The Sun Goes Up And The Sun Goes Down

Our generation thinks in dis-jolted and unwilling sound bytes; what will solve the economic problem is our discombobulated short-term memory. The best stimulus package–and the cheapest–is if we throw our TVs into the oceans and go about our daily business, creating, producing, buying and selling, eating and drinking, and falling in love.

“The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose” (Ecclesiastes 1:5). This verse, made famous in many ways more by Ernest Hemingway in The Sun Also Rises than modern-day Biblical readers, is roughly apt for today’s financial crisis.

Ultimately, time–and nothing else–will solve this problem; but at the risk of contradicting this very statement–I must agree with President Obama’s assessment in his February 24th speech to Congress:

“I reject the view that says our problems will simply take care of themselves; that says government has no role in laying the foundation for our common prosperity.”

Here Obama is rightly taking a jab at the Conservative POV which lauds free-market autonomy as the only viable methodology of our long-term economic condition. True conservatism essentially promotes the notion that the government should not interfere with natural economic conditions; that supply and demand and unadulterated competition will, in the end, produce the best and most enduring endeavors of our lifetime.

In some ways, this holds true over the very long-term. But lives are ruined in the process. If free markets are allowed to reign without some sensibility from a deliberately guided force, generations suffer.

Obama continues:

“For history tells a different story. History reminds us that at every moment of economic upheaval and transformation, this nation has responded with bold action and big ideas. In the midst of civil war, we laid railroad tracks from one coast to another that spurred commerce and industry. From the turmoil of the Industrial Revolution came a system of public high schools that prepared our citizens for a new age. In the wake of war and depression, the GI Bill sent a generation to college and created the largest middle class in history. And a twilight struggle for freedom led to a nation of highways, an American on the moon, and an explosion of technology that still shapes our world. In each case, government didn’t supplant private enterprise; it catalyzed private enterprise. It created the conditions for thousands of entrepreneurs and new businesses to adapt and to thrive.”

This, in my opinion, was the most brilliant portion of Obama’s speech in addressing the dangers of unadulterated and unfiltered conservative fiscal thought. When government deregulates business and does not allocate some measure of oversight to banking institutions and mega corporations, it results in jet-toating CEOs asking for handouts and $350 billion dollars being swallowed whole by banks who, first of all, take care of their own.

I’m not toting pure Liberalism either; I prefer a rational analysis and practical approach to all fiscal issues. But in fell swoop, Obama intelligently and formidably promulgates the Liberal notion of positive government interference.

Government as the catalyst of private enterprise. It’s a quaint picture of Optomistic-Liberalism marrying Practical-Conservatism.

What seems like a contradictory account of Government Liberalism converging with Capitalist Business, is actually a formidable explanation of a limited, but powerful, role of the federal government in providing a measure of much needed safety and oversight in the sometimes frail and unpredictable behemoth that is, today, the U.S. and World economy.

The sun will rise … it will set … and return again to the place from which it first arose.