The Deficit, Will's Will and Natural Bug Remedies

How Important is Reducing the Deficit Anyway?

“Feed a Cold; Starve a Fever”

Some economists believe that reducing the nation’s deficit is not the important challenge to our economy that others believe it is.  It is important, yes, but recovery from the recent recession and reducing unemployment, in their eyes, is more important.  

If an individual owes a lot of money, the logical course of action is to spend less by belt tightening, doing with less and restoring one’s credit rating by paying off loans and saving for the future.

Contrary-wise, however, when a business owes a lot of money, that actually may be a good sign because it means it is covering its expenses without diminishing its assets, and hopefully earning a profit, using funds it has borrowed rather than its own money.  So long as credit is available to the business, enabling it to function

   efficiently, paying off its debts need not be a high priority, so long as its profitable operation, including servicing that debt, can be fueled with “other people’s money.”

We must ask ourselves if the federal deficit is more like the undesirable debt an individual acquires or more like the not necessarily undesirable debts of a business.

Treasury Department Headquarters in Washington

The important thing about the federal deficit, of course, is that sooner or later it must be paid.  The operative word, however, is “later.”   We have always had a national debt, the accumulation of each year’s Federal deficits.  There must always be a plan for paying off that debt, if only for the purpose of enabling the nation’s borrowing power to remain unimpaired.  The details of the plan are less important than the existence of such a plan.

Economists who thusly minimize the importance of the nation’s deficit see belt-tightening and reduced spending on all levels, Federal, business and individual, as impediments to economic recovery.  Creating jobs and increasing the nation’s gross domestic product are not helped when the channels which pour money into the economy are tightened.  Rather, they would like to see increased government spending, increased domestic business spending and increased consumer spending speed economic recovery.  

If some tax reduction, particularly in the corporate area, is needed to “unleash” business spending, so be it.  But government spending also requires revenue and that means more taxation somewhere along the line.  So be that too!  Once spending has nurtured economy recovery and created jobs, more attention can then be paid to deficit reduction.  Nobel laureate Paul Krugman thinks along these lines and lately, it appears Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is turning in this direction.  

There is an old adage which says to “feed a cold, but starve a fever.”  The economic analogy to this might be to “spend money to remedy a still-functioning economy in recession, but resort to austerity only when an economy has ceased to function effectively, is flat on its back, and new strategies must be introduced to save it.”  I doubt that our economy has reached, or will reach, that feverish point whereby starvation via austerity might be needed.  But introducing austerity prematurely, rather than increaslng spending before that point is reached, will make it more likely that the severest levels of austerity will ultimately be needed.

A recent somewhat opinionated piece by New York Times columnist Charles Blow included the following paragraphs dealing with austerity as a remedy to our economic ills.

“Republicans have defined their position, regardless of how reckless:  Austerity or bust.  However, as economists have warned, austerity generally precedes, and can cause bust.  Just look at Europe."

"But Republicans are so dizzy over the deficits and delighted to lick the boots of billionaires that they cannot or will not see it.  They are still trying to sell cut-to-grow snake oil:  Cut spending and cut taxes, and the economy will grow because rich people will be happy, and when rich people are happy, they hire poor people, and then everyone’s happy.”

Do you agree?  If you do not, you have some distinguished company starting with Paul Ryan, John Boehner and Mitch McConnell.

Jack Lippman


                                                                 

                                                                                               

                                                                                                  

Are You Being Bugged?

 

Saw some advice on the usually boring “news” section of the AOL home page which I thought worth passing on.  It pointed out that many common household items are useful in getting rid of bugs.  For example, if you have roaches, or their palmetto bug cousins who reside in Florida, the article recommended zapping them with hot sauce.  I suggest you have a lot of paper towels handy.  Onions and cinnamon are recommended to get rid of ants, and the clincher was the suggestion that beer be spilled on slugs.  That bit of intelligence rang a bell with me, and resulted in my passing this on to you.  Back "up north" on Long Island, we always


Slug on a leaf, and three ladies about to kill some slugs

used beer on the slugs which crawled across our driveway during the summer.  I assumed they died of cirrhosis of the liver, if indeed slugs have livers. (And the beer can be the least expensive brand in the store).  While it is perfectly okay to spill beer on any slugs you may find in your garden (as the ladies in the picture are about to do), gun control advocates should avoid spilling beer on the "slugs" with which their "carrying" friends load their weapons.  This might force them to "stand their ground," and then, even cinnamon won''t help you.

JL

                                                 
                                                              
                                                                           


Will's Will   ... an old short story from my archives

Jack Lippman  

He studied the map carefully for a few minutes, and then shrugging his shoulders, stared out of the window looking toward the darkening coastline as dusk approached.  The windswept South Jersey marshland, other than being lighter in color, resembled the nearby sea as its wild grasses swirled under the rain which intermittently descended from the gray overcast.  He turned to her and spoke.

“Stella, this is the place alright.  From the bay window in the house, I can line up that lone tall oak tree with the tip of the promontory.  Then, everything fits in.  The low ridge off to the south, the low stone wall, the ruins of that old barn, the roadway leading up to the house; they’re all there where the map puts them.  This has got to be the place your uncle told you about before he died.”

With a determined look on her face, the trim woman smiled.

“You see, Ted, I was right after all.  Uncle Will was not a screwball like they all said.   They all thought that map he gave me was one big joke, and the story about the buried treasure just another one of his made-up stories.  But I believed him, and I think he knew I would.  That’s why he left me this old house, the map and just left the other relatives loads of money.”

“I would rather you have had the money, Dear, than be stuck with this drafty old house which nobody wants to take off of our hands, chasing around for something your favorite uncle may or may not have buried there.  But I promised you we would give it a try, and from what I can see out of the window, the map seems perfectly accurate.  We’ll start digging first thing in the morning, okay?”

The woman leaned over and gave her husband a kiss on the cheek.

“It looks like I’m making a believer out of you, Ted,” she whispered, as they locked the door and walked down the rutted flagstone pathway to their car.

The next morning, after a nice breakfast at the inn where they were staying, Stella and Ted returned to the old house, dressed in their oldest jeans and sweatshirts, and armed with several shovels and an assortment of tools which they thought might come in handy in digging for treasure.  The chilly sky was still overcast and a misty drizzle was steadily falling. 

They followed the detailed instructions on the map, pacing off the prescribed number of yards from this tree to that rock, from this point in the barnyard to that point along the old stone wall, and on and on like that all morning as the drizzle intensified.  Finally, Stella called out, “Like they say in the movies, Ted, this must be the spot!”

“I think you’re right, dear.  Let’s get out the shovels and get to work, before we get soaked out here.  At least the rain will make the digging easier.”

About two wet hours later, handling the digging alternately, they had gotten down almost four feet.  It wasn’t easy work.  Each time they dug deeper, the walls would crumble inward, and by the time they had a hole deep enough for one of them to fit into, passing the dirt up to the other, the pit was easily wider than it was deep.  Then she saw it.

“Ted, Ted, there it is, the top of some kind of box.  We’ve found it,” Stella screamed as she got on her knees, scraping sandy soil from the top of what appeared to be a green metallic box.  Five minutes later, she was able to hand it up to her husband, as she clambered out of the hole.

“Let’s get it back to the house, dear,” Ted said.  “We can open it there where it’s dry and I’ll come back here later and fill in the hole.”

Back in the old house, after cleaning up a bit and drying off, they leaned over the kitchen table, and surveyed the box which they had put on sheets of that morning’s Philadelphia Inquirer.  It looked like the kind of strongbox which people used to keep around the house for birth certificates, insurance policies and family papers.  It had a firm looking latch on it, but it readily opened when Stella pushed on it.  It hadn’t even been locked.

Inside, there was a soft cloth bag which seemed to weigh about a pound and also, a brown manila envelope.  Loosening the drawstring of the bag, Stella peered into it, and reaching in, extracted a gigantic meticulously cut unmounted diamond, whose facets immediately sparkled with sharp reflections of the light which was now coming through the window, the rain having stopped and been replaced by afternoon sunshine.

“Holy shit,” she murmured.  “That’s the largest diamond I have ever seen!”

Ted looked at it, as Stella held it firmly in both palms.  “It gotta be the size of a grapefruit.  I don’t know much about diamonds, but if that is a real one, it has to be a thousand carats.”

For almost five uninterrupted minutes, they silently stared at the stone.  Finally, Stella reached for the envelope and tore it open.  Inside was a yellowed magazine page, labeled June 26, 1969, and marked as taken from Newsweek Magazine.  They silently scanned the article, which read as follows:

“Iranian Police in Teheran have given up on ever finding the 987 carat diamond paperweight which was reported stolen from the Shah’s palace during his absence last year while the Royal Family was vacationing on the French Riviera.  A gift from the American oil industry to the Shah, the paperweight had been cut from a giant South African stone by Amsterdam diamond cutters, and presented to him five years ago.  American law enforcement experts, who along with Interpol, cooperated with Iranian authorities in the unsuccessful hunt for the stone, have returned to the United States.  Will Nugent, a spokesman for the American Embassy in Teheran, was reported as saying that by now, that stone surely has been cut into about 200 five carat gems, which can be anywhere on the globe. This was a job done by professionals.”

Accompanying the text were two photographs, one a picture of the paperweight which at that very moment was being cradled in Stella’s hands and the other of Stella’s uncle, Embassy spokesman Will Nugent, as he must have appeared thirty-five years ago.

                                        *                   *                  *

The lawyer looked up from the papers before him, turning to them.

“Stella, Ted,” he stated in a reportorial tone, “I’ve been in contact with the State Department, and they have assured me that your uncle did not steal the diamond.  Apparently, he actually was CIA, working under a diplomatic cover. They were rather vague about it, but conceivably, the Royal Family, fearing a revolution, might have given him the paperweight for safe-keeping.  They also hinted at another scenario; it might very well have been stolen, but your uncle managed to retrieve it and never was able to get it back to the Shah for one reason or another.  They told me that according to international law, it is now the property of the Iranian government, but that there is no way that the United States will tolerate it being returned to the Ayatollahs who control Iran.  Frankly, they told me, they are happy with the way things stand right now concerning the Royal paperweight.”

“You mean we can keep it?” Stella asked.

“Not exactly.  What they would prefer would be for you to follow the direction your uncle implied in the article.  Cut it up into a couple of hundred smaller stones so that the paperweight, in effect, won’t exist any longer.  Then, there will be nothing for the Iranians ever to come looking for.  State is agreeable to your keeping about twenty percent of whatever the cut gems bring.  Of course, you’ll have to report that as taxable income, but even after inheritance taxes the way they figure, that ought to still net you about $4,000,000.”

“What about the rest of the money?” Ted interrupted.

“They suggest it be donated to some good cause, preferably with some Iranian connection.”

Stella looked at Ted and both nodded.

The lawyer continued, “By the way, the diamond cutters who originally worked on the stone aren’t located in Amsterdam any longer.  They relocated in Tel Aviv about twenty years ago and the son of the man who created the paperweight is in charge.  He remembers his father working on the stone for the Shah and will be glad to do the work. The smaller stones ought to bring about $30,000,000.  If that’s okay with you, just pick your charity and I can start the ball rolling.”

“If it’s okay with you, Ted, I think we should do what Mr. Carter suggests.”

Ted nodded affirmatively.

                                        *                  *                 *

And so it was that on the outskirts of Tel Aviv, the Will Nugent Children’s Center, an institution devoted to the care of children orphaned or injured by terrorist attacks and military action in the Middle East, opened last year.  The Center not only serves Israelis,  but is open to children from anywhere in the region, and surprisingly, despite what you might read in the papers, among those residing or being treated there are some Palestinians, a few Lebanese and Jordanians, a number of Iraqis and of course, a fair number of children who came from Iran.

(At the time this story was written, our relationship with Iran was still heavily influenced by the hostage-taking  episode in 1979, and there is no way that the stone would have been returned.  Although this is a work of fiction, with no basis in fact, I wonder if the attitude of the State Department would have been different today, with the return of the stone becoming a negotiating tactic in our strategy of preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear power.)     
JL              

                                                               

                                                           

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Jack Lippman

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