The Big Game

It’s that time of the year again… when everyone everywhere is thinking about the Big Game. Hey, Fox sold out it Super Bowl spots, pretty much at the price level we’ve seen over the past couple of years, and vendors in Dallas are smiling at everything except the weather (yeah, the stadium is covered!). NFL players are coming up to a contract expiration, and the owners are trying to add two regular season games (going from 16 to 18 a year) under a new agreement… but the union is balking claiming those two extra games a year multiply the possibility of career-ending-or-impairing injuries. Players with shorter careers would obviously earn less money, particularly if there were no reason to pick individual players up after they become free agents… if they are too damaged to play.

Meanwhile, in Egypt, Jordan, Tunisia and Yemen, the Big Game is or may be regime change, mostly spurred by economic issues where unemployment – particularly among the educated youth who cannot find jobs at a more dismal rate than unskilled workers – is epidemic. In Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain, the Big Game is how to survive deflation and staggering resulting unemployment from austerity programs mandated by the Central Bank (of the European Union), the International Monetary Fund and even local parliaments responding to global realities.

In China, the Big Game is how to manage surviving as a very solid economic player with continuing and astounding (inflationary?) growth in a sea of over-leveraged and deficit-driven customer economies (like the U.S.) demanding currency reform. In parts of Africa, overpopulated urban centers plus rolling and never-ending drought in the countryside are fueling the rise of local warlords on the prowl. And behind the Super Bowl headlines, there is this startling American statistic: “Only 36,000 jobs were added to the U.S. economy in January, the federal unemployment report says, apparently reflecting a reluctance to hire. Unemployment fell to 9%, in part because more people have given up on the job market.” Los Angeles Times, February 4^th.

American politicians are watching as their “anti-terrorism” prelate/dictator “allies” are facing popular unrest, and undercurrents such as the pressure of the profoundly anti-Western Muslim Brotherhood are roiling in the seas of unrest all over the Islamic world. That Islam explains poverty well – the material world provides only distractions from pious devotion and the ultimate reward in the next life – and that poverty increasingly needs explaining in the Middle East (rags amidst riches, from oil, corruption or, most probably, both) is a driver of change. Fundamentalists around the world, from Evangelical Christians to militant Islamists, from nascent political movements everywhere, bring me to the Big Game.

As much as social issues from anti-gay-marriage movements demands to requirements that women be veiled seem to be the “tip of the spear,” when you peel back the underlying fears, the predominant (but clearly not the only) driving force is economic insecurity/instability and unemployment. Let me rephrase this “Big Game” in more accessible phraseology: “It’s the economy, stupid!” Real hard to get folks to rebel, to demand that their leaders be ousted by rioting well beyond the ability of the army to control them, to loot and kill seemingly randomly… when they have a nice home, a reasonably well-paying job and a comfortable material life. As the earth’s population continues to explode, however, and dwindling resources are spread ever thinly to the growing masses, comfortable lives are increasingly the exception; the rule is “live with less and less every year.” Add a touch of agriculturally-impairing global climate change, and you have another can of gasoline to a raging fire. Contracting economies and opportunities are the bread and butter of radical movements throughout time. History has been here before: “Let them eat cake.” Yeah, right!

I’m Peter Dekom, and may the average person’s “Super Bowl” be well-stocked with rice!