We Got Us in This Mess and We Can’t Get Us Out
Tonight, the audience of a free student showing of Watchmen in Cambridge erupted in applause at a line that Nixon actually sort of did deliver:
"Let's see those bastards at Harvard figure a way out of that one."
Oh crap, it's coming true. The movie is f'ing long, almost an hour per upcoming year of recession according to one Harvard drop-out. At least this country's last depression was also Prohibition, and anyone with gumption could run rum for money.
What are recent graduates supposed to do now? There are absolutely no jobs, and don't even think about grad school. Finance positions, Ivy gravy until painfully recently, are down more than 70 percent. Which is poetic justice: the hotshot genius "quants" were playing Jenga with the world economy, and they were drunk. And yet, who is supposed to save us? Harvard's Larry Summers and Dartmouth's Tim Geithner (among others). Maybe that explains why Geithner's own government is pulling the rug out from under him. That, or they know the truth.
The Watchman reference makes more sense after the jump.
Think about it: it took World War II to fix the last depression. Although we've not yet scheduled another great war, we have been warned that any successful stimulus would require more spending that Congress could ever push through (Krugman called for $2 trillion). But we can't just create a global crisis---or can we? This is where Watchmen comes in. Tim Geithner is Ozymandias.
Of course, the more obvious villain is Summers, who knows that if God intended women to use Bunsen burners he would have made them pink, and women less submissive. Geithner, by contrast, is an unassuming technocrat, brow perma-furrowed from a lifetime of squinting at calculators---or so he appears. The devil you know, you know? After all, where else have we seen a forehead like that?
Our president, presumably, is also in on it. They will probably all fail to stop the global economy from consummating its Rasputin impression: nearly murdered a dozen ways, it finally just dies forever. Thinking back on what Nixon said, seven out of the past nine Tresury secretaries have been Ivy grads, six of whom were Harvard men. Until we start seeing glowing blue men, it looks like the great Eight brethren--mostly just the one, though--are stuck here on Earth with too much to do and perhaps a shortage of pants.
Could be worse. Even bread lines have bread at the end of them.
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Read more: Harvard, investment banking, Jobs, Larry Summers, recession, Tim Geithner
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March 13th, 2009 at 11:18 am
“the hotshot genius “quants” were playing Jenga with the world economy”
On the contrary, it was the non-math econ and finance majors who wrecked things. All Ivies had nonrigorous econ tracks for people who are charismatic and wanted to be “leaders” (on the marketing and sales side of finance) without putting in the hard intellectual work. Their inability to understand the models that they were selling was what caused this process; what we need is not fewer quants but more of them, and fewer car-salesman-like financiers.
http://ssmag.wordpress.com/2009/02/25/stop-math-now/
March 13th, 2009 at 2:07 pm
Reason, what about the misanthropic quants who sat in the background and got paid? Don’t you know anything about the illuminati? Of course they’re looking to switch out the old charismatic leaders and switch in new ones, but we all know who holds the puppet strings… your innocent and intellectually rigorous quants.
Alex, The GVMT may have killed the black market for rum runners, but there are still many other illegal goods the public needs. Consider the profit margins on importing sex slaves. They are impressive.
March 13th, 2009 at 2:25 pm
Last I checked, Prohibition was the decade before the Great Depression
March 13th, 2009 at 3:36 pm
@yousure?:
You’re a moron.
March 13th, 2009 at 4:04 pm
If we hadn’t started admitting women, none of this would have ever happened.
March 13th, 2009 at 5:33 pm
Alex Howe!
http://thedartmouth.com/2009/02/27/mirror/amy/
March 13th, 2009 at 5:33 pm
Y11, I would go farther. If we hadn’t started admitting people with charisma, none of this would have ever happened.
March 14th, 2009 at 6:25 am
Admitting women is a small part of the problem. What about the goddamn 19th Amendment? Or the failure to exclude women from the 13th and 14th Amendments?
It would appear that a large part of the problem in the new administration is the huge number of lawyers. If I’m not mistaken, it is the lawyer’s role to turn justice and right on its head. Where there’s a wrongful purpose or cause, lawyers will find a way to accomplish it.
March 14th, 2009 at 12:27 pm
“7 of of the past 9 Treasury Secretaries were Ivy grads, six of whom were Harvard men.”
Unless you’re not counting Timmy, your math doesn’t quite work out. Unless of course you’re trying to label Paulson a “Harvard man” because of his MBA, which I’m sorry to say is a definite no-no. Paulson is a Dartmouth man. Grad schools don’t count for the “man” label. Defensive? No.
and Paul Krugman’s a rather gay-looking dolt. Cheap shot? Maybe, but it’s finals period.
@Fartmouth, the Alex Howe quotes were lame and had nothing to do with the article = not worth posting.
March 14th, 2009 at 12:36 pm
I hate how the comments box doesn’t recognize page breaks…
March 14th, 2009 at 12:48 pm
Alex Howe quotes are there because that’s who the author is…it’s his first article.
March 16th, 2009 at 1:25 am
All the king’s Harvard horses and all the king’s Dartmouth men/ couldn’t put the economy Wharton ruined together again.