The Boys of Summer
A race is a race is a race. So while we await the IAAF World Athletics Championships in Beijing later this month, we were left with last night’s opening round of the Republican party presidential debates in Cleveland as a teaser. Turned out to be the best reality TV show Donald Trump has ever starred in. Call it Presidential Apprentice, high dungeon life imitating art. But other than ejaculate ratings for FOX, what was really gained beyond the entertainment value? Then again, let’s take what we can get.
As the Federal Reserve continues to offset the true recalibration of the American economy in the wake of the Great Recession — it ended its triple-down quantitative easing late last year, but still maintains an easy-money stance by keeping short-term interest rates at zero — what is needed in this election year is an impartial arbiter in the tension between capital and labor, one that understands the need for a moderating equipoise in that tension.
Perception is all, and the perception is the rich get, the rest don’t; bit of Bruce Hornsby’s ‘That’s Just the Way It Is’ at work. Until that organizing principle has been processed it will continue to run its course. But how long can the nation afford to see the health of one side come at the expense of the other? It simply isn’t in anyone’s long term best interest to disenfranchise millions so that millionaires can see their own stakes grow. Yet the immediacy of today means that there is no time for tomorrow.
