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Repreive

1/26/2024

As of October and until just over two weeks ago, I had been bumped off the SF State History Department teaching list for this semester, due to declining enrollments generally and for History (it’s “non-vocational”) and for San Francisco (with its pretty high living costs) in particular (see “The End of History” 101323). Then, for various unconnected reasons, I was given one class and, as of last Monday, a second class to teach.

(Historical aside: Bismarck is famously (if apocryphally) quoted as saying that there are two things one should never watch being made: sausages and laws. If he had been involved in University administration, he would have added course scheduling to that list.)

So, I’ve been scrambling to figure out exactly what to do with each course. I’m aided by the fact that I’ve taught each class before, so while there are adjustments to be made, the basic course concept and many tools are already at hand. On the other hand, we (i.e. the Faculty across all the California State University campuses) were supposed to be on strike this week and not supposed to do any work. I have to tell you that I fudged a bit on that one on the one day that the strike actually happened (settled late Monday night), so that I could tell my students what to expect before classes actually began.

More broadly, I’m delighted with the opportunity to get back into the classroom and grateful to my Department Chair for navigating through all the bureaucracy to get me there.

Thus ends a period of despondency about what I would be doing in the future, a topic with which I have been wrestling since October. Despite my standard advice to others: “don’t retire from something, retire to something” and despite the fact that I am already well into my second career, I found myself struggling to figure out next steps. While I had opened some lines of possibility on specific projects, I had no clear sense of how I would spend my time/attention.

But, even with this reprieve, I am far from “out of the woods.” The enrollment/budget pressures are continuing and it is clear that some version of limbo and uncertainty will recur every semester for the foreseeable future.

In an upcoming posting, I will be talking about how “the world is too much with us.” After I started writing that, I read an interesting piece about how people later in their career need to think differently about how they spend their time: less outward, in “the world,” and “success” oriented; more inward and reflective. The author also plugged teaching/giving back as an important direction. Hmmm, I’ve had that covered in one mode and now need to rethink it….

As to the classes this semester, I can approach them with a renewed sense of opportunity and engagement with my students. But there are no illusions here, my “reprieve” won’t magically get them all excited about what I have to offer. There are new challenges and new techniques and material to bring to bear. For one example, I am moving one class from my heretofore standard “take-home” final exam to one that is “in-class;” blue-books and all. It’s one stab at dealing with the risks of AI-generated student responses.

Of course, one drawback of being a “contingent” faculty member, taking my chances with the course line-up every semester, is that there marginal benefit of long-term investment in learning new material and teaching techniques is pretty low. It’s a real deterrent and actually a detriment to students. Alas, given the current university quasi-vocational, “push-em-through-graduation” mentality, this becomes an acceptable cost.

In any event, now I will have a bit more time to sort through possibilities. I need to be ready for the end of the term in May with some specific plans—in history, philanthropy, or…

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Alternatives

1/19/2024

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I’m part of a group that makes annual predictions at the end of each year, which we review the following December. We’re often (usually) wrong, but it’s a source of a lot of laughs and groans.

This time, in addition to the usual three predictions, we will also make a call on the upcoming Presidential election (only 3xx shopping days until which). I will pick the Dems to win (as much out of hope/desperation as from expectation).

One of my other predictions will be that someone other than Joe or He-who-shall-not-be-named (HWSNBN) will be leading the ticket for one of the major so-called parties. I was surprised to find that several others in the group also foresaw an alternative to the current front-runners; some plumping for Nikki Haley, some for Gavin Newsom, some less specific. This may be our hopes getting out in front of what we think is likely, but there are some real possibilities

I wrote some time ago (111320) about the dysfunctional state of our party system and its two principal components. Neither has improved, indeed the GOP seems to lurch from crisis-to-crisis, exhausting our adjectives of ignominy.

Among their similarities, both parties have been effectively frozen by a nominal leader who insists on carrying the flag despite considerable dissension. The principal difference is that the Dems are unhappy and not doing anything visible about it (fringes and flakes notwithstanding) and the GOP is unhappy but won’t acknowledge it despite the bizarre melodrama of the primaries and debates (which include a consignment of fringes and flakes, e.g. Cornel West, Marianne Williamson and RFK, Jr.).

Indeed, the entire GOP process would be easily considered a charade if 1) the political media weren’t so desperate for something to write about, and 2) the just-in-case factor. As the flagship, the orange-haired one has taken on a lot of water, alienation of his non-base, a multi-ring legal circus in which he sticks his head in the mouth of four judicial lions simultaneously, and a non-trivial age/physical condition risk. All the jockeying between Christie, DeSantis, Haley, and Ramaswamy makes no sense unless they’re silently betting on their front-runner imploding. While politics makes for strange bedfellows (tawdry allusions intended), it’s hard to see any of the first three taking second-seat on the ticket and Vivek doesn’t add anything.

Conceivably, they might be out there spending many weeks and millions to build some name recognition for 2028, but the ROI on that angle seems pretty attenuated and speculative. No, they’re out there to position themselves for some dramatic scramble this Spring or Summer, either at the Convention or (if late in the game) at some extraordinary session of the Republican National Committee. He won’t go willingly, he has no conscience, and pretty much the entire apparatus is in permanent kow-tow mode, so this scenario depends less on prosecutors and judges and more on a demonstrable medical condition. Although if the constitutional disqualification angle gets some traction with SCOTUS (see Central Bankers, 011224) under the 14A (or my own favorite: the 22A (see Petard, 080423), he may have a judicial denouement.

If he does go, Haley is the odds-on favorite in my book. Not only does she appeal to younger/women/minority voters (esp. vis-à-vis Joe), but the others all have big drawbacks, especially in terms of electability. Early polls show that she would trounce Joe; so if HWSNBN drops; I’m betting Joe will back out too.

On his own, Joe is another situation entirely: his medical prognosis is more problematic and he’s a much more sophisticated political operator. I think he would be happy to bow out but for his fear of the return of his predecessor and the fact that his VP is underwhelming has put him in a political box. Harris (the Veep) was a so-so Senator with the right optics to make it to the ticket in 2020 and has not inspired since either in terms of “rizz” (formerly known as charisma) or substance. But the optics make it impossible for Joe to back out and endorse someone else.

The alternative is for him to, in effect, declare an open primary and let a gang of folks try to garner enough attention and money to blast through what remains of the selection process (timing would be key here). The list includes several of the also-rans from last time: Buttigieg and Klobuchar (Bernie and Elizabeth Warren are now past their “sell by” dates), our own Governor Gavin Newsom, and…and…and…. Actually, it’s hard to imagine who else has got the name recognition and stature to give it a go (run through the list of Governors and Senators for yourself: Jay Pritzker of Illinois?, Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan?, Cory Booker of New Jersey?). [The same is true if his withdrawal is “involuntary.”]

Now, each of them (and many other dreamers) have, I am sure, run their own scenarios, polls, and shadow teams of donors and operatives (if they haven’t then they’re not competent to run a country). The scenarios depend mostly on timing, with Joe dropping before the primary season starts, or end of the Spring before the Convention . It would be a highly disorienting process for both Dems and the media. The shock of actually having to make a decision in an open-ended, unframed (i.e., without lots of media crafting of the categorization and labelling), plus the drama of the unexpected could send us off into the proverbial uncharted territory in terms of who and how they are chosen. It would actually be exciting (and fun!). After the Convention, the Dems would be stuck with Kamala moving up from her VP slot.

The later the timing, the larger the problem of legitimacy looms. A candidate who isn’t vetted by the months/years-long slog would have to find a way to connect—almost instantaneously—with Democratic voters (perhaps in a primary, perhaps a wholly-open Convention) and then the broader electorate. Wow! My head is spinning with the complexities and uncertainties. The Convention (mostly local political operatives) could even pick someone eminently qualified to be President but who didn’t want to or couldn’t make it through the gruesome primary process (OMG!!). Maybe they might even draft Michelle.

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The Break-Up

1/12/2024

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From 1983 through 1998, I was a “Bell-head,” i.e., I worked for AT&T (briefly) and the newly-spun off “Baby Bell” for California and Nevada “Pacific Telesis Group.” I was reminded of this the other day since this month marks the 40th anniversary of one of the most remarkable events in American corporate history: The “Break-Up.”

The American Telephone and Telegraph Company evolved into a de facto national monopoly on voice telephony early in the 20C and was effectively sanctioned by the government. It provided reliable service across the country (serving over 80% of the country’s consumers and businesses) and globally. AT&T employed well over 1M people in its heyday. Technological developments in many fields were accelerated by WWII and some of these started to nibble away at the monopoly by the late 1950s and into the 1960s. By 1974, the Ford Administration’s Justice Department decided that “Ma Bell” was abusing its power and stifling competition and sued under the antitrust laws to change the situation.

Meanwhile, beginning in the 1970s, the Federal Communications Commission was exercising its regulatory authority to put limits of a different sort on what the phone company could do, but was only tangentially involved in the antitrust litigation (the issue of intra-governmental policy coordination is a treatise in itself). In 1982, I was the Special Assistant to the General Counsel of the FCC when we got a call from Justice asking for an urgent meeting later that day. We convened an emergency meeting of the relevant senior staff of the FCC, Justice Department attorneys came over and said: “Tomorrow, we will announce…”

We were a bit agog. The plan devised by DoJ and the Company was to split AT&T into 8 parts: seven regional “Baby Bells,” each retaining a monopoly of local phone service over a chunk of the country and A&T would remain just in the “long-distance” and international businesses. Under the plan, this would be implemented two years hence, on January 1, 1984. This was, among many other things, a “field day” for investment bankers and corporate consultants. Consumers would henceforth be getting two phone bills; there were huge technological complexities, legal issues, organizations to be restructured, not to mention creating a bunch of new corporate names and arranging seven completely new “C-suites.” Two years was not too much.

Amid all the shuffling and hiring, I leveraged a contact from Michigan to see if I could work for what became the local company for the upper Midwest: “Ameritech.” But they had already hired their Washington government relations team, so I was handed-off to the guy in charge of the “Pacific Telesis Group’s” DC office. He hired me to be the lead lobbyist for regulatory matters. I did that job for four years until they twisted my arm and was forced (forced, I say!) to move to headquarters in San Francisco in 1987. (So, whatever might be said of this event and its (continuing) reverberations from either an antitrust, telecommunications, technological, or other perspectives, I am grateful for it since it did generate a job opportunity.)

By the 1980s, computer technology was starting to have a big impact on how phone systems worked. There was no Internet yet, of course, but by the early 1990s, we could see that even bigger changes were coming. At the same time, cell phones burst on the scene (One of my first assignments for PacTel was to secure the license to offer cell phone services in Los Angeles in time for the 1984 Olympics), competition for long-distance service intensified (MCI/Sprint/etc.), and cable companies were starting to figure out how to compete for local phone service. It was a bewildering time (although much seems archaic by now).

By the late 1990s, it was apparent that the regulatory/antitrust premises of the “Break-Up” were already becoming outdated. Over the following ten years or so, the industry heaved and shifted again. The Baby Bells re-merged into two principal groups and what was initially seen as the sexy, high growth long distance segment became commoditized and financially dull. Southwestern Bell (which had bought PacTel in 1998 and set me free) scooped up a bunch of others, as did Verizon. Then they each bought the old long-distance companies (AT&T and MCI, respectively). Southwestern couldn’t resist taking AT&T’s brand (and it’s cell-phone business); so now we have two main companies, plus a few large cable companies which are comparable in scope if not in scale (and a gaggle of little local independents). Lots of clever ideas (mostly about tech guys getting into “content” failed. From a distance it all looks like a lot of churn and not much to show for it.

As I say, the investment bankers and lawyers made out very well in all of this corporate shape-shifting. Consumers had choices and changing service providers and meanwhile the technology and usage patterns for voice calls, information, video, mobile, gaming, streaming, and other services continued to spin into new companies, services, and patterns.

As a participant, I certainly benefited from all this. As a user, my industry knowledge makes me a little smarter than average (although this lead is certainly fading). As a historian, the story gives a great example of the deep differences between experience, memory, and historical perspective. These changes, whether legal/regulatory, corporate, or technological were each implemented by folks (mostly) in good faith, responding to the particular circumstances that they faced in an environment that doesn’t digest change well.

Typical historical questions—Was this all well done? Was it worth it? Is anyone to blame?—seem largely irrelevant. Few, if any, at the time predicted the current configuration; they were mostly just chasing opportunities or solving the problems at hand and letting the future take care of itself. Big retrospective questions have little to no applicability going forward since circumstances have changed so much. Certainly, no single person or group was sufficiently “in charge” to be assigned “blame” or credit.

The Break-Up and its shake-out generated lots of work and angst; but we have (most of us) moved on. It was the meat of many lives for a long time; now it’s just (increasingly) ancient history

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Central Bankers

1/5/2024

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Central bankers are a strange breed; some combination of the cognoscenti and the Illuminati. Deliberately (in most countries) separated from direct political control and with a huge remit: monetary policy, international currency exchange, labor market and overall price stability; not to mention a wide range of regulatory functions with regard to their country’s financial sector. It’s heavy (and heady) stuff. Almost always men (although about ten years ago, Janet Yellen in the US and Christine Lagarde in the EU were the two most powerful women in the world).

Despite their engagement with all manner of statistics and esoteric economic theories and their nominally non-partisan nature, they cannot help but be political animals. Their principal functions: setting interest rates, providing stable governance to their nation’s economy and financial sector requires subtle judgement and the ability to operate in a highly speculative environment. They are steeped in the arcane and the bureaucratic. They’re not democratically accountable and formal oversight is necessarily pretty loose; so, in the end, who can say why they do what they do.

They are not therefore, as a group, prone to radical thinking, but with the increasing dysfunction in mainline political processes, they might find themselves squeezed between their mandates and the formal political and legal limits on what they might do. Scrambling pretty hard to avert a total meltdown during the 2008 cratering of the financial system required some cutting of corners; most of which will never be known or believed.

In his intriguing SciFi novel of a few years ago, “The Ministry for the Future,” Kim Stanley Robinson posited a joint initiative by the leading central banks to set up a financing mechanism to fund reduction of carbon and climate adaptation based on the premise that the world (which includes the bankers’ particular responsibility for the global economy) was going to hell, so they had to act and claimed the power to take extraordinary action. Normal political leaders were happy to have somebody else actually deal with the obvious threat to civilization that they didn’t cause too much trouble as to the bankers’ exceeding the forms of democratic control and the climate crisis was mitigated. (Whew!) “Central Bankers Ride to the Rescue” is a great scenario and hardly the most outlandish to emerge from that genre. But what I’m suggesting here isn’t as dramatic or innovative; although it would require some subtlety and political courage.

When it comes to both politics and economics, central bankers are generally exceedingly smart and sophisticated. So, I can’t help but wondering what the US species: the Federal Reserve Board, is making of our domestic dysfunction, especially the possibility of the re-election of a certain former President and the implications for the overall state of the world and world economy. Whether in terms of climate, national security, global trade/finance, or culture wars, there are huge risks to the system they are both sworn and fundamentally inclined to protect.

While a good portion of Fed members are economic conservatives, none are blind or idiots; and likely there are some “never-Trumpers” among their number. Might they act? In fact, have they already begun to act? They would never do so overtly, and must mouth the ordinary mealy-mouthed platitudes about non-interference in the political process; but they’re masters of the strategic pause and raised eyebrow. Their tools—principally interest rates—are blunt instruments and there is no expectation of any precise management of the economy or timing of the business cycle. Still, bringing down interest rates soon and sharply, especially if recession can be avoided, will make the recent spike in prices seem increasingly “ancient” history by the time of the election. Economic growth and a remarkably low unemployment rate will, if they continue, help, too. After all, as we heard during the (Bill) Clinton campaigns, elections are usually all about “the economy, stupid.” To be sure, there are a bunch of other factors floating around this time, and bankers can’t solve the underlying nihilism among much of the electorate, but this befogged nudge in the economic environment might be enough to salvage Joe’s re-election.

Mindful of my recent comments about how much we understand of the nature of history—in terms of either the physical environment, mundane and indirect activities, or individual psychology—there’s no reason not to find this plausible even if it is effectively invisible to both current observers and later historians. This scenario might not happen. It might not work. It might work and never—ever—be acknowledged. “Tell-all” memoirs ain’t their style and “great man/woman” stories are not written about bankers.

[btw, much of this same thinking applies as well to the Supremes, especially as they hear the appeal of the Colorado decision on the 14A disqualification issue. They’ve got plenty of intellectual cover to uphold the disqualification and would get a lot of political support from never-Trumpers (both Dems and GOP). A lot of the mealy-mouthed Republicans (Mitch McConnell) would be privately delighted. Perhaps Roberts and one other (Kavanaugh? Barrett?) could scrape up the moral courage to put an end to the threat to the rule of law which HWSNBN represents.]

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Repreive

Alternatives

The Break-Up

Central Bankers

Condemned to Repeat It --
Musings on history, society, and the world.

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Repreive

Alternatives

The Break-Up

Central Bankers

Condemned to Repeat It --Musings on history, society, and the world.

Archives

Sign up for alerts when there's a new post

Condemned to Repeat It --
Musings on history, society, and the world.