This morning on NPR's On Point, in the first hour, host Tom Ashbrook interviewed Bonfire of the Vanities-famed author Tom Wolfe.
Wolfe said something that has had me thinking all morning.
He talked for a moment about the origin of the word "credit," pointing out that its Latin root means "I believe."
The credit crisis facing America takes two forms. Superficially, the crisis involves an increasing inability of firms to gain credit for expansion and so on, the thing that could drag us into a economic depression.
In its other form, the credit crisis is one that seems to be slowly gaining currency among Americans. This crisis is the kind of thing that brings about cultural revolution. This credit crisis is one in which the American people no longer "believe" that credit is, or ought to be, the foundation of our economic system. With such corruption at the highest levels of our government, our highest mode of societal collaboration, "Good Faith" is as quaint as George Bailey saving the Savings & Loan.
What is now broken is the relationship between ourselves, collectively (the government) and you, Wall St. That is to say, Americans, some of them heavily vested in the system that abuses them repeatedly, have said that they no longer believe in the so-called Masters of the Universe, no longer trust their representatives in Congress to rein in abuses and do not wish to see the things they've worked for for a generation or more squandered by men who produce nothing of value -- indeed, who produce instruments of anti-value.
The Full Faith & Credit of the U.S. Government, that's us. That's our belief that institutions charged with the protection of our individual net worth and investment in the capitalist project protect it and not gamble it away. You would appear to have lost that, if the fact that our Congress, our pathetic excuse for representation in government, has so far chosen to listen to us for a change instead of to you, is any indication.
You have been lying to the American people for generations and have, at least superficially, shaped our culture to accept your perfidy as the way things just get done. We're onto your lies, and you can blame your puppets for that.
We don't believe you anymore.
We are coming around to the idea that debt is no way to secure a future for our children and grandchildren, that living beyond one's means is no longer tenable in an increasingly crowded, increasingly competitive word, that going shopping is not a responsible solution to what is shaping up to be a sustained attack upon the profligate and corrupt way of life you have proscribed for us.
Are you willing to bet your mansions and yachts, your islands and your governments, everything you have stolen, on the notion that Americans aren't willing to make the sacrifices necessary to see to it that you hurt for what you've stolen from them? It's a historically-safe bet, but don't you just sense that something different is happening? That people are waking up from a long nap only to find that the people we left in charge have tried their level best to destroy us in our sleep?
That thought should keep you awake at night. America is not bankrupt -- America isn't even poor. We own the real value of this country in our strength, courage and ingenuity. We can rebuild from the bottom. We can pull in and cut off your air.
Are you ready to gamble that we won't?
"Never let 'em see you sweat."