April Fools

The G-7, no it’s the G-8—oh, this dates me—now it’s the G-20 summit meets in London today (would ancient diviners have found it to be an auspicious date?). Obama is off to meet the class for the first time as president. But acrimony and contention have already reared their heads.
The Premier of France has promised to walk out if his conditions aren’t meant, and everybody seems to be a little annoyed with the American banks and brokerages that talked them into buying lots of bundled mortgages. (American Home values are now falling faster than they have in recorded history.) The Chinese are pushing to dump the dollar as the world currency and create something new, not tied to any one economy. We don’t like the idea. I have to admit that I’ve seen it coming for decades. If it happens, we’ll all notice!
Every nation in the G-20—whose members own or control about 80% of the world trade, wealth and businesses—is hurting badly by now. A similar group of movers and shakers met in London in 1933 to do something about the Great Depression. They failed.
Will this meeting succeed? I cannot say for certain—but there is one little matter that seems to sum up both the day and the summit perfectly. Thousands of very unhappy demonstrators are expected to be on hand to greet Obama and other leaders of the summit.
They’re mad, especially at bankers who, they believe, caused all the misery. In reaction London banks, whose executives are known around the world for sartorial splendor—London being the world center for men’s fashion, after all—have told their employees not to dress in their usual hand tailored suits, but to “dress down” for their own safety.
Can anyone imagine, ask commentators, British bankers in blue jeans? Or khakis? Think of Mary Poppins’ employer, George Banks. Imagine him having a dress down day at the office. You get the picture. How fitting for April Fools Day.
Good luck to Mr. Obama. This may be even harder than dealing with Congress. We no longer walk in with the image of unchallengeable supremacy that we had, say, twelve months ago. We, too, are dressed down.
Then there’s talk—which would have taken as an ultimate April Fools’ Day joke only a couple of decades past—of breaking up General Motors into separate more viable parts. They increasingly expect to use Bankruptcy Court to affect these changes. But even the most optimistic scenarios rely on hopelessly optimistic sales projections. April Fool?
Chrysler—begging for its third bailout in fifty years—has been told coldly to get out of the house and marry Italy’s Fiat. Like the princess in “Princess Dairies 2”, they have 30 days to consummate. Prudential bailed them out in 1955; the government bailed them out in 1980—now it seems they can’t go back to the well any more. April Fool. (I still love our Dodge minivan.)
Ford’s sales plummeted by over a third last month. Another figure that might once have sounded like an April Fools’ Day trick. Americans not buying cars? April Fool!
American employers cut loose nearly three quarters of a million workers –about a hundred thousand more than had been expected—in March. Let’s go out and buy a car today! April Fool.
Isn’t it remarkable how many people can suddenly remember that they forgot to pay taxes when they get nominated for a cabinet post? “Oh, silly me, it just slipped my mind!” April Fool.
And finally, this is the perfect day to remember the promises we were made. We would be so much better off without a fixed pension. Think how much better off we are because we were given the freedom to fend for our retirement in the booming stock market!
How lucky we were to live in a land where the value of our house alone could support us in our old age through a reverse mortgage, pulling down all that lovely equity.
How easy it would be to pay back a little thing like a loan for college with all those high paying jobs we could just walk into, just wait for the recruiters to come to us.
How this all represented, not the high side of a cycle, but rather a “fundamental shift” in the American economy that was here to stay.
April Fool.