~ If it were Ben Franklin, it would have been, “a dollar saved is a dollar lost”.

I try so hard not to be political.  I try not to get embroiled in the affairs of idiots and the idiocy of the economy.  I know that I will live longer if I let the affairs of the world pass without my two bits, four quarters, eight six-pence, or five dollar gold piece worth of thoughts or advice flow from my lips - or the lip of my laptop; which is poetic, but not true (I write on a desktop, on a desktop).

So why should I assume that what Ben Bernanke is saying is true and not just poetic verbiage from a poet wannabe that is instead the Fed Chairman, which wouldn’t mean much if it weren’t for the money; salary and perks, like the perk of causing endless pain to the many millions  under whose “fed watch” pain is dispensed as if it were a health care program gone really (really) bad - which our health care system has already done, but that’s not Ben Bernanke’s watch - but, we’ll save that for another time.

So is Ben living in the past, or in the future, or in a never-never land of perpetual sunshine and temperatures hovering in the seventies and incomes in the high sixties (as in $680,000 per family per year) or how else is it that he can say, “the worst is probably over”.  He must be referring to the worst of it for his buddies and his peer group and his compatriots or co-conspirators or whatever you might want to call the bunch that makes the calls (at the fed) that has killed any hope of interest from savings like saving money in the bank that might make life worth living if one were interested in interest.

There’s no interest in Ben’s world.  A penny saved is just a copper out of circulation.  The copper would be better spent, circulated as a coin, not collected, not saved for a rainy day or sunny day or day of any other kind - it is thrift that is the enemy in Ben’s war of words.  He liked the song, “Hey, Big Spender, spend a little time with me.”  Ben was and is a Wall Street boy, Broadway or no way, bright lights and neon cheese and dinner at the Stork Club or Club 21 or nothing.  Of course the “recession” is over; there never was one in the first place, just read back at what Ben used to say.  He has always been a very slow learner.  And Ben has a lot to learn (yet).

There is (of course) no need to save when money grows on trees, is printed 24/7 with countless presses, is invented in bit streams of electronic dashes by the billions in a billionth of a second.  It’s Ben’s world.  Ben makes all the money, and if not all of it, most of it.  So he don’t need your lousy coppers, your tin pan pennies, your silver certificates, or even your gold bars which you may have scratched and saved to secure a future once known as “the American dream”.  Ben fills his banks with the counterfeit stuff, with federal reserve notes, money made not borrowed - made the old fashioned way, just paper and ink and computer strokes on a keyboard - no real work, certainly no pain - there is no pain in Ben’s world, Stork Club at eight if you please.

Does it really matter.  As you know I don’t believe in money anyway.  If money madness is the fastest way to get rid of it, so be it.  Faster is better.  We are the makers of speed - Carl Sandburg I believe.

But, for those that still believe in money, believe in health care, believe that science will save you from everything that is I have a few questions for you; and for Ben; and for all those who may be teaching economics or have “Bank Vice-President” printed on their business cards.  What does it take to unravel a seven or twelve trillion dollar economy?  Can you do it in just one day?  Can all the wealth that is be evaporated and transformed and transferred into one big vault, one giant super-fast computer guarded by just one man, one board, one planetary reserve of currency that can meet the needs of the millions (even billions) of money-minded folks everywhere just burning to barter a banknote for something better?

Of course the economy really did crash about a year ago.  Tinkle, tinkle - Crystal-nacht; but not just for the Jews - a financial crash for everybody; avoid walking barefoot on the shards, they can cause great pain.  We are living in the economic aftermath, the sitzkreig of the economic war, the phoney war after the war has been declared, but before it really becomes real - before we learn that our lives were long ago changed forever.  Now, like then, the gauntlet has been thrown down, what is past is past; but, we cannot fathom the tomorrow that that gauntlet brings.  We live (like then) in denial; not ready for the future, unreconciled to the past that turned against us, that turned on men as they turned from God.

So, in Ben do we have an answer?  Ben has studied all of this “before” by reading words, but perhaps not with wisdom.  All good Generals always refight the last war; are never ready for the next war, the new war, the “this” war.  Victory at Sea did not culminate in the invasion of Japan; it was one bomb carried on one ship, the (USS) Indianapolis that did the deed - the rest was airpower even if Hiroshima and Nagasaki were technically “ports”.  The Nagasaki bomb was delivered to Tinian by plane; planes of course were faster.  So in our nuclear metaphor what part of Wall Streets “meltdown” do we still not understand?

Most all of the Reichbank notes of the late 1920’s still exist.  When I was young almost everybody it seemed had one.  There was a one, or two, or five followed by many zeros.  You could focus on the ones, or twos, or fives; or you could focus on and count the zeros.  It is the numbers, not the naughts, that I and most others most often remembered.  They were pretty notes as banknotes go.  Gothic lettering, great serifed litigures with a flourish worthy of note, if not to note the note itself.  After thirty years people still saved them (the notes), they were money after all, and money even at its worst is still money (so people said) and so they saved them - saved the notes - still hoping that the money may come back, the value, something so pretty might once again buy something of value.  Hope springs eternal; such is our faith in every central bank.

Why worry?  Alfred E. Newman could not be wrong.  Buy some health care.  Buy a new car.  Buy a Nintendo for the kids.  Buy whatever might make you happy.  You can’t go wrong by spending it, by spending money if that is all you have.  Tangibles are always better.  Nothing is an asset; but sometimes just feeling value is good; touching it; holding something heavier than just paper in your hand (or plastic).
I prefer rock and brick and stone and cement - weight for value, density - do you get my point or is it the science of it all that you still don’t understand?

So Happy Birthday Ben.  It is your birthday is it not?  If not, why not?  Every new day is so glorious, so special, so pregnant with the possibility of learning something.  If this isn’t that special day then let’s pretend that it is.  It could be.  Maybe it should be.

[2009.09.16 / Thursday - Bernanke, Ben]