Syzygeist

From there to here...and beyond

I have often been asked how in the world I got from a career in journalism on the West Coast in the 80s to an investment bank on Wall Street in the go-go 90s.

An honest if incomplete answer resides in an old Sufi named Joe Miller who is, alas, no longer living, but who influenced many who sought his counsel. I went to see him after falling ill with pleurisy in 1987. He asked me what advice I would give to myself if I came to me with what was troubling me then. Without thinking about it for more than a second, I said I should try to live closer to my heart and walk in the path of my fear.

At that point Joe had a brief comment – “Most people do not do that,” he said - and then thanked me for coming to see him. I left his San Francisco apartment suddenly determined to sail my 47-foot ketch from San Francisco to Hawaii and back and to let the chips in my life fall where they might.

So I did, and in 1989 quit the San Francisco Examiner to write a book about the experience and other forces in my life.  Now “Into My father’s Wake” has just been published on Amazon. You can find it at http://intomyfatherswake.com.

That it took 20 years to finish the book and that it is coming out into the new e-economy of publishing is a comment on many things, only some of which I think I understand.  In the interim my father died, my brother suffered an injury and stroke, my mother developed Alzheimer’s and Morgan Stanley offered me a job. Then I met and married the mother of my two youngest children, bought a house in Long Island… the rest, they say, is history.

Of course I hope that people I have never met will find the book, and read it, and get something from it that is as useful to them as Joe Miller’s question was to me years ago. The made-up name of this blog – syzygeist – is intended to suggest such moments, when words or ideas or people or events or some combination of those come into alignment and we see or feel something valuable, and it helps us to change direction in ways we need to.

I marvel sometimes that Joe Miller might arguably be the reason that I later – after finishing a first draft, running out of money, getting a job with a boutique consultancy  – that I found myself “Crossing Wall Street. “ This is my working title for a comment on the world I found far from journalism or the life of a writer, which I had aspired to long ago. Life is a path, a philosopher once said, that you beat as you walk it.

Wadsworth on China

Yesterday (Monday October 18th) I watched an old friend and very wise man, Jack Wadsworth, interviewed on Bloomberg TV on the subject of China – its currency, economy and relations with the US.
I have known Jack since he was running Asia for Morgan Stanley in the mid and late 90s. I first saw him at a party for clients and was struck by the thought that if a war started and we all had to join the Navy and Jack had command of a vessel, I would want to serve on it. (I still feel that way.) Jack has run his own venture capital firm that has started about 30 new companies in China in the last half decade. He knows whereof he speaks.
On Bloomberg he had the same air of quiet composure, concern, confidence and good humor that always seems to characterize him. He did his best to persuade his interviewer that the real issue is not whether China adjusts her currency upward as Americans and their politicians would like, but whether America recognizes a labor rate differential in the world that requires our adjustment.
The idea is pretty straightforward – if a country competitor has labor rates that are roughly one-tenth of yours, you have a problem. Their currency adjustment alone is not going to fix it. You have to address it.
I listened to Jack trying patiently to explain this in the mini-bites of information that modern television news coverage allows. I have been involved with Jack in numerous meetings to discuss this issue: how the US-China dynamic should concern all of us, because if it goes off the rails, we (the world economy) all go together.
With U.S. mid-term elections approaching, a rising political theme is that China has to do something about its currency in our favor, and then somehow things will be different, better, “fixed.” Most troubling is the ring of 1930s protectionism implied – or actively expressed – if “they” don’t do what we want.
Jack’s quiet message – though I doubt it was heard through the veil of “tell me a happy truth that makes us feel better” – was simply that China cannot solve our problem. Its currency may be 5-10% undervalued, but we have a 10-1 imbalance to consider.
I would feel encouraged if I thought the American body politic can face this music and begin to dance together, but I do not. The Obama administration, public employee unions, the unemployed, Tea Party activists etc are not likely to come together with an attitude of “America has a problem that it must fix.” Wall Street and those profiting from currency market machinations could care less, as they will win no matter who loses. (Okay, some may lose there, but not the ones who should.)
Rather, we will seek outside causes for our ills and play a blame game as further difficulties come home to roost. The Greeks protest austerity. The French strike to defend their retirement age. And the US will find its own ways to defend the status quo. I predict we will look to others to blame instead of into the mirror, failing to consider that we have seen the enemy and it isn’t “them.”
What does that mean? Our currency will keep getting weaker, unemployment will remain at these levels or worsen, stock and currency markets will continue to fluctuate, and the hole the US has been digging will deepen, the reckoning yet to come.

View the clip of Jack Wadsworth speaking about China on Bloomberg here.