Years of Poems and Spirits

Tony Snow, the former White House press secretary, was dead. From what I know about him, I can only say, “Good Riddance!” The best 4th of July gift I’ve received so far was the passing of Jesse Helms.  But if Helms was a “bull dog” who still played by the rule, Snow–and others like him–are barking “chiwawas” who try to subvert the rules (see the NYKr article on Addington). Also on the list are Dick Cheney, David Addington and John Yu. I don’t wish them ill but only say this: there are many holidays to come and I can always use some gifts.

Like Joseph Goebbles and 姚文元, they are called “henchmen” by historians or the “Mob” by Arendt. They are so despicable because they serve nothing but power. To them, there is no morality or ethics, no principle or faith. The only thing that consumes their talent and career is the job of defending, justifying, and cheering the powerful and the abusive.

In Chinese, there is a term for them, “刀笔之吏”, or bureaucrats with a knife and a pen. At first, I thought it was a term comparing the power of words. After some digging, it is not. But the meaning stays true.

Here is what I copied from somewhere: 古人用简牍时，如有错讹，即以刀削之，故古时的读书人及政客常常随身带着刀和笔，以便随时修改错误。

(吴曰)《史记》中多有引用，如“萧相国世家”。在太史公写得最生动的“李广列传”中有如下一段：

大将军青亦阴受上诫，以为李广老，数奇，毋令当单于，恐不得所欲。而是时公孙敖新失侯，为中将军从大将军，大将军亦欲使敖与俱当单于，故徙前将军广。广时知之，固自辞于大将军。大将军不听，令长史封书与广之莫府。曰：“急诣部，如书。”广不谢大将军而起行，意甚愠怒而就部，。。。军亡导，或失道，后大将军。大将军与单于接战，单于遁走，弗能得而还。。。青欲上书报天子军曲折。广未对，大将军使长史急责广之幕府对簿。广曰：“诸校尉无罪，乃我自失道。吾今自上簿。”

至莫府，广谓其麾下曰：“广结发与匈奴大小七十余战，今幸从大将军出接单于兵，而大将军又徙广部行回远，而又迷失道，岂非天哉！且广年六十余矣，终不能复对刀笔之吏。”遂引刀自刭。广军士大夫一军皆哭。百姓闻之，知与不知，无老壮，皆为垂涕。

（highlighted之处疑是太史公“小说之笔”）想来太史公虽受酷刑而不辍笔，非曲于淫威或偷生之念，而是因为有“重于泰山”的使命感。同是文墨客的刀笔之吏，却生来有为虎作伥的奴性。李广明明死于卫青和武帝的合谋，却自言不堪“刀笔之吏”，太史公对于刀笔之吏和暴君的关系刻画实在深刻！

Just read the news on WSJ: “Federal Reserve Bank of New York Pushes For Tougher Rules on Credit Derivatives”

It looks like a quiet movement is undergoing to reverse the course Greenspan set for the Fed.

WSJ appears to be a more critical voice than the Economist in evaluating the Greenspan legacy. Not long ago, it published several pieces (e.g. “His Legacy Tarnished, Greenspan Goes on Defensive“) highlighting the downside of the Greenspan legacy: too lenient on opportunistic investors and too loose on market regulation.

Therefore, it is little wonder WSJ put Timothy Geithner’s recent speech at the top of its web page today. This is yet another evidence that Greenspan’s successors are seeing the danger in his policies and are trying to reverse the course. People may ridicule Bernanke for his seemingly wobbling response to the credit crunch earlier, particularly when he led the three quarter cut (?) after a sharp market drop. Some even wondered whether he was duped into a rookie mistake. However, the continued market slide and the weakness in the economy vindicated his foresight. Now he’s done with the cuts but still pumping heavily into repo market–seems to be another sign of determined monetary discipline.

Geithner’s efforts are equally remarkable. Those who say that financial market should remain the ultimate free market are either fools or pirates (or both). Those reckless loan or swap underwriters are no different from the lawless polluters or highway litterers. It is just as ridiculous to suggest that ordinary investors (or even conventional credit agencies) are equally responsible for the credit mess as calling regular consumers environmental polluters or labor abusers because they bought goods manufactured by wrong doers.

However, what strikes me the most is the mediocre background of the second most important central banker in the U.S., Timthoy Geithner. Something tells me this guy is a man to watch. His academic training and personal achievement don’t appear to warrant the position he is in (the President of NY Fed), and I wasn’t able to figure out his family connections either. Geithner could be a Jewish name but nothing in his personal connections suggest an outright Jewish background: his sibilings all have biblical names (David, Sarah) but David married a Catholic, it seems. He himself went to Dartmouth and Johns Hopkins. His mentors include Summers and Rubin. But if one is to survive to be the Prince of Banking, it is hard to imagine he could do without a Jewish mentor. His father, Peter, now sits on a Harvard philanthropy fund board and others (including Harvard-Yenching and earlier, the Ford Foundation) but the trail goes cold beyond that.

So who is this guy? Only 46 years old with no economics or finance training or background but presides the New York Federal Reserve. A political appointee but is well connected to Wall Street. According to a recent posting on Muckety, “If there were ever a career civil servant’s Hall of Fame, Timothy F. Geithner would no doubt be an inductee”. I certainly second that sentiment.

Anyway, two more things found about him:
An old speech on the need to regulate financial market.
A profile written by a financial reporter.

It was always a pleasure meeting like-minded folks. This is true for hillbilly racists, white working class laborers, liberation theologists, too-poor-to-own-property-but-enough-to-afford-a-latte-a-day liberal activists. So is it true for immigrant intellectuals from the Orient.

ZDS is a professor in law school. We are of the same age but took quite different routes to the same spatial and temporal location as we did this afternoon… that is too much. We met in his office about my coal mine paper.

But the conversation diverged soon after. I am pleasantly surprised that he’s a fan of Foucault and Said too (more so of the latter and P Bourdieu). His has a insightful view concerning the two: Foucault is too concerned with domination and permeation. Said, however, expands Foucault’s thesis and dares to contest the symbols that were created by the powerful.

Our different views of recent events: Tibet, 08 election and the Western liberal democracy, echo our choice of favorite between Said and Foucault. I suspect his training in law and legislation breeds in him a more optimistic outlook for the outcast surviving in democracy. After all, his job is to protect the right to be different.

I am much more pessimistic about where the liberal legacy in the U.S. is heading to. Now think of it, I may have been “shocked and awed” by the collective reactions following 9.11. But the force of conformity is unmistakeable.

Will an Obama presidency change the paranoia, the hysteria of fear and the intolerance of dissent? To me, that is the hypocracy and the weakness of popular democracy, for it creates a paradox that is unsolvable: even if Obama’s election will change the political ethos of our time, he cannot win unless sufficient majority are ready for the change. If, just for the argument’s sake, the majority is wrong, irrational or stupid, what’s in liberal democracy that can bring a change to this sorry reality?