Published: October 23, 2008 10:13 pm      

The Keystone Cops meet the dismal science

If this is the Information Age, then it’s also the Year of Information Overload for those of us trying to understand this global financial upheaval. All of the news media seem to feature littIe else than economic bad news, accusations of whoever is to blame, and arguments about what should be done. When I try to make sense of all the stuff I hear and read about this mess, there’s little about how it really started. And when each of the financial experts tells us what he wants to do about it, I don’t get a clear picture of how all the parts fit together. It reminds me of why economics is sometimes called the “dismal science,” and the old adage that the stock market responds to two things: fear and greed.

Since I don’t know any more about economics than John McCain does, my inclination is to look at this mess through the lens of human nature, specifically as it is reflected in a few observations and understandings of how people tend to behave.

1. Lots of people spend more money than they should.

Apparently millions of people bought houses they couldn’t afford and ended up, or will end up, having to let them go into foreclosure. Or maybe the lender misled them into thinking they could afford it. Anyway, in addition to the personal problems foreclosure causes, it lowers neighboring real estate values, and makes it harder for everyone to borrow money. People who didn’t buy too fancy a house nevertheless maybe didn’t save enough money, and when circumstances required them to borrow on their home equity, they got into a financial hole.

2. The economy runs on borrowed money — way too much of it.

Eventually, borrowing works its way up the “food chain,” and the whole world is awash in a sea of debt. The result, for the United States, is that we’re in debt up to our national eyeballs to countries like China, who someday may decline to keep buying our debt. Americans look at how their government has done this for years, and say, “Hey, I can spend as much money as I want.” That takes a lot of confidence in the future.

3. This financial system we use is a confidence game.

We can only hope this is true in the positive sense of that term. Unfortunately, we saw how the negative sense of the term entered the picture, when greedy lenders conned people into taking loans they couldn’t pay back. Once confidence was widely lost, greed gave way to fear, and all lenders started to hold back, and the economic engine, fueled by borrowed money, lost steam. At this point, even Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson were unable to restore our confidence. They were politically tone-deaf when they labelled their money infusion plan a “bailout.” Furthermore, they still seem to be making it up as they go. If the smartest guys in the room don’t know what they’re doing, we’re in trouble. President Bush’s attempts to reassure us are totally impotent, because he has no credibility left.

4. The most immediate need is to stop the foreclosures.

We can’t get rid of greed, but we can reduce fear, by putting money into the credit market, more money than has already been committed. There is no way to avoid it without risking a much worse recession than we already have.

5. Correcting this problem will take not only time, but financial sacrifice.

We can’t win this war without sacrifice, any more than we could “win” wars in Afghanistan and Iraq without financial sacrifice. There are legitimate disagreements about who should get the help and how much, but ultimately it will have to come mostly from taxpayers. And all those self-employed free market fundamentalists who have been riding the political hobby horses named “Unregulated Capitalism Must Rule” and “Tax Cuts Solve All Problems” need to get off of them, and butt out. Otherwise, we let the bandits who engineered this problem continue to profit, while we continue to try to borrow ourselves into prosperity. That nonsense hasn’t worked up to now, and it still won’t.

6. Lurking just offstage throughout this kabuki theater is the monster of health care costs.

Any long-term solution to the current crisis has to include reform of Medicare and Medicaid, to say nothing of dealing with 47 million uninsured people. When we spend 25 percent to 30 percent of our health care dollars on administrative costs, and most other countries spend six percent to nine percent, then we have to ask why. The answer is that whenever reform, specifically a single payer system, is discussed, we hear screams of “socialized medicine,” mostly from people who don’t know what they’re talking about. Then the rest of the politicians turn tail and run.

There are other ways to help control health care costs that are beyond the scope of this column. The main thing we don’t have yet, but must have, is sufficient political will to do it.

DENNIS WEIGAND is an Edmond resident.