In 1974, Stanley Marcus, aging cofounder of Neiman Marcus, Dallas-based symbol of quality in high-end retail published a ghost-written memoir about his skillful cultivation of the not-so-gentle giant that catered to whims of Turtle Creek residents, called Minding the Store, and the crowd went wild. Shortly thereafter, the store had a bad year, and pranksters altered the sales poster for the book, Who’s Minding the Store?, which, of course, became the top story at reliable new sources like The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. Upon reading Adam Tooze’s epic-length volume, Crashed, How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World, (2018), my sense of confidence in the global financial system whose principles I firmly question and, on whose stability, I unfortunately depend, is precisely that second title. So, who is minding global finance, these days? Are they competent, invulnerable and autonomous? Or, have they taken on the almighty free market with the same delusional optimism with which Exxon Mobile has led us down the garden path to die on the issue of climate change, looking for ways to make a buck on the next predictable global calamity?

The first parallel work that seems to jump out at the reader is Berry Eichengreen’s Golden Fetters, The Gold Standard and the Great Depression, 1919-1939, (2007). In a readable fashion, Tooze explains the complexities of international finance (securities, bonds and hedge funds) to an artisan of clever phrases who learned from Thoreau at an early age to keep his accounts on his thumbnail. Kudos, I sort of get it. But the real foundation of Tooze’s thinking must be sought, ominously, in Christopher Clark’s fascinating horror-show, Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914, (2014). Tooze poses the question, in his conclusion, “How do anachronistic and out-of-date frames of reference make it impossible for us to understand what is happening around us? Did we sleepwalk into crisis, or were there dark forces pushing?” (615) As complex as global finance is, as difficult as it is for experts to understand the unexpected meltdowns and predict the consequences of stabilizing measures, how can we expect the politics of illiterate demagoguery to provide the leaders with the political leadership and courage necessary to keep this badly oiled machine running at all? As the grifter in the White House carves up a kingdom that was never his among the devious daughters who swear to love him forever, the mess will be left for powerless Edgar and the Fool to tidy up. I begin to understand Dr. Kissinger’s deep distrust for democracy.  

What is wrong with this picture? That was my departed sister’s diagnostic question when trying to understand the lives of her psychiatric patients, many of whom had made it all the way to death row before ever finding their way to a psychiatrist. It was how she put their psychotic systems into context, to try and understand them, because madness always has a method. I find myself playing the same game with the 2008 Three Mile Island afternoon on Wall Street, with repercussions that went around the world as if New York really were the universe represented by the New Yorker geography cartoon that comes back around, so often, where after Central Park, you get Wyoming and then China. The bank CEO’s, after receiving huge bailouts, assigned themselves the same 400-million-dollar bonuses that they had grown accustomed to taking during their successful years. Not that the amounts would have been significant, considering the unimaginable quantities it took to bail the US out of unsustainable real estate and unwinnable wars against the hydra of global terrorism; it’s just that it revealed the genuine objectives of the guys we thought were minding the store. Turns out it was the same guys selling OxyContin and getting rich on it. Not to mention the tobacco industry. Thank you for smoking. That’s where me and Bernie start throwing Molotov cocktails. I would get a Che tee-shirt, but we need a more reliable horse to win this derby.

Che is not getting off that easy, though. The real question, for me, is, hoping against hope that Mr. Trump doesn’t decide to ride the nuclear warhead out of his B-52, Slim Pickens-style, to destroy it all just because he can, couldn’t there be a better system? Maybe not Marxist, but one that doesn’t systematically concentrate the wealth progressively and unsustainably into the hands of fewer and fewer people, while devastating the planet because individualism, profit and competition are the only things that matter anymore? Party’s over, read my lips, it’s not working. As Graham Greene's Trevor in his short story "The Destructors" explains, about the dome of St. Paul's to the other boys, "Wren built it. Nothing holds it up." Yes, and that is precisely our "Wiley Coyote" moment, today, (41).