Free Money

It is self-destructive to complain about “free money.” As when the stars and planets align, and the President, to bestow on us the fishes and loaves of capitalism, what we collectively call a “stimulus package.” Interesting sentiment, “stimulus package;” sounds like the old Geritol remedy for “tired blood.”

It is antisocial to confess open admiration for economic recession. That recession can be a good thing, even a necessary modulation of an economy. This is a mistake rustics are prone to, when they compare the economy to some remembered mechanical monstrosity, like as not the threshing machines of their youth. When the monster, due either to its size, appetite and assorted hungry noises, comes with the precaution, “not to be tampered with.” This rural lesson reinforced on occasion by some odd tinkering as always ended up worse than where it started. In the end the old lesson held, leave monster machines alone, even if it is the economy. It will in the end sort itself out.

Whether economies can or should weather recession without resort to “bread and circuses” has long been debated. The answer being largely dependent on your vantage point, whether you are inside or outside the machine. Whether it’s the whole machine shaking to bits or just some temporary out-of-round the machine itself knows how to correct. Another country sentiment, the bigger the machine the more likely it is a self-conscious being and able to correct by itself.

The core problem of all economies is they aren’t fair. A collapse perpetrated by over-zealous home buyers and lenders all seeking to cash in on a market bubble is the same as that wad of green straw thrown in a wound-up and otherwise happy threshing machine. That wad liable to choke the machine and bust the sheer bolts if those in the saddle don’t come off the throttle pretty darn quick. Precisely what some believe a self-conscious economy is supposed to do, and hopeful at the same time advance the lesson about getting rich in an unrealistic span of time. The question then becomes who should a house-broken economy reward? The citizen wise enough not to gamble on the bubble in the first place, or those in an abject hurry? In a consumer society any reduction in voluntary spending has ramifications, neatly countered by the sense that artificial stimulus delays new adjustment to baseline values. Of which we Americans have a long list – energy, housing, fleet efficiency, health care – to name a few, detailed during times of recession under the label, educational value.

Farmers are well known as naturally occurring troglodytes, at least when it comes to the economy. They have their old faith in the root-cellar economy, so the notion of a stimulus package doesn’t ring true. Neither does the summary expectation for Americans to go out and spend their package. The old rural code is to convert it to gold and bury it somewhere out back. Most of us secretly want to do this once in our lives, bury a cache. Rendered all the more daring in the face of the combined urges of Wall Street and Washington to “just spend it.” Consume something, they say.

For reasons I don’t fully comprehend I am disenchanted with consumption; seems like every other month there is a new computer or cell phone or new movie format on a bigger screen; all of the above with more pixels. I have wondered if recessions are less about economics as they are a disclosure of values. Is the race for more gigabytes in the same league as Imelda Marcos for more shoes? Perhaps the discussion about American health is less about calories than about our appliances. The ever-glittering array of sit-down, recline, transmit, download, on-line, watch-somebody-else-do-something stuff. What is the big dumb uncomprehending machine is trying to tell us by coughing up a recession?

Hence my solution is to let the machine sort itself out, Stimulate Not. Buy gold, borrow a shovel, bury it. Platinum, brass, copper, aluminum will also do but gold is more convenient, and stimulating. At one disbelieving stroke all of us bury the entire 150 billion and see then what the machine does. My guess is it will hiccup, blow a few sparks, then smooth out. And we will still have the gold when they want it back.