a curious Yankee in Europe's court

From Yo Yo Ma — SONGS OF JOY & PEACE

The object of the question above is Barbie, the doll. The inquiry is the focus of a feature in today’s Guardian. As the title blurb says, Barbie will celebrate her 50th birthday next year. It goes on to ask: Should women be celebrating this anniversary – or turning their backs in disgust on one of the world’s most popular dolls?

The pro Barbie position is written by Moira Redmond. Excerpt:

When it comes to careers, Barbie is also a brilliant role model. She’s been a doctor, a vet, a palaeontologist, an astronaut, a firefighter, a pop singer, a teacher and a film star. She has even been a presidential candidate. Here are some things I defy you to imagine Barbie doing: housework; sucking up to men; cowering; being bullied or intimidated; being sexually harassed.

The rebuttal is written by Julie Bindel. Excerpt:

The marketing ploys for the doll have been staggeringly cynical. For instance, early on, Barbie was promoted as a teaching aid to help young girls grow up and get their man, by marketers worried that parents might not warm to such a sexualised plaything. Feminists went berserk and accused the manufacturers at the 1972 toy fair in New York of encouraging girls “to see themselves as mannequins, sex objects or housekeepers.”

There is even a syndrome named after the doll. Someone afflicted with “Barbie syndrome” strives for an unrealistic body type. If Barbie was life-size, she’d measure 36-18-33, stand 5ft 9in and weigh 7st 12lb – 35lbs underweight for a woman that height. A group of scholars once worked out that the likelihood of having Barbie’s body shape is one in 100,000.

I chose two paragraphs for the rebuttal as opposed to only one for the endorsement, as you see. Does this indicate my own perspective? You betcha. It may also spring  from a sense of pique — I never had a Barbie!! (sob)

Seriously, I do think the more important factor is that little girls themselves get to choose their own toys. Many are continuing to choose Barbie, yes. But, as I’ve discovered, many little girls are choosing another. The news (to me)  came from my own impromptu Q&A with an eight-year-old houseguest one morning last February — see here.

So –my  last word — I say, may the various marketers battle each other to the death, but may it be the little girls who always win.

Evolutionary biologist John Dennehy wrote a post on his blog last month, poignantly expressing the pain of having to say good-bye to his amazing dog Sarah (The Evilutionary Biologist, Nov 10, 2008).

In his short whodunit article, “Capitalist Fools” in this week’s Vanity Fair, Nobel-laureate economist Joseph E. Stiglitz identifies exactly who led the world into its current state of economic havoc (Jan 2009).

Intro blurb:

Behind the debate over remaking U.S. financial policy will be a debate over who’s to blame. It’s crucial to get the history right, writes a Nobel-laureate economist, identifying five key mistakes—under Reagan, Clinton, and Bush II—and one national delusion

Playing For Change: Song Around the World “Stand By Me”

Website: http://www.playingforchange.com/

It’s going to get worse, Nouriel Roubini says in an interview last week (Nov. 28) with Bloomberg.com. He notes that the global economy is now in crisis.

Other comments: the U.S. economy is in free fall and the effects are spreading across the globe, and the European Bank needs to be more aggressive in cutting rates, and more stimulus spending is necessary.

Most interesting questions: is confidence the key to restoring stability in the markets, and will bank rates drop to zero?

Watch video here (17:02)

Who wrote this?

..He invests his property. He goes, in a condescending amateurish way, into the City, attends meetings of Directors, and has to do with the traffic in Shares. As is well known to the wise in their generation, traffic in Shares is the one thing to have to do with in this world. Have no antecedents, no established character, no cultivation, no ideas, no manners; have Shares. Have Shares enough to be on Boards of Directors in capital letters, oscillate on mysterious business between London and Paris, and be great. Where does he come from? Shares. Where is he going to? Shares. What are his tastes? Shares. Has he any principles? Shares. What squeezes him into Parliament? Shares. Perhaps he never of himself achieved success in anything, never originated anything, never produced anything? Sufficient answer to all; Shares. O mighty Shares! To set those blaring images so high, and to cause us smaller vermin, as under the influence of henbane or opium, to cry out, night and day, ‘Relieve us of our money, scatter it for us, buy us and sell us, ruin us, only we beseech ye take rank among the powers of the earth, and fatten on us!’”

Charles Dickens wrote this paragraph in describing a character in “Our Mutual Friend,” his novel first published in the years 1864-65. The book was written in the years leading up to the British financial crisis of 1866. A footnote from the paragraph explains:

“The 1850s saw an unprecedented boom in shareholding and speculation. The British financial crisis of 1866 and the spectacular failure of Overend and Gurney with other companies confirmed what many observers and moralists had prophesied. This passage shows Dickens aware of changing conditions…”

More about the financial crisis of 1866

Thanks Wikipedia:

Overend, Gurney & Company was a London wholesale discount bank, known as “the bankers’ bank”, which collapsed in 1866 owing about 11 million pounds (£828 million at 2003 prices). Until events at Northern Rock in September 2007, it was the last run on a British bank…

The bank’s core business was the buying and selling of bills of exchange at a discount. It was well respected, and expanded rapidly, reaching a turnover double its competitors combined. For forty years it was the greatest discounting-house in the world. During the financial crisis of 1825, the firm able to make short loans to many other bankers. The house indeed became known as “the bankers’ banker,” and secured many of the previous clients of the Bank of England. Samuel Gurney died in 1856…

After Samuel Gurney’s retirement, the bank expanded its investment portfolio, and took on substantial investments in railways and other long term investments rather than holding short term cash reserves as was necessary for their role. It found itself with liabilities of around £4 million, and liquid assets of only £1 million. In an effort to recover its liquidity, the business was incorporated as a limited company in July 1865 and sold its £15 shares at a £9 premium, taking advantage of the buoyant market during the years of 1864-66…

Overend Gurney’s monetary difficulties increased, and it requested assistance from the Bank of England, but this was refused. The bank suspended payments on 10 May 1866. Panic spread across London, Liverpool, Manchester, Norwich, Derby and Bristol the following day, with large crowds around Overend Gurney’s head offices at 65 Lombard Street. The failure of Overend Gurney was the most significant casualty of the credit crisis. The bank went into liquidation in June 1866. The financial crisis following the collapse saw the bank rate rise to 10 per cent for three months. More than 200 companies, including other banks, failed as a result.

The directors of the company were tried at the Old Bailey for fraud based on false statements in the prospectus for the 1865 offering of shares. However, the Lord Chief Justice Sir Alexander Cockburn said that they were guilty only of “grave error” rather than criminal behaviour, and the jury acquitted them. The advisor was found to be guilty. Although some of the Gurneys lost their fortunes in the bank’s collapse, the Norwich cousins succeeded in insulating themselves from the bank’s problems, and the Gurney bank escaped significant damage to its business and reputation.

The thing is…

And I mention this because it seems to me it’s a key underlying factor of the whole current Wall Street meltdown: it’s that we the citizenry can scream in accusatory outrage until the cows come home but the art and practice of fleecing the gullible and unwary is one of the oldest in human history. Just consider the ever popular shell game which has been around at least since the Middle Ages. And poor judgement and stupidity never seem to be in short supply in human behavior.

Why am I bringing this up? It’s this recent Washington Post story on government oversight of the $700 billion Wall Street bailout now underway. The article headline signals the bad news — “Bailout Oversight Lacking, GAO Says Investigators Find Few Safeguards or Gauges of Success.”

So for now…

It seems to be the same old same old — and by old I refer to those days of 1866, as well as to recent times. Some of the Wall Street whizzes who’ve been busily burning down the house for the past several years apparently think the $700 billion bailout is just a new supply of matches. They’re continuing their usual business practices, and happily continuing to fatten on us, as Dickens wrote.

They may even be humming along to the tune of “Everything old is new again” — (I offer this as a little laugh because we dare not cry relief from the dreariness of this post dose of righteous wrath).

But the good news is…

This isn’t 1866. It’s true we don’t have the eloquent and brilliant voice of the fiery Dickens to speak truth to the scoundrels and dimwitted among us, but we do have some pretty good voices of our own day that are fierce and strong, and so offer hope. They’re all telling us that we the people have to get smarter. That we have to read and listen more, read and listen better and more deeply, just as they are.

If  you don’t have your own list of such, I offer my short roster of favorites:

Activist Organizations:

• Save The Internet (SaveTheInternet.com)

• Change Congress (changecongress.org)

Some who see it and tell it like it is:

• Markos Moulitsas (DailyKos.com)

• Rachel Maddow (The Rachel Maddow Show, MSNBC)

• Glenn Greenwald (Salon Magazine columnist)

• Josh Marshall (Talking Points Memo)

Some items of interest this week:

I. Are Wall Street bankers losing their influence over the White House?

In appointing Timothy Geithner to the cabinet post of Treasury Secretary, President-elect Obama is breaking a long chain of Wall Street bankers running U.S. government, according to William D. Cohan at The Daily Beast (“Obama Gives Wall Street the Cold Shoulder” Nov 24, 2008).

Analyzing Obama’s choice of Geithner, Cohan writes:

But this surely drives home the point that one of Obama’s definitions of change is to not allow Wall Street its traditional role in running things. Tim Geithner, the presumptive Secretary of the Treasury, is all of a regulator, an academic and a civil servant. One thing he is not is a Wall Street banker (although he would have been an effective one.) Larry Summers, soon-to-be Obama’s director of the National Economic Council, is the son of economists, an economist himself, a former president of Harvard University and a former Secretary of the Treasury. He was never a banker and never worked on Wall Street. Indeed none of Obama’s cabinet picks, or rumored cabinet picks to date have worked in any substantive way on Wall Street.

The current U.S. Treasury Secretary is Henry Paulson — previously the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the investment bank Goldman Sachs.

To see short biographies of Obama’s new economic team, go here (“President-Elect Barack Obama and Vice President-Elect Joe Biden Announce Key Members of Economic Team” TPM, Nov 2008).

II. Obama’s not happy with Wall Street’s legendary greed is good credo

Obama offered a reprimand to the country’s top businesspeople last week in an interview with Barbara Walters on ABC network (Nov 26, 2008).

Excerpt:

BARBARA WALTERS: How did you feel when you read about the three heads of the auto companies taking private planes to Washington?

BARACK OBAMA: Well, I thought maybe they’re a little tone deaf to what’s happening in America right now. And this has been a chronic problem, not just for the auto industry, I mean, we’re sort of focused on them. But I think it’s been a problem for the captains of industry generally. When people are pulling down hundred million dollar bonuses on Wall Street, and taking enormous risks with other people’s money, that indicates a sense that you don’t have any perspective on what’s happening to ordinary Americans. When the auto makers are getting paid far more than their counterparts at Toyota, or at Honda, and yet they’re losing money a lot faster than Japanese auto makers are, that tell me that they’re not seeing what’s going on out there, and one of the things I hope my presidency helps to usher in is a, a return to an ethic of responsibility. That if you’re placed in a position of power, then you’ve got responsibilities to your workers. You’ve got a responsibility to your community. Your share holders. That if — there’s got to be a point where you say, ‘You know what, I have enough, and now I’m in this position of responsibility, let me make sure that I’m doing right by people, and, and acting in a way that is responsible.’ And that’s true, by the way, for members of congress, that’s true for the president, that’s true for cabinet members, that’s true for parents. I want all of us to start thinking a little bit more, not just about what’s good for me, but let’s start thinking about what’s good for our children, what’s good for our country. The more we do that, the better off we’re going to be.

III. Obama names his National Security team

Yesterday, Obama held a press conference to introduce his choices for his National Security team. From the Obama website change.gov:

Nominees announced today include Senator Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, Eric Holder as Attorney General, Governor Janet Napolitano as Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Susan Rice as Ambassador to the United Nations, and General Jim Jones, USMC (Ret) as National Security Adviser. President-elect Obama also announced that he has asked Robert Gates to stay on as Secretary of Defense.

Video of the press conference here (27:01)

IV. The everlasting Clinton(s) factor

As noted above, Obama has picked Hillary Clinton to be his new Secretary of State. And as Newsweek‘s Senior White House correspondent Richard Wolffe said in an interview yesterday (Countdown with Keith Olbermann, MSNBC, Dec 1, 2008):

“…for the media, Hillary Clinton has overshadowed every other pick coming out of this transition…”

My impression while clicking around online is that this Hillary media storm occurred with news outlets worldwide, given the high international profile of the former First Lady. Visiting various USA newsites and blogs, the two questions I saw posed most often were: one, why did Obama really choose his former arch-rival Hillary; and two, what does this choice tell us about what kind of president Obama will be?

The answers, of course, can largely only be speculation. But in a column yesterday, Matthew Yglesias captured the central focus of the discussion well, I think. Recalling some of the major differences on foreign policy between Obama and Hillary Clinton during the campaign, Yglesias writes (“A hawk in the roost?” The National, Nov 27, 2008):

For all the speculation about Obama’s offer to Clinton, there has been no real account of the rationale or motivations for his decision – at least not beyond vague, and endlessly repeated, references to Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book, Team of Rivals, a profile of the cabinet Abraham Lincoln assembled under wildly different circumstances. The transition team has done very little to outline the substantive agenda it expects a Clinton-led State Department to tackle, and indeed, perhaps the ongoing financial crisis will mean any bold new foreign initiatives will be put on the back-burner.

What is unclear at this point is whether Clinton joining the Obama team means that Clinton has gained faith in Obama’s approach, or that Obama has lost faith in his own. The very fact of Obama’s election would seem to tilt things in his direction: there was a consistent trajectory to their disagreements, and Obama was on the right side – a judgment vindicated by his victories over both Clinton and McCain. It’s not merely that he won, but that winning demonstrates his supposedly “risky” positions were not so risky after all.

V. Do you wanna speak English, Uncle Sam asks

The U.S. Department of Education is sponsoring a new online program offering free English language instruction. Titled U.S.A. Learns, the website…

…promotes programs that help American adults get the basic skills they need to be productive workers, family members, and citizens.  The major areas of support are Adult Basic Education, Adult Secondary Education, and English Language Acquisition.  These programs emphasize basic skills such as reading, writing, math, English language competency and problem-solving.

Read more background about the program here (“Learning English the Web Way” The New York Times, Nov 24, 2008).

See previous A glance at online news of politics USA