MEMBER MONDAY

By some reckonings, the election of 2016 was by and large theater acting out that darkest and most dangerous human impulse i.e. revenge. And, as implied by our focus article ( Who Can Win America's Politics of Humiliation?), failure to truly appreciate that underlying dynamic may set the stage for the next play. The essence of Friedman's column is encapsulated in his paragraph four which reads in its entirety, "It has been obvious ever since Trump first ran for president that many of his core supporters actually hate the people who hate Trump, more than they care about Trump or any particular action he takes, no matter how awful."

It has been called the grandmother test i.e. your understanding of a concept is best demonstrated by your ability to successfully explain it to your grandmother. I am pleased to serve as both your facilitator and grandmother as we gather to discuss a subject that is both vitally important and (to some) devilishly obscure: monetary policy and its role in a divided America.

This introduction may come across as cheeky, overwrought, and irreverent but it stems from the sincere desire to better understand monetary policy through a substantive discussion of the following thesis: yet another devolution in our monetary system looms (furthering the move from a free-market to a nationalized economy) should the Federal Reserve successfully implement its central bank digital currency (CBDC) initiative.

It just doesn't belong, not here, not now. The spring pandemic was simply not meant for these post-industrial times -- maybe something more appropriate to the Middle Ages. But here we are. A cannibal joined the family picnic and calmly started eating the children.

The overarching question as we address this uninvited guest is the extent to which the world has been and will be shaped not only by the pandemic itself but, perhaps even more so, by the manner in which we choose to respond.

Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass features this telling exchange between Alice and Humpty Dumpty over the meaning of a word in which Alice says, "I don't know what you mean by 'glory,'" to which Humpty Dumpty answers "Of course you don't -- till I tell you . . . when I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less" to which Alice responds, "The question is whether you can make words mean different things -- that's all" to which Humpty Dumpty closes down the exchange with, "The question is which is to be master -- that's all"

Viewed some sixty years later, my middle school educational experience seemed grey, tedious, and flat-out uninspiring. Just one single factoid survived all these intervening years i.e. the three styles of the ancient Greek pillars, you know, the Doric, Ionic and the other one. Yet, for some reason, what sticks to this day are the assigned short stories e.g. The Tell-Tale Heart, Leiningen Versus the Ants, The Most Dangerous Game, The Gift of the Magi.

"A Republic, if you can keep it"

Ben Franklin 9/17/1787, when asked what kind of government he had given us.

Check your own reflex when it comes to the actions in Portland (and elsewhere) as you compare and contrast two points of view:

The ease with which one's soul can be hijacked by a force or movement deemed greater than one's self was the subject of MM (5/1/17)/Cults. One of our own club members described the vulnerability on the part of most anyone looking for some sense of purpose and belonging. The seduction can end with the physical, mental or an emotional breakdown of the subject.

It was thirty nine months ago. Thirty nine months ago we addressed the book The Fourth Turning. It might just as well have been thirty-nine years ago. Or thirty-nine decades for that matter. It would make little difference given the subject matter does not concern itself with linear time. The Fourth Turning is all about the grand cycles that have defined the evolutionary patterns of Anglo-American history over the past five centuries.

Never has the City Club's unwavering commitment to truth and justice been more important than during this time of societal unrest. The issues of white privilege and race have both been bluntly faced in previous Member Monday sessions and is the subject of our next gathering. If there is one bedrock principle it is that of justice and accountability, whether past, present or future, whether skin color is black or white, and whether clothes happen to be jeans or a uniform. We believe this to be our real common ground and is the essence of the two introductory videos below:

Public pronouncements by the Federal Reserve (the Fed) so often come across as some zen koan, like what's the sound of one hand clapping or describe your face before your mother and father were born. Alan Greenspan began the fine art of riddle-speak as Fed chair ('87-'06) -- see how many simple declarative sentences you can find amidst his nineteen years of testimony -- laying the groundwork for successors Bernanke, Yellen, and Powell.

The pandemic has endowed state Governors with God-like power: who dies, who lives, and under what conditions. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, when confronted with the question of human life in the context of lifting the mandatory pandemic lockdown, declared, "To me, I say the cost of a human life is priceless. Period." Others, residing this side of the metaphysical curtain, might qualify such an absolute by invoking that old tagline and say, yes, yes, but for everything else there's Mastercard. Governor God turned cost accountant.

Amidst the stresses of the current pandemic comes this one extraordinary opportunity -- the chance to Know Thyself (and others). It's as if our whole lives have been one long civics class and this is our final exam. Times as extreme as these launch otherwise broad philosophical textbook abstractions into the real world -- the world of lockdowns, social distancing, maybe mandatory testing. Let's suspend judgment for the moment and just look upon this as one big Rorschach test.

Such unprecedented existential threats we're facing today! What are you talking about? What do you mean by what am I talking about ?!? -- well, just look around . . . . see everything from the pandemic to the economy to the climate to all the corruption and insider dealing to all the foreign threats to the . . . . just look -- right now! -- at the Murder Hornet invasion of the Northwest . . . we're on the precipice I tell you! Oh, stop the drama, we're always on the precipice -- it's called the future.

Perhaps the contemplation of life is best viewed in hindsight. Take education. Early on, still in the nest, students might learn, think, and write about essentially abstract concepts. Sophomores (literally, "wise fools") still in the nest, might churn out philosophical papers, often parroting the works of others, without the benefit of any real life experience. Maybe a bit presumptuous.

Surely no statute of limitations, legally-speaking or otherwise, should apply when it comes to the public's interest in certain matters. Some truths unfold only with the passage of time.

We'll set the table with two examples. It was not until many years thereafter that the public really understood the degree to which it had been (intentionally) misled in order to garner its initial support of that national hallucination known as Vietnam (MM 9/25/17, click Vietnam). Then, the so-called war on drugs, having become a classic cure-far-worse-than-the-disease, was itself born out of a cynical ploy to accomplish other ends (see the years-later deathbed confession of John Erlichman that the Nixon White House's drug war was a way to provide a cloak of legitimacy around its attacks on blacks and hippies, MM 9/26/16, click War On Drugs). The common elements: lack of transparency; undisclosed agenda; engineered public perception.

Of all the phenomena upended by the still-unfolding pandemic experience, surely economics would have to appear near the top of the list. Economics has indeed been a Member Monday topic before -- three years ago we discussed the role of capitalism in the context of resource constraints, global interdependence, deepening income disparity, regulatory capture, and a distorted monetary system. Covid-19 has now launched us into an altogether new dimension.

Tomorrow today will be yesterday. What we are facing now is history in the making. Journalists like to point out that news is history's first draft.

Such first drafts, often overloaded with detailed accounts of the then-present, eventually fade as events are put into greater context. It's been that way with all such events, small and large, just as it is now with Covid-19. The 1918 Spanish influenza is remembered mostly in terms of statistics, a few grainy pictures, and a smattering of stories about long-forgotten individuals. One imagines how historians a hundred years hence will likewise remember the events of today.

Look upon this as an opportunity. What this forced quarantine offers each of us is the chance to turn off the background music and see our life movie, this time without the score: no more orchestral accompaniments to color our emotions; no more special effects to distract us from our essence.

There are no right answers. There are no judgments aside from those that bubble up from within. The opportunity lies with the elimination, or at least the dialing down, of the usual societal constructs. Such liberation. How we respond to this societal break may tell us something about who we are, even who we have always been. It's just us and the mirror.