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Yearly Archives: 2012

Swift Boating

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If there’s one irrevocable law in politics, it’s that whatever works will be done and re-done until it fails completely.  The stakes for a Presidential include the most powerful office in the world and total expenditures of $10B.  No one is going to run a campaign based on wild new ideas unless they absolutely have to.

So it should come as no surprise that 2012 is turning into a mirror of 2004.  The only thing that seems wrong with it is that the challenger’s side didn’t anticipate and devise an effective counter to this year’s equivalent of a “Swift Boating” – changing what should be your opponent’s greatest strength into their biggest liability.

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A New Beginning

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Barataria stands as a blog with a purpose.  Most of the time, that purpose is to tell the stories lost in the jargon of economics and finance that have come to define our recent lives far more than most people are comfortable with.

If we can’t grab what is happening around us and make it our own, how can we call ourselves a free and democratic society?  Barataria does what it can to offer a different way of looking at what is happening and relate it in story form, free of unexplained jargon.  Hopefully, this will help to make a more real and useful politics.

After a few months of big events and heavy articles, it’s time to summarize the Baratarian view on the big economic picture in one polemic and invite your comments.

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Cat’s Pride

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This summer re-run is a sad one.  Since this piece ran two years ago Munchie moved out with his Mom and, just recently, passed on over the Rainbow Bridge from kidney failure.  Like any loved pet, Munch will be missed for both his cuddliness and his mischief equally.  Consider this a tribute to him and all our fur children no longer with us.

Munchie wasn’t a bad cat, but he had a reputation. His name probably came from his habit of jumping up on counters and tables, eating anything that was left out. Bread, crackers, you name it – all for Munchie. When his second or third family were moving, Munchie was handed off yet again. He found himself in his fourth home in about as many years, suddenly  living with cats who didn’t know him at all. They weren’t exactly thrilled. Neither was Munchie, who had a tendency to be crazy all night long, running and yowling.

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Global Currency

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Imagine a single currency, all around the world.  No more converting between Dollars and Euros and Pounds, the money in your wallet is your ticket to ride anywhere.

Sound like a fantasy?  Throughout history it’s been more or less the standard.  The coins from one era might come from Rome or Madrid or London or Beijing, but one accepted unit of exchange was the norm until very recently.  In many ways, the standard now comes from twelve Federal Reserve banks in paper form, printed with green ink.

But we’re a global society now, with total worldwide trade taking up nearly $8T of the global product of $52T.  Is it time for a new global currency that isn’t subject to the needs and politics of one nation?  More and more, the answer is “yes”.  But getting there, as with anything international, is the hard part.

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Resiliency

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Long ago, most Americans lived as Laura Ingalls Wilder chronicled in the “Little House” series.  Pa Ingalls and family were out in the wilderness, surviving with the rhythm of the land and putting away what they could to survive long winters and perhaps beyond.  The family’s net worth was what they had around them – nearly all put toward surviving on their own.

That life has been replaced with interdependence based on a dollar value assigned to absolutely everything.  We all get by with any extra scratch, should there be some, not stored up to get through the winter but properly invested in convertible assets.  This means that everyone is subject to the values of the Free Market™, which determines the value of all assets including experience, talent, and work.

The real lessons from successful financial companies like Bain Capital are the demonstration of what these values of interdependence are – and how our world far beyond Pa Ingalls has become as hostile as any winter on the Great Plains.

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