Homeless or Estranged?

The homelessness problem in New York City has worsened. The other day a homeless man was sleeping right in front of the entrance to a K Mart on Astor Place. New Yorkers have gotten used to this and those entering the store navigated around him they way they would a puddle on a rainy day. Another homeless person was sleeping right outside a bank off Gramercy Park, the kind of tony neighborhood whose residents cotton to pristine sidewalks. It’s one thing when you read reports about the synthetic marijuana epidemic which is the scourge of homeless encampments in poorer neighborhoods. After all homelessness is the final rung on the food chain of disenfranchisement and the default mode for those who can no longer find living quarters with the proceeds from welfare checks, social security and varying forms of subsistence income. But when you start to see homeless people with their filthy blankets and cardboard signs, sitting amidst cartons of take-out food in areas filled with multi-million dollar apartments, you realize that homelessness is metastasizing. It’s a disease that can no longer be ghettoized and is now so out of control that no one is spared its reality. How can this occur in one of the wealthiest cities in the world? After all New York in not Calcutta nor a war torn city like  Sana’a. Mayor de Blasio has pledged tens of millions of dollars to remedy the problem, yet the real question is how? It used to be argued that the growing homeless population was the result of the increase in mental patients who could no longer be legally mandated to institutions. The persistence of racial inequality, despite the civil rights struggles of the 60’s, is the great subject of our day. However income inequality, the theme of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First  Century, may partly explain the presence of so much extreme poverty in the wealthiest sectors of one of the wealthiest societies on earth. The agglomeration of  so much money in a few hands has caused the opposite of a trickle down effect, as the affluence of the middle and professional classes becomes tested. When small business owners strain to pay college tuitions, which eat up a good chunk of their incomes, there’s little incentive for the kind of increased entrepreneurship that produces more jobs. The economic condition of American society is mirrored by our educational system in which a tiny elite receive outsized preparation to become what Tom Wolfe in  The Bonfire of the Vanities called “masters of the universe,” while the rest, receiving worthless pieces of paper, from corroding and meagerly subsidized public institutions, are being prepped to join the breadlines. Unheimlichkeit is the German word for estrangement. It literally means "not at home.” It's the growing population of disenfranchised and estranged New Yorkers--some of whom were formerly part of the so-called middle class--who are now filling the ranks of the homeless and making homelessness such a pervasive fact in both our city and country’s life.

Bonfire of the Vanities

Puyi,  the last Emperor of China

According to an article in the Times there are seven things Xi Jinping, China’s new leader, wants to eliminate (“China Takes Aim at Western Ideas,” NYT, 8/19/13). Amongst the items included in the mysterious Document No. 9, quoted by the Times are “western constitutional democracy” and “universal values” of human rights.  Plainly Xi Jinping and other higher ups in the party want to have their cake and eat it too. “Even as Mr. Xi has sought to prepare some reforms to expose China’s economy to stronger market forces, he has undertaken a ‘mass line’ campaign to enforce party authority that goes beyond the party’s periodic calls for discipline,” the Times remarked, going on to quote Document 9 to the effect that “Western forces hostile to China and dissidents within the country are still constantly infiltrating the ideological sphere.” Interestingly the trial of the disgraced Bo Xilai, who represented a more leftist stance has not contributed to a lessening of the party’s hold over China. As the Times went on to comment, “Relatively liberal officials and intellectuals hoped the ousting last year of Bo Xilai, a charismatic politician who favored leftist policies, would help their cause. But they have been disappointed.” The irony is that the family of Xi Jinping family has managed to amass a substantial fortune during his rise to power (“Billions in Hidden Riches For Family of Chinese Leader," NYT, 10/25/12) and if Bo Xilai trial represents a purging of an even more radical element then Wang Lijun, the reputed lover of Mr. Bo’s wife Gu Kailai (“Dollop of Romance is Added to Intrigue at Former Chinese Poltician’s Trial," NYT, 8/26/13) Xu Ming and Mr. Bo are hardly the Gang of Four. Xu Ming (“China Boss’s Fall Puts focus on Business Ally,” NYT, 8/21/13) a billionaire and one of the richest men in China, channeled enormous amounts to Mr. Bo in order to that he might live in the style to which he’d become accustomed. So what Document 9 really celebrates is not a leadership that is returning to the ideals of the Long March but the ideals of latter day robber barons, the kind of “masters of the universe that Tom Wolfe documented in The Bonfire of the Vanities. The equation is a familiar one and ideology free, of high level connections equalling preferential treatment. In the name of the party, Xi Jinping is amassing a degree of economic and political power that's reminiscent of the great dynasties that ruled China before anyone had ever heard of Communism or Das Kapital. 

Stickups by the Stuck Up

It used to be thieves that robbed banks. John Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde, Pretty Boy Floyd, Jesse James. They pulled off some of the great heists of the l9th and 20th centuries. There was a science to safe cracking. Great holdups predicated on complex planning and timing were the stuff of movies like Thief and The Bank Job.  But in the 21st century, the nature of criminality has taken a new turn. Banks rob from themselves and from their own customers. Recent descriptions of what has gone on in the world of banking resemble the process that occurs when the body attacks itself at the onset of auto-immune disease. Former treasury secretary Robert Rubin, under questioning by the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, is hard put to explain actions that were the equivalent of an attack on the very institution he was supposed to be helping to guide (“Panel Criticizes Oversight of Citi by Two Execs,” NYT, 4/8/10).  HSBC and UBS are accused of allowing clients to avoid taxes by actively abetting the creation of off-shore accounts (“2 Charged in International Tax Evasion Scheme Said to Involve HSBC," NYT, 4/15/10). Lehman Brothers uses creative accounting to hide losses (“Lehman Channeled Risks Through ‘Alter Ego’ Firm,” NYT, 4/12/10), and Goldman Sachs is accused of betting against the very products that it was selling to its own customers (“S.E.C. Accuses Goldman of Fraud in Housing Deal,” NYT, 4/17/10). There have always been financial scandals, and the precincts of so-called respectable finance have never been freed from their Long Term Capitals, their Enrons, their Ivan Boeskys, Marc Richs and Michael Milkens. But it does appear that in the last decade the tide has really turned. The stickups are being perpetrated by the stuck up. There are very few reports of masked men entering banks today (even by neophytes of the kind Al Pacino played in Dog Day Afternoon), and if you look at the doors on today’s bank vaults, it is obvious that nothing short of a tactical nuclear device would be able to dislodge them from their hinges. The real threat seems to lie not with the so-called robbers, but with the guys in wingtips and rep ties sitting confidently behind their desks and holding the combination. Aren’t these the same Masters of the Universe Tom Wolfe wrote about in Bonfire of the Vanities? Are you going to trust them with your money?