Saturday, September 20, 2008

Wall Street Blues, Part II

Well, after the shattering of the protective shield around the masters of the universe this week, you knew it was coming: the backbone of the class that have benefited the most from the current administration are having to, gasp, economize.

Oh, the horror!

You have to wonder about people who’ll go on the record as saying they have to tell their youngest daughter that she won’t get the royal cosmetic surgery treatment her three older sisters did because times are hard. Or swapping out caviar & truffles for Waygu beef for a father’s party—not that they’re saving anything, but it looks less extravagant. Do they even listen to what they’re saying?

So I guess those who feed off the conspicuous consumption crowd are also going to be facing lean times. Except, apparently, the high-class equivalent of the pawn shop—those who buy & sell estate jewelry.

This just makes me want to vomit. That woman who was bitching about paying a nanny $1250 per week being too much & looking for a bargain basement substitute—no doubt with a masters in early childhood development? She’s not facing hard times—the woman who’s going to get paid $750 per week to look after her kids (plural), do light housework & be available all the hours God sends is facing hard times. Her choices aren’t whether to buy at Bergdorf’s or Barney’s; they’re whether she should buy food or pay the Con Ed bill.

I swear—we’ve all fallen down the rabbit hole.

Friday, September 19, 2008

For your viewing pleasure...

For some reason I can’t now recall I recently took it into my head that I wanted to see Triumph des Willens (Triumph of the Will), Leni Riefenstahl’s documentary record of the Nazi party’s annual conference of 1934. This is a film that, like the Constitution, a lot of people talk about without having actually, you know, ingested it.

I’d heard about it for a number of years, but never had a chance to see it—it’s not the sort of thing that would appear on a double bill at the art houses with Double Indemnity, Sons of the Desert or Singing in the Rain. But having the inclination, I found a video of it through the King County Public Library and sat down to watch.

It’s a remarkable piece. And I’m talking mostly about the cinematography and filmic philosophy—the way it was conceived, shot, edited and presented—a far, far cry from what we see down at the multiplex. But also about what was deemed appealing to the public at the time. Here are some thoughts:

First, you have to actually watch it. The first 20-some minutes are nothing but images and music. There is a prologue—written, not spoken—to set the stage, and then the aerial approach of Hitler over the medieval city of Nürnberg and lengthy shots of party members preparing for the highly choreographed activities.

This is followed by excerpts from speeches by various alpha Nazis—Hess, Schirach, Goebbels, Goering, Hitler and others—interspersed with rallies of Hitlerjugend, military reviews, torchlight parades, and masses of uniformed laborers of various stripes.

But no voice-overs telling you what’s happening or how you should think about it. In fact, the only spoken words are the various speeches. So you have to concentrate. (If you understand German you could possibly go fix a salad or something, but if you did you’d miss the physical appearance of these guys as they spoke.)

Second, it’s black and white. Yes, most films were in the 30s, but Riefenstahl was commissioned specifically by Hitler and she had access to all the resources in the Reich. If she’d wanted color, she could have got it—and those red-black-and-white Nazi flags look stunning against seas of brown shirts.

But again, black and white means you have to pay attention.

Third—no smash cuts every 3.7 seconds. You’re actually able to follow an image and process it. The camera stays on speakers without “commenting” by moving around.

Fourth, there’s the music—what a blessed respite from the docus you see produced today that not only add sound effects (marching feet, airplane motors, crowds murmuring), which actually detract from the authenticity of what you’re seeing (kind of like the mirror image of “reality TV”) but also splice in completely extraneous canned music loops to “fill” the space not taken by the fake sounds. Riefenstahl chooses this as carefully as she does her camera angles: opening segment is Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, which segues into the Horst Wessel Lied. The film closes out with Götterdämerung fading into Horst Wessel.

One Nazi standard into another. Worth more than all the irrelevant incidental music in all the stock houses in the world.

Then there’s how the main characters are presented. No attempt whatsoever to make them look prettier than they are. Frankly, Hitler’s inner circle was remarkably ugly—Goebbels, Himmler, Hess, Bormann, Streicher, Goering… There’s not a one of them you’d want to take to a Manhattan after-party. The only looker in the bunch was Reinhard Heydrich. But there’s clearly no makeup on them. Plus they’re obviously and unashamedly sweating.

Now, this is fascinating given the recent trend in US politics: from the Nixon-Kennedy debates we’ve been on a downward trend where how you look counts more than what you stand for. Try to imagine anyone without even features, good hair, a svelte figure and designer clothes getting elected to national office. Not going to happen.

Can you say Ralph Nader?

(I imagine that was a good deal of Sarah Palin’s appeal to the RNC handlers who picked her as John McCain’s running mate. If she’d held the same views and looked like a youthful Bella Abzug, she’d never have made the short list.)

BTW—you don’t see this crowd together again on film until they’re in the dock at the Nuremburg war crimes trials in 1946. Minus, of course, those who’d committed suicide.

There are reviews and demonstrations and mass protestations of hope, belief and loyalty. When I say “mass” I mean an entire stadium of serried ranks of organizations swearing undying fealty to the party. Of particular interest were the labor brigades—uniformed and wielding their shovels like rifles.

(Really—it’s clear that you weren’t much of a Nazi unless you had a uniform.)

I also was fascinated by the cavalry demonstration: soldiers in the feldgrau uniforms and that distinctive helmet wheeling and cantering—with modern rifles with fixed bayonets. There was also horse artillery. Remember—this was only 16 months after the Nazis took over; they hadn’t started mass producing their Panzers yet.

Although you’d see a lot of these horses in service in the retreat from the Soviet Union and the defense of Western Europe, 1943-45.

The closing images are of the “blood flag” ritual—Hitler consecrating new party banners by touching them with the flag allegedly splattered with the blood of the fallen from the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch attempt. There’s also an interesting reconciliation with the SA—referring to the Night of the Long Knives that took place less than three months before, when Hitler had his old street fighting buddies eradicated.

Finally, there’s an endless parade of troops through the old heart of the city, and Hitler proclaims “All loyal Germans will become National Socialists. Only the best National Socialists are party comrades!”

Presumably all the cheering masses considered themselves as part of that elite.

Now, Triumph is a highly controversial film precisely because of its subject matter—and because it’s so good at presenting it. I’m not going to comment on that except to say that anyone outside of Germany who saw this film should not have been surprised in the least at the train of events that led to September 1939. Starting with the prologue, it was patently clear that the Nazi regime was all about doing a better job of putting Germany on top of the world than the Kaiser had. Viz.:

“On September 5, 1934, ... 20 years after the outbreak of the World War ... 16 years after the beginning of our suffering ... 19 months after the beginning of the German renaissance ... Adolf Hitler flew again to Nuremberg to review the columns of his faithful followers…”

The “beginning of our suffering” refers to the Versailles Treaty, and the “renaissance” is Hitler’s accession to power.

There’s also a clear indication of Goebbels’s philosophy of propaganda: in order to make it work, you have to tell a big lie, and you have to keep on repeating it, in the face of any questions you’re asked. If you try little lies, you're sunk; and if you waver at all, you’re gone. Him talking about the free and open press in Nazi Germany alone is worth the price of admission.

There’s a historic touch to the finale that I find telling: that parade passes the Frauenkirche square, which is beautiful and quaint in a Grimm Brothers kind of way. Every year the great Christkindlmarkt is held right there—stalls of traditional (and, these days, Chinese) Christmas decorations, goodies and gifts, bratwurst and glüwein to keep the damp cold outside of you. These markets have been there for hundreds of years.

That area used to be the Jewish ghetto of Nuremberg. Until the good citizens petitioned the Holy Roman Emperor (don’t get me started on that one) Karl IV to cleanse their fair city of the aliens—who were also business competitors. The emperor graciously granted the town a pogrom; the Jews were gathered into the synagogue, which was set afire.

The beautiful Frauenkirche was built on that spot and has anchored city rites from holiday fairs to Nazi rallies ever since.

And you should definitely watch Triumph of the Will.


Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Financial security

Okay, they are really starting to annoy me.

You’ve no doubt heard the latest news from that bastion of capitalism. Six months after rescuing Bear Stearns & a week after bailing out Freddie & Fannie, the Feds have declined to save the bespoke-trouser clad asses of Lehman Brothers. (Since beginning this post, the government has stepped in to “loan” billions to AIG; I’ll rant about that below.)

& Wall Street is shocked & outraged.

The two investment banks & F&F have been washed ashore along with other rotted detritus of the Cheney-Bush economic maelstrom of greed. Specifically, they “overextended” on totally crap loans in the sub-prime débâcle. The masters of the universe have been cleaning out their desks, auctioning their coffee cups & mouse pads on eBay (opening bid: $130—after all, they’re trained to be rapacious & you don’t lose that just because they took away your keycard) & shuffling off to enjoy the last of their $80 hand-made cigars & $570 bottles of Opus One while they contemplate where they’re going to take their top-tier MBAs next & make more outrageous salaries & even more obscene bonuses.

Seeing as to how their options are kind of diminishing.

So here’s what I don’t get, being a liberal arts major, so I’m hoping some of you MBAs out there can 'splain it to me:

Investment bankers, hedge fund managers, insurance giants—in the past couple of decades they’ve bought pols by the gross for the specific purpose of not only refraining from regulating their industry, but of enacting legislation that will allow them to rape & pillage unencumbered by such pesky things like class action law suits, anti-trust actions, etc. The whole idea was that the “system” would only work optimally if free-market forces were allowed to operate freely & the government kept its ignorant nose out of things.

Even after the S&L crisis in the Reagonomics 80s & the telecoms/Enron meltdown at the beginning of this century—the “investment” industry was still able to perpetuate this sub-prime mortgage scam with the happy encouragement of the Bush administration, who touted the bubble as a positive outcome of their economic philosophy.

But now, after their genetically engineered capons have come home to roost in the multi-million-dollar Eastside co-ops, these guys have been crying & whining to the Feds that they’ve spent all their allowance (& all their investors’ allowances) & they need more money so they can stay in business & lose more money.

So how does it work that the government is anti-capitalist & economically blinkered if they try to regulate some aspects of business life, but are anti-capitalist & economically blinkered if they don’t bail these bozos out?

These dire financial straits are completely self-inflicted. & at the same time they were handing out/backing mortgage loans to people who were patently incapable of making the payments on properties they couldn’t afford if they pooled assets with a village, these financial vandals were taking home “performance bonuses” that ranged from excessive to obscene.

Why is their stupidity suddenly my taxpaying problem? If the positions were reversed—if I’d invested in property or stocks & then couldn’t make good on the payments, they’d toss me out in the street & seize my assets in a New York instant. & they wouldn’t return my calls if I tried to explain that I was just a little short this month & couldn’t they just trust me…

BTW—the Feds wouldn’t help me out, either. & I could be had for considerably less than the squillions we’re talking about.

There is not one single communication from anyone associated with investing, from emails to annual reports, that doesn’t carry the disclaimer that you “invest at your own risk”. Why does this stricture not apply to the greedy schmucks who send the missives?

& if they’re seriously worried about their futures, why don’t they

There’s a line in my favorite movie about investment, Trading Places, where Eddie Murphy tells Ralph Bellamy & Don Ameche (playing Randolph & Mortimer Duke, characters who would fit in very well in the current scenario) that basically their brokerage firm is a bookie operation.

Well, no self-respecting bookie would try to weasel out of paying off bets, regardless of the immediate cost—primarily because there’s rather a lot more at stake than mere money in losing your credibility in that line of work. Also because they apparently have to be better judges of what’s a bad risk than major investment firms.

& you certainly wouldn’t hear a bookmaker whimper about how no one will help him. Who’d bet with a bellyaching bookie?

So, when the Feds told potential buyers of Lehman Brothers that they’d have to invest without the security of the US Government to make good any bad choices, it was just bizarre to hear all the wailing & bleating from the Wall Street community. Their about-face was faster than the 500-point drop on the Dow.

I’m glad that the Feds held firm with Lehman (& with Merrill Lynch, who had to find a buyer on their own). But this AIG thing is just more salt in the wound. I understand that they’re megalithic, with tentacles in every kind of business involving money but no actual tangible products, & that if they went belly-up, the current recession we’re in as a result of the sub-prime implosion, the endless war investment, the oil crisis & every other aspect of Cheney-economics—the company’s woes would metastasize & take down a lot more innocent people than have already lost too much.

(18 September addendum: check out this actual AIG commercial.)

But still—just as you know you have to give some tough love to your kids when they spend their allowance & ask for an advance, just this once—“loaning” $80B to AIG is a bad policy. They & all their ilk have no incentive to do anything different in the future, & we’ll all end up bailing them out of the next crack-brained get-rich-quick scheme they cook up & sell to the American people.

One last question: how is it that we aren't rioting in the streets over this?