“There are no atheists in foxholes, and no ideologues in financial crises.”

                      — Federal Reserve Chm. Ben Bernanke, quoted in today’s New York Times

As a direct-marketing copywriter (call it junk mail if you must), I’ve spent a good deal of my adult life following first principles: Sell fear, greed or — if possible — both.

It’s cynical but it works. People who feel fear or greed tend to act on those feelings (and, hopefully, buy whatever I’m selling), because fear and greed are bedrock human impulses.

Watching the current financial crisis unfold, I’ve been thinking a lot about greed. Greed got us into this mess. Mortgage lenders were greedy, making loans to people who couldn’t even pay down their credit card balances. Wall Street was greedy, reselling bundles of bad loans to unsuspecting investors, and peddling financial instruments incomprehensible even to those who created them. Not least, homebuyers were greedy, thinking they could get something (a house) for, basically, nothing — little or no money down, ridiculously low introductory interest rates.

But in the immortal words of Gordon Gecko, the savage that Michael Douglas played in the movie WALL STREET, “Greed is good.” Can that also be true? ‘Fraid so, sometimes. Greed is just another word for “incentive,” and incentives have brought about every change that defines our lives, for better and for worse. Without incentives, we wouldn’t have internal-combustion engines, open-heart surgery and AquaFresh Extreme Clean. (Nor Claymore mines, Superfund sites and American Idol.) Without incentives, we’d still be painting antelopes on cave walls.

And greed cannot be curbed. At least I don’t think so. That’s our nature, or so my direct-marketing experience tells me.

Here’s where it gets cute though. When all us greedy people selfishly pursue our own selfish interests, an extraordinary thing is said to happen. Something emerges called The Marketplace, a theoretical entity where everything sorts itself out for the greatest good of the greatest number of us. A lot of people believe in this seemingly magical ability of Mister Market. Heck, even I believe it (with certain caveats), and I call myself a liberal. Most importantly, in recent years a majority of our political leaders have believed it.

At least they did so until some time last week.

Those leaders have elevated The Marketplace to the level where bishops frolic and the Pope presides. If we are left to pursue our various self-interests, those leaders assert, Mister Market will sort it all out. Free markets, they say, make a free people, and anyone who says otherwise must be a Socialist.

(Yeah, they say that. I have Republican friends who use the S word. Some even sling around the M word. Pardon me, but I don’t think there’s been a practicing, believing Marxist in America since Joe McCarthy rooted the last one out of the State Department in 1954. A heartfelt thanks from all of us, Joe, wherever you are.)

So OK: Freedom is good. Got that. If some freedom is good, more freedom must be better, right? Check. If more freedom is better, than total freedom must be best of all. Why, of course it must. Let’s all carry Smith & Wessons for personal protection. No, make that AK-47s. No, make that Claymore mines.

This is where we are now. When things to get to the Claymore mine stage, this is where we always wind up. In moments of national crisis, governments usually do what our government is doing right now. When they fail to do so, we get a Great Depression or a decade-long stagnation like Japan in the ’90s. Most times though — this time, thank heaven — government jumps in with both feet, doing whatever it must to save and protect us. That always, always involves intervention, regulation, and the tossing-out-the-window of free-market fundamentalism.

Sure, Gordon, greed can do good in the world. Sure, Mister Market, in the long run, I have total confidence that you will sort things out for the greatest good. However, to quote another famous economist, John Maynard Keynes, “In the long run, we are all dead.”

Frank Joseph
www.tolovemercy.com

P.S. My short story “Our Lady of the Helicopter” has been chosen for inclusion in the anthology NEW LINES FROM THE OLD LINE STATE, published by the Maryland Writers Assn. (The story first appeared in SCRIBBLE, the MWA literary magazine.) The anthology will be introduced at the Baltimore Book Festival this Sunday at 5:30 p.m. and I’ll be among the authors reading.

Earlier that same Sunday afternoon, I’ll be signing copies of my novel TO LOVE MERCY at the AuthorsBookshop.com tent.

The Baltimore Book Festival takes place Friday-Sunday in Mt. Vernon Square and it’s always lots of fun. Hope you’ll make it! Here’s the link: www.baltimorebookfestival.com/index.cfm?page=schedules

P.P.S. And don’t forget to visit the “Fall for the Book” festival at George Mason University in Fairfax VA this coming Thursday at 1:30 p.m., I’ll be reading from TO LOVE MERCY and signing books in the Provident Bank tent, along with fellow authors Solveig Eggerz, Peter Brown and Elaina Loveland. Here’s the link: www.fallforthebook.org/events.html

I’m typing this with nine fingers. Let’s see how far I get before the anesthetic wears off.

I just returned from Suburban Hospital in Bethesda MD, where kindly Dr. Bieber removed a cyst from under the nail cuticle of my long finger. I had not encountered the term “long finger” previously, but it’s the term of art — it’s on the chart. (The long one, in case you’re wondering, is the one with which Redskins fans offer the Dallas Cowboys salute.)

You’d think he could do such a simple procedure in his office, but no. Medicine is weird, and I’m not talking merely about terminology.

The doctor wrote something on my finger with a Sharpie to make sure he targeted the right digit. They laid me on a gurney, strapped a tourniquet on my left arm (the one where the surgery was taking place) and a blood-pressure cuff on the other arm. They swabbed the business arm with sticky yellow Betadine antiseptic from fingertip to elbow, then fitted an elastic sock over the hand. Then they punched a hole in a big blue tarp, ran my upraised arm through the hole, and tethered the other end of the tarp above my head. This is a sterile tent, they said. Tent indeed. Where, I asked a nurse, are the marshmallows?

Dr. Bieber stuck needles in two spots at the base of the finger, which hurt, but not for long, since they were full of Lidocaine. Then he clamped a teeny tourniquet around my finger. The nurse had said the arm tourniquet was just for backup — he’d probably use the finger tourniquet only. I didn’t see the surgery and I’m glad, but I’d've liked a gander at that baby tourniquet.

By now my finger is as numb as a block of wood. I can feel the doctor doing something to it but can’t tell what because of the tent overhead. The radio is playing a Shania Twain song.

Pull. Scrape. “Isn’t she the one whose husband just ran off?” Dr. Bieber asks. “Yeah,” one of the nurses replies, “and I hear the woman wasn’t half as good-looking as Shania.”

Scrape. Pull. Shania goes away and Journey starts to sing.

Pull. Scrape. A country song comes on. “You like country music?” the doctor asks. “Her sister really likes it,” one of the nurses answers. “She’s from Texas.”

Scrape. Pull. The doctor is putting in the stitches now, to soul music. The two rotator cuffs he did earlier today went fast and he’s ahead of schedule. After he finishes me up, it’s off to the beach for the weekend. A nurse notes there’s rain in the forecast. The doctor makes a noise that might be a laugh, and says he’ll be playing Monopoly with his mother-in-law.

“But first, paperwork,” he says. “I’d rather do paperwork than almost anything.” He picks the phone off the wall, hits a button and begins dictating my case, speaking in medicalese at about 250 words a minute. Every few sentences, he slows down a bit to say: ” … end paragraph.” He hangs up the phone and looks at me. “Did you get all that?” he asks. “Most of it,” I answer. He tells a nurse to put in the last two stitches, we shake hands, and he’s off to the beach. Total elapsed time: Five songs on WASH-FM.

The weirdest moment came after Dr. Bieber took off and the nurses were bandaging me. The finger, still totally numb, felt like it was missing, gone, disappeared — like there was a blank spot in the middle of my hand where I once had a finger. I had a vision of those poor mopes coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan, missing much bigger limbs, and wondered whether this is what that felt like.

Now I’m looking down at a bandaged finger half the size of a banana. I’ve typed this far to discover that it’s actually not nine-finger but six-finger typing — touch on the right, hunt-and-peck on the left. There’s no pain yet, three hours after the surgery, but I have Tylenol + codeine in case it comes along. It could be an interesting week ahead for novel-writing.

This is nothing. One of my high-school buddies just had his prostate out. Another is fighting cancer with one hand tied behind his back, because they can’t give him chemo. I made a list the other day of my aging contemporaries. The majority have some heinous crap or other that’ll either kill them or just, if they’re lucky, make their lives miserable. All I have is sleep apnea, a bad back, several orthopedic nuisances, and a finger that could start hurting any minute now. The feeling is just starting to come back.

I’m looking forward to next Tuesday when they take the stitches out. I feel terrible for my friends but a little relieved on my own account. I think I ought to try living a little more fully and being a little more grateful. Who knows? Next time things could be more complicated.

Frank Joseph
www.tolovemercy.com

P.S. I invite you to attend “Fall for the Book,” a delightful festival that takes place every year at George Mason University in Fairfax VA, outside Washington DC. This year’s festival takes place Sept. 21-26 on the GMU campus. Headliners include Sue Miller, Ethan Canin, Chinua Achebe, Michael Cunningham, Charles Baxter and … me. I’m participating in a presentation by the Writers Center of Bethesda MD Thursday, Sept. 25, from 1:30 to 3 p.m. It’s in the Provident Bank Tent. Hope you can make it!