bar, you cannot resist that 3rd plate of $125 O-toro sashimi.

The trouble with humans- one of many actually, is that we don't really know when to say "enough" until it is painfully obvious that you have had too much- often too late. Another manifestation of our communal self-indulgence? Gluttony and obesity in America today. One of the great ironies of this latter-day, bygone "gilded age" is that one of its princes, Henry Paulson ultimately became Secretary of the Treasury.

Not as ironic a development as Joe Kennedy morphing from predatory insider trader to head of the SEC under FDR, perhaps but ironic nonetheless. In 2000, when Paulson was the "top banana" at Goldman Sachs he led a delegation of other like-minded Wall Streeters to petition the SEC to relax its net capital rule from 15:1 to 40:1. Denied at first he got his way in 2002 and as a result suffered a near Dante-esque fate, spending his last days of public service sorting through the detritus (somewhere down the hall from Sisyphus with his rock).

I defy anyone to argue that, had 40:1 worked and the financial world as we knew it still been "printing money" today, another supplicant would now be petitioning the SEC for 85:1 leverage. So again- pardon my cynicism. Just as I embrace the maxim of "trust, but verify" I will believe that we have changed and will never go back to the obscenely self-indulgent ways of the immediate past, when I see it. And if I were a betting man.......