Adventures in Protocol

Given all the diplomatic talent roaming through the halls of the White House and the State Department you figure that someone could have come up with an appropriate gift for the Queen of England.

Appropriate means: appropriate to the solemnity of the occasion, and to the roles and duties of the persons involved.

Beyond that, as with all such ritual offerings, a gift must be something that the recipient will enjoy.

This is another way of saying that when you are celebrating your anniversary, you should not offer a toy truck or an air conditioner.

Given how badly the president muffed his gifts to Prime Minister Gordon Brown, the world was intently waiting to see what he would offer to the Queen of England.

As you know, it was a fully-loaded iPod. Not merely loaded with Broadway show tunes, but also with film clips of the Windsor's state visits to America, and with footage of Obama's greatest speeches.

If it gift-giving were about good feelings, it would have been charming. Beyond that, it was uninspired.

Among other reasons, because the Queen already has a silver iPod. She uses it to listen to music.

Did anyone think that an iPod has a rather small screen. Why offer an iPod to a couple of octogenarians whose eyesight is probably not what it used to be. What are the chances that the Windsors will want to strain their eyes to watch pictures of themselves on a miniature screen?

And do you imagine that the Queen has never had the opportunity to review the film clips of her visits to the United States?

If a friend visits your house and does not bring his camera, you might well send along a tape you made of the occasion. Well and good. The august personage of the Queen of England brings along her own camera crew, plus an entourage of international media. To ignore these facts is to treat her as less than she is.

And why would anyone imagine that the monarch would want to spend time watching her own public appearances? Doesn't that assume that she is rather too narcissistic?

The point of being Queen is to serve one's subjects, not to become infatuated with her own image.

As for the collection of Obama's greatest speeches, this feels a little too look-at-me, even a little too self-absorbed. It is not fitting a man who insists that he is bringing humility back to foreign policy.

Given who the Queen is, if she should ever yearn to watch one of Obama's greatest speeches, she would easily be able to instruct a member of her staff to arrange a viewing.

Finally, an iPod does not denote the dignity of the office of President of the United States. It is a useful and wonderful gadget, but it does not quite shout: leader of the free world.

Nor is an iPod redolent of the majesty of the Queen of England.

But, let's be thankful for little things. We can console ourselves that President Obama did not undo two and a quarter centuries of history by bowing down to the Queen of England.

He saved that gesture for the King of Saudi Arabia, a man who, for reasons that escape me, inspired more deference, fealty, and obeisance than did the Queen of England.

They're Spending My Money!

You can't turn on the cable news these days without hearing someone screech: "They're spending my money." By which they mean that the government is spending tax dollars.

But since an elite few citizens pay most of the taxes, these talk-show hosts qua aspiring demagogues are really proclaiming their own wealth and status.

Histrionics aside, our government has become notably profligate. We should be concerned. But that does not excuse fuzzy thinking.

Sad to say, but once you pay your taxes, the money is no longer yours. It's theirs. It belongs to a democratically-elected government that is exercising the people's will.

That does not mean that the government is tyrannical. As long as we have a voice and have representation, the government is not a tyranny.

If you want to protest, the best way is to "Go John Galt." Otherwise, once you earn it, the democratically-elected government has a right to take some of it.

If you are still suffering over the fate of what used to be your money, try this for consolation. The government is not paying for the new stimulus bill out of tax receipts. It is borrowing the money from China and Japan.

Strictly speaking, the government is not only not spending your money; it is spending other people's money.

When you see that new lighthouse being built, it is not your tax dollars at work. It is Chinese and Japanese loans at work.

Thus, the people who are paying tax are not paying for the stimulus. Their children and grandchildren will be paying for it at some indeterminate time in the future.

If you now feel bad about sticking your descendants with a mountain of debt, you can console yourself with the thought that the Federal Reserve is working overtime to ensure that it will be paid off with worthless money. Now that the Fed has declared war on the dollar and is actively working to produce inflation, you know that the dollar your grandchild will use to pay off today's debt will be worth far less than the dollar we borrowed from Asia today.

It's a great scheme, and will continue to be a great scheme, until our creditors decide that they might not want to continue throwing good money after bad.

But what if China and Japan decide that what's good for General Motors is good for America.

What it they figure out that when the federal government was GM's lender of last resort, it leveraged its power by imposing conditions--- or attaching strings-- to the loans. For example, CEO Wagoner was fired.

But if creditors have the right to attach strings before loaning money, why would China not try to impose its own conditions before lending us any money?

Of course, that will never happen, but, then again, those sound like famous last words.

Help Needed

Yesterday Dr. Helen Smith remarked on an interesting irony. Our government has just put out a bulletin advising people on how to deal with the stress that it is fostering.

Link to Dr. Helen's blog.
Link to government advisory bulletin.
And, for an extra treat, the comments of Fausta Wertz. Link here.

Dr. Smith's point may not be self-evident, but it is still true. When political leadership is incoherent, it does not merely undermine investor confidence. It undermines everyone's confidence, and thus, produces stress.

To reuse one of my old metaphors, when your ship has hit an iceberg and is taking on water, you are not going to feel less stressed because Captain Clueless has decided to get a massage.

But the news is not all bad. Most of the government's advice is sound.

If you are under stress because of the current economic conditions the government advises you to keep things in balance. Find both the good and the bad in the situation.

It also advises you to start or continue an exercise program, and to work on cultivating social connections. These are both great ideas, more easily said than done.

Finally, if you are involved in an industry that does not offer many opportunities for future employment, you should set out to develop new skills.

This is all good advice. The government is telling you to attack the problem, not yourself.

Naturally, it adds that if your emotions are getting the better of you, you should seek counseling.

It does not say what to look for in a counselor, so I will offer some of my own advice.

First, you need to connect with the person.

Second, the counselor needs to be conversant with current economic realities.

To be more specific, you should avoid counselors who want the problem to be all about you. You do not want a counselor who keeps asking you how it all makes you feel.

And you do not need a counselor who seems to think that it's all about your needs.

Most importantly, you are not going to be able to deal with real problems unless you find a counselor who is willing to focus on them and who has some understanding of what is going on in the world.

Some counselors cover up their inability to deal with reality by making everything a function of your emotions. Such counselors should be avoided.

If you are having trouble dealing with the current crisis, the reason is that the current crisis is extremely difficult to deal with. Any counselor who tries to convince you otherwise is not doing you a service.

Richard Posner on "Animal Spirits"

Judge Richard Posner has just weighed in on the topic of "animal spirits." As always, his remarks are worthy of serious attention. Link here.

For my own posts on the topic, link here.

Posner begins by turning the tables on the economists who are worrying about the psychology of market participants.

He notes that the current crisis must be a great embarrassment for economists.

Economists who studied the Great Depression assured us that it would ever happen again. They expressed full confidence in their own abilities to avoid the mistakes of the past.

Which is well and good, except that that does not guarantee against making new mistakes.

Ask yourself this: how many people based their investment decisions on the premise that our brilliant economists could guarantee that there would never again be a Great Depression?

It reminds me of therapists who pretend that if their patients discover why they got it wrong in the past then they will naturally get it right in the future.

I have often argued that this is a fundamental mistake, not least because knowing why you got it wrong does not tell you how to get it right. It tells you want not to do, not what to do.

For all of their knowledge of the past, economists were at a loss when the banking crisis hit. Not knowing what to do, they decided to do everything.

In Posner's words: "Academic and government economists specializing in the business cycle were as surprised by the September collapse and the ensuing downward spiral of the economy as anyone, and were unprepared with plans for arresting it. Six months later they cannot agree on what should be done to recover from it. Not knowing what will work, the government is trying everything."

Eight decades of study by some of the greatest minds in the world did not lead to a consensus. The great economists do not agree on what worked in the past.

Some believe that fiscal policy (increased government spending) is the solution; others place their faith entirely on monetary policy (lower interest rates.)

Some believe that the New Deal rescued us from the Depression; others believe that the New Deal aggravated the problem.

Like a mind divided against itself, the government has decided to try it all, all at once.

But this approach bespeaks panic and sows doubt. Why would anyone feel confident in the future when our leaders are reacting our of fear.

Add to that the fact that the new administration seems more intent on paying off the special interests that gave them power than fixing the banking system.

Telling us that clean energy and universal health care will solve the financial crisis is inane. It ranks up there with the notion that giving new powers to labor unions will impel businesses to hire more workers.

But then again, the Obama administration seems more intent on fixing the blame than on solving the problem.

Does the administration grasp the problem and does it have any real confidence in its ability to solve it? Or does it believe that free market capitalism is the problem and that increased government control over the economy is the solution?

To repeat a point I have made before, the real question is not whether the administration believes in free markets, but whether the markets believe in the administration.

As of now, the answer is that they do not.

Posner described the Obama administration this way: "The intentions are good. But the lack of focus, the partisan squabbling, the dizzying policy oscillations, the delays in execution, and the harassment of bankers are bad."

The markets probably suspect that this administration is more interested in election victories than in economic growth, and, thus far, they have been acting accordingly.

Mistresses

I'm a bit late to the party, but I just started watching the BBC America dramedy, Mistresses. If you have a chance, I recommend it highly.

Inspired by the iconic American show, Sex and the City, Mistresses moves the story to London, and improves on the original. The British show is more engaging, and much better acted. In the end it makes SATC look dated, even frivolous.

Like me most reviewers prefer Mistresses, but Heather Havrilesky, writing on Salon.com, declared that SATC was the better of the two.

In fairness, Havrilesky is surely closer to the target demographic of the show, but when she declares that SATC allows its characters to grow and to develop, even to have moral depth, she is merely revealing the kind of spell the show has cast.

People loved SATC because there were no moral complexities mucking up the works. The show says that you can live you life as you please, and that you will be rescued by a Prince Charming, has ignored serious moral issues.

SATC was a creature of its times. It took place in a New York City that no longer exists. Its characters enjoyed a Gilded Age where money was abundant, where people did not have to work very hard to acquire it, where shoes were the Holy Grail, and where work responsibilities never interfered with lunch.

In SATC young women were constantly sharing embarrassing secrets, as though they had no privacy or intimacy that they wanted to keep for themselves.

I cannot imagine where they ever got the idea that saying whatever came to mind, no matter the consequences, was the way to conduct a friendship or relationship, but surely it is a caricature of what really goes on when people connect.

Sad to have to say it, but Katie, Trudi, Siobhan, and Jessica make Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte, and Miranda look like cartoons.

You would not want to be friends with Carrie and her three musketeers. You would feel that you could connect with the women on Mistresses.

Not only are the SATC characters are empty and unserious. Their emotions are histrionic, put on and taken off like so many designer outfits. To try another metaphor, their emotions sound like leftovers from a bad method acting class.

It is not just about aesthetics, or about taste. SATC became a cultural phenomenon, to the point that its characters became role models for young women, representing the best that contemporary life had to offer.

Women were winning new freedoms and new opportunities, and many of them were somewhat lost. To find their bearings and to understand the new rules many of them turned to this television show.

To their detriment. Not only because no one should ever fashion her life on a fictional character, but because these characters do not present an accurate picture of the lives of young women.

New freedoms, good. New opportunities, great. But the show never seemed to imagine that these also implied new conflicts and new responsibilities.

When real women faced real-life complications, SATC had nothing to say to them.

To me the women of SATC seem like overgrown adolescents, girls who simply do not want to grow up and conduct themselves as responsible adults. Or perhaps they merely represented an adolescent's view of adulthood.

I grant that the plots of Mistresses are worthy of a soap opera. But at least they have plots. Katie and her friends act like adults. They engage in complicated, even sordid liaisons, but they always grasp the moral complexity of the situations, and are assumed to have made an informed decision.

No one is trying to tell anyone what to do and what not to do. We are trying to say that actions have consequences and entail risks, and if an adult weighs the risks and chooses one or another path... then at least the decision and the experience are hers.

If, however, she has learned from SATC to flit from one experience to another, without giving the matter very much thought, without thinking that there are real people involved, driven by a hope that she will be rescued by a Prince Charming... then the show has done her a disservice.

The soap operas of Mistresses dramatize moral conflicts. SATC ignores them. Both Katie on Mistresses and Samantha on SATC are in their late 40s. They both have torrid affairs with much younger men. More power to them.

Katie gets involved in a sordid melodrama, but at least her situation dramatizes the complexity of her choice. If you look at the movie sequel to SATC you will see Samantha retired to lotus land with her ever-loving, ever solicitous young beau.

In their ways, both plot lines are unrealistic. Yet the one on Mistresses encourages us to think about relationships as occurring between human beings. The one on SATC allows us to think that cartoons might actually come to life.

A New Civility Project

If you look hard enough you can see a glimmer of light in the miasma of American academic thought.

Inspired by Judith Martin, aka Miss Manners, the University of Virginia is launching a Civility Project to write a new set of rules for courteous and respectful behavior. The Project plans to make free use of a set of rules that George Washington wrote down when he was 15. It is open to outside participation. Link here.

To honor the occasion let's read Gordon Wood's assertion of how seriously Washington always took this topic.

Overcoming aristocracy and establishing a republican government was one thing. Washington also knew that the new Republic would have to establish a new set of rules for social interaction that did not involve aristocratic obeisance.

In "The Radicalism of the American Revolution," Wood wrote: "All the founding fathers were aware of these conventions of civility, and all in varying degrees tried to live up to them. But no one was more serious in following them than Washington. He wanted desperately to know the proper rules of behavior for a liberal gentleman, and when he discovered those rules he stuck by them with an earnestness that awed his contemporaries.... He was very desirous not to offend, and he exquisitely shaped his remarks to fir the person to whom he was writing-- so much so that some historians have accused him of deceit."

Aristotle on Rehab

As with most things in life rehab can be good or bad.

Good rehab takes its inspiration from Aristotle. It works to replace bad habits by good ones. It will involve 12 step programs, add exercise, meditation, and yoga, and will allow physicians to make human connections with their patients.

12 step programs assume that you do not need to know Why you became an alcoholic; they want to show you How to overcome your addiction. And they want you to develop the good habits that involve improving your character, the better to improve the quality of your social interactions.

12 step programs substitute daily meetings for daily trips to the local tavern. They avoid introspection about the root causes of guilt and tell you instead to make amends to those you have harmed.

As I wrote in a previous post (link here)counseling for people who have completed rehab should focus on the difficulties of reconstructing a life around better habits and routines, and around more ethical behavior. To my mind that involves coaching more than insight-oriented therapy.

Saying that addiction can be treated by replacing bad habits with good ones ignores the possibility that addiction involves a mental struggle with temptation, and thus, that it can be solved by learning to resist temptation.

12 step programs teach people to avoid temptations, and especially to avoid the people, places, and things that have been associated with alcohol. It is an outside/in, not an inside/out approach.

Some therapists believe that some people are psychologically predisposed to addiction. Whether they were improperly breast-fed or harbor unresolved toilet-training issues, these people become addicts because they need to find a way to express their unresolved issues.

So, when we see so many financial professionals flocking to rehab, are we to think that they were all incipient alcoholics, waiting for an occasion to express their unconscious tendencies, or that they simply developed a bad habit?

If the latter, this is what the psychology looks like. When someone loses a job, he loses a good part of his social network, he loses the schedule that organizes his time, he loses the space that has become a home away from home. Also, he loses the income that has allowed him to maintain a certain lifestyle and community standing.

He has been cast adrift without a compass or a motor. Telling him to enjoy his family life sounds empty when he is suffering because he can no longer support it as he used to.

This former financial professional is suffering anomie, and there is no easy fix for it.

At the least he has to reconstruct his life. He needs new routines, some new friends, a new schedule, and a new daily path through the city. He needs some purpose in his life, some sense of order, some place to go where he will feel comfortably at home.

He might well find it at Cheers. A familiar bar can provide a sense of belonging to a group. You know everyone there; everyone knows you; you participate in the rituals that signify membership.

In the past the place might have been an adjunct to the high-stress world of work. Now it has become life itself.

Thus, bad habits develop. Worse yet, these professionals were involved in a culture that promoted bad behavior. They did not have the moral resources to cope with their new circumstances.

Bankers and traders were adrenalin junkies. They lived for the thrill of risk and reward; they were high even when they weren't high. Once the party stopped, they could not stop moving. They simply changed the venue.

I would attribute this thrill-seeking to a fundamental absence of ethical behavior. Thus, to a culture that encouraged and enforced bad habits. See my post on learned rudeness. Link here.

Many banks were inflicted by a lack of decorum, an absence of the kinds of everyday rituals that would ground them in reality and connect them with other human beings. They learned never to say thank-you.

Others see this differently. One Connecticut executive bemoaned the fact that there was not enough empathy on Wall Street. People did not run around the trading floor telling each other how they felt your pain. According to this theory, the financial community needed more sensitivity training.

Evidently, this executive has used his rehab experience to absorb some elementary psychobabble.

Now, I understand why this thinking is taking root. The Bear Stearns bankers who forbid everyone to say thank-you were trying to make them into fierce competitors, even amoral predators.

Clearly, they were fostering an absurd caricature of manliness. But how did they buy into it? Shouldn't they have known better.

I imagine that they were reacting to an assault by the sensitivity trainers and the empathy police. The time that Wall Street went off the rails was also the time when sensitivity training was the rage, on the Street and in the culture at large. Men were being implored to get in touch with their feminine sides. They were encouraged to indulge in the most promiscuous forms of empathy.

Naturally enough, this provoked a reaction. Empathy makes you a weak competitor. When you feel the pain you are trying to inflict on your opponent, you are going to hold back, not to compete as hard as you would if you were merely trying to win at all costs.

Some bankers seem to have concluded that they were going to be turned soft by the invasion of the empathy police. Thus they tried to immunize their staff against it by making them cruel, rude, brutal, and ruthless.

These bad habits also made it impossible to promote team spirit, company loyalty, and the proper feeling of gratitude toward the company.

They had not learned how to enjoy the camaraderie of working with their colleagues on a common mission, and had to compensate by seeking out the most intense thrills.

Financial professionals who had been cured of their good social habits were easy prey for demon rum.