Fantastic Fables: Father and Son -- Meditations on a soil of remorse

Father and Son

"My boy," said an aged Father to his fiery and disobedient Son, "a hot temper is the soil of remorse. Promise me that when next you are angry you will count one hundred before you move or speak."

No sooner had the Son promised than he received a stinging blow from the paternal walking-stick, and by the time he had counted to seventy-five had the unhappiness to see the old man jump into a waiting cab and whirl away.

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Ambrose Bierce's mastery of words still astonishes. A hot temper is the soil of remorse. Beautiful. I think that our soil of remorse is a Congress that steadfastly shirks its duty with respect to foreign wars and passes reckless budgets that spends money on wasteful and unproductive goods and services. The depth of their understanding is unknown since they tend to indicate their preferences with the uniform structure of "we need to spend more on X" where X is their preferred program, department, or sector. They indicate their disfavor of program, department, or sector by saying "we should cut spending in Y." A Congressman might his extreme disfavor with something by suggesting it be eliminated entirely. However, the only thing that ever gets cut or eliminated is taxes, and that for only a time. The amount Congress increased the defense spending by in FY 2017 and FY 2018 is $108 billion. That increase is larger than any defense budget in the world, with the exception of China.

One result of prolonged Congressional dysfunction is that we have corporate America out there issuing low interest rate bonds to gorge on cheap dollars. Whereas a stock valuation is an ephemeral construct of the market, payroll, rent, and debt service are things with concrete values that needs to get met at specific times. If too many firms bump into too many of these walls with too few dollars, there could be hell to pay.

In the last recession, the gangsters who caused all the trouble whacked the back of the taxpayer's head with their financial walking-sticks and hopped into the getaway cab while the taxpayer was counting on the government to do the right thing. Which, of course, they didn't.