My brother Bob, a financial manager and strategist, has identified eerie similarities between the swirling steroids controversy and the state of the U.S. economy. After reading a note he sent me the other day (see below), I recalled the story of Lyle Alzado, former Oakland Raiders football great. Alzado met a horrible demise in 1992 after years of rampant steroids use, which he chronicled in Sports Illustrated a few months before
Paulson, Bernanke, Clemens, Bonds...it's all the same thing.
Paulson, Bernanke and the other managers of the U.S. economy might also heed Alzado's advice. With only the lightest of editing, I outline Bob's thoughts below:
The human body has natural limits, natural ups and downs. The use of steroids is always going to lead to blowback because it interferes with the body's natural rhythms in a fundamentally unhealthy way. Steroids aren't about improving nutrition or enhancing the immune system; they're about goosing performance.
The economy too displays natural cycles and rhythms, the dominant one being the business cycle. But about 15 years back, Alan Greenspan and the financial leaders of our country started messing seriously with the natural cycles of the economy in a bid to alleviate us of any economic pain -- i.e. recession -- in much the same way steroids are supposed to alleviate physical pain, speed "recovery" after workout, improve peak performance...even the vocabulary is similar.
Cue the Moral Hazard, the Federal Reserve's message to take all the risk we want because, if the shit hits
Bonds hit the wall, just as the economy is doing after one-too-many goosings.
Cue also the dot-com bubble, cue the breakneck lowering of rates 2000-2002 -- a bone-headed decision which led to the real estate bubble and bust -- and cue the sub-prime debacle leading to another round of interest rate cuts and phony bailouts which will just deepen and prolong the pain. Barry Bonds was not faking when he complained about how hard it was to get out of bed in the morning in the last few years. And his home run production plummeted after a certain point. He hit the wall, just as the economy is doing after one-too-many goosings and a natural "aging" of the expansion. We should not feel too sorry for Barry, but the long-term effects of steroid usage can be pretty nasty.
Henry Paulson, Ben Bernanke, Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds...it's all the same thing; manipulation and denial with the aim of the enrichment of the powerful (individuals and institutions) and screw the rest of us. And the SEC has simply looked on until it's too late, as has professional baseball.
Clearly the man in the street is responsible for taking on all the debt that was pushed like a drug. But the economic "leadership", unaccompanied by any sense of a moral compass, has played a major role in putting us here.
