Modern Media: Junkies for the Age of Excess
By Brian Lambert
Henry Luce, the legendary publisher of TIME-Life, might be spinning in his grave at the cover story in this week's issue of his news magazine. "The End of Excess: Is this Crisis Good for America?", written by former Spy magazine editor Kurt Andersen, reads like the sort of loony lefty bulls*t (as Luce likely would have called it), that the TIME of old would have assigned to its most retrograde columnist for a thorough trashing.
Dig this:
Given that we've brought on the current crises through a quarter-century of self-destructive financial excess and over dependence on debt and fossil fuels, during the same quarter-century we've all become familiar with a way of thinking about self-destructive excess and dependence. The vocabulary of addiction recovery could come in handy just now. We are like substance abusers coming off a long bender, hitting bottom (we can only hope) and taking the messes we've made as a sobering wake-up call. I've always thought many of the 12 Steps were superfluous, so here is a streamlined, secularized Three-Step Program for America — Bubbleholics Anonymous?—to start getting back on track:
• Admit that we are powerless over addiction to easy money and cheap fossil fuel and living large — that our lives had become unmanageable.
• Believe that we can, individually and collectively, restore ourselves to sanity and normal living.
• Make a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves and be entirely ready to remove our defects of character.
Of course, when addicts finally quit, it feels awful for a while, and that's where we are right now. The recession, provoked by the sudden, essentially cold-turkey abandonment of spending, lending and borrowing, is something like our national equivalent of the jitters, sweats and seizures that addicts experience right after they give up the junk. Actually, the applicable addiction trope is more like food (or sex) than drugs or booze, since as economic creatures, we can't quit; we just have to teach ourselves to buy and borrow in moderate, healthier ways. The new America must be about financial temperance, not abstinence.
Cutting to the bottom line, Andersen is essentially arguing that most of what TIME's advertisers have been selling Americans for years, all the material dreams they've so artfully purveyed as necessities, not only have damn near killed us but were pretty much always contrary to our best interests, and now that we can't afford 'em, we're most likely going to be better off.
Oh, baby.
I gather that formally acknowledging that "The Age of Excess"/"The Second Gilded Age" is over is now suitable for mixed company. I mean, if TIME, as old school and clubby as journalism gets, is suggesting it from its cover, the game is changing. "The Age of Excess"--the long, guzzling run from the late '50s until last fall--was a half century during which the American Dream was contorted from believing that you could afford a home and college for the kids into being convinced it was your divine right to claw and connive and game the system to become filthy, ostentatiously rich; a goddam cross between a rap star and Bernie Madoff.
The argument is that we are not just in a "rough patch" but that a profound--long foretold--change is actually settling upon the land. It is a change far more substantial than that that was supposed to have followed 9/11, you know, the "day that changed everything" . . . but really didn't. As Andersen points out, the big difference today is that those trillions of dollars of what we're coming to think of as "bulls**t money" are gone, baby, gone and unlikely to return via the next bubble, as real estate jacked us up after the terror attacks.
As impressed (and pleased) as I am that TIME has detected enough consensus in a twenty-first century version of "Small is Beautiful" to drop an argument for it on its cover, I doubt much of the rest of mainstream media thinking is catching on as fast.
Maybe you went to the auto show last week. It was a pretty forlorn affair. I've been going ever since Garfield was president, and this year's event, shrunken and thick with smell of the apocalypse, was just plain sad. Standing next to a Chrysler minivan-- a freaking minivan--with a staggering $43,000 price tag, you had to doubt there'd be any Chryslers at all to sell in 2010. (Do the two-year depreciation math on a $43k Chrysler minivan.)
I wandered the show, careful not to slop beer on the "magma red" leather seats of $90,000 Audis, after reading the "Local Television" section of the recent Pew report on "The State of the Media." The numbers are pretty scary, at least as bad as they are for newspapers, and much more dependent on Age of Excess characters such as Denny Hecker and new car advertising, which, in turn, has been dependent on Americans eagerly blowing huge chunks of the family budget on 17 million new cars every year.
From the Pew report:
Adding to the fiscal strains, a slump in revenues in the slowing economy also eroded station appeal as advertising from retailers, especially car manufacturers and dealers and home goods resellers — the bread and butter of station ad revenue — plunged in the second half of the year on weak consumer sales.
Of course I can't find it now, but a car writer -- (I thought it was in Business Week, but it's not coming up) -- had some fascinating stats a couple months back on a cultural sea change in Japan as a result of their 'Lost Decade" in the 1990s. Essentially, not only did older Japanese, close to retirement with suddenly much less money to blow on vanity purchases dramatically reduce the number of new cars they bought ... so did the younger, twenty-something Japanese. The latter group, the piece argued had bought into "green thinking" and so significantly altered their transportation habits that actually owning a car, much less a new car, made no sense. (Their hi-tech vanity purchasing was directed more to personal electronics.)
This is from "a _New York Times _piece in February:
The economic malaise that plagued Japan from the 1990s until the early 2000s brought stunted wages and depressed stock prices, turning free-spending consumers into misers and making them dead weight on Japan’s economy. Today, years after the recovery, even well-off Japanese households use old bath water to do laundry, a popular way to save on utility bills. Sales of whiskey, the favorite drink among moneyed Tokyoites in the booming ’80s, have fallen to a fifth of their peak. And the nation is losing interest in cars; sales have fallen by half since 1990.
Japan, of course, is much smaller and with an advanced public transportation system we can only dream of here in the U.S. But as even a silly feature story in this morning's _Wall St. Journal _ noted, avid American car junkies have begun seriously reassessing the (ego) need of a new car every couple years. That 30- to 50-percent depreciation hit suddenly makes no sense at all.
Point being that new cars, one of the most enduring icons of The Age of Excess, will likely never return to the sales levels before this crash. What is bad for everyone in the media (not just autoworkers) is that this same thinking--the dramatic reduction in highly discretionary vanity/luxury spending--is evident in everything from the restaurant industry, "(where pros are talking about shuttering 20,000 restaurants over the next couple years)" to high-end "label" merchandising. Suddenly such routine "excesses" are now out of sensible reach of the "aspirational wealthy," i.e. those who don't really have the cash to afford what they flaunt.
The point here is perhaps too obvious to labor over. It is that any media operation that requires 2006 rates of growth from advertisers selling consumers luxuries they can easily do without had better have a solid "B" plan ready to roll because that game is in for a serious change.
(My apologies for bad links here and there. I'm fighting some "cut and paste" bug that won't let me edit in "rich text." If you've got any ideas, I'm all ears.)
© 2008 MSP Communications, Inc. All rights reserved
I guess my first response to Andersen would be the punch line from the old joke, "What do you mean 'we' white man?" I don't have a lot of sympathy for the we're-all-guilty routine in part because it obscures those who are really guilty and in part because it's nonsense. Most people did not create credit default swaps, engineer over-leveraged buy-outs, manage hedge funds, nor did we make millions a year. A fairly small number of people at the top of the financial system created the mess, and they were abetted by their political hirelings and a lazy and corrupt media, but that's where the real blame lies.
One of the notorious idiots on CNBC and writers of letters to the editor in strib are out raged because Joe Dokes went in way over his head to buy a McMansion. However, that's not where the problem is. The problem is that the loan officer didn't say, "It would be irresponsible for our bank to give you this loan," and he didn't say that because his boss was pushing him to make any loan because they weren't going to hang on to it but sell it off. The toxic loan then got ground up with others and sold off as loan sausage, which then got sold off as pizza meat. It's really like the e-coli or salmonella outbreaks: a little insalubrious behavior in a spinach field or a slaughterhouse ends up poisoning people all over the country.
Then as with the food poisoning, the people who were supposed to be watching out for problems didn't. The guys in the financial corporations who were charged with over-seeing the loan packages didn't have a clue what was in them despite being paid handsomely to be smart guys; the people rating the financial health of the firms gave everything a grade A prime, and the government regulators decided it would be unseemly to regulate. No, Joe Dokes is not the problem.
LAMBERT: I pretty much agree, except that even the Joe Dokes -- who couldn't believe is great good fortune in the sky high value of his house, but took out a home equity loan to buy a new boat, a couple ATVs, a week at a casino and a fake Prada bag for the Mrs. -- should acknowledge that all that crap came via the scheming of the Wall St. "smart guys" and that, truth be told, he really didn't need any of it.
What amuses me is that the likes of TIME magazine are at a place where they are seriously considering whether the tree-hugging hippies of old were, in fact, right about sustainability ... and actual, true "conservatism".
Posted by: john sherman on April 5, 2009 at 9:17 PM
Eh, just another news weekly trend story painting with the usual broad brush dipped in shallow reporting.
I'm with John Sherman. Larry Summers made $5.2 million tutoring hedge fund wiz kids in math, part time (extremely part time, like one day a week), in just two years. Of course, he was happy to serve as baggy-kneed courtesan when the need arose to herd a few more sheep into the pen.
And now look where he's sitting, unimpeded by any pesky Senate oversight, not that Geithner's confirmation showed any evidence that such a thing even exists. seriously, where am I expected to believe his fealty lies?
Puh-lease, only the most reckless of these malignant goniffs who've been working both sides of the private/public street have suffered in any appreciable way for their wretched excesses and gaming of a system only they can comprehend, and then only darkly.
LAMBERT: I think I've noted my own unease with Geithner's Goldman, Sachs history and deference. Were it left to me I'd probably appoint someone like Bill Greider to Treasury and then fill the tumbrels with executives for public executions. Obama is obviously taking a more, shall we say, measured track, balancing those who know the characters and folkways with all the transparency -- volunteered and otherwise -- that comes with a huge on-going story. I'm told Summers is widely believed to be some kind of genius, and with genius often comes arrogance.
Posted by: Jim Leinfelder on April 6, 2009 at 10:09 AM
I completely agree with Jim Leinfelder.
By the way - your links are pretty good reads most of the time. If you have anything to apologize for, its overuse of phrases like 'game changing'.
LAMBERT: Do you prefer business phraseology like: "These are our plans going forward"?
Posted by: 108 on April 6, 2009 at 11:21 AM
Feels like the town hall in Blazing Saddles..."Howard Johnson's right...".
But, is this just the latest trend painting story? Has the Summers-Geither-supported Goldman Wall Street scam succeeded in arresting the USA economic fall and 6 months from now all will be right with the world?
Not if I can help it.
You know that "I'm mad as hell and I won't take it anymore?" Well, that was a fantasy in a movie...just a line, just talk, which as we all know, is cheap.
I'm not happy with my country and if Bush taught me anything, it was to get involved if your country is on the wrong track and since 2002 I've never been more active in making change happen here.
So, where are we now? No offense BL, but I didn't need the blog post nor the TIME article to figure it out. But then, mainly because I'm not trying to journalistically assess the media either. I'm just trying to live in modern america.
--Wall Street is causing trouble right? So, to do something about it, I am researching moving all my 401k into an IRA at a bank/investment fund that does not touch Wall Street at all. ROI, who cares, my current ROI since 2000 has negative and now that Wall Street has determine to screw our country (and still doesn't get it), now it is personal.
--Mortgage company was the source of all this bubble? Fine, I'm experimenting with (I'll call them) alternative monthly payment plans. Nothing big, just overpay or underpay about $50 each month, just enough so a human has to scratch his butt each month and figure out what to do to process the payment. So far, they are flummoxed.
--Auto industry got greedy? Well, the self-correction there is a model to the Wall Street financial district, but as we saw with GM and witnessing with Wall Street, both are good at only one thing - ignoring reality. But, I am getting new wheels this summer!! On my bike, that is. This looks like a great summer to start bike commuting, doesn't it? Plus it was extend the life of my Prius...and me (unless I'm run over by all the idiots in cars).
--USA Health care? Well, too bad, I quit you guys cold turkey when you couldn't even figure out how to process the lab expense (between their own lab and clinic!) on my bloodwork from my last physical, and hounded me for a full year and send it to collections (for $100, that all made sense, right?) So, I'll take my chances on where I'm at now - no drugs, no fancy therapies, no screenings, no big deal - when I go, I go...it's been a good ride.
--Big Energy? It is time to go small energy. I say every house in america should go out and get solar panels and wind turbines--EVERYONE. They should be like a furnace or refrigerator, just another household appliance that every house needs. Then when the next nuclear-to-coal power plant is proposed, there will be no need for it and the entire investment will be lost.
Will that suppress the economy? Not my problem. People that build things--solar panels, wind turbines, bikes, they will be growing like mad, right?
TIME can put that in their trendsetting article and smoke it. Bush-Obama, change, hope...I ain't waiting for it.
LAMBERT: Well ... all right! I think a lot more people should get mad as hell. The magnifying glass on Geithner should be ratcheted up to 11. Be skeptical. Stop believing merchandised, commoditized "information". But let's not get into self-destructive behavior over it. That's what I liked about Andersen's piece. IF we acknowledge that this ios very much like what the "hippie luddites" were wailing about back in the days of Jimi and Janis and Country Joe, let's be cool with what's going down and make sure that our lives -- our "spirit", for lack of any better description -- is improved by flushing out the "toxic assets".
Posted by: The Other Mike on April 6, 2009 at 1:56 PM
I know you're a big Graydon Carter guy, so I'm giving props to the latest VF and it's "American Dream" story.
The Rockwellian photo montages were pretty great, too.
Sigh.
LAMBERT: Wait a minute. YOU read that piece and are agreeing with it? Was there an earthquake around here that I missed?
From the piece:
"In hewing to the misbegotten notion that our standard of living must trend inexorably upward, we entered in the late 90s and early 00s into what might be called the Juiceball Era of the American Dream—a time of steroidally outsize purchasing and artificially inflated numbers. As Easterbrook saw it, it was no longer enough for people to keep up with the Joneses; no, now they had to “call and raise the Joneses.”
“Bloated houses,” he wrote, “arise from a desire to call-and-raise-the-Joneses—surely not from a belief that a seven-thousand-square-foot house that comes right up against the property setback line would be an ideal place in which to dwell.” More ominously and to the point: “To call-and-raise-the-Joneses, Americans increasingly take on debt.”
Posted by: bertram jr. on April 6, 2009 at 3:37 PM
I think this Joe Dokes i.e. a new boat, a atv is the most overused cliche around. I mean it might apply to Minnesota or at least some of the people we know but at most maybe people got a new computer or a big tv (which to some degree was being pushed by the government) This Joe Dokes is very effective because it is an extremely visual image. After all there are things white liberal people like that are extremely expensive. If you need help go to the website. Now back to my baby aspirin and oatmeal.
LAMBERT: Try to mix in a few walnuts. I hear they're a "superfood".
Posted by: dan buechler on April 6, 2009 at 4:28 PM
Leave it to Time magazine...even in its currently ravaged handful of pages...to turn a catastrophic economic crisis into a popular trend sweeping the nation! When Leinfelder's right he's right.
LAMBERT: Not to play a semantics game with a world-class semiotician, but when I think "trend piece" I think one of thgose ditsy, "EVERYONE is wearing beige this season ... " things. I didn't get the feeling that Andersen was saying this was happening, only that it would be good if it did ... and "essay" in other words.
But hey, you and Jimmy and 108 should link arms and sing rowing tunes or something.
Posted by: Frogman of Grant on April 6, 2009 at 7:31 PM
I agree with John Sherman also. In countries like Brazil they've made laws that say a bank cannot lend in instances where the buyer is spending more than 30% of their income on mortgage payments.
The mortgage loan processes I went through to buy my home was not slouch - the lender, the broker, the realtor, the banker and his assistant, the home developer, title company, home inspector all knew every detail of my finances and the value of the property (both real and speculative) and everybody knew the crazy person at the table.
Everybody knew who was getting the fees, offering ridiculous loans under incredible risky terms. Everybody knew which insane party was going to give derisory terms (even encourage dangerous lending practice) and then turn around and resell the mortgage to a slice and dice derivates layer cake and wash their hands of it all.
I was the most shocked at what we were "approved" at and paranoid enough not to buy into their scheme. I couldn't afford the payments on the scheme they amount they offered. Now they want to take no responsibility, blame the poor, and put their hand out for the bailout.
That's why countries make laws to regulate banks and lending practices. Brazil isn't the paradigm of a perfect economy but at least they aren't as stupid as the U.S. in making common a practice that destroyed our system.
LAMBERT: I'm with Sen. Byron Dorgan that we need to hear one really good reason for securitizing this stuff.
Posted by: Robb on April 7, 2009 at 11:41 AM
The reason you securitize is fairly elemental: so that you can refresh your stock of cash to write new loans. Otherwise banks would have to stop writing loans when they run out of money. And we wan banks to be a perpetual supply of credit, right?
Oh, and I agree with John Sherman but I’m holding out for hurling with Jim. Go Beavs.
LAMBERT: I'm fine with "refreshing" your stock of cash, provided it is cash and not 90% re-re-re-insured speculation.
Posted by: 108 on April 8, 2009 at 9:24 AM
I agree with much of what's been said about Wall St., the housing financiers, the lack of regulation. I would add the Best Congress Money Can Buy(and I mean both political parties.)
But the larger society certainly made it all possible. Something for Nothing was an unspoken mantra in America. As was consumption over saving: My God Given Right to spend beyond my means and gamble on the future.
Human nature makes us prone to look at too many problems thru the lens of Us versus Them. And Them is always the problem, not Us. A mirror is just something you peer into to comb your hair.
Problem is, the really big problems like the health care system will require some consensus to solve.
So far, Obama is largely avoiding the Us/Them rhetoric, even though I sense he's beginning to piss off some crazy liberals.
The Age of Out-of-Control Consumerism may be over. But it leaves us with a big financial dilemma: a large part of our present, failing economy is based on the Must Have mentality.
How do we get out of this mess and create jobs if consumer spending is sharply curtailed? I have no answer. Buying solar panels for the home (and I would love to) ain't going to do it alone, I fear.
Things are going to get a lot worse before they get better. Millions more will lose jobs this year. A turn-around will not be easy or come soon.
At least we have an adult in the White House.
LAMBERT: There's plenty of work to do in all most every imaginable field of endeavor. The trick in the short term is convincing Joe Sixpack that he really is better off with less instantly disposable cash in pocket, but a health care program that provides quality care at rates that won't bankrupt him if he breaks a leg, and better infrastructure (electrical grids, etc.) of every sort. That scenario means less available for ATVs, Grand Casino Hinckley and Prada hand bags.
Posted by: Paul Gustafson on April 8, 2009 at 10:34 AM