PAUL B. FARRELL

15 Christmas gifts, 'ghosts' haunting Scrooge

[This is the last Christmas before the Great Depression 2]

LOS ANGELES (MarketWatch) -- "Christmas, bah humbug!" grumbles ol' Scrooge. "You're a year older, not a minute richer. Gettin' harder to make an honest buck off Main Street in this credit crisis. That Cratchit, his sick kid and relatives are begging all over 'Merica, just want my money. If they'd stopped asking for bailouts and just trust free markets, my profits would soar, then trickle down into their greedy pockets. But no: They're slacking, growth's down, production sinking, dividends gone, market's crashing, bah humbug, a pox on ..."

Suddenly, a clammy darkness, heavy fog, chains rattle, a deep, slow voice:

"Ebenezer, ol' friend, before it's too late, repent," says his former partner in the Scrooge Marley Global Hedge Fund. Jacob Marley died seven Christmas Eves ago while washing down two dozen of his favorite imported gold-sprinkled truffles with a thousand-euro bottle of 1867 Chateau de Pompideux. Scrooge shivers, his heart racing with fear.

"This night three Spirits will haunt you, the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future. Heed their lessons or disappear without a bailout ..."

Out of the dank musty shadows, the Ghost of Christmas Past emerges, draped in tattered rags, a lost soul bearing the first gifts, warnings, wake-up calls.

Ghosts of Christmas Past

These expose the dangerous ideological spirits of Nobel economist Milton Friedman, patron saint of Reaganomics and Bushonomics, of free-market deregulation and privatization:

"The Ascent of Money: Financial History of the World," Niall Ferguson. Bubble/bust cycles will never die: "This is no new insight. In the 400 years since the first shares were bought and sold on the Amsterdam Beurs, there has been a long succession of financial bubbles. Time and again, asset prices have soared to unsustainable heights only to crash downward again." It is happening again, now.
"Panic: The Story of Modern Financial Insanity," Michael Lewis. While Ferguson starts with the dawn of money history, Lewis focuses on bubble cycles beginning with the 1987 Crash. The culprit: Wall Street's own IPOs. That transferred "the ultimate financial risk from themselves to their shareholders" as "the psychological foundations of Wall Street shifted from trust to blind faith."
"The $3 Trillion War: True Costs of Iraq Conflict," Stiglitz and Bilmes. Original estimates: $50 billion funded by oil revenues. Now add veterans' lifetime health benefits, equipment placement, homeland security increases, interest on federal debt and it's a $3 trillion war! In "Wealth and Democracy," Kevin Phillips warns: "Most great nations, at the peak of their economic power, become arrogant and wage great world wars at great cost, wasting vast resources, taking on huge debt, and ultimately burning themselves out." We too ignore history's lessons.
"Shock Doctrine, The Rise of Disaster Capitalism," Naomi Klein. Friedman's been the oracle of conservatism since his 1962 "Capitalism and Freedom." His core principle: "Only a crisis produces real change." Klein warns that those who believe in this "shock doctrine are convinced that only a great rupture -- a flood, a war, a terrorist attack -- can create the vast, clean canvasses they crave ... to begin remaking the world."
"Principles of Economics," N. Gregory Mankiw. Mankiw was chairman of George W. Bush's Council of Economic Advisors, now teaching at Harvard. He's the chief propagandist of the same ideology that drove Reaganomics. His textbooks are still being used to indoctrinate college students with an ideology discredited by the current meltdown and bailouts. His core assumption -- that as consumers, workers and investors, humans act rationally -- has also been discredited, by Nobel economist Daniel Kahneman, a psychologist.

Ghosts of Christmas Present

New Age gurus tell us to live in the "eternal now." Unfortunately, that doesn't leave much to cheer about. "Now" is both depressing and on the edge of economic depression.

"Return of Depression Economics & Meltdown of 2008," Paul Krugman. Even if we dodge the bullet, if we've hit bottom, if we're shifting into a bullish cycle, "once the economy is on the road to recovery, the wheeler-dealers will be making easy money again, and will lobby hard against anyone who tries to limit their bottom lines." America must reform its "out-of-control financial system, so as to prevent or at least limit the next crisis." Without reform we'll just set up another, bigger meltdown: "The time to start preventing the next crisis is now."
"I.O.U.S.A., One Nation, Under Stress, In Debt," Wiggin, et al. America is not just mired in endless deficits, our collective psyche is trapped in a debtor's mindset, satisfying an addiction to instant gratification through rampant consumerism. For years, co-author David Walker, former U.S. comptroller general, has been warning of "financial armageddon" created by America's "biggest deficit ... the lack of leadership: politicians continue to duck hard choices" and fail to tackle our growing $60 trillion to $75 trillion of Social Security and Medicare debt.
"Irrational Exuberance," Robert Shiller. "Bubbles are primarily social phenomena. Until we understand and address the psychology that fuels them, they're going to keep forming. We recently lived through two epidemics of excessive financial optimism" warns Shiller. "I believe we are close to a third episode, only this one will spread irrational pessimism and distrust -- not exuberance."
"Bad Money ... the Crisis of American Capitalism," Kevin Phillips. Financial historian Phillips exposes Washington's "number's racket." But that raises a bigger question: Why do we let ourselves be scammed by our own government? "As inflation and interest rates have been kept artificially suppressed, the United States has been indentured to its volatile financial sector, with its predilection for leverage and risky buccaneering ... The rising cost of pensions, benefits, and interest payments -- all indexed or related to inflation -- could join the cost of financial bailouts to overwhelm the federal budget."
"The Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update," Donella Meadows, et al. By 2050 the world population will skyrocket 50% to 9.3 billion, while Earth's supply of natural resources will decline. Too many people versus too few resources. Oil giants, Saudis, free market ideologues and many of Washington's 42,000 lobbyists deny any problems. Advocates say it may already be too late.

Ghosts of Christmas Future

The future is already here, now. In an earlier column, "The Day After Tomorrow Was Yesterday," I contrasted the message of a disaster movie about a new ice age with a Pentagon study on how global warming meant increasing global wars:

"Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed," J. Diamond. "One of the disturbing facts of history is that so many civilizations collapse. Few people, however, least of all our politicians, realize that a primary cause of the collapse of those societies has been the destruction of the natural resources on which they depend," warns Diamond. "Fewer still appreciate that many of those civilizations share a sharp curve of decline. Indeed, a society's demise may begin only a decade or two after it reaches its peak population, wealth and power."
"The End of the Oil Age," Bloomberg Markets. Bloomberg captures the "Peak Oil" warnings in many books. As one Web site put it: "Worldwide oil production in the year 2030 will be the same as it was in 1980. However, the world's population in 2030 will be both much larger (approximately twice) and much more industrialized (oil-dependent) than it was in 1980. Consequently, worldwide demand for oil will outpace worldwide production of oil by a significant margin. As a result, the price will skyrocket, oil-dependant economies will crumble, and resource wars will explode."
"Hot, Flat & Crowded: We Need a Green Revolution," Tom Friedman. America needs a green revolution not just to create new sources of power but to recapture our status as a global political power. Friedman sees five necessary targets for public policy: New demands for scarce resources, outflow of America's wealth to petro-dictators, an ever widening income and class gap, climate changes now causing 90% of global disasters and a rapid loss of biodiversity.
"Predictably Irrational: Hidden Forces Shape Decisions," Dan Ariely. Neuroeconomics recently disproved Wall Street's "rational investor" hypothesis, while exposing a bigger problem: Not only is the average investor irrational, we are "predictably" irrational. Get it? Wall Street can easily manipulate us to act against our own best interests. Worse yet, we're unaware we're being conned.
"The Black Swan: Impact of the Highly Improbable," Nassim N. Taleb. A "black swan" is an extremely rare, improbable event (like 9/11) that cannot be predicted and is outside our vision, yet has catastrophic impact. Example: the risk exposure of Wall Street bankers and traders to global derivatives. The "shadow banking system" they created finally triggered the global credit crisis.

Marley hopes to jar his old friend Scrooge with these haunting messages from the Ghosts of Christmases Past, Present and Future, warnings that -- if ignored -- may end all future Christmas celebrations. For while the choice is clear, the will to set aside self-interests for the collective good may not come until it is too late.

So as you ponder the fate of your children and theirs, step back. While enjoying your family's holiday celebration, share a little jolly with the Spirits of Scrooge, Marley, Cratchit and Tiny Tim. Pass along this revision with a message of Peace on Earth ... before we pass the point of no return.