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VIDEOFive Things You Need to Know: Make the Bankers Pay
By
Kevin Depew
Jan 22, 2010 1:30 pm
Opposition to Bernanke beginning to take on the form of political fashion accessory.
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"Wine can invest the most disgusting hole
With wonders to our eyes,
And make the fabled porticoes arise
In its red vapour's gold
That show in sunsets seen through hazy skies."
Baudelaire was the French version of Edgar Allan Poe and, like Poe, he enjoyed the high-white silent scream of opium combined with large quantities of strong liquor, probably absinthe. Poe died shortly after being found wandering the streets of Baltimore in a state of delirium, shouting the name "Reynolds" over and over again for reasons no one will ever be able to understand. He was incoherent, his brain savaged by either drink or a cerebral hemorrhage, take your pick. Similarly, Baudelaire met his end in an insane asylum, semi-paralyzed by stroke. Which proves that in the end we all get what we deserve. Unless, of course, we're bankers.
"To punish the oppressors of humanity is clemency; to forgive them is cruelty."
- Maximilien Robespierre, 1794
Indeed. Nothing spooks a criminal quite like the blunt force of forgiveness, something Robespierre knew well. Which only partly explains why he generously doled out the guillotine's shiny blade of clemency during The Reign of Terror with such fierce determination. If nothing wigs a criminal out quite like forgiveness, then nothing deters one like a pile of bloody severed human heads.
2. Knee-Deep in Decapitations
It's a sure bet -- a mortal lock, as they say in the gambling business -- that if Robespierre were around today, we'd be standing knee-deep in decapitations. During the French Revolution, the average French citizen loved The Reign of Terror in precisely the same way today that awkward teenagers and strange high-school chorus teachers love the television show American Idol; the only real difference is that Robespierre typically appeared far better dressed in public than Simon Cowell does.
But that's not really the point. No, the point is that with public appetite now parched from an absence of banker blood, the first head to roll may very well be the one that sits atop of the entire pyramid scheme: Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. With Bernanke's term set to expire on January 31, and a Senate vote on his confirmation pushed to next week, opposition to his reappointment is beginning to take on the form of must-have political fashion accessory -- at least a must-have for anyone who would like to get reelected in November.
Of course, those without a horse in the race have the luxury of being far more generous. Warren Buffett, for example, told Fox News on Thursday, opponents of the Fed Chairman's reappointment "ought to get down on their knees every night and thank the Lord that Bernanke was there through this." Apparently, in Mr. Buffett's eyes it's not enough to merely thank a bureaucrat for doing his job, we should get down on our knees, too. Fortunately, for now at least, in this country we're still free to choose whom and what to worship.
The irony, of course, is that were we in a different place with respect to social mood trends, Ben Bernanke wouldn't be in this position in the first place. In fact, if viewed through the lens of a rising transition in social mood, the past two years wouldn't be viewed as one of the darkest periods in our nation's history, but as one of the finest.
After all, having staggered through a full decade of terrorist attacks, multiple wars and their associated crimes, fiscal malfeasance, bank failures, a housing collapse and millions of foreclosures, and to still, still be just about even on the whole deal... well, in some circles that's not half bad. But this isn't a rising transition in social mood. It's a darkening, a falling transition. Prepare for public displays of punishment and a growing pile of severed heads.
3. Taste Our Salty Bread
I've had more than a few experiences with "public displays of punishment," so on the one hand I can sympathize with Mr. Bernanke. But I've also experienced the metallic tingle of vengeance on the tongue, and there are few things more seductive than the mob's promise of a requital feast.
"You are to know the bitter taste of others' bread, how salty it is, and know how hard a path it is for one who goes ascending and descending others' stairs."
-- Dante Alighieri, Paradiso
That's all the mob really wants -- someone to taste their salty bread. And the first fool charismatic enough to stand up and promise to deliver the full meal -- whether it's Robespierre or Stalin -- will be the one licensed to operate the guillotine.
4. Where Is Our Robespierre?
It's a good question, or if not a good one, then at least it's The Question being asked with increasing urgency these days.
Robespierre was small, unimposing and bespectacled, with a cat-like face. He had a weak voice, but compensated for it with a strange, halting delivery, and although few understood his rhetoric, everyone could agree that he was a patriot. Which is all the reason anyone has ever needed to justify hacking human heads from their torsos.
"We wish an order of things where all low and cruel passions are enchained by the laws, all beneficent and generous feelings aroused; where ambition is the desire to merit glory and to serve one's fatherland; where distinctions are born only of equality itself; where' the citizen is subject to the magistrate, the magistrate to the people, the people to justice; where the nation safeguards the welfare of each individual, and each individual proudly enjoys the prosperity and glory of the fatherland; where all spirits are enlarged by constant exchange of republican sentiments and by the need of earning the respect of a great people; where the arts are the adornment of liberty, which ennobles them; and where commerce is the source of public wealth, not simply of monstrous opulence for a few families."
I've read that bizarre paragraph through 10 or 15 times now. And I have to admit, with unemployment edging higher than 10 percent and underemployment well above 20 percent, it doesn't sound half bad. And then I remember it was written by Robespierre.
Where is our Robespierre? He's Out There right now, busy writing speeches, so be careful of what you wish.
5. How Did We Get Here?How did it ever get to the point where a nation of half-bankrupt debtors is spending time late at night wondering how to get back at formerly-insolvent and now bailed-out creditors? How did we get here?
Sometimes I awaken at four o'clock in the morning and find myself asking that very question. I stumble out of bed in the dark and peer out from behind hard-pulled shades at empty streets. At that hour, anything that moves is simultaneously soothing and suspect; stillness a cold reminder that I'm standing there waiting for something that's already happened.
In other words, we got here in precisely the same manner as those in the preceding years, decades and centuries before us -- by never really leaving in the first place.
1934 Chicago Tribune Editorial Cartoon (courtesy of Charleston Voice)
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