Why Santa Took Off the Cowboy Boots
Multiple choice quiz: why did Santa sleigh into Amsterdam this week without cowboy boots anywhere in sight?
Because:
- the boots weren‘t his; they didn‘t fit, and his feet hurt;
- they are an affront to reindeer décor;
- the Dutch have taken a dislike to all things cowboy;
- Santa is just plain tired so he went to work for ING (Internationale Nederlanden Groep) on loan from AIG (American International Group);
- all of the above; or, none of the above.
Clue: headlines that didn’t make it into the Dutch daily newspaper De Volkskrant on Monday, to wit, "Santa Claus Conscience Corrals Cowboy Economy?" The paper did report that "ING Chief Executive Officer Jan Hommen said he had made a ‘moral appeal’ to the top 1,200 employees to return their variable bonuses earned last year."
Shades of AIG! Santa has defected to the EU (European Union) for sure! But folk in Brussels are not polkaing for joy just yet—they are sniffing around for the cowboy boots.
The fallout from U.S. taxpayers‘ outrage over bonuses paid to the AIG execs who led the giant insurer into near-default has reverberated globally and shaken the Dutch Finance Ministry to is core. So the Ministry has made a "moral appeal" for the return of "300 million euros (about 409 million U.S. dollars) in bonuses [paid] to about 40,000 staff members last year." These bonuses were paid AIG style even though ING "posted a net loss of 729 million euros (about 996 million dollars) for 2008 and has planned 7,000 job cuts."
In fact, the Dutch losses seem like chump change, mere "walking around money," less than a billion U.S. dollars compared to AIG‘s hundreds of billions in losses (when you combine losses from credit default swaps with the larger losses from AIG‘s Investments division ).
And maybe this is why Santa defected, sans the cowboy boots.
Let me explain.
Back in 1879 one fellow famously opted for Santa being an essential part of America culture, writing that "Yes, there is a Santa Claus;" he is one ray of that "eternal light with which childhood fills the world." That settled the issue for most Americans until AIG came along. For many Americans AIG extinguished that "eternal light." Now it seems, Santa is trying to defect to the Dutch.
It is just easier for Santa to appeal to the higher sensibilities of the wishful thinking he symbolizes in a culture where a paltry billion dollars seems worth quibbling about. Why go on beating his head against the cowboy culture of Wall Street? The Street had not a qualm about rolling the dice with credit default swaps that placed, not a mere billion, but hundreds of billions of dollars of other people‘s money at risk.
Did I say they lost the roll? They shot craps in a way that no one in the history of Monte Carlo, Las Vegas, or the back alley ever has.
So after more than a century of trying to be hopeful and influence the cowboy culture of Wall Street with peace, joy, and love, even a wishful thinker like Santa is for sure tired. Feet hurt, Santa? You bet!
In fact, he took off the boots right after AIG‘s Edward Liddy assured Congress that U.S. taxpayers were legally responsible to pay the bonuses, even if doing so was morally and ethically reprehensible; goodbye smiley-faced conscience, hello lawless legality—for how can you have anything legal in a lawful sense apart from a conscience rooted in law? Well, ask Santa last seen chasing after a KLM Royal Dutch flight taking the North Pole route to Amsterdam. He and the American mindset are just no longer compatible.
As stated above, Santa got into the loop back in 1897 when Francis Pharcellus Church, an American journalist turned editor at the New York Sun, assured all of New York, America, and the world that in spite of callous, cold-hearted, calculating, cynical, skeptical, money-grubbling materialists, "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus." And everyone knew that "If you see it in the Sun, it‘s so!"
Church assured us in writing that "Santa Claus…exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist…there is a veil covering the unseen world which not…all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding…"
Except greed, deceit, and callous disregard for the wellbeing of investors, taxpayers, and a gaggle of other folk who neither invest nor pay taxes but may end up homeless and hungry due to the evil creative genius of high rollers who invented credit default swaps. Neither the poetic wishful imagery of Church nor the ‘supernal’ Santa Claus he proffered has a snow ball‘s chance in the hot place when Wall Street gets warmed up. When the Street is hot—well, makes a red devil turn green with envy as "love and generosity and devotion" to anything but money go bye bye.
"A cowboy economy" is how Kenneth Boulding described such frenzied greed. He coined the phrase back in the 1960s when describing an ‘illimitable’ economy symbolized in America‘s "‘illimitable plains’ and the ‘reckless and exploitative’ behavior of American economic activity." While he had harm to the environment mainly in view – egregious strip mining, deforestation, etc – clearly by extension Wall Street fits the critique.
The New American Plainsmen Foraging Pioneers are Wall Street‘s minions run amok. They remind one of fearless cowboy wranglers with Gatlin guns itching for the slaughter of a few billion buffalo, Native Americans, and prairie dogs thrown in for good measure. While we‘re at it, wouldn‘t hurt to strip a few billion acres of American backyards of shade trees, swings, and lawn chairs to make way for the cattle…
It just seems to many of us that a new breed of cattle baron has taken the helm of too many outfits on Wall Street. Illimitable, unregulated, scheming inventiveness in new ways to gamble with other people‘s money drives their evil genius. In turn, the barons are hailed by the drovers—in the manner of Jim Kramer, if Jon Dailey has his head on at least half straight—who corral the strays and keep the main herd in line with their stock picks.
Thus it is that Marty Robbins‘ “Whoppie ti yi yo! Get along little doggie, it‘s your misfortune and none of my own” sung to the cattle, has been replaced with the likes of AIG‘s mantra, "Get along little dummie, it‘s your misfortune and none of my own; we‘re too big to fail but we sure stuck it to you," sung to the unsuspecting taxpayer.
Such is the new U.S. cowboy economy; in the face of which the morality of a Santa Claus conscience based on wishful hope does not stand a chance: all the wishing in the world about ‘supernal beauty and glory beyond’ where Santa Claus frolics with "faith, fancy, poetry, love, and romance" will not reign in Wall Street greed—for Wall Street, Washington is the only Santa Claus there is, every child‘s dream be damned. Indeed, the clearest signal that there‘s a new sheriff in town, and that the real Santa had best skedaddle for parts unknown, is that the American dream has become a Wall Street playground for an economy of greed in which the fat get fatter and the rest get flattened in the stampede. So much for "moral appeals" in America.
They tell us (with President Obama backing them up as of this morning 3/24/2009) that there is not a legal thing can be done about the recent egregious bonus payments. (Fifteen of the top 20 employees at AIG who received bonuses have agreed to give them back—a refund that totals about $50 million—but only in the face of overwhelming public pressure and threats from New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo). Most of Wall Street excesses apparently fall into this lawless hole. If so, maybe it is so just because there is not enough moral substance in the American conscience to have been sure in the first place (before throwing billions of dollars around like leaves in the wind) that we matched the have to of law with the should do of essential morality for guys like AIG‘s cattle barons who have not a clue about ethics and morality. It follows that perhaps we let the Street slide into a sewer of greed because the burgeoning cowboy economy became the consumers own kind of Christmas Tree with Santa spreading goodies under it many thought were free because plastic and sub-prime loans just made it feel that way. So if the conscience happened to prick us from time to time, we quickly salved it over with wishes for goodness, rightness, and happiness forever and ever and ever as we rode one of the longest hot streaks in the history of the American economy right into the ground. Even if we did stay on till we began to think money grew on elms and cottonwoods as well as the evergreens of Christmas and it could be Christmas time all year, just a little honest scrutiny of what was driving the fantasy on Wall Street would have shown that ‘Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night’ was bound to turn into a nightmare.
Indeed, Santa is not hanging around. Legalities aside, he has fled to the moral appeals issued by ING‘s CEO Jan Hommen. "A spokesman for ING said on Monday it had launched a ‘moral appeal to management to hand in bonuses for 2008.’ So now we will see. Is there really "nothing else real and abiding" in the world other than the hopeful conscience of Santa Claus? Is there anything real enough in mere fanciful wishes that the ING people will be morally up to handing their bonuses back? Is the goodwill wishful thinking broad enough and deep enough in Holland to surmount the legal obstacle that there, too, there is no lawful requirement that anyone give the bonuses back?
Well, we will see. The Dutch are no dummies; for this reason they are inspecting the Santa Claus spirit that just emerged in Amsterdam very carefully: is this big fat dude dressed in red wearing cowboy boots? Is he not maybe a spy sent by Wall Street to infect the Dutch Finance Ministry with the cowboy fever? Is not all this "moral appeal" stuff really a ruse to divert attention while ING turns Amsterdam into its own Santa Claus? Why did Santa take off those cowboy boots anyway? Did he?
