I finally got home
internet access today. Unfortunately, the technician had to use my computer to finish the setup - my computer with my desktop background picture of Fox Mulder in a speedo... awkward...
In honor of me being once again plugged into the net world, I'm going to take this opportunity to lay out my thoughts on two of the biggest issues these days.
First is the financial crisis. I've done my fair share of research. I've read all the articles in the new york times and the economist. I am a reasonably intelligent, rational person. I don't understand this.
I'm not talking about on a practical level. I understand that a housing and debt bubble burst - and that that means people were getting loans that they shouldn't have gotten, that they couldn't pay back. And that that impacted a lot of more abstract securities that everyone else in the financial sector was trading with, based on those loans. And that this sparked a lot of fear and uncertainty, which makes people divest. Which has led banks and financial institutions to suddenly need cash that they thought they wouldn't need right now, and they can't get it because all the loans are bad. And this has cycled into a spiraling miasma of fear and uncertainty, leading to the stock market crash this week. [someone correct me if any of this is factually inaccurate - I'm just using this as a segueway).
What I don't understand is how humanity has created a system that responds only to its actions, but that behaves in ways that
humanity doesn't want it to. And that it's such a huge undertaking to fix it. When you first look at the financial sector, you think it's a world of rock-solid metrics and fundamental analysis. That's how it looked to me when I was in an investing club in high school. But maybe I should have thought more about my prior investing experience, in
the stock market game in elementary school. Way back in 5th grade, I was on a team in this state-wide school game where students were given fake money to invest in stocks. I invested in Iomega when it was in the low 10s,
primarily because I thought the name was cool. The stock proceeded to rocket to 60, split, and then hit 60 again. I won the stock market game.
I still have trouble conceptualizing the relationship of stock price to anything measurable in the real world. It seems to be one part tangible financials, one part news/hype, one part gossip, and then 2 parts human nature. The stock market is far from alone in the canon of institutions plagued by human nature. In fact, investment is a fundamental human action; always with associated risks and unintended outcomes. Relationships between people can show the same kinds of complicated negotiations, investments, bubbles, and panics that the markets show. Two people often don't intend to let one little thing spiral out of control, but it does, against both of their wishes.
So maybe the financial crisis does make sense.
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Second, is the election. I have to admit I've been heartened by the news that Barack Obama is gaining in the polls. I recently gave a lot of
thought to what a President Obama would mean, and why he is important to me. Most of the folks who attack Obama do so on two fronts: his policies and his identity. For me, his policies are almost a non-issue. And that is maybe not a long term good approach to making
decisions about electoral candidates. However, I feel that policy positions are given way too much credence. What appeals to me about the candidate is that he seems incredibly smart and sensible. I love that he explores
nuance and tries to understand all sides of an issue. Basically, I am drawn to what I perceive as his way of approaching issues. And this carries a lot more value to me than a checklist of policy positions outlining an approach. A checklist is a static document representing a static frame of mind. That is not the way you tackle real, unexpected issues that arise. Presidents do not expect the problems that ultimately confront them. In 2000, we could not have guessed that the next president would face 9/11, Katrina, and this financial crisis. So
rather than picking someone based on what they say they will do on known issues, I prefer someone who tackles problems in a way that seems extensible and scalable to unexpected problems. This idea is explored in
this NY times article from almost a year ago, where one foreign policy expert says he was "
impressed not so much by Obama’s policy prescriptions as by his temperament and intellectual habits. “He has,” Lake says, “the kind of mind that works its way through complexities by listening and giving some edge of legitimacy to various points of view before he comes down on his, and that point of view embraces complexity.” This awareness of complexity felt like a kind of politics itself and a repudiation of the Bush administration’s categorical thinking."
Obama's identity is also a frequently polarizing topic. I suppose there's little to say regarding it - some on one extreme think he's an anti-American Arab Muslim. Most people who view his identity negatively probably lean more towards the center, however. And these folks most likely take politics a lot more personally than a lot of (young) people on the left. They see a presidential race as having very tangible consequences on their own lives, so the overlap of a candidate's identity with their own identity is a very real factor. I tend not to really believe that a president will have much effect on my own life - my job, my housing, my food, my friends, my art. So a president's identity serves a different purpose in my estimation. I like Obama because he represents a wholesale reorganization of American foreign identity. The aforementioned article captures this sentiment nicely: "Obama’s supporters believe that his life story and the angle of vision it affords him hold out the possibility of curing the harm they would say we have done to ourselves through our indifference to the views of others and through the insularity of a president who seems so incurious about the world. There is thus an emblematic force to Obama’s candidacy. A President Obama, says Joseph Nye, the Harvard professor who popularized the term “soft power” to describe the capacity to gain support through attraction rather than force, “would do more for America’s soft power around the world than anything else we could do.”" This is the arena where I feel a President matters most, the arena of image. A President Obama would make "America" as an idea seem more palatable around the world. And that is something that feels more tangible to me, that seems to impact me more.
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In a minor side note, I got an awesome rug today. It matches my curtains, my comforter, my sheets, and it has my favorite color. The.Perfect.Rug.
