Ben Stein on the State of the Economy

Over at The American Spectator, Ben Stein has posted some thoughts about the state of the economy in an excerpt from Ben Stein's Diary, From Coolidge to Harding:

I am sitting in the study of my home in Rancho Mirage. My glorious dogs, Brigid and Cleo, are sitting on the couch staring at me. Words cannot describe the love I feel for them. No. Not if I were Shakespeare. Not if I were Samuel Johnson. Nothing can describe the love I feel for these hounds. Loyal. Beautiful. Intelligent. Modest. Perfect. I love them. On the other hand, I am doing a rapid burn about the state of the economy. Maybe by the time this appears, we will be in better shape. But for right now, here’s what I see.

It is true enough that the Bush administration did a poor job on the economy. They cut supervision of the markets to a bare minimum, if that. (This started long before Mr. Bush, by the way.) They allowed a true historic incompetent, Henry Paulson, to be secretary of the treasury and to staff it with other boobs. They did not woodshed Ben Bernanke when he turned out to be too slow to respond adequately to the growing crisis.

They allowed simply criminal self-dealing in the form of executive compensation—and just plain stealing—from Wall Street to Main Street. They did not stop the pools of manipulators and looters on Wall Street and in Greenwich from running wild. Essentially, they took the community swimming pool that had been the playground of people planning retirement—the stock market—and allowed sharks to swim in it.

The pitiful destruction of Americans’ hopes for retirement is the result. The demolition of American hopes for a brighter tomorrow is the result. It did not happen by accident. It happened because criminals and fast talkers were running the system that “served” American savers and robbing it blind. (See the new book Enough, by John Bogle, which lays this out in brilliant detail.) This was all a grievous set of faults by Mr. Bush, and grievously hath he answered for it.

Ben goes on to explain why, as harmful and wrongheaded as W's economic policies were, Obama's are incalculably worse. He then drops this bombshell:

Well, anyway. It is all maddening. And I am getting scared. I was not even 30 when I started writing for this magazine. Now, I am 64. What do I do? What about my dwindling stock portfolio? What do I do about that? What do I do with my homes that I bought in moments of wild euphoria? How will I support myself when I am old and gray? I am terrified and that makes me fearful and angry.

I am really angry that “they”—the speculators— have stolen my peace of mind. But to be fair, I stole it from myself by my spendthrift ways and by extending myself too far. I really believed that we were in stable times and above all I believed the government would keep things on an even keel. I did not plan for calamity, as the saying goes, and now I am paying for it.

That's reassuring, isn't it? Here's Ben Stein, "writer, actor, economist, and lawyer living in Beverly Hills and Malibu," star of movies and television, regular panelist on Fox News's weekend business shows – and HE'S scared? Where does that leave the rest of us?

As any regular Ben Stein reader knows, this sort of gloom and doom is not characteristic of his writing. Normally, Ben's material tends to be cheery and uplifting. Thus this sort of jeremiad is especially jarring coming from this particular source. Ben sweetens the bitter pill somewhat, though, by closing with an account of his visit to Harding University. The result was a dramatic change in his mood and outlook:

I had felt a bit tired earlier in the day, but the moment I got on the Harding campus, I felt great. When the speech was over, a high official of the school said he hoped I would have a safe trip home. I answered, “I am home.” I really love those people.

Thank you, Ben, for yet another beautiful – if troubling – piece of writing.