Dominos

Looking for linkage… my mantra in writing these blogs… and what everyone in any academic or business pursuit needs to do in order to adjust for developing trends… the “next” next, if you will. Jared Diamond, a geography professor at UCLA, has written what I consider to be the two seminal works on understanding the rise and fall of societies in two “linked” books: Guns, Germs and Steel and Collapse. If you really want to get a handle on what’s happening on this planet, start with these two fascinating studies… and then look around you. The first book explains why modern collective human society grew from the Middle East and spread horizontally (comparable climate to grow seed crops, which would not grow in climates just 500 miles north or south) and how societies take root and expand… how disease impacts the vulnerable and rewards the germ resistant, why some cultures hit dead ends early, and why others seem to expand towards global conquest. The second explains the environmental, social and economic variables that kill nations and destroy entire cultures; it’s enough to make you squirm.

History is a harsh teacher, and most of humanity seems to be loath to study it in depth for fear of the forecast of their own demise. Wall Street barons might easily forget Marie Antoinette’s unfortunate “Let them eat cake!” expression when confronted with the lack of bread in shops necessary to feed the French people, but her head was soon separated from her body in a harsh reminder (the French Revolution) that special interests who extract the lifeblood from the general society sooner or later perish. It wasn’t a fervent ideological Islamic religiosity that deposed leaders in Egypt and Tunisia and is threatening in Libya, Bahrain, etc.; it was the unemployment statistics among the educated classes, the unpleasant reality of watching very rich and powerful interests willing to sacrifice the youth and economic growth of an entire nat ion in favor of a very narrow class of incumbents living in unparalleled opulence – a practice that is, from an historical perspective, never sustainable.

As Wall Street’s “borrow yourself silly” philosophy tanked the global economy, pressures on the marginal societies – many found in the most explosive Middle East – magnified… and unemployment skyrocketed even beyond the already-untenable levels before the crash. But Wall Street has enlisted those with passionate social issues to build a new anti-tax, anti-regulation wall around their sacred castle, those who are willing to buy into systems that actually caused the economic collapse as a solution to preventing such collapses in the future. I will predict, at some risk, that the Tea Party movement, however correct in noting the fundamental failure of government in protecting the people, will not be a long-term force remotely with the power it enjoys today… because its sameold-sameold de-regulation mantra simply cannot yield the desired result in a country that has long since abandoned a free market economy in favor of one that is constructed to benefit the rich incumbents.

I will leave you with one thought that my consulting friend, Dennis Duitch, sent me recently: “NOT A SINGLE EXECUTIVE WHO RAN THE COMPANIES THAT COOKED UP AND CASHED IN ON THE PHONY FINANCIAL BOOM – an industry-wide scam that involved the mass sale of mis-marked, fraudulent mortgage-backed securities – has ever been convicted… Instead, federal regulators have let the banks and finance companies get off with carefully orchestrated settlements – whitewash jobs that involve their firms paying pathetically small fines without even being required to admit wrongdoing… When it comes to Wall Street, the justice system not only sucks at punishing financial criminals, it has actually evolved into a highly effective mechanism for protecting them. This institutional reality has absolutely nothing to do with politics or ideology – it takes place no matter who’s in office or which party’s in power… It is a closed and corrupt system, a timeless circle of friends revolving between industry and government, that virtually guarantee a collegial approach to the policing of high finance.” Rolling Stone Magazine, March 3^rd. History’s clock is ticking.

I’m Peter Dekom, and we all should remember this quote from philosopher George Santayana: Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.