Just last month an international panel of
sociology intellectuals, political theorists, and economists assembled on the
campus of Bard College, on the Hudson River, just an hour's drive north of
Manhattan. The group was put together
by Roger Berkowitz and his supporters of the Hannah Arendt
Center for Ethical and
Political Thinking, to begin the discussion of The Burden of our Times: The
Intellectual Origins of the Financial Crisis.
Dr. Berkowitz opened the
conference and concisely led the audience from the technical points of the
global financial crisis, cheap money, low interest rates, speculative mortgages,
to the need to dig deeper into the historical root of the cause. For starters, one might ask, "What is cheap
money?" And, "When did cheap money
begin?" Dr. Berkowitz concluded his
introduction of the two day, six panel, two keynote conference, with the
following statement:

"In an era of unroiled capitalism, self-worth and
purpose are increasingly determined by workplace success. When higher cultures and spiritual values are
being devalued, one way a person can secure meaning and sense in life, is through
capitalism. Our Challenge, the burden
of our times, is facing this reality.
Our world has no value beyond profit and loss. In this sense the global financial crisis is
more than a hiccup in the advancement of capitalism; it is a wakeup call to the
consciousness of being. What does it
tell us of ourselves?"
Richard Bernstein of the New
York Times conveys the first panel best.
The title of one panel -
"Can Arendt's Discussion of Imperialism Help Us to Understand the Current
Financial Crisis?" - was typical of the conference, with its somewhat
surprising assumption that Arendt, whose main concern was understanding the
twin evils of Nazism and Communism, would have much relevance at all to a world
dominated by what might be called Goldman Sachsism.
But what that panel
discovered in Arendt's writings on imperialism, which were part of her larger
"Origins of Totalitarianism" work, actually echoes eerily and powerfully recent
financial events.
The crucial point is that
for Arendt, the era of imperialism, which she believed began in the 1870s and
lasted until the outbreak of World War I in 1914, marked the moment when the
economic principle of unlimited growth and expansion came to dominate politics.
It was the point at which private people pursuing great wealth, in essence,
seized political power and made the protection of their interests the policies
of the state - and it's not all that hard to see something like that happening
today.
You can read Mr. Bernstein's
complete coverage here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/22/us/22iht-letter.html
The other panel questions
included: Is the root of the financial crisis greed and the loss of values? Is
global capitalism the root of the financial crisis? And furthermore, will capitalism be the
solution to the global financial crisis?
What are the political and cultural grounds of the financial crisis?
The crisis is still fairly
recent to be asking these questions, but "that is the point", remarked Dr.
Berkowitz who has now put the conversation in motion. And he brought in an impressive international
group of panelists. There were thirty
participants, from as far away as South Africa. You can see the list of participants here: http://www.bard.edu/burdenofourtimes/ . You can see their accomplishments on
Wikipedia.
There were a lot of ‘isms'
brought up in the dialog. After all this
was an academic environment and the title did include the word
"Intellectual". But one of the strong
points of the conference was Dr. Berkowitz diversified picks of panelists with
industry professionals, government officials, economists, intellectuals, and
academia. Although much of the
conversation referred to Imperialism, Neoliberalism, Marxism, Keynesianism,
Stoicism, Chicago School, and Protestant Ethics, the panelists put their points
right on the table for you.
Jerry Kohn asked, "Are we
already imperialist or are we part of a republic that can pause and augment the
capitalistic and political structure?"
Antonia Grunenberg urged, "government control needs to be revised,
re-positioned on a global scale with political clout." Tracy Strong outlined, "four key steps to
totalitarianism with the forth being erosion of the nation-state and that is of
space that citizens belong.... In 2007, $3.2 Trillion dollars transferred per day
with only $17.9 Trillion in world exports.
This is contemporary Imperialism...Cross border ownership of assets: 12%
of US equity, of 25% US corporate debt, of 44% US government
debt, the spike in recent years lead to the global crisis. Our environmental damaging consumption is not
sustainable. Dr. Strong's summary pulled
from the Steinbeck book, The Grapes of Wrath, "Who can I shoot?"
Roberta Sassatelli from the University of Milan, made an interesting point on the
consumer and their change of values.
According to Dr. Sassatelli, the consumer has not lost values but has
seen a change of values. "The individual
power of choice, the consumer lifestyle and greed gives freedom in the American
lifestyle. Consumers, many armed with
Internet information, have power, like voting power, and responsibility in
their purchasing choices. They may
choose products that are greener that leave less of a carbon footprint or buy
domestically."

Keynote speaker, Arjun
Appadurai, spoke at length on Max Weber and his book, The Protestant Work Ethic
and the Spirit of Capitalism. In Dr.
Appadurai opinion, without a rational banking system, one that utilizes double
entry accounting and does away with derivative gambling chips, capitalism will
fail.
These are just some of the
comments from day one. In day two, the
day began with industry professionals who run an agency out of Washington DC
that tracks the Shadow Banking System. A
system, that transfers as much as a Trillion dollar a year, many times from
drug and slave trafficking, and many times re-routing aid funding for third
world countries back into bank accounts right here in the good old US of
A. This is according to Raymond Baker,
of Global Financial Integrity Org.
Another fellow panelist, Jack Blum, of the Tax Justice Network,
testified before the US
Senator Committee on Homeland Security last week in favor of a new
incorporation transparency bill.
Liah Greenfeld, Boston U. Pollitical Science Professor,
stated her prediction for the future of the United States. "The USA
will become like Switzerland
but without the banks, making chocolate and cuckoo clocks for the Chinese
consumer."
The keynote speaker for day
two, Hunter Lewis, argued that our entire Keynesian based economy has never
been mathematically proven. The idea
that we can borrow our way out of the global financial crisis is betting our
chips on hunches.
The last panel included Tom
Scanlon, an attorney for the US Treasury, who started his dialog with, "There
is no shadow banking system." Obviously
he missed Raymond Baker and Jack Blum's presentation earlier that day, or that
was the US
government's official position on the topic.
Another panelist was Paul
Levy of JLL Partners and one of the captains of the LBO business. Mr. Levy had a unique perspective of the
financial crisis since he knows many of the Wall Street leaders on a personal
level. He does not think of them as
criminals and does not believe that most of them did anything outside of the
law. When asked who do you blame. "I don't really know", replied Levy. But he believes many of them lack moral
sense. Although many bankers are
talented accountants and mathematicians, they are as shallow as a kiddy
pool. "If you don't have values and
would do anything for money, how can you find value in life?" Mr. Levy continued along this dialog, "A rich
person is a person who is happy with what he has."
If you are sorry that you
missed the conference, and want more details, don't worry, the entire
conference will be included in Roger Berkowitz's next book. Check back. Once it's available, I'll add the
link to Amazon.
What did I personally take
away from this conference? What
does the financial crisis tell me of myself?
Well considering that I am an
American GenX slacker, and self-made millionaire capitalist, who recommended to
his readers here to short the market back in September 2008, and to buy back
into the market two days before it hit bottom in March of 2009, all I can say
is ....
The American working class
lifestyle, that we have grown accustomed to, is unsustainable. If we don't begin to address this fact, it
will address it for us. Our modern
shortsighted form of government has fleeced us from the value of our citizenship. That which many of our parents, grandparents,
and older generations have given their lives for, we have allowed our
politicians and bankers to run down the value of our currency, drive down the
quality of American life, and sack our children with debt of biblical
proportion.
There is no magical
solution. It is not too complex or too
big to understand. It is really
simple. The future includes: less jobs, high taxes for those who have
jobs, less social programs, less government infrastructure jobs, higher crime
and violence, greater divide and tension between social classes, and high
commodity prices. The top talent will
hold jobs with global corporations, and hold the demands, travels and stresses
of that position. The rest of us will
become peasant farmers, without good healthcare. The failing economy will be followed by
political unrest, then a risk of a revolution which will lead to outsourcing
our federal government to the Chinese and Arabs. But this might not necessarily be a bad
thing. Do you agree, disagree, or are
you aloof to it all? Let's hear it
below.
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Comment by sarg2 on 2009-11-11 10:17:16 Rob--I think your personal takeaway is typically smart. From an American point of view, yes, we will carry on but in a diminished capacity. Another conclusion one might draw is that the limits of capitalism's imaginary are even more important given the fact that economics has come to play such a central role in the world and in our personal sense of ourselves. Thus, the loss of US economic prestige is a big blow to our collective consciousness, one that may or may not be compatible with the self-image of the US that we and our politicians continue to hold and show little sign of being willing to give up. What we still have, however, is military might (or at least the illusion of such might) and that is a dangerous situation. |
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