“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