A Difficult Negotiation

So this coming week we get to see just how the markets react to the news that Standard and Poor (now there’s an ironic name!) have reduced the USA’s credit rating. I pay attention to such matters because the spillover and tie-in with the Euro-crisis mean we Canadians cannot escape unscathed.  S&P lowered the rating as a result of the hoo-hum conclusion to Obama’s negotiations with the GOP over the debt ceiling.   Now at this point most are more concerned with how the world reacts to Obama’s solution as it is offered and so the focus is on that. Yet what is coming is clearly seen in what just happened. 

For if you watched any of those negotiations or read the news at all regarding it you know they (the negotiations) went right to the final wire, and only then resulted in what I would call a big band-aid instead of a solution.   The whole spectacle was akin to watching WWF characters parade around insulting each other before a match, and then making much noise and drama while ‘fighting’ to a pre-determined and premeditated conclusion. 

Such conduct is most unbecoming outside of a sporting event for the temporarily immature.  Worse, there are a few things that make such behavior stand out even more.  For starters, everyone was aware going into it that a real solution is mandated, and failure would result in major economic issues worldwide.  Also, we would expect that given such enormously high stakes mature and professional people ought to take pains to be calm and level-headed.  And that the very top people in the country ought to be mature and professional (at least in these kinds of situations).  Instead we were treated to a very political and highly damaging game of brinkmanship.

The childishness of the ordeal and the minimalist conclusion (which is not a true conclusion, for it does nothing to ‘solve’ the debt – it merely puts off the debt time bomb for another president to deal with) speak very loudly of the root cause of Western society’s present grief.  Selfishness.  

It is dogmatic individualism that insists that “my” side ‘wins’ in the debt debate, for at the end of the day the whole of society will suffer for it.  It is a ‘me first’ mindset that demands that everything be cut EXCEPT what I personally benefit from.  It is flat out full-tilt and in-your-face selfishness that insists that a real and tangible reduction in standard of living not affect the rich in a profound way. 

I think we all understand that such an outcome is not pleasant for the rich, but neither is even more hardship for the poor.  Surely that’s not news to anyone, and what is coming should not be news to anyone either.  But it will be reported as news.  Shocking and disturbing news. 

There are just not that many ways to solve a crisis of selfishness. Actually there is only one way that I’m aware of, and that is a humbling experience.  The choice is to do it yourself or to have it done to you by someone else, with the latter being much more painful and humiliating.  In light of refusal to decisively deal with the issue in what surely would have been a difficult negotiation, a series of most difficult negotiations are now coming down the pipe.  Unfortunately, to humble ourselves or to be humbled is only the least of them.