I’ve never heard anyone say, “I need some light reading to take the beach; do you have an extra copy of Banker & Tradesman?”
I’ve never been to a neighborhood barbeque where the fate of the Red Sox was pushed aside, so that we could instead banter about Section 404 of the Dodd-Frank law.
I’ve never seen any of the late-night comedians take on proprietary trading by banks, or the merits of doing away with the tax deduction on home mortgage interest.
No, the intricacies of the financial services and real estate gang are insider baseball. For all the political huffing and puffing, for all the news media coverage, the complexities of the financial markets are invisible to most folks, for better and for worse. This despite the fact that the small-print explanations that come with those bank statements and financial services boilerplate are so easy to understand.
The invisible aspects of it all lead to vast amounts of negotiation in smoke-filled rooms, while the outside world whines about the influence of corporate lobbyists in Washington. But, in truth, who else is going to do the talking about credit-card receivables and the merit of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission? Your mama?
On the other hand, if the Great Unwashed Masses really did understand the details of the regulatory nightmare, they could provide the best kind of leverage that there is in the public sector: Derision, satire and laughter.
While there are vast expanses of Dodd-Frank that are truly comical, none of it is going to be ridden out of town on a wave of public derision or laughter. The comic assault is reserved for a certain variety of public policy, more home-spun and easier for folks to grasp.
Depreciating Assets
Consider the state’s new dietary crackdown in schools, where all manner of non-broccoli junk food and salt and fat and sugar and all that is good in the world is to be banned, or at least severely restricted. It’s more complicated than one might think, but the butcher, baker and candlestick maker could get the drift of what the politicians and bureaucrats were about.
Where the power of derision kicked in was when Section 4, Subchapter 2, Line 15 of the vast food regulatory regime was interpreted to mean that cupcakes, everyone’s favorite little school bake sale fund-raising gimmick, would be prohibited – deemed as dangerous to the school environment as Evil Demon Rum and trigonometry classes.
The laughter and derisive howling was heard across the state, somewhat akin to Paul Revere riding up and down the Mass Pike, screaming the “anti-cupcake police are coming; the anti-cupcake police are coming!”
Succumbing to the gales of laughter and joking arguments that tofu brownies weren’t going to raise much money for the high school band, Gov. Patrick (not a barrel of laughs, himself) issued the emergency decree to every government bureaucrat, near and far: Do away with the cupcake ban. And so, the laughter faded away.
I predict another comedy backlash in Southington, Conn., where the Junior Prom this year was delayed a bit by dress-like-a-slut prom-dress police, who stopped girls at the door and, in some cases, rejected admission to girls showing a bit too much asset – none of which was depreciating.
While the girls stood in the hallway, making themselves look more like Hillary Clinton with the help of some safety pins, the word, I suspect, was going out over the laughter-and-derision network. Next year, things will probably be different at the prom – and I don’t mean the girls will dress more prim and proper.
At a more serious (but just barely) level, U.S. Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren risks being derailed by gales of laughter, as she mumbles and fumbles her way through explaining how and why her dim, distant, very tiny Cherokee Indian heritage led to her affirmative action-driven rise in fame and fortune and financial services regulation and a Harvard professorship.
I personally haven’t laughed at her at all. I think it’s wonderful that we are addressing generations of abuse and job discrimination against folks who are 1/875th Cherokee, by elevating Warren to her current heights.
What was that I heard? A giggle? Shame on you.
