President Obama Lectures Wall Street. My Lecture on Symbolic Expression.

Posted on | January 30, 2009 |

President Obama’s statements at a press conference yesterday lecturing Wall Street does not help the economic crisis. By chastising bank executives for their billions of dollars in bonuses they paid themselves only months after the federal bailout, however, Obama points out to America how out of touch Wall Street is with the rest of the world.

Corporate executives cannot seem to recognize the symbolic significance of their actions! How did the auto industry expect Congress to receive them back in December when they arrived in Washington in private jets begging for billions of dollars in taxpayer bailout money? Did banking executives expect the American people to understand the economic subtleties of paying each other multi-billion dollar bonuses after they received billions of dollars of bailout money based upon the argument that the entire flow of cash in the country was about to freeze up and destroy civilization as we know it?

Desperate economic times turn anything into symbols of the large

maladies of human behavior for which we blame our financial plight: greed, avarice, apathy, ignorance, snobbery. It is hard to understand why masters of finance and industry do not know that in an economic crisis, all of their actions become symbolic. In others words, when John Thane installs a twenty-four carat gold toilet in his executive bathroom, and hangs shower curtains encrusted with rubies, or whatever outrageous interior decorating he did while Bank of America and Merrill Lynch were going down the tubes, it becomes symbolic.

This is what Citibank must have in order to stimulate the economy. Couldn't you get a tax break to buy one of these back in the 80s?

Why executives do not grasp the importance of symbolism boggles my mind. What public relations strategy did the conference room at Citigroup come up with when they decided to buy a private corporate jet for tens of millions of dollars just a couple of months after their bank became the blueprint and poster-child for TARP money? What bright forward thinking mind said, “The American people will understand that we need a brand new state-of-the art private jet in order to do business”?

This is not the time for executives to buy air conditioned dog houses for their lapdogs, or to trick-out stretch limousines to woo clients. Anything that does not have the semblance of concerned frugality will glare as a symbol for all those things that we believe brought the economy down: greed, avarice, apathy, ignorance and snobbery.

Accountability and transparency are not just political catchwords that we can use to play drinking games when we watch CNN. These words describe a philosophy being put into action now. As the public and the political eyes increasingly probe the actions of anyone who we associate with Wall Street, TARP, automobiles, Iraq, Pentagon, oil, gas, White House, CIA . . .anyone who screws-up in the symbolic expression of their attitude will be singled out, publicly humiliated, burned in effigy, tried in court, or thrown in jail. So the consequences of being ignorant to basic symbolic expression are steep. If you have any authority over surplus money, do not flaunt it.

The new hair style for 2008 - 2009.

A glaring example of the symbolic importance that actions can have during this recessionary period is Governor Blogojevich, convicted by the Illinois senate yesterday on Articles of Impeachment. The Governor, who sports a fashionable “crazy psychopath from No Country for Old Men haircut,” is charged with abusing his power in office by engaging in various pay-for-play schemes. If you listened to any of the television journalism programs last night, barely anyone interviewed (including members of the Illinois senate) could state a clear and specific crime of which the Governor was proven guilty. But it does not matter. The sworn F.B.I testimony, the 1930s-Chicago-mobster type conversations captured on wiretap, and the tapes of he and his wife yelling expletives I use every ten minutes of the day create a picture symbolic of greed, corruption and political avarice.

The political reality that most politicians engage in some form of Blagojevich’s financial shenanigans all the time will not work as a defense. Defenders of Nixon say the same thing. The point is that, like Wall Street tycoons, politicians need to be very mindful of the symbolic significance of their actions. The defensive arguments from the world of finance that corporate jets, commissions in the form of bonuses, and lavish interior decorating as a means to promote business happens all the time just does not cut it in these days of recessionary angst.

I read that supposedly he idolizes Elvis Presley, which might account for the hair, that makes him look more like the maniacal hit-man in the image just above.

When actions and attitudes take on symbolic importance in history, the media and the government turns certain people into examples. It won’t be long before key players of the financial meltdown are lined up before a senate judiciary committee. And then it won’t be long before key players in the dangerous and often illegal operations of the Bush Doctrine will be lined up, too (and I hope many of them will face real criminal charges).

History repeats itself. Once the economy settles down and returns to good-times, Wall Street tycoons will start paving their bathrooms in gold again, putting chandeliers made of real diamonds in their living rooms, lighting their cigars with $1,000 bills, flying around in his and hers private jets, and throwing giant multi-million dollar birthday parties on remote islands. And we won’t care because we will turn our complete attention to several sex scandals in Washington.

And if you must make a huge mistake in your symbolic expression, don’t wear your hair like the crazy psychopath from No Country for Old Men.

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