Slavoj Zizek, the Slovenian philosopher, once said a metaphor for cinema could be found in a scene from the 1974 film, “The Conversation”: Gene Hackman, playing a paranoid detective, flushes a hotel toilet experimentally and is horrified to see the clean water replaced with blood which overflows the bowl and spills all over the floor. Similarly, Zizek says, cinema is like a toilet out which we are expecting the excrement of the netherworld to flow.

I’m not sure if Slavoj has seen the latest James Bond film, the Quantum of Solace, but if he does, he may need to revise that thought: in this instance, the toilet is wired to a cannister of nitroglycerin and the viewer is greeted with a fiery explosion which takes out the entire hotel. Strike that, it would take out the entire town.

I had been looking forward to this film; the fact that it followed directly on, narratively speaking, from Casino Royale, hinted at a discipline that had been previously lacking in the Bond series. Each Bond film has been hitherto a set piece: the villains are different, the scenery is different, and no Bond girl manages to make it from one film to the next, even if she survives to the end of the film. It is this lack of continuity which perhaps has sustained the film series, as it makes it easier to adapt stories to a particular time and place. Furthermore, if I may indulge a Lacanian impulse, it may satisfy the need of the viewer that Bond is able to press the “reset button” constantly: Bond can change women, change vehicles, change locations and change clothes without any consequences. He has the ultimate “disposable” life, which includes being able to dispose of others.

A good symbol of this discontunity is not only found in the variety of actors who have played the lead: a more dramatic example is Bond’s CIA counterpart, Felix Leiter. Hitherto, Leiter has not only been played by a variety of actors, they have also come in different ages and even different races. Quantum is the first example of a Bond film in which Leiter was played by the same actor as in the preceding film. Quantum is the breaking the habit. But is it successful?

From a storyline point of view, Quantum is an absolute disaster from its first moments. The director has chosen to eliminate the flow of motion for bursts of energy which are as staccatto as gunfire. We are not permitted to see how, say, Bond’s car swerves to avoid uncoming traffic: rather, we get a montage of the car and Bond driving in order to create the impression that somehow he is magically avoiding a crash through unseen manuevers. Most of the action sequences are done in this manner, which is entirely disorienting.

Bond has always been a rebellious character, but hitherto there was a humourous edge to his being an upstart: not so in this instance. Indeed, Bond is a moody, semi-psychotic loner in this film, who only associates with those whom he could find helpful.

This is not to say that touches of the original Bond series do not come through: for example, when Bond arrives in La Paz, Bolivia, he is greeted by a young woman from the British consulate wearing a short dress, who informs him that her duty is to put him back on a plane to London the following day. The idea that even the British government would put a young, attractive, unarmed woman in charge of handling a proven killer with a history of seducing and manipulating women is patently absurd from a narrative point of view, in any other film besides a classic Bond movie.

Even more absurd is a hotel which appears in later scenes: we are informed that its omnious gurgling noises have to do with the operation of its fuel cells. As the hotel is in the middle of a desert with an almost uninterrupted flow of sunlight, the idea that such an establishment would not be taking advantage of the solar energy potential is ridiculous. However, solar energy does not explode and the narrative needed hydrogen cannisters in every room for the purposes of using the studio’s arsenal of special effects.

To be fair, there are some delights to be found: there was a fleeting moment of narrative joy when it seemed as if MI6 and Bond were going to have to go up against the CIA as well as the standard supervillains of the piece; a long, prolonged war in which Britain’s intelligence services stood alone would have made for great suspense. However, the film backed away from this implication, and the CIA was presented as having been duped: they were more stupid than malevolent, which is probably closer to the mark.

Another delight was how the “board of directors” of the evil conspiracy met: rather than show the standard meeting room on a yacht or somewhere underground, it was done during a performance of Tosca using earpieces and small microphones. This led to the most satisfying moment in the film, in which Bond had stolen one of the earpieces and suggested that they should perhaps find a more secure place to discuss their plans.

The evil plot at the film’s centre also contains some elements of interest: the villains plan to steal water from the Bolivian people and store it in a vast reservoir beneath the desert. The reason why this is done is never resolved: one can only assume that this will be stated in the next film. However, highlighting the lack of potable water at the moment shows an awareness of environmental issues which is astonishingly better than any previous Bond film.

The finished product is a slurry of seriousness and silliness, half-finished ideas, some of which are good, others poor. It is slickly packaged, but has a great many defects. What it is definitely not is the Bond film of yore: a fantasy world of espionage that bears so little resemblance to our world it cannot possibly disturb us. The problem for the makers of the next film is if they want to continue onwards towards things which can affect the audience: do they want to use the context of illusions to inform us of the Real? If this is the intent, then far from finding any quantum of solace, this film could represent the next step in the series evolution to something more challenging.

Sadly, I’ve been neglecting my blogging; the struggles associated with trying to find a new job in the midst of a recession have taken their toll. Fortunately, I’ve been successful, though not quite in the way I thought I would be.

When I sat in the Human Resources Manager’s office while on my way out of my last company, I said to her, “This will be my last job in technology.” It was something I blurted out, there was no coherent thought behind it, just a desire. I had no wish to continue to fight against company politics or to be forced into a position where I’d have to endorse mediocrity or worse. At that point, I had no idea how to realise that particular dream.

Happily, as a poet friend of mine once wrote, “everything has its own gravity”. I found a suitable position with the university where I am doing my Phd. I will start my new role tomorrow. While there is a technological aspect to my new line of work, it is fair to say that I am shutting the door on my internet career. In my mind, I can envisage that particular portal, like the thick white door leading to the spare room in my grandparents’ house: a brass key fits into the mortice lock, there is a clicking sound as the key turns and then it is time to bury the key in the yard where no one can find it.

It’s not that I haven’t enjoyed working with technology or no longer have an interest in it: it will always be part of my life. However, I believe the present economic climate, as well as the dysfunction at the heart of Western management techniques mean that it is nearly impossible for anyone who wants to innovate to succeed.  I have done my bit, but I’ve had enough.

When I began my career, the idea of change was not only something that was looked on positively, it was embraced. I helped companies move from print to web, and helped start ups get going. Over time, however, the drag of resistance has only increased, not decreased; the past seven years have been a long war against that resistance.

For example, a company that I worked for in 2003 was still stuck with an archaic infrastructure based upon the programming language Perl; the set-up had been in place since 1996. No formal project management techniques or procedures underpinned the development. Consequently, it was stuck. I argued for change, managed to demonstrate with my team that change was possible; our thanks was to have the team’s jobs shipped off to India.

The proliferation of technology has had the unintended consequence that bad ideas have become entrenched. In 2005, I worked for a company in the travel industry; its infrastructure was underpinned by a backoffice database that utilised the Visual Foxpro database / programming language. There is an inherent flaw in Foxpro in that it is a single threading application, namely, it can only do one thing at a time: this is hardly the stuff of modern e-commerce software. Because the owner of the company was fluent in Foxpro, and had personally built the database, he was ideologically bound to retain it. Thus the team I put together had to make a modern website work with archaic systems. The problem was compounded by the way Foxpro stored data in this instance: with Foxpro, there are two choices - one can either use an SQL database, which is standardised and would have avoided problems, or use what’s known as “local data”, which is prone to corruption and frequent collapse. It will likely come as no surprise if I say this latter approach was what was adopted.

Possibly the nadir of my career was when the owner of the company directly blamed me for this setup not working. I had to be stronger at that point than I’ve ever had to be - I looked him in the eye and refused to accept the blame. The owner’s response was to buy a server that had eight processors in order to see if that would overcome Foxpro’s technical limitations. It did not. Generally speaking, my thesis was proven correct: nonetheless, we managed to build the infrastructure for a series of websites which helped the travel company win awards later on. My immediate supervisor, however, was demoted, and my role was eliminated: I can only assume that my uncompromising stance did not help matters.

I’ve been lucky in some ways: after departing the Foxpro ghetto, I launched an open standards initiative for another firm which survives to this day. In my last company, the team put together a website which is going to be featured in the trade press. However, the response from management was to shrink back into their shell like a turtle and basically inform me that what I had to say was not only not going to be heeded, but rather, I was to go.

My latest interview cycle has shown that fear is driving many companies, particularly in the publishing sector: most of those I spoke to were going to use an open source content management platform called Drupal, cross their fingers and hope for the best. I don’t think what I had to say made matters any better for me.

I will repeat my thoughts here: I believe we are coming to the end of the “first phase” of the internet, in which its main value lay in the immediacy of information. Jobs, news, travel information, all became instantaneous to the point where we consider this just a normal part of life. It’s easy to forget that ten years ago, we used to have to wait for such information to arrive in the post.

The second phase, however, is much more exciting. Because there is the opportunity to store user preferences like never before, the vast flood of information can now be tailored around what the user is actually interested in. The buzzwords for this are “behavioural targeting”.  The technology exists, and is waiting to be utilised; however, few companies have the patience for this. They are so focused on driving quarterly results that investing thought and effort into genuine innovation which could secure the long-term future of their businesses has become impossible. I do not find it at all ironic that individuals and educational institutions like my University have become the driving force of innovation, far more than business is doing so on its own. Business has no stomach for it, no appetite for it, no desire for change; rather, the management of many companies is far more concerned about the requirements of internecine warfare and annual bonuses than they are about building anything that will endure. Managers, rather like my former boss, are concerned about stringing up one year after another, like beads on an abacus, watching their income grow to six figures or more: the welfare of the employees can go hang.

I suppose that is a secondary reason why I’m glad I’m done: during my career, the attitude that employers have held towards employees has grown worse rather than better. My last boss held a very “mechanistic” view of my employees: if one left, I could surely replace them with someone better. What made this statement particularly maddening and insensitive was the context: it was after we had gone through a very long and difficult recruitment cycle for developers. However, he is not alone in thinking that people are like for like, i.e., one C# developer is like another, one project manager can be replaced by someone superior. This reminded me uncomfortably of how Ford used to play groups of immigrants against each other in the 1930’s, saying to Italians that the Poles were more productive than they and vice versa, and threaten those who were employed with replacement. As I patiently explained to my boss, this kind of attitude was possible when digging for coal: threaten someone and they may dig faster. However, threatening someone in a knowledge industry has never made them think any more quickly or better. Perhaps the low point in my last job was when the board insisted on phoning one of my contractors explicitly for the purposes of yelling at him.

I do not believe the recession will make management any better. The people who are going to be most harmed by the slowdown are those who actually have knowledge, not those in the boardrooms. The latter will continue to be mystified by what is going on, and no clear plan will emerge apart from endless retreat: for example, I have received reliable information that a former firm of mine is actually going to try and rewind in order to focus more on print rather than web.

As such, I am forced to conclude that capitalism in its present form is failing all around: it is not delivering stability, it’s not preserving the environment, it’s not delivering growth, it’s not delivering social justice, and it is not delivering innovation. The moment I walk in the door of my new employer, finally beyond the reach of people who think that my pursuit of a Phd is an eccentricity rather than a boon, I will join the trade union, donate more money to the Green Party, and do whatever I can to advance the University and its interests. I will focus on creating knowledge instead of wealth. To be sure, I am truly glad it’s time to say good bye. Farewell to all that, and good riddance.

As presented by the Long Johns (John Bird and John Fortune):

Less than twenty four hours after explaining to my colleague what created the credit crunch and the subsequent economic turmoil, my own job was swept away by the rolling tide. There is very little to tell; the processes involved were not transparent, all I know is that there was a meeting of senior shareholders, most of them looking grave and grey, and hours later, I was packing my bag and leaving my work laptop behind. I don’t believe I was alone; I went into London on Tuesday in my hunt for a new job and to my surprise, a former co-worker (who worked at a similar level of management) boarded the same train as I did. We didn’t speak to each other, and we barely acknowledged each other with a glance. He was dressed to the nines and was looking sheepish; the scene would not have been out of place in a film entitled “Middle Management of the Damned”. I’ve heard a lot of nonsense about the “dignity of work”; nevertheless to be unemployed does feel like one has a giant pimple right in the middle of one’s face. I’d rather not see my friends or colleagues in this “condition”.

I am better equipped than most to ride out this situation; I had a notice period payment, and I have a skillset which is still in demand. I’m also not the only income in this household. All may yet be well. However, the situation is not helped by the turmoil on the stock market. As I look at my handy stock ticker, the Dow was down yesterday by nearly 200 points, and, yesterday the FTSE closed down over 200 points. This is after massive intervention by the Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, and the European Central Bank to stabilise the situation. Indeed, the British government is now injecting capital into the banks directly and has made a £500 billion credit line available.

Despite all of this government cash, all of the bailouts, all the promises of buying toxic debt and basically begging the markets to behave themselves, here we are. Governments are obviously determined to continue molly-coddling the investors and bankers which got us into this trouble in the first place: everything hinges upon what precisely they think about the future. If they think things will improve, the market will rise. If they think things will remain in the doldrums, they will continue to hammer the economy. Creating this level of assurance is now so important that governments are falling over each other in order to make it happen, and in the process, creating an absurd form of socialism which hits the average person in order to prop up the rich.

I’ve tried to calculate the amount of money that has been thrown away so far in this pursuit; it is already in the trillions, most of it is in the form of new debt, which will be passed on to European and American taxpayers. All of this debt will have to be repaid, and mostly, it will be repaid to the Chinese and governments in the Middle East. And yet, if the stock market is any indication, they want more.

If at this point, you feel like you’re being robbed it is because that’s precisely what’s happening. Let’s be clear: the banks loaned money to people who could not pay it back. We all make mistakes in purchases: I wish I hadn’t bought the used car that I did, for example: it’s temperamental, and keeping it in good nick is a pain. However, as most of us are not banks, we accept and simply learn from mistakes, and write off the losses involved. Yes, there is a difference in scale, but if there is one emotional quality that is lacking in the banks it is maturity; though wisdom runs a close second.

What’s truly horrible is that the heist will get more expensive, the longer the situation lasts: the commitment is open ended. Furthermore, simply handing over the money is not going to help the poor and unemployed. There is no bailout for me, or for my sheepish colleague hiding on the train. Rather, we are simply expected to find work, even if the paralysis in the economy makes this very difficult. If I go down to the unemployment office, I will be faced with a government which is going to try and stop me from claiming any cash, in spite of the taxes I have paid into the system over the years.

If there is any good to come out of this, it should be the realisation that capitalism has reached a point of crisis. It was nice to believe that somehow it could be the quickest means by which poverty was alleviated: there was a point where one could offer it as a magic bullet and not be laughed at. Furthermore, it required little intellectual rigour in its application: politicians can be lazy, and just “leaving things to the market” sounds like a labour saving device. We should have known better: setting loose the market may have let many good entrepreneurs come to the fore, but it also unchained forces of greed and stupidity. Now that the government and business are so intertwined by necessity, we now have a choice: we can either continue to be subject to further muggings by big business, or the balance can be shifted in favour of stability, security and the environment. Favouring the latter would likely mean economic growth is not as sprightly, or that we don’t produce as many Bill Gateses or Steve Jobses as some would like, however perhaps it’s time to recalibrate our expectations. What’s better, being able to have the absolute latest in every gadget and the indulgence of every whim, or knowing that your home won’t be repossessed, and that your employment won’t go up in smoke?

I admit I’m writing as someone whose vice is spending money on my education; as such, I don’t have far to go in changing what I want out of life. A transition of this type would likely hurt others far more than me. However, there is a world of pain out there anyway; returning to the train carriage of several days ago, I saw no smiling faces, heard no laughter. This may not seem unusual in a train in the middle of a big city; however the overriding tension was new, not something I’d seen since the early 90’s. Back then, I hoped we’d never witness this again; this time, I hope we have the wisdom to make the choices to ensure that it doesn’t.

I think I’m a reasonably good manager in at least one respect: I try to shield my team from the horrors of what exists outside of our limited domain. I don’t rehash every argument I’ve had, or tell them every silly quip that has been said by my superiors; I try to create an atmosphere that is conducive to creativity.

However I’m beginning to wonder if some members of my team are almost too insulated: I got asked yesterday, “What is all this?” This being the economic crisis, the credit crunch and the subsequent fallout resulting from it.

I could sympathise; the present crisis is not easily understood. In fact, I’m not sure I understand all of it: what I do know sounds thoroughly crazy, but given that unlike fiction, reality doesn’t have to be realistic, perhaps it’s true. I attempted an explanation for his benefit and that of my team.

I asked him if he’d ever heard of a company called Yes! Car Credit; this is a British firm that sells cars to people with bad credit histories. He said yes. Fine, I told him, have you ever seen the interest rates they charge on their car loans?

He hadn’t. The interest rates, I explained, are much higher than they would be for a “standard” borrower. It’s a premium you get charged for being a bigger risk: Yes! Car Credit makes their money this way, by being a lender of last resort and socking it to those who have nowhere else to turn.

Similarly, subprime mortgages were attractive to investors because of this higher rate of return. If houses kept rising in value, these were not as risky as usual, because even if there were some “deadbeats”, the houses would still be valuable asset, and could be sold on at a profit.

This problem was made worse by the present banking culture; investment bankers are incentivised to get high rates of return on their money in the short term. Subprime mortgages offered these high returns, quickly. The bankers, eyeing big bonuses, Saville Row suits and Aston Martins, said “Yes, more of that please”.

“But,” my colleague said, “the people taking out the mortgages didn’t have any money!”

Right. A lot of people got into a financial hole and the only way to keep above water for some was to borrow against the perceived (rising) value of their homes. There was an insane situation, repeated throughout the United States, in which people were taking out loans just to pay their mortgages.

Government made the problem worse because they didn’t tell the banks to cut it out; indeed, in America, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac provided guarantees for the issuance of these subprime mortgages. So long as the market kept rising, the day of judgement was kept at bay.

This is not to say the banks were oblivious to risk. The way they handled it was by issuing “derivatives”, which packaged the subprime debt into other securities which were sold on to other banks throughout the world. Banks, again, liked them because they offered a higher rate of return than more conservative investments.

I then had to lower the boom on my colleague: I said, “What if I told you that all banking is a con trick?”

“Say what?”

When one looks at their bank account, they assume that the nice figure on the ATM or computer screen is somehow stored in the bank’s vault. It’s not; for banking to make a profit, they loan the money out or invest it. Thus the money in your account is actually not there; all they have on hand is a fraction of total deposits, and a hope that you’ll believe the money is secure.

My colleague visibly paled. I continued: so let’s move on to recent times. Bought any petrol recently, I asked. He replied in the affirmative and complained about how expensive it was. I said, because of the constraints on the supply of oil, food and other commodities, prices have been rising quickly. This made subprime mortgages even less affordable for those who had them. Add to that the measures that central banks took in order to stamp down price increases, namely, by raising the main interest rate at which banks operate, those mortgages became even less affordable. Subprime deals began to collapse like a house of cards; in the United States, some people went so far as to evacuate their houses and hand their keys over to the banks without bothering to go through repossession. House prices have plummetted as a result: according to the Guardian, you can buy a two bedroom house in Detroit for £800. My colleague said, “Cheap holiday home!” I think he hadn’t heard the “Detroit” bit. However, the price is an indicator: subprime mortgages stopped meaning anything other than losses.

My colleague then wondered why it’s our bad luck; surely the banks should just tough it out and suck up the losses. I replied that in an ideal world, that’s precisely what would happen. The problem is that the derivatives bundled in these bad assets in so many wrappers and spread them so far and wide that the banks actually don’t know what their assets are worth any more. Furthermore, they don’t trust each other’s assets to be worth anything.

“Is that important?” he asked. Yes, it is: a lot of banks lend to each other to cover temporary shortfalls. They’re now treating each other like subprime borrowers, raising interest rates, and thus discouraging the consistent flow of credit. Furthermore, some institutions are regarded as being too risky lend to: Lehman Brothers failed because no one wanted to loan them any money, in spite of the fact that much of their business was profitable. This problem is made more complicated because the banks obviously mistrust each other even without a credit crisis and won’t get around a table to discuss the problem: new disclosure rules, for example, could show who is toxic and who isn’t. However, those who are toxic don’t want to show that they are until the very last minute.

Because of this mistrust and lack of lending, all credit is drying up: it’s not just affecting the flow of money between banks, it’s also affecting the amount of money banks have to lend. Individual savers are more inclined to stampede to get their money out: because of the con-trick at the heart of banking, a lot of banks can’t withstand that at the moment. They have to maintain higher reserves from now on in order to weather the storm. This means there is less to loan to businesses and individuals. Economic activity, as a result, is slowing down, if not shutting off.

My colleague asked how the bailout would fit in. The idea, I replied, is that the government would buy these toxic assets and thus flush the system out of what’s creating the mistrust. However, there is another way around it: make the subprime assets into good ones. This can be done through revision of the terms of these mortgages (i.e., at a lower interest rate) and also by giving cash to homeowners. This has the added benefit of making fewer people homeless. However, unlike buying toxic securities, there is no prospect of the government actually making a direct profit out of it: they are trying to get these assets at a bargain price, with the hope of making money after the situation improves, and thus minimising the cost of the bailout. But that’s just a hope; and it won’t reduce the number of tent cities of repossessed people that are springing up.

My colleague then asked the killer question: “How long is this mess going to last?”

I had to tell him the truth: I don’t know. If the banks can somehow manage to get rid of the toxic assets, and if the “bailout” is done in such a way that confidence returns, the worst may be over by the end of 2009. I did remind him that the worst performing business of all time is predicting the apocalypse: so far they’ve been wrong every single time. Somehow, we muddle through war, chaos, and economic catastrophe: even the Black Death didn’t finish off humanity. However, it could very well be that we are like Japan, which sleepwalked through a deep recession for over ten years. In any case, the era that we are coming into is a more modest one, a less reckless one, one in which we can and should be more aware of how things actually work. It may not make anyone happier, but at least, it should make us safer.

My colleague asked what he, personally, could do.

“Keep your head down,” I replied, “and if you’re religious…pray.”

I had to stop myself from shouting “Amen” and “Halleluiah” during this rant by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH):

The $700 billion bailout of American financial institutions is likely to be rubber stamped this week. I can’t say that I’m particularly happy about it, but at least this morning’s television news wasn’t as polluted as usual with bankers crying out for Uncle Sam to rescue them. It’s been reported that matters became so pathetic that US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson got down on one knee before the Democratic leadership and begged them to pass the bill.

I liked Nancy Pelosi’s response to this grovelling: “I didn’t know you were Catholic.” I have to admit that I would have found it somewhat difficult to come up with an adequately polite quip for this former “Master of the Universe” (to use the Tom Wolfe term) reduced to prostrating himself in such a manner.

This incident is perhaps symbolic of an end of an era: we haven’t seen Wall Street this humble in a long time. Ever since Michael Douglas (as Gordon Gekko) said “Greed is good”, we’ve been living in a world where investment bankers were a privileged minority: the dot com bust, Enron and the death of Savings and Loans couldn’t bring them down. Now they really need to be saved and the shoe is well and truly on the other foot: it may stay there.

I come from a banking family. Both of my parents held high level jobs in the technology departments of large institutions; my Dad in particular had a front row seat to much of the senior-level decision making. We had a chat yesterday about what caused the crisis; it’s partially correct to use words like “avarice” and “stupidity”. One word that didn’t instantly spring to my mind is “cowardice”. After all, high stakes gambling is not an activity for the faint of heart.

However, according to my Dad, the bankers have known for a very long time that the financial incentives for short term gains were potentially destructive. A number of institutions have discussed restructuring investment bankers’ packages so that they would get only part of their bonuses up front. The remainder would be paid later, after it was seen that their bets had paid off. This alteration alone probably would have headed off some of the riskier ventures, and furthermore would likely have created at atmosphere of greater stability and employee loyalty. After all, if you’re not going to get a payoff for a number of years, it’s worth hanging around to get it.

So what stopped them? Apparently, the banks were afraid that if they changed the bonus structure, all their talent would jump ship for an institution which decided to keep present arrangements in place. Under these circumstances, no one was brave enough to fly in the face of the overriding culture; when times were good, this hesitancy bore no consequences.

It’s not the job of leaders, however, to just surf along the waves of prosperity: anyone can do that, and it’s not really exercising leadership if you indulge in a Lacanian outburst of “Enjoy!” The jouissance of the markets needed to be curbed: real leadership would have taken into account the potential downside, and prepared for turbulence.

I don’t accept that the banks had any natural obstacles to change. I’ve been in a similar business situation in which rival firms hated and mistrusted each other; the only cure was courage, a willingness to talk and extend an open hand. In my case, I worked with others to achieve agreement on the creation of an open standard for data transmission; the firms who created it hadn’t ever spoken collaboratively prior to this venture. Admittedly, my business realm was quite humble. However, this example shows the fundamental simplicity of change: someone in Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley or JP Morgan Chase just needed to get on the telephone and say, “Let’s talk”. It’s highly probable that they would have found they had more in common than previously realised, and would have been able to agree a solution.

Competition sometimes can bring out the best in people; after all, this is an Olympic year and we’ve had ample evidence of this. However being mindlessly competitive is destructive: it’s appalling to think of how many people are going to lose their jobs, how many homes will be repossessed (there are already reports of “tent cities” of the repossessed springing up in American cities), how many dreams are going to be shattered because the bankers shilly shallyed and said to each other, “You first” and “No, you”. Paulson may think that he is being brought to his knees by political intransigence; the truth is, he and his ilk brought themselves down because they were too weak to admit that they should help each other.

As an American (as well as British) taxpayer, I’m not looking forward to getting the bill for decades of others’ spinelessness. I probably should have realised that I’d be picking up part of this tab some time back: a very long time ago, in what almost feels like a different life, I worked as a lowly intern in the technology department of my Dad’s Wall Street bank. I vividly recall a summer’s day, with 32 degree Celsius heat, on which I had to push a cart with a heavy UNIX workstation down to another office on Broadway. In my way was a photo shoot, featuring several male models dressed as bankers. I had difficulty, but I manoeuvred my cart around the scene: I noted that the models were uniformly tan, smiling, and hadn’t broken a sweat even though the air was so hot and oppressive that I couldn’t help but feel grimy just by breathing it in. I recall resenting them because of their air of arrogance and presumption. They embodied the spirit of the Street, as it stood astride the world. We will be better off if the bankers finally accept that it’s time for them to step out of the way; after all, their skins are going to be saved by the people pushing the carts.

As sent to me by Robin Yassin-Kassab:

Now here’s a bail out plan that works! I’m against the $85,000,000,000.00 bailout of AIG. Instead, I’m in favor of giving $85,000,000,000 to America in a “We Deserve It Dividend”.

To make the math simple, let’s assume there are 200,000,000 bonafide U.S. Citizens 18+. Our population is about 301,000,000 ± counting every man, woman and child. So 200,000,000 might be a fair stab at adults 18 and up.

Divide 200 million adults + into $85 billon; that equals $425,000. My plan is to give $425,000 to every U.S. citizen age 18+ as a “We Deserve It Dividend”.

Of course, it would NOT be tax free. So let’s assume a tax rate of 30%. Every individual 18+ has to pay $127,500 in taxes. That sends $25,500,000,000 right back to Uncle Sam. But it means that every American adult has $297,500.00 in his /her pocket. A husband and wife have $595,000.

What would you do with $297,500 - $595,000 in your family?

• Pay off your mortgage - housing crisis solved.
• Repay college loans - what a great boost to new grads.
• Put away money for college - it’ll be there.
• Save in a bank - create money to loan to entrepreneurs.
• Buy a new, fuel efficient car - create jobs & reduce emissions.
• Invest in the market - capital drives growth.
• Pay for your parent’s medical insurance - health care improves.

Remember this is for every adult U S Citizen 18+ including the folks who lost their jobs at Lehman Brothers and every other company that is cutting back.

And of course, for those serving in our Armed Forces. If we’re going to re-distribute wealth let’s really do it … instead of trickling out a puny $1000 (”vote buy”) economic incentive that is being proposed by one of our candidates for President.

If we’re going to do an $85 billion bailout, let’s bail out every adult American! As for AIG - liquidate it. Sell off its parts. Let American General go back to being American General. Sell off the real estate. Let the private sector bargain hunters cut it up and clean it up. Here’s my rationale. We deserve it and AIG doesn’t. Sure it’s a crazy idea that can “never work.” But can you imagine the Coast-To-Coast Block Party! How do you spell Economic Boom? I trust my fellow adult Americans to know how to use the $85 Billion “We Deserve It Dividend” more than I do the geniuses on Wall Street or in Washington DC. And remember, this plan only really costs $59.5 Billion because $25.5 Billion is returned instantly in taxes to Uncle Sam.

You don’t want to even hear what I think about the stupid mortgage companies that loaned out billions of dollars to people who they knew had no way of paying back the loans, with both sides of the equation interested in one thing … fast money. But it didn’t work, and now we’re supposed to bail out those idiots too???

Kindest personal regards,
Bill

I am not sure I see the point in giving billions away only to have part of it returned to the government in taxes: just give out the after-tax amount, I think. However, the basic principle is sound: rather than bail out financial institutions who invested in bad mortgages, how about giving homeowners a boost so the “bad” mortgages are no longer “bad”?

It’s nice to see the people at Obama HQ are having fun:

Two days ago, I was walking home from the train station when I heard a loud noise explode from behind me. The dreadful cacophony sounded like a goose was being strangled in 3-D surround sound. I turned, and saw that a group of teenagers had appropriated a traffic cone: one of them was using it as a megaphone. The lad was rather skinny, diminutive, but with the bright orange cone, at least he was able to say “hello” in the most disruptive, annoying manner possible.

I had hoped that they would stop after a few paces; after all, it was unlikely that the cone was something the group carried with them wherever they went. But for about half of my journey home, they were right behind me, continuing to use the megaphone en route. Both I and about half of my town got to hear the speaker’s honest opinion of several of the girls in the group: I’m fairly certain that the audience was as un-edified by the experience as I was. Fortunately, a divide in the road meant I went down one track, and they went down another, their voices continuing to rage against the dying of the early autumn sunlight.

Alone at last, I began to think about George W. Bush. I realise this thought is not linear given what I’d just experienced, but the idea of a stolen megaphone giving a loud voice to a diminutive individual is something of a metaphor for his reign. If he had not been President, and the power of his thoughts had not had any amplification, how much better off would we have been?

I must admit that my thoughts were given some additional potency given his recent statement about the $700 billion bailout of American financial institutions. In some respects, it was amusing: after being told for years about the evils of socialism, here we were, being told it was necessary to support the largest, rottenest and most bloated features of the capitalist landscape. In other respects, it was maddening: I don’t accept that this money has to be spent in the way they describe. Rather than use it to bail out the banks, why not use it to help those who are disadvantaged by the banks failing? A simple question, but I see few asking it.

The bailout, as Bush wants, is likely to happen, and the office of the Presidency combined with George W. Bush’s will are enough to create sufficient public and political paranoia to make it so. We’ve seen this same dynamic at work in determining whether or not to invade Iraq. Without the megaphone, this intellectually incurious man would have been one voice drowned out, perhaps solitary in his opinion.

I try not to think about what we’ve lost in the past eight years. While the world of 2000 was by no means a perfect place, it was in much better shape than it is now. Yes, challenges remained in former Yugoslavia, and Palestine was still a source of conflict and strife, but at least there were a lot more Iraqis who were among the living. At least America was not broke. At least the world was not painted in quite as dark hues, coming from a palette of blood, environmental degredation and violence.

I have no doubt that the World Trade Centre would have been attacked, regardless of who was President. I believe Osama bin Laden was and is trying to provoke a war between the Muslim and Western world as part of his personal political programme; I reject the idea that he is particularly Islamic in any proper sense of the word. However, the correct response was not to instantly take up arms, though rounding up bin Laden and his gang for trial in the Hague is absolutely the right move. What 9/11 did was open doors that had previously been closed; the French summarised the mood quite well. Le Monde, a paper not traditionally favourably disposed to America, said “today, we are all Americans”. Regimes that had hitherto been hostile, even Iran, were dismayed by the act. That should have been a cue for a larger summit on how to resolve the conflicts in the Middle East, with the United States as an honest broker. However, because the wrong man had the megaphone, an opportunity for peace turned into war. A chance to elevate the discussion was cast aside, and the world was plunged into bitterness, rancor, torture and death.

Economically, there was an opportunity as well. After fits and starts in the Nineties, the American budget was moving in the right direction: debt was being paid off. Some of the benefits of growth were reaching those at the bottom of the ladder. All that needed to be done was to keep going, and to add an element of environmental responsibility. This too was thrown away, burned up in the midst of a series of irresponsible tax cuts. Furthermore, nothing was done to restrain the unrelenting greed of bankers on Wall Street: their focus on delivering ever bigger short term returns cannot be dismissed as a contributing factor in creating the false boom and all too real bust. The cleanup of the credit crunch, the unpaid-for tax cuts, and the mounting costs of the war means that the total debt of the United States government is now approaching $10 trillion. To give an idea of how much a trillion is: a trillion seconds ago, reading and writing had yet to be invented.

There were opportunities to improve the environment. In the fight against climate change, time is the most precious commodity; wasting it is more than a pity, it’s a crime. Yet, the Bush era should have as its hood ornament a giant, polished SUV. Perhaps the most appropriate kind is one I saw in New York: it was a long, white stretch limousine that was made out of a Hummer. I was glad there was no opportunity to pull the driver over and ask him how much fuel it consumed; the answer would likely have been as obnoxious as teenagers armed with traffic cones. Yet, I am sure I was in a minority by being outraged by its existence.

I don’t envy Barack Obama, assuming that he wins. It’s a tradition for Presidents to leave behind on the Oval Office desk a letter for their successor, usually providing some advice or just well wishes. I suggested to my work colleagues the other day, half in jest, that should Barack win, there would be a note written in crayon waiting for him saying “ha ha ha”. Obama has to somehow rewind all the damage; fortunately, there is enough goodwill still left for America that he will have plenty of nations cheering him on, and helping where they can. But thanks to the Era of Missed Opportunities, he will no doubt have moments where he will wonder what he could have done if he had the legacy of 2000 to work with, rather than the legacy of 2008. Hopefully these periods of reflection will be momentary: the full extent of regret should be left to historians. I just hope the man meets the measure of the mess.