We're in a "Repression": The Economics of Shame

If the current recession started last December, as the latest findings from the National Bureau of Economic Research clearly indicate, then it stands to reason that, considering things have gotten a lot worse since then, we're a lot closer to a depression than anyone has realized. Perhaps we're not quite there yet -- by some definitions we'd need a few more years of blight and an even higher drop in GDP and a bigger rise in unemployment to start seeing bread lines around the block and the return of fedoras and clarinet music.

But taking into account the generally sour and sexless state of the economy -- along with our present political limbo, which is a bit like waiting to finalize a divorce so you can swap a staid, dull-witted partner for a young, spunky new one -- and considering the chastened, even prudish mood of both consumers and businesses, perhaps we're better off thinking of our current state of economic ennui not as a recession or a depression, but as a "repression."

Certainly, over the last two decades, whether shedding our inhibitions at E-Trade, Best Buy or Balthazar, we've all been rather profligate in our lust to exchange liquidity, whatever the moral cost, eventually turning credit tricks when we had utterly spent ourselves in random acts of impulsive and ultimately shallow purchase. As if waking up in someone else's bed, as the poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti once described, to discover that "she has bad teeth and really hates poetry," there's an unmistakable whiff of shame and sleaze shadowing the corridors of power and the aisles of Circuit City alike (if not, indeed, true humility, which one suspects won't kick in until everyone realizes that the economy, as Paul Krugman has noted, is truly "falling off a cliff").

The horned bull studs of high-finance -- inspired by the libertine exploits of those two burly mortgage predators, Fannie Mae and the aptly-named Freddie Mack (sic) -- have spent their peak years engaging in the most dangerous kind of unprotected financial intercourse with a revolving-door of easily seduced consumers, in particular the impressionable new class of incoming freshman home-owners, screwing them repeatedly without the slightest concern that the mortgage industry's own potentially fatal and unchecked fiscal viruses would infect these naive and needy ingenues of the American body politic, and place their literal "family jewels" in jeopardy.

Like callous upper-classmen caught taking advantage of the local high-schoolers, even the once-cocksure titans of Wall Street and Detroit are now routinely sighted on cold D.C. mornings making the ignominious "walk of shame" across the Capital quad, scratching themselves silly while sheepishly begging their increasingly ambiguous Washington fraternity brothers to pump even more gobs of pirated tax revenue into their hoary bottom line -- anything to stay in the game until the next frenzied night of freewheeling, free-market debauchery.

It's telling that during their latest attempt to extract adequate pity from Dr. Paulson's economic health clinic -- along with enough hard cash to get them through the next term of ignoring the screams of the environment and making victims of the debutantes who buy their giant, nozzle-sucking vehicles on credit -- the Big Three automakers wisely left their steely, king-sized private jets at home, and arrived somewhat chastened -- if still prideful -- to the same tawdry tables where they once proudly drank the fortifying elixir of Republican deregulation, and dragged cowed and submissive legislators around by the hair.

Those bestial nights are not likely to replay themselves anytime soon. Double-digit unemployment is now a very real possibility, and even the best efforts to jack up the wilting tower of American capitalism -- through infrastructure spending and tax rebates -- will likely take far longer to have an effect than those embarrassingly-titled herbal "stimulants" that those fading fat cats, no longer able to afford Viagra, are now forced to ingest in the hopes of regaining their lost potency. No, there's no magic pep pill this time, and no quick dose of Penicillin to "get you back out there"; what's more, everyone in that little black book is staying home tonight anyway, wearing sweatpants and cooking lentils and spinach greens. Purse-string promiscuity is so last year; checkbook chastity is the new hedonism.

In fact, read between the lines of our president-elect's sage exhortations to a new era of "sacrifice" and "responsibility," and the words "prudence" and -- oh, the horror! -- "restraint" can not be far behind. How dull it all sounds, how provincial, how utterly repressive, to give up the swinging life of expense-account orgies and hedge-fund bacchanals, fuel-engorged SUVs, feel-good credit extensions and wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am mortgages. Does the downturn ultimately demand that we all -- gulp -- settle down? It just might, even for you dollared denizens of the night. As for that wad of cash that you used to describe as "burning a hole in your pocket," perhaps now is a good time -- as even those meathead frat boys sometimes recognized -- to "keep it in your pants."

Comments

[lushnorooz]

I wish us lowly taxpayers could penetrate the national arsenal of money ourselves....

[Aaror]

I think I just had an epiphany, though I am not sure it is directly related to your post.
You mention that we have been in a recession since December. Well, if you look at the shadowstats site, we have been in a recession since 2002 (except maybe for one or two quarters in 2004). But perhaps we are looking at this wrong?
Capitalism, and economics, are ways of distributing wealth. for many years, 20% of the population of this planet used 80% of the raw materials. As companies outsource American jobs to China, India, etc. those nations standards of living rise, and the standards of living in the "industrialized west," (US, EU, and Japan) fall. maybe we are moving towards a world where wealth will be spread more evenly, which means we in the US will be poorer. Basically, we are exporting standard of living to China in exchange for cheep clothing and toys.

[Sundialsvc4]

(Chuckle...) I just re-read it again. You're good! :-)

[Sundialsvc4]

I have just four wee suggestions, James:

(1) Call it a Depression. That's what it is, and has been for a long time.

(2) Don't start making plans to sell apples. Don't start a pilgrimage to Washington DC asking for a hand-out from the "guv'mint" dole. "The guv'mint" doesn't have any money either; they just think they do.

(3) Remember where you live: the United States of America. Remember what happened here just sixty years ago; what we did; what we showed the world that we could do. Terribly short-sighted mistakes were made since that time as the leprechaun spilled his "gold coins" all about. These can be reversed, and in fact, a wad of REAL money can be made in the process of doing it. (But first you have to stop listening to leprechauns.)

(4) "Bust 'em." We know who they are, and that there are many of 'em. We know what they've done to a country we all hold dear (and that they do not). We don't have to live with them, or with their consequences. Give 'em the fair trial that they never gave anyone. They say, "enforcement is off the table." I say, "NUTS."

[ChrisThilges]

There is a lot of blame to go around here in our current situation, but I feel that the problems this economy is facing are not strictly from predatory lending or bad management or rampant materialism in themselves. In fact these are the very results of our problems. Focusing on who to blame and contriving punishments, at the time may seem like justice; but which I feel will get very little done (though should be done, just not focused on ... eventually crime doesn't pay?). And I think that if Americans do figure out the solution to the problems causing their current state of affairs; justice just may be served well enough. Most large systems are built upon small philosophies that are repeated and geared up to a larger and even larger scale. The difficulty in developing a solution will be the difficulty in finding this needle within the haystack which is American philosophy. I think many people do already see/feel the prick of this needle and I say that in times of fear it is always braver to choose democracy over fear. How often has this option really been chosen since the 70's, or even then?

[Sundialsvc4]

+++ !!

[James Rotondi - Huffpost Blogger]

As Richard E. Grant memorably says in the film "Withnail & I," 'How should I know what WE should do? What SHOULD we do?'

Look, I agree with Sundial and Chris both: there are no easy answers, and just propping up the system with more fake money is only going to drive us deeper into the abyss. But on the question of "American Philosophy," let's acknowledge that it isn't just capitalist principles that have led to our high standard of living; it's capitalist principles regulated and checked by"it must be said"sound socialist ideas. Do you like the five-day work-week, maternity leave, public schools, public transportation, minimum wage, the f'ing weekend? Then say thanks to the reforms brought about by good ol' democratic socialism. . .

A mixed economy may also be a mixed blessing; but it's the best shot we have. . .

[mattjs85]

A mixed economy is most certainly not a mixed blessing and it certainly is not the best shot we have.

I suggest you read "Middle-of-the-Road-Policy Leads to Socialism" by Ludwig von Mises.

In case you decide to not read it let me sum it up for you...

Government intervenes in an economy to achieve some task.
Intervention A fails to meet its objective which requires Intervention B.
Intervention B also fails which requires intervention C.

So on and so forth...

Think about all the actions governments have taken since they've been instituted, how many of these actions as a percent of all the decrees, laws, ect. have sought to reduce government intervention in the economy voluntarily? Not many because a mixed economy always results in more government which leads to socialism/fascism.

[write2bheard]

Brilliant...A very apt analogy.

[GreenDemo]

Hilarious, James! And so true... thanks.