GETTING RICH #2

Most people don’t really understand where money comes from. In fact, my brain starts to blur when I try to follow the intricacies of some pronouncements from economists. It is truly a “dismal trade.”

I was amused and a little sad watching Ben Bernanke on the McNeil-Lehrer report on PBS. In a series of town hall meetings, Bernanke, assisted by Jim Lehrer, will try to de-mystify the arcane working of the Fed. My amusement came when a woman opening the questioning by asking Bernanke to explain exactly what the Federal Reserve Bank did.
What followed was a longwinded explanation of monetary policy and how the Fed does a better job than Congress of monitoring and controlling inflation, borrowing, and consumer protection. There is really nothing complicated about what a central bank does, but most people still won’t understand.

Why? Very simply, most people do not understand the difference between “fiscal” and “monetary.” (A few years ago on the CBC I heard a reporter refer to Alan Greenspan as the man who ran fiscal policy in the U.S.) What Bernanke doesn’t understand is that when he merely uses the word “monetary” he loses his audience, unless they happen to be economists.

I wrote an article some time ago talking about the easy difference. I remind people that – in broad terms – “monetary” is what you do to money. Fiscal is what you do with money. Without usurping the domain of the learned economists (a position to which I lay no claim) I wish there were more plain talk. Not the gobble-de-gook I heard from a U.S. Treasury department expert who said that money came from government borrowing and selling T bills. (Or something like that.) The general public has no idea what the term “money supply” means. It is too easy to say that it comes from printing presses at the Mint.

Trying to make it simple so that even I understand: there are two ways to make the money supply go up or down (up if you need economic stimulus, down if you are combatting inflation.) Monetary method is to raise interest rates, which reduces the amount of money available by making it more difficult to get. Or opening the gates by lowering the rate to make money more easily available.

But the same thing can be done with fiscal policy. If the government raises taxes it will take money out of circulation. Lowering taxes puts more money into circulation (increases liquidity as the gurus say.) But of course, most politicians know it is political suicide to raise taxes even though it has exactly the same effect as the non-elected central bank raising interest rates.

Any way, I seem to have been even more long-winded than Bernanke. The reality is that however well meaning the Fed chairman may be, his listeners at the town hall meeting simply don’t know what “monetary” implies. From the beginning his explanation was doomed.

GETTING RICH #1 (FIRST OF A SERIES)

George Soros made billions in currency trading. He shorted (or did he go long?) on the British pound. Made a killing and almost sank one of the world’s solid currencies. A few years ago there was a monetary meltdown in the Far East. Thailand almost went bankrupt as the Baht dropped precipitously. The Prime Minister of the country blamed speculators for the collapse.

I am not a money trader although I, like thousands of others, missed an opportunity to enrich ourselves when the Canadian dollar went through $1.10 U.SD. Last year. I was in Texas at the time and I thought semi-seriously about buying a great quantity of U.S. dollars. One of the “joys” of money trading is that, like buying and selling commodities, you can do it on a ten percent margin. Of course, if you guess wrong, you are easily wiped out.

So it is with horror that I, a regular viewer of BNN (aka Globe and Mail Report On Business) saw a commercial selling the benefit of currency trading. I paraphrase, but the essence of the pitch is: “You too can learn to trade currency. You can sign up for free practice then when you are ready you can go to work getting rich.” The “getting rich” I added.

There is a kind of shameless seduction that passes as investment advice. Desperate times call for – of course - desperate measures. So if you are running on empty, why not become another George Soros, using your recently acquired “skill” in currency trading.

I wonder why such an august organization as Globe Media, which owns and operates the Business News Network can allow such jiggery-pokery enticement. A network that appears to take a solemn, measured view of investment, is endorsing membership in a casino-like adventure. Shame on them.

But we live daily with enticements to get rich. TV is full of them – from buying bankrupt properties to investing in commodity futures. The unwary are trapped. Yes, they are trapped by their own greed, but that is no consolation.

Like the poor souls in the U.S. who used their homes like ATM machines and found that when the collapse came their properties were ”under water.” Or the gullible thousands who hearkened to the siren call of the unregulated money-lenders who would put them into a home of their own for no money down.

Who is to blame? The fools who take the bait, or the fishermen who troll for suckers?

A UNIQUE UNDERSTANDING

Judge Sotomayer backtracked on her comment about “a good Latino woman” which suggested that she brought special insights that would make her a better judge. She was right. She should have stuck to her guns.

This is not reverse racism. Let me try to explain. There is a reason why minority groups are over-represented in issues of social justice and political change. There was a reason why, in earlier days, there seemed to be so many Jews, like me, standing up for the rights of the oppressed. We were among the founders of the NAACP, recognizing as we all did, that the oppression of us was the oppression of all people.

When you are part of a group that is under siege, whether it is Jews or blacks or Latinos, you develop a very special understanding of oppression. Unfortunately, that us not always so. Many members of minority groups, once they have penetrated the barrier of discrimination, turn their backs on social causes and become, as in the case of many of George Bush’s personal advisors, more right-wing than the very people who once oppressed us.

When Phil Graham, the senator from South Carolina, suggested that if he said “I will be a better senator than others because I am a white, Caucasian male, it would have been political suicide.” Graham. Like many others I have met, simply does not understand. Being a white Caucasian and comfortably in charge of his world, there is less compulsion to make change. He is far less aware of inequalities simply because he has not lived them.

I know what Sotomayer was saying. I am only sorry that she did not make the point that when you are yourself a member of an oppressed minority, you have larger insights, greater empathies, more profound sympathy, when it comes to others.

So there is, Judge Sotomayer, more in you than you will admit – even to yourself. Your very being is tied to a fight against injustice, and a fight to survive and succeed in a hostile environment.

I know. I know. There are people, usually comfortable members of the majority, who will say: “:Get over it. Stop being so sensitive. Rise above it all.”

You guys are talking in your sleep, the smug sleep of self-satisfaction.

WHERE'S THE ARGUMENT?

I used to make a living looking for an argument. I made a good living. I made good arguments. Lately I am less than eager to spoil for a fight. Even about Michael Jackson. But wait – there are limits to my patience.

“Mozart was a real screwball but we judge him by his music. Michael Jackson may have been a strange man but his music will live on.” This comment from someone who has a an academic grounding in “serious” music. I was aghast. Can anyone compare Jackson to Mozart? Jackson may have had all the “moves” but he did not write the Requiem Mass.
Beethoven may have been an uncaring, sometimes cruel man, but he pushed the limits of music. I don’t want yet another argument about the merits of classical music versus pop music. Michael Jackson fans will outnumber Beethoven fans no matter what I say.

So I held my tongue. Bit it, it fact. I don’t judge musical merit by the kind of person who made the music, I do not care to judge the difference between simple ballyhoo and hype music and the profound music that requires virtuosity and talent
Jackson was, to me, a freak. Talented yes. Maybe even brilliant. But to suggest that he will be revered in 200 years is preposterous.

So it has been with some dismay that I find a public appetite for all-Jackson all-the-time to be just a trifle wearing. I was in Texas last month and I was watching MSNBC when it was reported that he had stopped breathing. I was treated to endless (and breathless) renderings of Jackson-mania. The cameras we focused on an intersection close to the entrance to the hospital in Los Angeles. The story went on and on, every morsel of “news” being dissected for something new to say. Tiring of it I tried CNN. Same picture. Same breathless hoping for a break. I tried FOX. Same again. Up and down the dial was hysteria about Jackson. It was a wonder anyone was watching Judge Judy. Worse still, the endless coverage continued and even today MSNBC is consumed by it.

I don’t have to catalogue all this for you. If you are a Jackson fan then there is no such thing as too much. If you believe that other stories have a larger bearing on our lives, you turned off the TV or switched to The Food Network.

If I were still on the air I would succumb, just as all the U.S. networks have, to the overriding appetite of my audience. I would have talked about Jackson. I would have said that I don’t understand the level of hysteria; that I don’t understand the grief junkies leaving flowers at the entrance to Neverland; of the whooping with joy of people whose internet application brought them a ticket to the Jackson memorial in the arena in L.A.
I have not looked, nor will I, to see how many of these coveted passes to the “celebration” will be offered on EBay.

It would be superfluous of me to comment about our fascination with celebrity, just as it would have been futile for me to have entered the argument about who was nuttier – Mozart or Jackson.

ON BEING A NERD

His name was in the death notices yesterday. It awakened childhood memories. We were never good friends, although we were fellow sufferers. He was, like me and a couple of other kids – a nerd.

Long before that word became common language – I was one. I grew up, (or failed to grow up) in a boy-society that honoured athleticism, size, and strength. My only claim to athleticism was that I was a very fast runner, having honed the skills running from boys who were bigger, stronger and more athletic than I – which was everyone. But not quite. “D” whose death notice I saw, was a fellow sufferer.

We nerds, or more properly - undersized, un-athletic, often called “sissies” were easily recognized. When baseball teams were being put together there were always three or four of us, the un-chosen ones, standing waiting to be “called.” We never were. Instead, the brawny (how brawny can you be at 10?) captains would agree – “You take those two – I’ll take the others two. Head for the daisies.:” That meant that we were consigned to the deepest reaches of the outfield where, if we were really lucky, no ball would be hit. (In fact one did get hit toward me. I reached for it and took a nasty crack on the tip of my finger, leaving me to this day with a left hand fourth finger whose first joint bends back alarmingly.)

Of course we were always the ones to be bullied, toyed with, teased, and tossed about like playthings by the “brawny” ones. My memories include such harmless pranks as being pushed into the boys’ washroom while we walked to a new class. There I was folded in half and plunked bottom-down into the large wire receptacles that held used paper towels. It meant that by the time I could extricate myself I was late for my next class and had to silently keep my mouth shut and mumble an excuse.

My father exhorted me to fight back. Hit somebody hard. I tried. They laughed. I was half their size, two years younger, and until I finally reached a delayed puberty, had the best soprano voice in the girl’s choir.

I remember the guys who consigned me to the outfield, who dumped my in trash baskets, and who whenever possible, showed me that I was physically inferior. My only weapons were speed, and if that failed – tears.

"D” had a better way to handle it. He laughed along with the bullies and pretended to enjoy being the target of their brawniness. By the time we were old enough to be cadets you would imagine the bullying would have stopped.(During the war all the boys were cadets who marched and drilled and target-shot with Lee Enfield rifles modified to handle .22 calibre shells.)We would, from time to time, take the streetcar to the Armouries at the CNE. I remember “D” being the laughing, isn’t-this-fun victim of the brawnies. They were at the back of the streetcar. Just as they were always the ones who sat at the back of the classroom where they could made kissing (suck) sounds when one of the nerds dared to put his hand up and answer a question. On the day I remember the brawnies (I can still name them) had taken “D”s trousers, opened the rear window, and tied them to the trolley wire where they blew in the wind. “D” laughed along with them, pretending to enjoy the prank. We all had our systems to survive.

What is so appalling to me is that the same kind of heirarchal order seems to persist among youth. They still deride the smaller ones. They are quick to demean with language like “faggot” or “retard.” The rulers still rule. The brawnies are still tough. Bullying is still their recreation.

It was not until my late teens that I realized I was not just a victim. I never knew one way or the other, but I hope “D’ escaped too. We never met during adult years so his passing didn’t so much sadden me as it did remind me of what some of us were – once.