When I was in seventh grade, there was a playground near my house that served the kids of about ten families in our very tiny community. It had the usual kinds of things—a swing set, a sandbox, and perhaps a few other less memorable items. However, it wasn't the fixtures that call this scene to mind just now, but the use we put them to and a concept I learned about which I get occasional senses of deja vu.
For example, someone brought some good sized tires, perhaps from trucks, and we made up a game where some people would swing on the swings and others would roll the tires at the people on the swings and the game was to dodge the tires rolling at you or to hit them just right to knock them back in the other direction. It was a very dynamic game, not for the faint of heart, perhaps reminiscent of Rollerball or American Gladiators, though a lot more low tech and presumably less safe.
A short distance from the battleground area that the swingset came to be was the sandbox, where we played more cerebral games. As I recall, we had some little vehicles, probably Tonka® or some such thing, and we'd dig tunnels under the sand for them to drive through. The game in this case was to make bigger and bigger tunnels, almost like a game of Jenga®, but with sand. We'd reach into the tunnels and find a handful of sand to remove and cross our fingers that by removing that particular bit, the entire structure wouldn't fall in.
The game got harder as more was removed because there was less holding things up—and also because it was just hard to reach all the places you needed to without pushing on them. It became more and more intricate to manipulate, and through the eyes of a kid, quite beautiful.
We used terminology that denied what we knew to be the obvious truth, that we were weakening the ceiling above the area we were making. The goal, of course, was to make a giant underground cavern for the trucks to move around in, unimpeded by vertical columns. No one really thought that by removing all the columns, it was becoming stronger. We just loved when it stayed up at all as we used ever bolder techniques that by all rights should have knocked it down. And we tempted fate further by emboldening our terminology to match.
We called it “hollow support,” both as a noun and a verb. I guess it was a kind of cartoon physics thing where if we didn't admit it was getting weaker, maybe it wouldn't. “We need some more hollow support over here,” someone would call out, and another would rush to yank out another bit of supporting structure, all in the name of coming as close as possible to what we all knew was unachievable. All in the name of perfecting the hollowness of the support.
It was beautiful up to the end. And after that? Well, it collapsed, of course. It was just for fun—it wasn't going to affect our lives, after all. If there were little guys driving those Tonka trucks, we were pretty callous about their fate, but that's the nature of the game. We'd just pat each other on the back and talk about what great hollow supporting we'd done and how we should do it again sometime. Then we went home and didn't have to care. The next day would just be another day, like any other. At least for us.
As I look at the US economy these days, that concept pops back to mind a lot. The people running the show, those who devised the complex pyramids of economic sophistry that became our banking system were playing with just so much sand in a sandbox. They were seeking to build something fun, not something secure, and pressuring it ever closer to collapse. Then off to dinner like any other day, not having to care. Over a nice wine, they'll talk about the great things they achieved, and then moan about the great loss they, too, suffered in the Big Collapse. Perhaps they'll think of a few supportive words to offer the little people who were crushed in that collapse.
Hollow support—it was so obviously ridiculous even as we were doing it as children, who could have ever guessed I'd find use for such a concept again as a grown-up?
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Lisa, thanks for stopping by. Glad I managed to get the term to resonate.
It is unlikely that such repairs will work. And if they do, it is unlikely that they will offer any sustainable solutions.
But the "cavern diggers" will never stop. That is the game that they play. It is what they do. It is what they have been taught is the 'right' thing to do.
It is time to call in an architect and build a system that will meet OUR needs; all of us - not just a few 'game players'.
I doubt that we'll do that though. We'll applaud those who apply yet more bandages and stop the bleeding for the moment. Then we'll start diggin caverns again. We are truly madmen.
This post is a bulls eye, Kent. The banks could be the supports, and they are all collapsing like the sand castles they are. Even the grabbing of the supports of collumes and hollowing them out is mighty good.
When the roof falls on us, We are indeed left with a sand pile.
I do ponder what is next.
Good points here.
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As you've heard me whine before, we'll never begin to solve our problems until we grow up enough to realize you can't let bullies make up the rules on the playground -- or in the financial system.
We need some more hollow support over here."
I'm gonna use that.
A sentence that applied to probably half of America's purchases in the past 5 years, as they whipped out their credit card.
It is, unfortunately, and apt analogy and I am going to also adopt "hollow support" as a term for financial playground activities these white-collar criminals have engaged in.
You note that the rich beneficiaries of these disastrous schemes are probably sitting around sipping fine wine and talking about their own misfortunes. That immediately brought to mind the wife of Enron CEO Ken Lay imploring all the people who were furious with her husband to consider the fact that the Lays were also suffering. "We're fighting for liquidity!" she said. Just breaks your heart doesn't it?
Well, first of all this isn't a court of law, so I'm not at all convinced that I need to prove anything in the rendering of opinion. That is after all what we are doing here, rendering opinion. You have not proven the intentional quality of the malfeasance of all those you rather sweepingly condemn in your post. Nor could you. You may feel you don't need to offer proof of intent, that it is obvious, but the obviousness is at least in part a function of the assumptions and inclinations of your audience, myself included. I completely agree with your characterizations in this post, but I don't confuse that agreement with these things having been proven.
By the same token, I don't think you should confuse my skepticism with cynicism. From another perspective, after all, your views of the financial elites might themselves be viewed as deeply cynical (I don't call them such in the least, but others might). More disturbingly, you seem to confuse my sense that the Obama-Geithner plan is hollow with a cynical belief that nothing can be done. Since when did what Obama is doing become the same as anything or everything that could be done. I must say I am surprised that my refusal to subscribe to the cult of the current administration is being put down to an incapacity for faith or "optimism."
As for the Obama-Geithner program itself, it is hollowed out in my view by a decision, intentional I would think, to pursue political ends (in the instrumental, rather than strictly ideological sense) in the guise of economic solutions, as a result of which
a) the stimulus package, as massive as it is, does far less than it should in the way of ensuring job growth or cutting job loss.
b) the proposed tax cuts are not at all targeted to the juicing of either production (eliminating taxes on the first x dollars of capital gains/bank interest/dividends) or to the juicing of demand (reverse sales taxes. rebates etc--cutting the rebate on certain home sales from 15 to 8 thousand was a telling, and unwarranted political compromise).
c) the percentage of the stimulus going to states and municipalities, which could spend the funds immediately and productively, is far too low and far too regulated. Inner city public transport is contracting faster than the economy and no help from the saviors of AIG).
d) Speaking of AIG, the nationalization of concerns entirely underwater was a far more efficient, cheaper, and more taxpayer friendly solution than the current boondoggle that has us all throwing trillions at such companies--but a solution that would have required political fortitude.
e) Speaking of boondoggles (and we now reach the very heart, the hollow heart, of the Obama-Geithner proposal), the very blokes you skewer under the rubric "hollow support" are now receiving the mother of all largesse in the private-public partnership scheme that Obama-Geithner have hatched. So far as I understand it, which I think I do, it amounts to heads the masters of the financial universe win, tails the taxpayers lose when it comes to disposing of toxic assets. Or to put it another way: if they turn out to be assets in the end, the financiers take the profit; if they turn out to be just plain toxic, the taxpayer swallows the poison pill. The cynicism, dear Kent, is in this plan, not in its critics.
First, let me suggest you make a post out of your comments there. They seem well-reasoned and worthy of not being buried in someone else's post discussion.
Second, let me say that I'm sympathetic to your criticisms as enumerated but that I still have not lost the hope that the people running the show believe what they are doing will work. They may be wrong, but I think they are, in fact, trying to rescue us. I have strong reservations about the details myself, but not about their good intent.
By contrast, my belief about the people in the previous regime is that they subscribed to a world view that said that necessarily some must lose for others to win and a moral theory that if people fail to protect themselves, that's their own fault; these two descending from the even more simplistic “greed is good” theory of things. In that theory, it is possible to believe that the monumental failure that was coming up was in fact forseen and intended by some who considered their sole moral responsibility to be to protect themselves, not to protect others. (Ironically, this is the party that usually waves a Bible and the slogan of family values at election time, not to be confused with the party of the godless [as many of them would characterize it] who want to make sure that society worries about everyone. Strange.)
There are perhaps two elements to the hollowness—one is a simple physical one of vacating the support structures. That may well be in play even now. But there was in our sandbox [rightly, since we were kids] no concern about the effects on the little people; I am not convinced that's happening today. It's possible that the middle ground is that the system at present is so big that there are both elements of good and elements of bad going on, and that the system is accidentally (due to oversight error) or necessarily (due to the budget required to do otherwise) no being adequately overseen, or perhaps there are people who have been duped.
It's hard to tell if you and I disagree or if we just use different words. But I'm grateful for your elaboration in any case. I'm very glad to know people of good conscience are thinking hard about it.
It seems that "Hollow Support", is called martingale strategy in game theory and it is how finance markets fundamentally work. You trade short term fun for catastrophe in long term.
I blogged about this just before reading your article:
http://open.salon.com/blog/mr_k/2009/03/29/economy_change_the_game_not_only_the_players
My point is that when the game is rigged, don't blame the players.