Boulevards of Broken Dreams

The conversation of the generation is far from coherent.  Dismantling of the camp-style occupations across North America is inevitable because civic authorities and police have the clout of municipal public safety ordinances and criminal law behind them.  But it has been kicked off with a messy display of unrest in hundreds of communities. 

By accepting all comers, as recommended in the last post, the gene pool of earnest protesters was certain to become diluted by malingerers and mere malcontents. It may have been glib to exhort people to “Just Show Up.”  Confrontational face-offs in city parks, vacant lots and boulevards of broken dreams were sure to occur when these unruly assemblies squared off with officialdom bent on enforcing public health and safety regulations.  But it was called for all the same.

Make no mistake -- the boulevards will be cleared, if not by official edict, by the relentless cycle of the seasons.  The last chance before the freeze to exhibit outrage at rampant greed and runaway free market dogma through outdoor housekeeping is upon us.  Some demonstrators have been better housekeepers than others and the movement is being defined by the habits of a messy few.

Demonstrators are making the most of the opportunity through resistance to the order to decamp.      

But it’s time to practise indoor housekeeping again.  There will be other opportunities to demonstrate.  Income disparity is as certain as death and, yes, taxes.  That’s because of who holds power – and who doesn’t.  

It’s time for the boulevardiers to stand down before things get any uglier.  Violence should never be the hallmark of this movement and that too is inevitable the longer the standoffs prevail.

The importance of the occupy movement is that it marked the moment when the conversation of the generation began in earnest.  In that alone it has accomplished something momentous. 

Ex-PM in Synch With Protesters

Anyone who thinks the Occupy Wall Street movement has no relevance for Canadians may be surprised to see former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney offering his sympathetic take on the protests.  Mulroney understands how Canada's economy is driven by what happens in the U.S.

As prime minister, Mulroney saw first-hand how Canadian fiscal policy is defined by the international money markets,  leading him to champion free trade as a means to achieve global competitiveness.
Small wonder that Mulroney has joined Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney in raising a supportive voice on behalf of the protests. 

Marginal living standards are becoming the great leveller in North America as the middle class is hollowed out after putting all its faith in free markets.  Ironically, while its equal opportunity they want, Americans -- and Canadians to a lesser degree so far -- are finding equality at the bottom of the income spread.

Some commentators dismiss the occupations as copycat displays, preferring to credit the prudence of Canada's chartered banks for sparing us from the fate that has befallen our U.S. neighbours. 

But they only need to look at the soaring debt load in this country to understand how Canadian consumers are poised to share the same fate.             

Occupy the Western World

Occupy Wall Street is still a burgeoning, largely moderate collection of interests

So far the violence-prone anti-global hoardes haven’t taken over.  The odds are that either they will or at least that there will be a clash between the moderates in the movement, who are openly declaring themselves, and the extremists who like to wear black masks.

Nobody with any sense is arguing that capitalism should be dismantled, only that its excesses must be reduced.  Equality of opportunity is the goal, not chaos.

But the longer the movement continues as a formless mass, the greater the likelihood that it will be hijacked by extreme positions, violent or otherwise. 

Its shambolic state has certain advantages:  as long as it is undefined, it can be inclusive.  Until it adopts a manifesto – and by doing so defines the basis for negotiating a new social contract in America – the worst that can be said about its philosophy is that it is meaningless.  But this lack of precision is the very nourishment that allows the movement to grow.  For now, it appears to have sustainable momentum and the spontaneity that can attract new adherents. 

At this point, calls for the mass demonstrations to coalesce around a common theme would only fragment it.  However there is a limit to how long this street theater can remain formless, due to its vulnerability.     

Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney lent momentum to the movement when he gave his endorsement in an interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Carney told Peter Mansbridge that the Occupy Wall Street protests and their ilk, that hit Canadian cities on the weekend, are a “democratic expression of views’’ and “entirely constructive.’’ 

“It makes it more tangible, the challenges that that economy is facing, and it makes it more important to demonstrate success on issues such as financial reform,’’ he said.  Carney’s utterances couldn’t have been more apt.  Nor could they have been more potent since he is about to become the head of the Financial Stability Board, tasked with reforming the international banking system using Canada’s model.    

As moral authority goes, Carney’s utterance was as powerful as Warren Buffet’s assertion this summer that people like him aren’t paying their fair share for public services.  And it is more timely, since the replacement of the FSB’s current chairman takes place next month. 

It’s vital for the momentum of Occupy Wall Street to be sustained right now.  That’s because, like Sisyphus, Carney is having to push a very large bolder up a hill.  Europe’s money managers are slow to respond to demands for a trillion-dollar infusion to shore up the continent’s banking system.  Canadian spokesmen have told the Europeans that action is already overdue and further delay will only make it harder to stabilize the system. 

Carney could use the evidence that there is a growing impatience with the status quo throughout the western world.  This virtual constituency, uncontrollably linked by social media, is becoming a new political reality much larger than national boundaries. 

Due to its common cause – angered and frustrated by being disinherited and futureless -- it is becoming the basis for a new global political reality.  To falter now would remove a powerful force for change just when it is most needed.              

Debate Spills Into the Street

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezYoxIYJjSo

Occupy Wall Street has become the rallying cry for young Americans galvanized by news of an impending "double dip" recession.  Incensed at the erosion of their individual and collective sovereignty in the face of mounting debt loads, demonstrators are flooding onto Main Streets across the U.S. to register their dissent. 

As demonstrators turn their wrath against iconic targets like Wall Street, they don't appear to be in a mood for discussion.  Neither do the police and civil authorities, as hundreds of protesters were arrested over the weekend. 

This confrontation has been brewing for decades as the Prophets of Boom have overheated industrial economies until they are ready to burst.  Cooler heads have failed get decision-makers to heed the warning signs in the face of immediate gratification and unlimited growth.  Now the heat is on them, as common folk demand an historic settling of accounts. 

While expectations that took generations to set are being crushed by the economic news and by the authorities' reflex reactions,  it looks like the discussion has spilled out of the usual forums for democractic debate.  All the momentum is with the protesters, acting spontaneously and fuelled by  Web-induced fervour.  Little likelihood, then, that the demonstrations will cool down quickly.

The situation has all the elements of a sustained confrontation.  Not since the Vietnam War has there been such widespread protest in the U.S.  With no visible leadership and limitless energy, the people on the street must take their inspiration from non-violent figures like Ghandi, Mandela and King.  Political and public safety authorities will need to keep control over the police.  Without some self-control, the vision of America will soon be turned from a dream state into a horror show.             

  

       

The Future: A Dog's Life?

Since the Second World War, merchandisers have devised many new ways to exploit consumers’ ingrained fascination with the future.  From Chrysler’s “Forward Look” in the Fifties to the timeless exhortations of life insurance peddlers, the promise of the future has been a consistent advertising hook.

Now a major pet food producer has launched the first TV commercial designed for dogs.

The Nestlé corporation is using a high-frequency pitch in the commercial to grab the animals’ attention in a 23-second spot for its Beneful brand.  According to Reuters, the concept was being tested in Austria this week featuring a high-pitched sound similar to a dog whistle.  The commercial is said also to embody a squeak like pet toys emit.

Imagine how the focus testing must have gone:

Prompt:  Would those members of the pack who heard the squeak please respond?

Response: Woof

Prompt:  Describe the vision that it brings to mind

Response: (Scratch)    

Prompt:  What do you think of when you hear that sound?

Response:  (Yawn)

Prompt:  Could you in the second row find something else to lick while we do this test?

Response: Muffled bark …

Maybe the test result will convince Nestlé’s marketing team that dogs live in the moment -- not where consumers spend most of their time.     

       

Brinkmanship Blues

While North Americans are staring over the precipice, it’s worth reflecting on how we came to the brink.  The credit collapse that began in 2008 occurred when too many Wall Street whiz kids arrived at the same calculation:  that the smart money was on anyone who could arrange to make a few points by betting on defaults and then selling their bets.  Credit default swaps became the rage just long enough to crash the gasbag of false hopes that sustained an economy held aloft by expectations of perpetual growth.

Meanwhile, most economists were caught up in the same assumptions.  They figured on endless upward curves that held an unbreakable allure for anyone whose own fortunes were based on the same assumptions. Throughout the last half of the 20^th Century in America, the economy was held aloft by vested interest as surely as it was by any superior ability to predict human behaviour. 

The whole house of glass, held up by hubris, is about to come down.  Political leaders who depend on mass support seem unprepared to make the selfless and unpopular  decisions required to set things right.  They have no models to fall back on to pattern their responses.  The New Deal-style solutions that propelled America out of the Depression under Roosevelt have proven to be insufficient under Obama.  It looks like we’re heading back into recession – or worse -- despite all the stimulus of the past two years.

With the global scope of the problem now confronting us, America can’t buy the rest of the Western world out of trouble.  China or India can’t be expected to do so either, 

As David Cameron told the House of Commons in Ottawa yesterday, it’s a “DEBT” problem we’re really facing – not a credit crunch, as it was called the last time.  People can blame the tight-fisted banks for their misfortune – and there is plenty of blame to go around among all those who extended easy credit to people who didn’t know how deep a hole they were digging, or seem to care.

But it comes down to the realization that the same individual choices that created such a mess will have to dig us out of this one.  Debt-driven consumerism held the postwar economy aloft because people who were bombarded with marketing hype believed their bubble would never burst. 

When it comes right down to it, sovereign debt is a collectivity of personal choices.  National sovereignty is little more than the aggregation of individual rights, bounded by historic geographic hopes. 

In the end, the same stiffened resolve that carved new nations out of wilderness homesteads will be the only salvation.  It’s going to be painful but pure and simple to behold.