The Case For Quote-Choice-Unquote

Barack Obama's core proposals on health insurance, trade policy and tax credits all seek to reduce an array of economic risks. John McCain's ideas on health, education and the tax code tilt toward "choice," or letting individuals make judgments about economic risk-taking. Most of the time, moral hazard is simply academic. Not after this week. Our presidential candidates should have a talk about it.

Neocomrade D. Henniger, ideoslave to Rupert Baron Murdoch, columnist in the Wall Street Jingo, does not speak up very loud on behalf of the Big Management Party’s Commanderissimo. What kind of a ringing endorsement is "tilts towards quote-choice-unquote," for Pete’s sake? Indeed, is not "quote-choice-unquote" primarily a technical expression of the Moral Majority Fœtus Cult, only very tenuously related to "economic risk-taking"? Inside the MMFC perimeter, ‘choice’ has somehow become the slogan of unspeakable l*b*r*l fiends and Demoncrats, which is why it requires to be shudder-quoted by the Wise and the Virtuous, the Friends of Al Hamilton™.

Cap’n M’Cain is definitely not in the late General Hamilton’s class, tiltwise, although perhaps one should examine the possibility that he specialises in a more naval sort of risk, something like the Risikostrategie of Admiral von Tirpitz? That Gothic monstrosity is even more mysterious than the risque moral that D. Henniger goes on about at length. The learned Wikipædiatricians start off Der Name ‘Risiko’ zur Bezeichnung des tirpitzschen Konzepts ist in doppelter Weise zu verstehen -- then and it is all uphill from there. However, it does appear that the Carl von Clausewitz of the briny deep intended to push the burden of quote-choice-unquote onto the imperial Brits and have as little as possible to do with it himself.

One spoofs Neocomrade D. Henniger’s organ as the Wall Street Jingo for a reason, naturally, for the same reason that leads one to refer to a certain barbers’ college at Allston MA as "the Harvard Victory School." Imperial Big Management comes out from under General Hamilton’s greatcoat quite as much as out of the vest pocket of Hamilton, Esq., attorney at law. Moreover, Al's current set of Friends have, in the last degeneration, decided to break with the legal profession, which leaves them all the more to be analysed in terms of the violence profession. [1]

At the broadest and bullshittiest level, is not the violence profession the spiritual home for mateurs of Risiko? At the narrowest and most journalistic level, before the Harvard Victory School MBA’s recently sabotaged the Greater Texan economy, they spent seven years Kiddie Krusadin’ all over the map with approximately the same degree of Big Managerial skill and success. [2] Their special qualities get far more attention, and get it far quicker, when Big Management victimises holy Homelanders rather than Lesser Breeds Without, but the qualities are much the same.

One risk Neocomrade D. Henniger runs personally is that customers of the WSJ might reflect that he is for, not against, the great Princeton-Harvard-Goldman-Sachs Bailout Bill. His neocomrades at the palaces of the former investment bankin’ are certainly not to be abandoned to the consequences of their quote-choice-unquote. Quelle idée!. Perhaps that is the tiltin’ part, though -- the Wise and Virtuous, the Friends of Al Hamilton, do not apply rules witlessly and mechanically, they weigh as well as count. [3] (Hath not Plato explained these things in the Politicus?)

Though not exactly a risk, it is decidedly an inconvenience for the neocomrade’s Big Managerial polemic that nobody can detect a dime’s worth of difference between Senatorino B. Hussein Obáma and Commanderissimo J. Sidney McCain as regards the PHGSB scheme itself. BHO may not ‘tilt’ often enough to suit the Baní Murdoch, or he may not ‘tilt’ in exactly the Murdoch community direction, or he may not ‘tilt’ instantly when instructed to by wise and virtuous Friends of Al Hamilton, but it would be absurd to claim BHO does not know the tilting trick at all.

The consequences for rhetoric and polemic are grave, should they be noticed. The neocomrade makes a great pother about "Now, with big banks dropping like flies and Wall Street vaporizing amid a mortgage meltdown" &c. &c. -- but it is all irrelevant to his own immediate marketin’ project! To grasp why the Commanderissimo of AEI and GOP and EiB is a far sounder choice, the Jingo customer has to turn her back on all that and look at either (1) "health, education and the tax code" or (2) "health insurance, trade policy and tax credits." [4] As far as the substance of this scribble goes, it could have been written a month ago. If D. Henniger cares about his literary glory, I suppose he would defend this procedure by pointin’ out that the phrase "moral risk" has only become trendy thanks to the Goldman-Sachs Scandal of September 2008. In rebuttal, let the prosecution whether "moral risk" is really, in fact, all that trendy as of Thursday morning 2 October.

[E]very corner bar and hair salon is filled with experts on the perils of moral hazard. Everyone gets it: [c]ut risk down to next to nothing and some people do crazy things.

Like a good deal of Big Management Party agitprop, that claim is sufficiently at odds with experience and reality that the phrase "lying through their teeth" comes to mind. Yet there is no need to question the subjective sincerity of Neocomrade D. Henniger, it suffices to assume that he very rarely frequents corner bars and hair salons and feels free to work out what goes on in such trailer-trash dives à priori. Furthermore, either the neocomrade's spinsterly technique is on display, or else what he knows à priori coincides marvelously with what Big Management would like to think Televisionland and the electorate think. What the HVS MBA's would like to MAKE Televisionland and the electorate think, even. [5]

As spinster, DH overshoots the mark, however. If EVERYBODY craved a decently stimulatin’ level of risk in her life generally and in her finances specifically, Sen. Obáma's standing in the opinion polls would be utterly unaccountable. As would J. Sidney’s support for the bailout plan, for that matter. [6] Alas, peccatum originale is still with us, even in the holy Homeland; quite a number of folks remain so craven and unspiritual as to prefer safety to (joy and) sorrow.

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Most of the time, moral hazard is simply academic. Not after this week. Our presidential candidates should have a talk about it.

Much more fun, and nearer at hand, would be for the vice-presidential candidates to talk about it. If Governess S. L. Heath-Bailout (sp?) of Alaska can talk sense about "moral hazard," I might revisit my own à priori notions about those corner bars and hair salons. Few technically possible things are less likely than that one, though.


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[1] Neocomradely presentations of the typical lawyer of 2008, slanders such as the Guru of Rio Limbaugh is accustomed to bark and bellow, make them all out ambulance chasers, more or less. If that were the case, the legal profession should be eminently of concern for D. Henniger’s brand of Risikotheorie -- they "all seek to reduce an array of economic risks." That is to say, they are all spiritual Demoncrats, so of course the Friends of Al had to break with them. And furthermore, B. Hussein Obáma personally used to be editor of the Harvard Law Review, a fact which shrieks for itself!


[2] That generalization is a bit unjust to Neocomrade Dr. Gen. D. H. Petræus of Princeton and West Point, admittedly. Still, as this keyboard has many times insisted, the Petræo-McNamaran COIN is at best only remedial, it has only restored us to where we thought we were before the Crawford cowpokers came along and started makin’ their dumb HVS MBA mistakes. Furthermore, the braniac himself would insist that COIN is different from mainstream violence professionalism, and so it is. One big difference is that the Risiko element is far less prominent. The exsuRGency experts are almost a special species of ambulance chasers, as it were: they "all seek to reduce an array of [security] risks."

But not to go overboard, please! Senator Biden was mostly just funning when he claimed that all ‘our’ quote-success-unquote and quote-victory-unquote in the former ‘Iráq has been due to Petræus of Princeton havin’ unconsciously adopted the Obáma Plan.


[3] A case could also be made for "They weigh quite as badly as they count."


[4] Evidently BHO has nothing of interest (for D. Henniger) to say about schooling, nor JSM about Absolute Free Trade at the international level. The verbal parallelism invites curiosity, but if it means anything, this keyboard cannot work out what.


[5] D. Henninger may conceivably be engaged in sorcery, operatin’ on the theory that if he repeats "All Americans endorse the Gospel of Moral Hazard" often enough and vigorously enough, reality will finally accomodate him, if only in order to shut him up and get some sleep. I would not bet on that proposition myself, however.


[6] Even Lord Mammon’s whizkids could be represented as risk averse, if one (very inadvisedly) takes them at their word about what that $600 trillion of ‘derivatives’ are all about. These scraps of paper are alleged to be a form of insurance. On that theory, they would very unrespectably "seek to reduce an array of economic risks."

In reality, of course, ‘derivatives’ are a matter of Enrichons-nous! and Fâites vos jeux!