High Nooners

Peggy Noonan decides that we should be in fact eating cake.

The cake is a lie.

The new economic statistics put growth at a healthy 3.5% for the third quarter. We should be dancing in the streets. No one is, because no one has any faith in these numbers. Waves of money are sloshing through the system, creating a false rising tide that lifts all boats for the moment. The tide will recede. The boats aren't rising, they're bobbing, and will settle. No one believes the bad time is over. No one thinks we're entering a new age of abundance. No one thinks it will ever be the same as before 2008. Economists, statisticians, forecasters and market specialists will argue about what the new numbers mean, but no one believes them, either. Among the things swept away in 2008 was public confidence in the experts. The experts missed the crash. They'll miss the meaning of this moment, too.

This first paragraph may be the most journalistically competent thing I've ever read from Nooners. She's right, and I'd never thought I'd ever say that.

Which makes the massively jarring contrast then with the sheer idiocy of her next paragraph the largest single breakthrough in matter/antimatter physics in decades if scientists can successfully mathematically quantify and reproduce the effect.

The biggest threat to America right now is not government spending, huge deficits, foreign ownership of our debt, world terrorism, two wars, potential epidemics or nuts with nukes. The biggest long-term threat is that people are becoming and have become disheartened, that this condition is reaching critical mass, and that it afflicts most broadly and deeply those members of the American leadership class who are not in Washington, most especially those in business.

Executives are sad, you see. This is America's biggest issue. Sad businesspeople who are sad.

Not greed. Not Too Big To Fail. Not the forced consolidation of the banking industry. Not the housing crash and the commercial real estate crash. Not the massive conflicts of interest surrounding Obama's economic team and the financial behemoths they in some cases still work for. Not a compliant Congress that is lobbied to destroy America's financial self-interests. Not the lack of oversight provided by said Congress, or the corruption those lobbyist help to breed and propagate. Not a shadow banking system of pyramid-scheme derivatives worth trillions that, should it even partially collapse, woudl wipe out the world's GDP. And certainly not an American middle class that has been outsourced, downsized, and productivity-enhanced to within an inch of its life.

No. The real problem is America's CEO's are bummed out.

Are you f'ckin kidding me?

That is the most inane thing I think I have ever honestly read about the recession so far. And the great thing is it gets worse.

I talked this week with a guy from Big Pharma, which we used to call "the drug companies" until we decided that didn't sound menacing enough. He is middle-aged, works in a significant position, and our conversation turned to the last great recession, in the late mid- to late 1970s and early '80s. We talked about how, in terms of numbers, that recession was in some ways worse than the one we're experiencing now. Interest rates were over 20%, and inflation and unemployment hit double digits. America was in what might be called a functional depression, yet there was still a prevalent feeling of hope. Here's why. Everyone thought they could figure a way through. We knew we could find a path through the mess. In 1982 there were people saying, "If only we get rid of this guy Reagan, we can make it better!" Others said, "If we follow Reagan, he'll squeeze out inflation and lower taxes and we'll be America again, we'll be acting like Americans again." Everyone had a path through.

Now they don't. The most sophisticated Americans, experienced in how the country works on the ground, can't figure a way out. Have you heard, "If only we follow Obama and the Democrats, it will all get better"? Or, "If only we follow the Republicans, they'll make it all work again"? I bet you haven't, or not much.

This is historic. This is something new in modern political history, and I'm not sure we're fully noticing it. Americans are starting to think the problems we are facing cannot be solved.

You mean we're screwed? Like I've been saying for over a year now? Have you been paying attention to reality, woman?

You can just imagine her brunch conversation over Eggs Benny with her fellow Washingtonians. The Village just can't figure this one out. The moneyed class fouled up the entire country, and they just can't magically fix this without fundamentally rearranging the power structure of America. That terrifies the crap out of them, frankly. That's what Noonan is really afraid of.

The recession is actually affecting the Village. This doesn't happen to people like her, you see. And the people who should know best, who she has spent her career telling us about as being defined by having the quality of knowing best itself are the same people that completely annihilated the economy.

This apparently is negatively affecting her world view to the point of the Villager equivalent of emo whining. In the Wall Street Journal, no less.

Honestly? Peggy? Shut it. You're still employed, which is a lot better than, oh, about 10 million or so of us.

Steve at NMMNB has an even better takedown of this rampant self-pitying schlock, too.