Dope

Limited Inc and a friend spent some time by a highway last night, looking at the moon. It was a moon well worth looking at.

"Well," our readers comment, jejeune to the point of jaundice, "a moon's a moon's a moon, right? Excuse me, but once we sent a few retread fighter pilot types up there and line drived a few golf balls, that was it with the moon thing. Like, boring, lifeless, dusty, full of craters, and there goes ten billion dollars."

Yes to all of the above. The moon is certainly a de-mystified object, it is certainly the victim of a sort of cultural pollution -- there's no awe in us anymore about it, there's a false sense that we've peed on it, that now the territory is claimed -- but Limited Inc loses all skepticism in the ghostly white shimmer of it, feels that there is definitely a werewolf pull to the moon, some obscure but distinct disturbance in the blood, some ritual passage negotiated between eros and thanatos that eludes cynical dismissal. We've seen the moon in the dark hollow of the New Mexico country night, when darkness seemed more absolute than civilization, and the moon kept spreading out, visibly becoming enormous above the mesas, fantastically hatched there in the bright glare of constellations, its interstellar closeness -- because in solar system terms, the moon isn't that far away from us -- finally comprehensible to the senses, and a bit terrible.

Of course, we've also seen, with the inattention of the urbanite, the moon as a mere shell, or the moon as a mere sign -- there it is again above the freeway, there it is again above the parking lot. Last night we pursuaded a friend to go out with us and salute it with glasses of vodka. The night got cold, the cars going by were rare, and probably a few of the drivers wondered who the hell the lunatics were, sitting there raising glasses to the moon. My friend had a few things she wanted to say to the moon, and so did Limited Inc. Finally it got cold enough that we were shivering and it was making less sense to sit there on the concrete post among the rustling brown grass. So we left. But we left with some faint lunar afterimage inside us, which I hope both assuages the terrible gods of this year, and portends something powerful for next year. And to hell with it if we didn't time it directly on New Years Eve.

Remora
On the Optimism Front

We packed our Schopenhauer for our LA jaunt last week -- which should tell you that Limited Inc is not a member of the Optimists club, if you were wondering. However, Schopenhauer's extensive pessimism -- the sort of grief only a philosopher could manage, shedding tears over the pain and irrationality of individuation, and even more tears, acidically tinged, over the incongruous and unheard of reputation of Hegel, the contemporary Schopenhauer most despised -- is not a good guide to short range economic forecasts for first quarter GDP growth.

An optimism about such things has reigned in the columns of American newspapers for the past month. One wonders if this is a real boomlet, or if this is mere puffery. Although short term memory loss is the norm in this wonderful land of ours, still, there are those who remember the Y2K year -- the year that the Dow became unhinged, the year that lunatic predictions from George Gilder and James Glassman were seriously debated, even as the stuffing was dropping out of the structure.

Here's the WP today:

Reports Suggest Economic Recovery
Experts See Clear Signs Recession Is Fading by John Berry
"For the first time in many months, a series of economic indicators, released yesterday, all contained solidly positive news, suggesting to many analysts that the recession that hit the U.S. economy last spring may end soon.

The Labor Department reported that initial claims for unemployment benefits last week remained below the 400,000 level for the third week in a row....

Meanwhile, the Conference Board, a New York-based business research group, said its consumer confidence index jumped nearly nine points, to 93.7 this month, after being depressed in October and November following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The increase brought the confidence index back in line with the University of Michigan's consumer sentiment index, which began to recover last month."

But let's look at what that index means. Here's the AP version:

"The Conference Board said consumers� assessment of the current economic climate was slightly more positive in December than November. Consumers rating current business conditions as good increased to 17 percent from 16.8 percent.

However, the board said consumers who felt business conditions were bad rose to 21.7 percent from 20.7 percent last month.

Nontheless Americans are still feeling more optimistic about the near future. The percentage of consumers who expect business conditions to improve rose to 22.2 percent from 17.7 percent in November, the report said. Those expecting conditions to sour declined from 11.6 percent from 16.9 percent."

In essence, Schopenhauerians still seem to outnumber optimists among the hoi polloi.

Limited Inc would like to be optimistic. No, that's not quite right -- Limited Inc would like to benefit from the optimism of others by placing beaucoup articles among the resurgent media. But Limited Inc would also like to be contrarian and hip and regard it all as a bubble. And the small contradiction can only be maintained if there is some wave of money coming in from the East. In the media world, though, it is hard to see that wave. More newspapers are cracking down on freelancers, shrinking book sections, getting the business editor to take over the recipe section when the old coot that used to do it died, etc. Magazines are still not seeing that advertising outreach to the highly confident consumer postulated by the Conference Board. And there's the gnawing question of debt -- as was remarked in the nineties, public debt shrank while private debt exploded. Now public debt is growing -- and there's only so much room in debt space, even with the whacky Fed jiggling us down to 0 down, O percent. I do have to say that the Fed has the best spin in the business -- articles like the WP one are routinely full of the goodies that Greenspan has given us because we were nice, not naughty -- all those car sales! all those home sales! without paying attention to the red that is accumulating because of all those car sales! and the debt load that is not shifting because of all those home sales! and the propadeutic example of Japan, liquidity trap city, which we are all politely avoiding -- a car wreck we are passing by, or at least we hope we are passing by.

Remora

As our readers probably expect, Limited Inc is a devotee of William Greider. We loved the Fed book, we loved that it was so thick, so textured, so bought, so little read. We loved the story of Jimmy Carter accidentally causing a crisis in the economy by getting consumers to stop using their credit cards (a mistake we will never make again -- conservative Bushies would rather have consumers max their Visas on porno than not whip those cards out at all). We loved One world, ready or not. We loved to compare it to the Olive and the Lexus Tree, a relic of the nineties that ranks up there, as an artifact of decade delusions, with Strachey's thirties book on the inevitability of communism, The Coming Struggle for Power. Which okay, we probably have readers who aren't exactly conversant with agit-prop from the thirties. So our references are esoteric. Sue me.
Anyway, given our admiration, what is it that keeps us from reading Greider's pieces in the Nation? It is, we think, a sense that we have to make a long slog with this guy. Through some very depressing stuff. Still, we recommend his latest on the relationship of China to the rest of the underpaid third world, especially the maquilladora zone of Mexico. Greider writes that the contrast between the 1.25 per hour wage in Mexico and the .25 per hour wage in China is tipping the GEs and Toshibas of the world. So Mexico is finding itself in the unique position of railing against cheap labor. Two grafs of especial note:


"Achieving more meaningful economic and social integration obviously involves huge, complex issues, from Mexican immigration and US development aid to the relationships between currencies, legal systems and environmental standards. But the most difficult issue, one that cannot be evaded, is wages. No one should pretend that US-Mexican wage tensions can be entirely reconciled--of course not--but what is required is a wage-floor trade agreement that, as labor likes to say, "brings the bottom up, instead of pulling the top down." Mexico could only accept this arrangement if it had a genuine preferential status with the United States and Canada--including both significant trade privileges and investor guarantees of long-term commitments as well as serious aid for education, health and infrastructure. Think of this "North American union" as a first step toward someday imposing an international "living wage" standard on the production of traded goods, enforced by penalty tariffs on countries and companies that decline to participate. Producers would have a choice: Pay decent wages to their workers or pay penalty tariffs on their exports, the money to be recycled into development aid.

Obviously, the world is not ready for this (neither are Mexican and American politics), but the road to global reform has to start with a few like-minded nations willing to experiment with new terms because they see mutual self-interest in the bargain. A healthier, self-sustaining Mexico would be a lot better for the United States than a cheap-labor export zone that makes a few people very rich but survives on the backs of desperate immigrants and drug smugglers. US consumers might have to pay marginally higher prices on some items, but US commerce would gain a far more promising market for its exports, and that would help to reduce US trade deficits. Mexico would regain a measure of self-determination, the ability to chart its own course free of the neoliberal straitjacket. "

I think this is a point to make over and over again - while Capital has long internationalized, labor remains the last redoubt of the antiquarian position. Labor has thereby lost its great advantage. There's no reason that the Boeing's Chinese factories and their American factories can't join at the grassroots. Along the border, it is more than time to wake up.

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Dope

Limited Inc, with a disgruntled expression on our face, could be found staring out at the jets taxing up and down the concourse at the Phoenix airport yesterday. A considerable portion of our Christmas was lost to the greed of America West. This airline has apparently taken as it's motto the famous words of J.P. Morgan: the public be damned. Damning that small section of the public which had bought tickets on a one o'clock flight from Phoenix to Austin in the naive faith that there actually was a one o'clock flight from Phoenix to Austin, America West gave us a little lesson in corporate irresponsibility that made those of us who had some knowledge of airline deregulation long for the days of the CAB. We approached the representatives of AW, poor sods, who produced this excuse: somehow, a flight crew couldn't be assembled for this flight. Now, let's try to look beyond the implication that America West is run in much the same way as high school plays are mounted ("hey everybody, let's buy a jet or somethin', and like fly it for people and all, and like they can buy tickets and everything... let's pretend to be an airline!"), there is something odious about a company that is willing not only to cut corners -- for surely the real reason Limited Inc and his fellow Austinites were stranded for four hours was that there weren't enough tickets sold for this particular flight -- but to cut those corners while blaming its staff.

Well, we had too good a time in LA to post regularly. We know that there are issues (the fall of the Argentine government, the mole like behavior of Osama Bin Laden, the whole "will these shoes go with my new plastique bomb kit" fashion scene) with which we should manfully grapple. But today our host, blogspot, is experiencing trouble of some cyber-weird kind. We will resume tomorrow with the bons mots, don't worry.

Remora

Limited Inc, like a rattled heroine in a Joan Didion novel looking for nembutal, went riding around the highways of LA for three hours yesterday with a jazz musician from Riverside who had only recently, at the age of 30, received his license. Being the fearless passenger type, we did not flinch at the Magoo like structure we traced as we headed the wrong way on the Hollywood Freeway, going vaguely in the direction of Pasedena when we meant to be going to Venice Beach. However, as the countryside became more, rather than less mountainous, we eventually realized that we were, like so many travellers in California (the Donner party comes to mind), wandering in a labyrinth of our own illusions that had little to do with geographic reality.

This morning, we read with interest the story of the fall of De La Rua's government in Argentina. Of course, readers of this humble rag will remember our predictions on this score from months ago, when the IMF restructured the Argentine debt. As you will no doubt recall (ah, the passages from our column that are no doubt burned into your brains, my dears, like grill marks on a sizzling hamburger), at that time we pointed out that the headline money from these deals is not exactly pouring into the pockets of the Argentine people -- rather it is, by routes that show the true Yanqui ingenuity in devising shifts of wealth that reward the Lord's true husbandmen, those frisky emerging money market manager s we so know and love - cycling to the temperate zone. This fact notwithstanding, Yanqui newspapermen are pretty certain they know what's been happening down South American way: it is the laziness in the blood. Here's the LA Times editorial that revamps our old friend, the lazy Latino, in a little more sophisticated form:

"To reactive the economy, mired in a three-year-old recession, the new government must bring down unemployment, now at a staggering 20%. It must also find a way to manage a public debt of $155 billion while reducing a fiscal deficit that this year hovers around $8 billion. A recent article in an Argentine newspaper illustrates how imperative it is for the new government to overcome the political elite's devastating corruption and inefficiency. According to the story, the Argentine Congress boasts thousands of employees who are known not so affectionately as gnocchi. Gnocchi, you see, are the potato dumplings that Argentines eat on the 29th day of each month, a custom that is supposed to bring good luck. The employees got that nickname because they show up to work only once a month--always on payday. Civil service law prohibits their firing. But if forced to show up more often, they'd have nothing to do."

Notice the contrast between our own fiscal policy, which would never pump money unnecessarily into the system, with those gnocchi. The Lord has truly blessed us is the moral Limited Inc draws from this sad debacle.

Limited Inc. flew out to LA yesterday. We
are spending a week at a friend's house.
Last night we went to Track 16 to hear a
series of male and mostly bald Southern
Cal writers read sketches or stories on
the rather vague theme of holidays. The
one female writer, a statuesque, frizzy
haired blond, read what she called a rant
in a voice that had seeped through Mae
West and Janis Joplin to arrive in her
throat, jazzing up what was otherwise a
rather weak referencing to what all the unwashed and disgruntled, or the leather clad and the smokers, know about Christmas � what an essentially sad time it is to stage a holiday, and how bogus its cause, and how mendacious its sentiments.

Track 16 is an art gallery stuck in a warehouse district, the m.o. for galleries from San Antonio�s Blue Star to the bright and shining tax dodges of Providence, Rhode Island. Still, Limited Inc is moved by the replacement of boxes of screws, or tubs of cement, or shelves of PVC pipe, by track-lit spaces that direct one�s attention to what�s hanging on the wall. Is this the only universal left to art, that track-lit symbol of the work�s isolation? That self-standing which wavers teasingly between art and a box of U-Valves?

Still, this is too melancholy a thought to express our happiness about being at Track 16, and seeing these good hearted people turned out to applaud their friends, or perhaps turned out in curiosity, or a genuine interest in new talent. The MC was one of those youngish (say around 32) balding men who�ve gone through the hair loss process happily, and gleam with such unabashed nudity of forehead that the eyes slip, catch on the heavy eyebrows, and then on down to the nearly fattish cheeks beneath. Broadbeamed in a gray comfortable suit which was not altogether suitish � his blue sneakers defining a limit to any assumption that his gray suitcoat might lead you to make � he read his story in a voice that seemed to issue from some velvet lined cell. The story featured tits � tits, I believe his phrase was, out to Sunday � and this, it seemed, was the real theme of these stories. In all of them, tits stood in for the eternally feminine, negative but observably bouncy space.

The deal about this reading was that, unlike readings I�ve been to in NYC, these guys were stand-up. They were funny, or at least the audience, and not just that part of it composed of friends, laughed. But even so, in the original medium in which these stories and sketches existed � ink on paper � it was all subpar. Whereas NYC writers read as though it were a death march through the vocables that they were making for your sake, reader, yet one feels some basic comfort with the written as written. As if reading were not a bad habit to be denied, not something to be negated in performance. Maybe this is what we feel is so often wrong with LA writing � this urge to please or shock immediately. It is the sign of an unconscious cultural fear of being caught reading.