eurotrash

i wish we were more cultured, like the europeans, cuz like, then everyone wouldn’t hate us and stuff.

ah yes, the american college student. (s)he strives to sounds as educated as possible at any given moment – and so (s)he should! after all, a $100,000 diploma doesn’t go as far as it used to. when you’re the 30th psychology major in line waiting to interview for a management position at abercrombie & fitch, you need to set yourself apart from the crowd. and what better way is there to impress a crack team of twenty-something managers (college grads themselves) than to impress upon them your knowledge of world culture? whether it’s an interview, a cocktail party or a funeral, people will always be impressed with words like “multilateralism” and “france.”

but not me. i’m consistently bemused – and somewhat disturbed – by the knee-jerk praise slathered on europeans by american “elites.”

to these multi-degree-wielding sophists, europe embodies what our society once had in its diversity and intersection of cultures, but lost in its national narcissism. americans don’t speak foreign languages; we don’t travel to different countries; and a disturbing number of us can’t point to our own continent on a color-coded map.

of course this country has its weak points, but it does not follow that europeans are necessarily more culturally sensitive or worldly than americans.

do these people mean to say that because we don’t have to dodge castles on the way to the uniprix, we lack a sense of history? true, we may not have the trappings of an ancient society, but what is it that the europeans see that we don’t? there are no monuments to the collapse of the british empire. germany is devoid of tributes to its great, failed socialist experiment. and the french... well, the french just like to smoke and talk about the infinite nature of nothingness. our freedom of expression ensures that we are highly critical of ourselves and appreciate even the pain of our history.

so i highly doubt that there’s any significant difference between their public appreciation of history and ours. moreover, i doubt there’s anything particularly enlightening about a language change on a trip that’s the same distance as baltimore to florida. come to think of it, we already do change languages – even when we’re all supposedly speaking english. and if you don’t think there’s a culture change between states, you should take a drive to oklahoma.

nevertheless, many will give the europeans the benefit of the doubt. but should we?

dutch filmmaker theo van gogh, said to be related to the artist vincent, was a prickly character, to say the least. van gogh was notorious for inflammatory writing that defied social taboos. quips like, “hey, it smells like caramel – they must be burning jewish diabetics,” make one wonder how he even made it to forty-seven.

of course, van gogh’s attacks were not limited to any particular faith, and he had recently enraged the islamic community with his display of passages from the koran on naked women. the piece was part of a larger critique of the sometimes-violent scripture.

so the surprise of the european community to his shooting and attempted decapitation is itself somewhat surprising.

but van gogh is not the focus of this article. what i’d like americans to appreciate is that the next day a bomb blew off the door of a local muslim school and that more than 20 arsons at mosques and churches throughout the netherlands ensued. i want americans to know about the monkey noises that spanish soccer fans shouted at english players of african descent at their international “friendly” last weekend, jeers repeated at a subsequent under-21 match.* i'd love to meet just one person who saw paolo dicanio raise a facist salute (or, if you're grand-daughter of the late dictator and far-right politician alessandra mussolini, a "nice roman salute") to the throngs of lazio fans in rome.

this acclaim by default is by no means limited to the social and cultural spheres. by the aforementioned logic, europe’s leaders must, of necessity, be better statesmen and diplomats than our own. the call for submission to international standards typically rest on the assumption that america is, to quote johnny depp, “like a puppy.” we’re a young nation that needs to be watched. we’re isolated, we’re inexperienced, and we’re naïve. democracy is a dangerous tool in the hands of hicks and cowboys.

so i wish that americans knew that france’s “liberal” socialist party joined with its extreme right-wing party in banning muslim headscarves in government buildings and attempting the same in schools. (note: the latter party’s candidate considered the holocaust “a detail of history” and finished second in their 2002 presidential race.) i wish americans were told that since britain’s 1995 gun ban, violent crime per capita has more than doubled. i wish that americans could appreciate europe’s damoclean sword, its public pension system. i wish that newspapers across the nation blared from their front pages that u.n.’s oil-for-food scheme has been linked to the french and russian governments, and that significant portions of saddam’s $21.3 billion was funneled into financial pools for international terrorists.

meanwhile, americans should take a certain amount of pride in the fact that that 45.9% of our “poor” own their homes, 72.8% have a car and almost 77% have air conditioning, a luxury in most of western europe. plus, even the poor have adequate space to store these trappings in their average 1,200 square feet of living space, compared to europe’s average of 1,000 square feet for both the poor and the rich, alike.

it’s delightfully ironic that if elitists were to take their own advice, they just might find out that europe’s not everything it’s cracked up to be.

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*although i do not condone retaliation, english fans deserve credit for their characteristically pithy response, chanting: “one armada and no world cups!”

all roads lead to home

when i delve into the forgotten depths of my memory and recall my grade school days, i'm assaulted by waves of youthful elation and bitter disappointment. and every so often i stumble across a golden nugget of wisdom gained in my youth.

i can still recall the first time that i learned something in class and had a "eureka" moment. i believe it was in third grade, when we were learning our first lessons in roman history. i remember struggling a bit as i read stories of epic battles and bloodsport, the great circuses and deadly chariot races.

we would later come to learn that while these distractions occupied the masses, the rich pursued an orgiastic existence of opulence and excess. and i can remember thinking, "hm. that sounds familiar."

those stories stuck with me throughout my youth, alongside that uncanny feeling.

i was brought immediately to that place in my mind when i read a commentary piece written by john tierney and featured in the june 11th ny times, entitled "the circus maximus syndrome." he described its pathology as follows:

"The victims of this urban-planning syndrome believe, like some Roman emperors, that a leader's prime civic responsibility is to build entertainment palaces for the masses....

They imagine drawing hordes of out-of-towners to the new convention center, and when the visitors don't materialize, the mayors' solution is to build an even bigger convention center with a subsidized hotel next door."

witness, oriole park at camden yards, the m&t bank stadium, and the baltimore convention center. we'll see how our neighbors in washington do with their $400mil home for the washington nationals.

mayors promise billions upon billions of dollars in revenue, based on feats of accounting that would earn a seat on the board at enron. a classic economic example highlights their fallacious thinking. a vandal smashes a shop window; the shop gets insurance money; the insurance money pays a contractor to fix the window. thus, his employment adds to productivity. but this reasoning ignores the opportunity cost of the labor. the contractor could have been fixing something else, or learning, or teaching -- anything more productive than needlessly fixing a broken window.

the government doesn't answer any questions by adding up how much money will be spent on a project. what truly counts is what could have been done with all those resources.

also, it might help your political comprehension if you conceptualize the relationship between politicians and consultants: picture marlon brando hiring michael moore as his fitness consultant. see, if the consultant doesn't write a jackpot report, the project stalls. if the project stalls, the mayor doesn't get cash from the usual suspects --"real estate developers, construction workers, bond traders, [and] owners of hotels and sports teams." and if the mayor doesn't get the campaign contributions, the consultant doesn't get paid.

what's more,

"aside from the thanks of these groups, politicians also get a pleasant distraction from their mundane duties. It's more fun to pose next to a model of a model of a new stadium than a new water main."

again, we can take baltimore as an example. i have a lot of time to think as i'm trotting along in my car over the undulating asphalt and endless minefields of potholes. these "roads" take me through what i'm told was once a vibrant city, before the new-new-deal of the 1960's.

now, i'm surrounded by heroin addicts and new, low-rise public housing just waiting to be abused and abandoned. these faux-suburban townhomes stand in stark contrast to their high-rise surroundings, but their design should come as no surprise. d.c.-metro area "planners" and developers funded and staffed the previous state administration.

and they had the nerve to complain about urban sprawl. amazing.*

having momentarily swept things under the a rug of new, aluminum siding, baltimore has been able to capitalize by handing out special-interest tax-breaks and condemning properties for transfer to the baltimore development corporation.**

it's sad to think that perhaps the only upshot of all this is our abundant supply of failed athletes and racecar drivers, who make great soldiers and mechanics.

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*if you're wondering what members of the former administration are doing now, they're helping developers get the zoning they want by making the right donations and "consulting," i.e. telling them how to navigate the "smart growth" laws they pushed through the legislature.

** the b.d.c. is itself an interesting case, and it may have backed itself into a corner recently. it loves its status as a private corporation because it's sheltered from the public information act. but its status may raise some interesting complications if the supreme court disallows eminent domain transfers to private corporations.

bubble.gov

this post relates to an op-ed i wrote, which appeared in the baltimore sun on may 9th. fortunately, i think it snuck in right before the recent bubble in bubble articles. (the word "bubble" just lost all meaning to me.) the piece is sort of anecdotal, and while i'd prefer to have written something objective, i think it works, nonetheless.

my only regret is having missed the opportunity to illuminate the dangerous (and, i suspect, ultimately disastrous) role of the federal government in creating and sustaining this bubble.

the main driving force of this bubble is too much credit. not too much in terms of raw borrower numbers and amounts, but too much by way of interest-rate only and adjustable mortgages that have precariously shifted interest-rate risk to unsophisticated homeowners and/or speculators.

in a natural setting, no sane lender would make these kinds of loans. the risk would either scare off the lender or drive up rates to accurately reflect default risk. but in the real world, the federal government underwrites every mortgage, unwittingly insured by the taxpaying population. so, when the baltimore sun asked one banker why anyone would make such loans, he gave them the typical response:

"'The customers are demanding it,' he says. 'We do them because the market is driving them. That's what the competition is doing.'"

that covers the demand, but what's left out of his response is the supply, and that no one would be competing in the first place if not for the fact that fannie mae and the federal government will purchase any mortgage up to around $300,000 (and, therefore, accept its default risk) with naught but a bare-bones credit check.

no one is actually sitting down to figure out whether or how borrowers will be able to pay.

quasi-governmental bankers will tell you that the loan is securitized, and that in the event of default, they can seize the house and sell it. sensibly, then, the amount of the loan is limited by the house's value, and all is well and good as long as the creditor can sell it off and minimize losses. but if everyone gets hit at the same time and the market dries up, the mortgage-backed securities will turn to junk bonds - utterly worthless.

meanwhile, fannie and freddie have worked out deals and created new and complicated derivative instruments that have them leveraged into the trillion-dollar range. given their due-diligence track record, i have some serious doubts about their ability to manage risk. my guess is that their worst-case financial scenarios, which they would use to paint a picture for government "insurers," assume rather generous salvage prices for properties in default.

the most pressing question is, how can those of us who survived the burst make money on the other side?

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here's an update: as part of the "reform" legislation that was originally conceived to reign in fannie mae, it now has permission to purchase mortgages up to $500,000. if that won't help the poor afford housing, i don't know what will.

treatise envy

originally published in the april 2005 copy of the u.m.d. law student paper, "the raven"

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This April 1st, I was reminded of a 1994 Michigan Law Review article that would have been the best – and probably only – April fool’s joke in law review history. “Chix Nix Bundle-o-ticks: A Feminist Critique of the Disaggregation of Property,” by Professor Jeanne L. Schroeder, was an incisive commentary on the fatuous and ethereal subject matter of much modern legal theory. In it, she undertook a neofeminist deconstructionist critique of the phallocentric implications of the “bundle of sticks” metaphor, familiar to students of property. The article cut to the core of post-modern legal studies, laying bare their rather perverse foundations and often ridiculous products.

But there were two problems. First, it was November. Second, she wasn’t joking.

No, the good professor was completely serious when she suggested that all of us unwittingly perpetuate this undercurrent of sexism. If you think I’m exaggerating, here it is from the horse’s mouth: “I argue that property as both thing and right is described, not in terms of just any physicalist imagery, but in terms of phallic imagery. That is, property is metaphorically identified with seeing, holding, and wielding the male organ or controlling, protecting, and entering the female body.”

You may ask yourself, “Self, how could such academic prattle wind its way into a journal published by one of the top law schools in the nation?” And you should explain to yourself that it does so in the same fashion that it enters courts through law clerks, and into legislation through legislative aids. It’s because of us – the MTV generation.

Publication can make or break a professor’s career. And who better to decide whether an article will make a meaningful contribution to the legal profession than a bunch of kids? At respected institutions across the nation, students just like you and me, and that dude that spent Friday night trying take two Tri-delts home with him, are rolling out of bed, heating up last week’s pad thai and poring over law review submissions.

To be fair, it does take some work to get onto a law review board. Applicants are screened for mechanics and style. But making bluebook skills the paramount criterion does little to help the board make informed decisions about what articles will help the evolution of legal theory.

You may be surprised to see this article lambasting legal academia, yet supporting the evolution of legal theory. But even a hardened pragmatist or utilitarian will admit that legal theory should not be insulated from outside influence. The law cannot be self-contained, and academic incest can only cause problems for our profession. But there must be some lines drawn between, say, sociology or economics on the one hand and pseudo-Freudian and Derridian psychoanalytic deconstructionism on the other.

Maybe it would help if we sought the help of professionals when selecting articles. But that would appear antithetical to the very nature of journals. Ours, like many others, proudly announces on our school’s website: “No longer is there an Advisory Editorial Board. Rather, faculty exercise virtually no control over the Law Review, and cooperation with the local bar associations ended in 1972.”

In today’s market for teachers, publication can mean the difference between tenure track at Harvard and an adjunct slot at a non-ABA school, and we’ve made students responsible for the primary indicator of a professor’s worth. Tell academicians in any other profession that our journals are edited by students and I guarantee they’ll laugh.

The inmates are running the asylum. So in the end, it might not be such a bad thing that only professors read law reviews.