Battle at the Top

Daniel Gross has an interesting article in Newsweek entitled "The Failure Caucus: Who wants the economy to fail again? These guys.". Here's the intro...

Most Americans have a lot riding on the success of the government's efforts to pull the U.S. economy out of its ditch: individual investors, bankers, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, Democratic politicians, and taxpayers. A somewhat smaller group has a lot riding on the failure of these efforts. I'm not simply talking about investors who are betting against the markets and who believe the recent stock-market rally is overdone. I'm talking about the Failure Caucus, a group spanning the political spectrum that has invested reputations, egos, and, in some instances, their political futures on the notion that we're in for several more years of economic trauma.

The Failure Caucus has several divisions.

Go read the whole article where he breaks down the list of those rooting for the economy to collapse.

Ultimately nobody knows the future. It is a guessing game. The joke is that some get it right and get applauded as geniuses with great vision. Those who get it wrong are seen as misguided fools, too stubborn to have seen things aright. The whole thing is a mugs game. But, it is like life itself. You don't get a choice, you have to live your life. If you are lucky things fall in place and you pat yourself on your back for your brilliance. If things trip you up or you make mistakes early, then you spend the rest of your life behind the eight ball and blame yourself and take your lumps.

The only strategy that works is the one advocated by Thomas Edison: "Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration." Or as Louis Pasteur put it: "In the fields of observation chance favors only the prepared mind." In short, you make your luck by covering as many bets as you can. By doing the ground work. By caution. By pursuing as many stratagems as you have time and effort to cover. But in the end, the future will do what it will do to you. So if you succeed, remain humble. If you fail, hold your head high if you have done everything humanly possible but still failed. Fate owns you.

I remember the slogan of the 1980s that drove me crazy: "He who dies with the most toys, wins." This gloating over success is obscene. But we have just lived through 30 years of obscenity. In the end, we all come to the same end: we die. And the one truism is that "you can't take it with you". To kid yourself that you are some solitary hero out to "win" at life is a joke. There is nothing to win. We all die. The ancients held that nobility was to live a virtuous life, i.e. do the best you can with what you have, to accept your fate bravely, to struggle for the community. That's what was lost in the last thirty years, the age of "excess" brought on by a right wing agenda gone beserk.