The Road Not Taken: July 2009

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Green Shoots With Aphids: The Bleak Present As Prologue

Green Shoots With Aphids: The Bleak Present As Prologue

Continued high levels of joblessness are "browning" Ben Bernanke’s "green shoots." No doubt a "recovery" of sorts will begin in the not too distant future. Short term prospects, however, remain bleak. For instance, consumption, the largest component of GDP, will stay weak, since unemployment is high, while the wages of those who hold jobs are barely keeping up with inflation. Previous spending binges were financed by refinanced mortgages, an option virtually non-existent now, and by overuse of credit cards, also less available. People now realize that economic life must be lived more cautiously and thus savings rates have increased. This is a commendable change of behavior, but not now. It is spending that creates jobs, not saving.

Investment, on the other hand, is undermined not only by the dismal situation we are in–lack of orders and unutilized capacity–but banks, having only partially recovered from the financial debacle, are unable or reluctant to loan. In addition, housing construction (part of investment in the GDP accounts) is almost as bad as it can be, with a significant upturn years away. Exports are also weak, since this is a world-wide recession. Our best hope, then, for the near future is government. By all accounts, the impact of the stimulus will be greater in the second half of the year. However, given our economic weakness, it is increasingly clear a booster shot is needed, though whether politics will allow this remains to be seen.

But the present is but prologue. Even after there is a recovery–in all probability, a weak one--the long run is almost as bleak as what we are now experiencing, just different. When John Maynard Keynes wrote--"In the long run we are all dead"-- he was lambasting economists who believed that the market left alone would eventually solve all our problems. He was not suggesting, however, we not look at the long run.

When we do so, we are hit with our most vexing problem--in a word, de-industrialization. Manufacturing is virtually disappearing, the automobile industry an obvious symbol of this. Manufacturing now provides less than 10 percent of our jobs. This reality has two negative repercussions. First, new jobs, when they appear, are typically service jobs which pay much less than what was previously earned in manufacturing, threatening the very existence of a large and healthy middle class. Second, it leads to whopping and unprecedented trade deficits, as we buy from abroad what we no longer produce.

What can we do about de-industrialization? Some suggest: government should pick winners and subsidize alternative energy; rebuild our infrastructure to encourage corporate investment; penalize corporations that relocate their factories abroad; make "Buying America" part of our national psychology, as well as part of our federal purchasing system. On the international front, it means challenging China, the country with which our trade deficit is largest, "forcing" it to devalue its currency. We should be more willing to put barriers on foreign exporters that fudge on environmental standards, child and prison labor and, in general, on unsafe and deplorable working conditions. Other advanced capitalist countries, who are major exporters, like Germany and Japan, as well as many other European countries, make it difficult for foreign countries to undermine their manufacturing sectors. Why not us? (Answer: corporate ideology.)

In the last analysis, the odds are not good that measures like these will do that much good, not only because of our politics, but mainly because Chinese workers earn about one-tenth of what our workers make, if that. It’s hard to produce here what can be produced in China at a fraction of our cost. And other poor countries lurk in the wings, such as Vietnam, India and Bangladesh. In the end, the great disparity in international incomes, built up over centuries, is being reduced–a sign of progress. The best Americans can hope for is that the process of equalization is slow enough to allow the US to make appropriate adjustments.

A second major problem of the future (as well as the present) is the growing disparity in the distribution of personal income. In fact, inequality is higher than it has been since just before the Great Depression, over 80 years ago. Some even believe inequality helped create this disaster and in general is a cause of business cycles. That is, the ability to produce is greater than the ability to consume, given that the upper one or two percent of the income strata have less need to spend. This problem was known as under-consumption. Discussion of under-consumption has largely gone out of fashion, except in the recent writings of Robert Reich, the former Secretary of Labor under President Clinton.

But one reason under-consumption was overcome was that ways were found to increasingly loan the increased incomes of the well-to-do to the middle class and poor. In essence, this is what credit cards do and this is what increased loans on houses do, both (as mentioned) no longer playing key roles. If to this we add a once-in-a-generation attitudinal change about saving, the old bugaboo–under-consumption–might once again rear its ugly head.

It is easy to know what we should do about this–make our taxes more progressive, to reverse what the labor markets are creating. But such legislation is unlikely for political reasons. As the economy limps along in the years to come, dealing with inequality will return to the political and economic arena, not primarily as a moral issue, but as an economic issue involving shortfalls in sales and higher levels of unemployment.

Finally, the third great problem looming ahead concerns the value of the dollar. The vast holdings of dollars, in the form of ownership of treasury bills, notes and bonds–in short, our growing national debt–is in the hands of sovereign wealth funds, central banks, private corporations and others. This is dangerous, since these holders of our dollars are fearful. Not only are we buying more than we sell, in huge amounts, we are spending more than we tax, running huge and growing deficits, borrowing the difference. Holders of this debt fear it is out of control, but they are, at the moment, unable to get rid of their holdings, except at a huge loss.

Before the recession, the dollar was depreciating vis a vis the Euro. Then, worldwide fears led many to put their money back in dollars, but that fear is diminishing and the dollar is again slowly depreciating. Even if we avoid a dollar panic, similar in currency markets to the 1987 stock market crash, in which the Dow dropped about 23 percent in a single day, it is difficult to believe that the money we have been printing, by the trillions, will not lead to a significant decline in the dollar. This means that imports will cost more and this will show up in a higher inflation rate. (It may help our exports some, but with so much of our manufacturing capacity destroyed, the opportunities are limited.)

If, as is likely, unemployment is still high–say, a few years from now--increasing inflation means the Federal Reserve will be between a rock and a hard place–needing to keep interest rates low to promote further recovery and needing to keep them high to prevent inflation. No doubt, the likelihood will be an unsatisfactory compromise. For the near future, however, inflation is unlikely to be a problem and if anything, deflation (lower prices) will be, the precedent being Japan’s lost decade (roughly, the 1990's).

But, in the final analysis, the greatest of all economic problems is cultural: the widespread conviction, best expressed by President Reagan, that "government is the problem." This is assumed by vast numbers, including those who receive government subsidies, like wealthy farmers and corporations, those who receive aid when there is a flood or tornado, and even those who rely on their Social Security. Believing that government is the problem means that we will rarely be able to raise taxes, since after all the money will only go down a sinkhole.

But without an ability to raise taxes, in sufficient amounts, and regulate our economy, we are forever trapped in instability and financial quagmires. The unwillingness to tax in order to pay for what is truly needed–appropriate health and educational systems, infrastructure and more–is not just a Federal problem. Our states, symbolized by California, are in deep financial trouble, with no simple way out.

Our only hope may be that someday this tenet central to our culture can be reversed and we can come to understand government as the primary source of economic stability--in short, the solution, not the problem–bringing forth appropriate oversight programs (and other planning) and spending and taxing levels to keep us employed, competitive and well-paid. Perhaps it will take another Great Depression to change the way we think, but such a disaster will also create opportunities for those whose commitment to democracy is minimal. The more distant future, in short, is likely to be a struggle between the forces that would reform capitalism, and make it workable, and those who would use its shortcomings to undermine democracy as we now know it.

Disenchantment About Obama

[Since this posting includes different writings pulled together, it may be a bit disjointed. Sorry.]

More and more, I am disenchanted about Barrak Obama. I fear his unrealistic bi-partisanship; his close ties to big business, especially Goldman Sachs, home to Robert Rubin and his economic and financial friends, Timothy Geithner and Larry Summers; his back-tracking on gay rights and torture memos; and his handling of the bail-out which was too small to begin with and is defended in such a way that a needed booster shot may never take place. He is endangering Democratic rule and making it easier for Republicans to come back to power and enact whatever God-awful things they come up with in 2013 (or even 2011). More later. (What follows is often edited comments.)
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FRIEND A
A friend of mine writes: "I'm disappointed that you're disappointed in Obama . Whadda-I-know, but is more G spending than projected the answer? Has he really sold out to Wall Street? Doesn't he--the Administration--have to operate in a harsh political arena where not just the paleo-Republican party, but many from his own party would not tolerate the radical measures you would like to see?"
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ME
Everybody agrees he’s smart. One question, then, is why is he behaving so cautiously, and seemingly at opposition to his rhetoric. And your answer is the political environment. But I think he is far more moderate, not only in action than his orations, but more moderate than what he has to be.

The disparity between what he says and the cautious policies he pushes–in medical; in stimulus; in his appointments–and not just Geithner (who you could argue, not persuasively to me, he needs for expertise) and Summers (the same) but the Interior guy and the New Hampshire guy, whatever his name, who backed out at the last moment; his back-down on the bill on helping the small, in trouble, mortgagees on a bill he had said he supported and which passed big in the House, then failed in the Senate; his commitment to support Spector in future Democratic primaries, without getting any kind of commitment from Spector to support more liberal measures, which it appears he won’t.

This conservative pattern goes beyond, I think, political need. He does, however, say whatever he thinks will get him elected, than picks and chooses which of these promises he intends to follow up on. In the end, he is simply more conservative than his rhetoric. One additional thought: Obama has made "hope" his campaign logo. What we need is someone who also says we will need to sacrifice, to reach the goals we want–medical care for all and full employment. And he has to show more courage on the gay front and reconsider our commitment to Afghanistan.

But my point is that there is ultimately a conventionality in his thinking–that education is the answer (and especially his emphasis on mathematicians, engineers, and scientists), the smart grid, etc. With more of these, poof, we live happily ever after. And I don’t think this is political. I think, beyond his intelligence and modest liberality, he is unaware of the real hole we are in. This is not simply an empty suit, words I should not have written earlier. It’s a belief that he is at bottom so conventional in his essence that he cannot see that we are, economically, in a world that is shifting under our feet. It’s a belief that old-fashioned ways–which worked in decades since WW II–will readily work in the new world we are now in. In reality, China and others are undermining the enormous gap in well-being we have over them and how, in a world where their labor is so cheap and their government so powerful, can we continue to maintain our prosperity? This is the 64 trillion dollar question.

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A 2nd friend (FRIEND B) more sympathetic to my view, responding to what was written by FRIEND A

"I think (FRIEND A'S thoughts display some naivete.

1 The enormous commitments (Trillions!!) to the financial industry with the US holding the bag (TALF after TARP) and no nationalization in sight, all banks having passed the stress with flying colors. Nothing for homeowners. Continuing scandal of securitization and derivatives as if nothing had happened.
2 Turnabout on torture, abuses, civil liberties, etc. The Bush argument: National security is in danger, so we cannot do anything to hurt our troops!! As if the pictures, not the facts, are what matters.
3 Single payer off the table, not even to be heard in the secret debate, a total cave-in to promises of "reform" from the corporate culprits. Endless billions wasted and entitlements in danger.
4 Endless commitment to Af-Pak (2024!) war with a new general more interested in counter-terror than counter insurgency.
5 No change on Israel and continuing saber-rattling with Iran.
6. Bloated and totally ineffective spending on military continues as if we could afford it.
7 Maybe cap & trade on carbon, but no carbon tax to begin to bring down emissions and begin to deal with global warming.
8 No effort to mobilize the public to understand how precarious our economic, financial, diplomatic, infrastructure, educational and manufacturing deficits are.
9 His "Moslem" speech will be in Egypt!! The poster boy for authoritarian regimes which are fueling Al-Queda and Islamicists everywhere and which is the chief Arab supporter of the worst aspects of Zionism.
11 No real change that the public hungers for. Go along and get along with Republicans,
Conservative-Dems, and almost every aspect of the status quo. No use of the bully-pulpit when he still has it. No real effort to curb the multinational corporations in their efforts to avoid all taxation while driving American economic and foreign policy.

Those are just the high points! I agree with Friend A that Obama has real opposition and it’s politically tough, but in almost every case he takes the line of least resistance and does not fight back. I don't agree that he is "an empty suit"; he is the smartest leader we could have and that may be the reason that he may be the most disappointing. If he fails, not because he tried and lost fighting, but because he was so tepid, the consequences will be even graver for the US. You and I, I think, agree, that that could lead to Republican victories in 2012 and to a political future that we would find extremely unpleasant.
I wish it were different and that we could have some confidence in the possibility of real change, but I think that hope is rapidly dwindling."
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Paul Krugman’s blog. He has since become a bit more positive on Obama’s health plan, although whether this is justified remains to be seen. But his criticism is still valid, in my view, even if what passes in the health area turns out to better than what PK thought on June 24. And I think it likely that the health plan will be far less than what we would have expected after Obama was elected.

Paul Krugman: June 24, 2009: Obama messes up on health care, big time. Really bad news on the health care front.

And now he’s done it on a key component of health care reform. What was the point of signaling, right at this crucial moment, that he’s willing to give away the public plan? Let alone doing it at the very moment that he was making such a good case for it?

Maybe there’s a way to recover from this. But it’s up to the health reform activists to stiffen the administration’s spine. Obama may be satisfied with "broad parameters" — but the rest of us aren’t, and have to make that known.After making the case for a public option, and doing it very well, Obama said this: "We have not drawn lines in the sand other than that reform has to control costs and that it has to provide relief to people who don’t have health insurance or are underinsured," Mr. Obama said. "Those are the broad parameters that we’ve discussed."
There he goes again, gratuitously making a big gift to the other side.

My big fear about Obama has always been not that he doesn’t understand the issues, but that his urge to compromise — his vision of himself as a politician who transcends the old partisan divisions — will lead him to negotiate with himself, and give away far too much. He did that on the stimulus bill, where he offered an inadequate plan in order to win bipartisan support, then got nothing in return — and was forced to reduce the plan further so that Susan Collins could claim her pound of flesh.
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Julian E. Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School. Julian E. Zelizer says President Obama needs to speed up stimulus spending to jump-start economy.

Vice President Joseph Biden has acknowledged that the $787 billion economic stimulus program has not yet had the impact that the White House was looking for.
"We misread how bad the economy was," Biden said during an interview.
But Biden's account downplays the damaging compromises that the administration made on the stimulus package back in February, as well as the problems that have emerged in implementing the program.

Back in January and February, when the administration and Congress completed their work on the economic stimulus bill, several Democrats and liberal pundits warned that President Barack Obama's stimulus was not going to be enough to revitalize the economy.

While Republicans argued that Congress should do nothing other than cut taxes, Obama's Democratic critics said that another bad scenario was to pass an expensive and highly visible measure that would not actually accomplish the job. This would become a recipe for political attacks down the road, evidence that government can't help achieve economic stability and that President Obama's judgment on policy was suspect.

And there is some early evidence that this scenario is now playing out. According to the most recent Gallup Poll, many of the cherished independent voters in swing states who had shifted toward the Democrats in the 2006 and 2008 elections are now unhappy with the president's policies.

While President Obama's approval ratings remain at the high level of 56 percent, according to Gallup, these independents are concerned that the president's programs are resulting in too much government spending without achieving clear results.

With two million jobs having been lost since Obama started his presidency, it is difficult for many Americans to react well when Director of the White House National Economic Council Lawrence Summers says, "the stimulus is on track...."

The early criticism is now worth revisiting. When Congress agreed to the final stimulus in February 2009, liberal critics offered two major complaints. The first was that the level of spending in the bill was too low given the dire state of the economy.

"I'm not sure if the $800 billion stimulus plan is adequate to the problem," said Nobel Prize- winning Princeton economist Paul Krugman at Willamette University in January before the final deal had been reached. "We're facing one hell of a crisis and we'll need more than a Band-Aid . . . My guess is that the administration will be back later this year for a second round."

After initially complaining that the stimulus was too small, liberals were then furious when Obama agreed to cuts in the size of the stimulus in response to a small group of Senate centrists.
The second criticism had to do with where the money was directed. The liberal critics argued that the final stimulus bill focused too much on infrastructure programs and tax cuts, with not enough assistance being provided to state and local governments. Cuts in the legislative process eliminated funding for states to help with food stamps, school construction and more.

Finally, there is a problem with the stimulus that did not really become clear until after the bill passed. The implementation has been flawed. Currently, only a small percentage of the stimulus funds has been spent. While countries such as France have immediately made use of their stimulus money, the United States has gone slower.

Rightly concerned about the potential misuse of funds, the administration has moved too far in the direction of delaying the distribution of funds. The government's grinding bureaucratic process has also slowed down progress. And the U.S. relies heavily on third parties rather than directly spending the money.

The stimulus is experiencing problems similar to those of President Franklin Roosevelt's Public Works Administration. In 1933, the PWA was slowed down by administrator Harold Ickes due to concerns about corruption and inefficient projects. Ickes, who believed that PWA faced the "unattainable ideal of administering the greatest fund for construction in the history of the world without scandal," centralized decision-making and insisted on approving virtually every decision personally.

While many of his worries had merit, the White House was unhappy that needed dollars were not getting out the door and into the hands of workers. Roosevelt was fortunate because he could rely on Harry Hopkins and the Federal Emergency Relief Agency, which spent money as quickly as possible. Eventually, despite its problems, the PWA created a lot of jobs and accelerated the development of the South and the West.

As the unemployment rate continues to rise and the stock market swings up and down, it is difficult for many Americans to understand the purpose of allocating so much money but then not spending it as soon as possible. The worse that economic conditions become, the harder it is for existing levels of funding to have their desired impact.

Seeing results is important politically if the White House needs to ask for more money to jump-start the economy. The stimulus has become a litmus test through which to evaluate the president and this problem compounds the challenge of passing health care and other measures sought by Obama.

The best strategy for Obama is not to react as Biden and Summers did. Rather, the best strategy is to fix this. With all the doom and gloom about the president, he still enjoys strong standing with the public, and Democrats remain in a good political position.

It is worth remembering that many of FDR's earliest programs, such as the National Recovery Administration, did not succeed, and others, such as the PWA, experienced some problems during the implementation phase. But in the end, FDR's New Deal is widely considered by most historians to have been a tremendous success.

While the economy was not fully revived until World War II, the New Deal provided relief. It significantly and steadily brought down levels of unemployment starting during FDR's first term. The jobless rate dropped from a high of nearly 25 percent in 1932 to just above 9 percent in 1937.

Even if, as some conservatives insist, you somehow consider people who were working in New Deal public works jobs to be jobless -- a dubious claim -- the unemployment rate fell by more than 10 percentage points during this period. The only rise in unemployment occurred in 1937-1938, and that was precipitated by FDR's reducing levels of public spending.

Today, the Obama administration cannot afford to stand still on the stimulus. The time has come to correct what's gone wrong with the existing program by speeding up spending and to consider the possibility of making a politically difficult request for more.

Needed (and provided): a new name for the economy

There is a category in the news daily, in which there are two alternatives, but which require three. I am referring to recession and depression.

By common consent, we are in something called a recession, and have been according to the organization deciding this, since December 2007. But it is more than a recession although, fortunately, it would appear, for the time being at least, we are not in the horror of horrors, the 1930's catastrophe, often called the Great Depression. But we are not exactly in a common recession, so we often read we’re in a recession plus. Or more frequently, we are in a Great Recession.

Actually, the Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), a private organization of esteemed economists, is by common consent the organization that decides when a recession begins and when it ends. The shorthand definition is two consecutive quarters of GDP decline. But the NBER does not behave as if it were in a strait-jacket on this, and it will say we are in a recession if enough criteria are heading South, even if two consecutive quarters are not reached–such as industrial production, personal income and sales. More formally: a recession is a "significant decline in economic activity spread across the country, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in real GDP, growth, personal income, employment, . . . industrial production and wholesale-retail sales."

Interestingly, what is key for the NBER is income, sales and production, not unemployment. Long after the NBER decides the recession is over, unemployment will likely be climbing (or at least, not declining).

So let me define a recession, somewhat differently from the usual way: a recession occurs after an expansion in which prices go up which are then countered by tight money by the Federal Reserve, which causes the economy to pull back–output falls and unemployment rises. Then, having slowed down the inflation, the Fed lowers interest rates and the economy rebounds. What makes this "recession" different is that prices did not rise very much, except, of course, housing prices, but even more important lower interest rates–the federal funds rate controlled by the Fed is barely above zero–didn’t bring the economy back.

Yet, clearly, neither the depth of the decline, nor the length of the decline makes what we have a depression in the mode of what existed in the 1930's. Clearly, bad as the situation is for many people, we are clearly not living through the Great Depression.

But don’t we need a word for what we have–other than Great before Recession? Ideally, it would be good to join the words recession and depression, but re-pression doesn’t do it (and sounds like something in Pakistan or Afghanistan); nor do any of the other introductory words, like Great, Deep, or Sustained do the trick. Slump could be a possibility, but it’s implicit in the word recession. The only alternative I can come up with is not likely to be accepted, since it isn’t English–Uber-Recession. In Latin, uber means super and in Greek it means hyper. Mostly we know the word through Friedrich Nietzsche–ubermensch. Maybe, Hyper-Recession can do the trick, but it is also unlikely.

Thus, we have a condition without a name, bordering on one side a mild but definable condition–a recession–and on the other a devastating but vaguely defined condition–a Depression.
Given that the Great Depression occurred about 75 years ago, it is time for a change. There IS an alternative. Call any decline that responds to monetary policy a recession. Call anything that does not, even when accompanied by awfully high levels of unemployment, measured in its broadest sense, as discussed by David Leonhardt in Wednesday’s New York Times (July 15th), in which five states–Oregon, Rhode Island, Michigan, South Carolina and California--all have over 20 % unemployment rates, and a downturn that also does not respond quickly to a massive stimulus–call such a decline a Depression. And call what happened in the 1930's the Great Depression.

Simplicity itself: we have something to define what happened in recent years–2001, 1990-91, 1981-2--Recession; we have something to describe what we are going through now–Depression; and something to describe the rare catastrophe (of the 1930's)–the Great Depression. (Capitals are optional.)

Roger Federer, Again

[The again is because I wrote a previous piece on Roger on September 27, 2008. Perhaps, the greatest article ever written on a tennis celebrity–maybe even on tennis itself–was "Roger Federer As Religious Experience," written in 2006, and which can be easily found by Googling the title. It was written by the distinguished novelist and writer, David Foster Wallace (known especially for his novel, "Infinite Jest"), who committed suicide on September 12, 2008 at the age of 46.]

Federer won the French Open about a month ago, after Nadal, the defending champion and king of clay, was eliminated in an earlier round by Robin Soderling. Federer thus became the only active player to have won all four of the Grand Slams, the last being Andre Agassi. Then, with Nadal, unable to defend his title at Wimbledon, because of a knee problem, Federer won back his title, which he had held for five straight years, until his defeat by Nadal a year ago, and in so doing restored his number one ranking. In winning Wimbledon, he now has won the most Grand Slams ever, topping Pete Sampras by one, 15 to 14.

Question 1: Is Roger Federer the greatest player in tennis history? I think that Rod Laver, who might also have a claim, has it right–he was at Wimbledon watching the final, along with Sampras and Borg. You simply can’t look at tennis this way. The rackets are completely different. The competition is much greater now than then, in terms of the numbers of fit athletes who take up the sport–partly or mostly because the financial payoff is greater. And of course, in Laver’s day, you could not play in the Slams after you turned professional. He won all four in the same year, when he was an amateur, and then did it again, after the Open Era began (open to all, whether amateur or professional), an absolutely stunning achievement. Laver thinks you should simply judge whether a player is the best of his (or her) era. Had he been allowed to participate, he surely would have won many more slams than Roger has won so far, but I doubt he would be winning many of them now, assuming he was 25, since he is shorter, and the competition, as mentioned, is much fiercer.

Question 2: Would Nadal have beaten Federer at either the French or Wimbledon, had he not been injured? Federer beat Nadal, in straight sets, at a warm-up for the French, a clay tournament in Madrid. Was it due to Nadal’s weariness or incipient knee problems or was it due to sharper play by Federer? Of course we will never know. But after a bout with mononucleosis, followed by a back injury which hampered Roger during much of 2008 and the early months of this year, Roger seems to be playing at a higher level than he was a year ago. In the taut match with Andy Roddick–the Wimbledon final–Roger hit an amazing number of aces–50, far exceeding the number of aces hit by Roddick (27), who many think has one of, if not the best, serves in men’s tennis and surely one of the fastest. If I recall, he holds the record for the fastest serve ever made. It’s hard to think that Roger could have beaten a healthy Nadal on clay, given the beating he took last year, but he has beaten him before on clay and, with Federer, the impossible is always possible.

Comment 1. On Roger: why do I like him so? I can’t answer this. Maybe it’s the way he seems to float around the court–but I am not a fan of ballet dancing–but then again it’s delightful to watch. Maybe it’s the sensational shots he often makes, which others do as well, but not as often. It’s like watching a relatively normal looking guy–he doesn’t have Nadal’s muscles; he doesn’t have Ivo Karlovich’s height–6'10'’ or is anyway near that. He looks like a normal guy with super-abnormal talent, that gives a pleasure I can’t describe or even figure out. Moreover, he is (recently) married to his long-term girl-friend, a nice-looking woman, who is due to give birth to their child shortly, but she is not a beauty queen like Sampras’ wife or Roddick’s wife. I like this. But maybe more important, in interviews he comes over as a real person. This is not easy as tennis players are asked dumb questions. But Roger’s answers are invariably thoughtful and honest–no false modesty and of course, no braggadocio. Occasionally, I am moderately put off by what he wears, including the jacket he put on after his Wimbledon win, which had on it, the number 15 (the number of slams won, the last, minutes before–I assume he had two jackets). But part of me believes he wears what he does because he thinks it is appropriate to dress up for Wimbledon, given its traditions, and who am I to disagree?

Comment 2–on others. If Federer had to lose, there is no one I would rather he lose to than Andy Roddick, who I believe is a straight shooter, with a nice sense of humor. It is exciting that taking off about 20 pounds has made him into a better competitor and almost enabled him to win the Wimbledon final. He lost it for three reasons: (1) having won the first set, Roddick had set point on his serve in the 2nd set tie-break and Federer was able to get to a ball and hit his forehand down the line (to the ad court), not quite a lob, but a high hit. On television, it appeared that Roddick simply mishit the backhand volley, or perhaps one might refer to it as a backhand overhead, and instead of landing almost anywhere in the open (ad) court where it would have been a winner, since Federer was off the court on the deuce side, it landed about a foot or two wide. But later commentary, by Roddick himself, indicated that it was unclear whether the ball Federer hit was going wide, causing hesitation on Andy’s part, and then Roddick indicated he thought the (modest) wind was possibly bringing it in, forcing him to make a hasty, last minute decision to go for the shot. And these circumstances led him to mishit the ball. That he then lost the next point on his serve may have been psychological. Federer then won the set when he held his serve on the following point, winning 8-6.

At this point, I thought Roddick had had it. But he played a good third set and only lost it in a tie-break. He followed this up with a service break of Roger, winning, therefore, the 4th set. As we entered the fifth and final set, Federer had been unable to break Roddick’s serve and he would need to do this to win, since at Wimbledon there are no tie-breaks in the final fifth set. (2) At 8-8, Federer serving, he fell behind 15-40. Losing one of the next two points would give Roddick a golden opportunity to serve out the match. Instead, Federer served an ace and saved the game with a winning forehand volley. (3) At 14-13, Federer ahead, my spouse said she thought Roddick was weakening and was going to be broken, ending the match. He wasn’t. But at 15-14, he was. She detected either fatigue or nerves or maybe it was simply intuition.

One of the minor annoyances of TV is that Federer won when Roddick failed to hit properly a forehand. What TV showed is Roger leaping in happiness. And they showed it over and over again, as did the newspapers. What they didn’t show is what happened to Roddick’s shot. I think he hit it into the net, but I’m not sure. Nor can I remember whether it was a forced error, whatever that ultimately means, or an unforced error.

Most of my friends, with one exception, wanted Roddick to win Wimbledon and, having lost this tournament, win the US Open in September. Here is what I want: Roger should win the US Open, the end-of-the-year tournament, then win all four slams in 2010 and then I’ll hope for a Roddick victory. Incidentally, far more astounding than winning more slams than anyone else is Federer’s being in the semis or finals of consecutive slams for a record 21 times in a row, with Lendl second, with 10! And he did this while still recovering from mono, which helped cause him to lose the semi in Australia, last year. He was willing to give it a try, which Nadal obviously did not want to do, at Wimbledon, even though he was the defending champion.

Comment 3–Rafael Nadal. First, off the court, he seems like a mild-mannered young man. Actually, to me, he seems artificially over-modest. (I think the NY Times article on Nadal impressed me in one way–Uncle Tony (his coach) seems like a very decent, thoughtful man.)
On the court is something else. At first, Nadal often used to be near the net, after winning a point, either because he made a winner or his opponent missed (or he forced him to miss), and he would go into an in-your-face fist thump (or double or triple fist thump). I thought this was not only unsportsmanlike, but very alienating, especially since he was apparently told not to do this to Roger and didn’t.

Of recent, he doesn’t do this anymore or rather he does his fist-thumping from the back of the court and does it without staring at his opponent. Good–an improvement. But he glares, glowers and scowls constantly. I find it most off-putting. Contrast this with an incident Federer had with Tommy Haas, an excellent German player who was probably one point away from eliminating Federer in the French Open, but for a super backhand winner that landed an inch or two from the back and side lines, saving Roger the game. Otherwise, Haas would have served for the match.

Now, it happens that Roger was playing Haas in the semi’s at Wimbledon and the week before they had been practicing together. One assumes they are friends. After a Federer drop shot, Haas hits a drop shot back that falls about 5 feet from the net, touching the side line. But Federer is there. Haas, standing near the net, raises his racket and waves it back and forth, perhaps to better be able to hit a lob if Federer chooses to do this, but most likely to distract him. In fact, Federer should have been awarded the point by the referee, but wasn’t. Instead, he hit a cross court shot that went out by a foot. Haas’s point. Haas and Federer remain at the net and joke a bit about what happened, at least their smiles indicate this. It was 40-0, Federer serving, so now it was 40-15. Federer lost the next point, but won the next point at 40-30 to win the game.

Have I ever seen Nadal show any indication that he is other than a robot, a very good one, capable of outstanding shots, both defensively and offensively. And I’m ready to believe that if injuries don’t destroy his career, he will turn out to be one of the greatest players of this era, perhaps even surpassing Federer, though I doubt it. But all he does on the court is run, hit and glare. Every point he loses results in a glare, as though he is Mr Perfection, even glaring or glowering when there are great, winning shots by his opponents. Give me a Roddick or Blake, who when they lose a point, you see frustration or, sometimes, even admiration for the shots made by their opponents. I think Federer appears to accept that his opponents can occasionally outplay him and certainly outplay him on a given point. No glares or glowers. Maybe a better word to describe Nadal is scowl–"to contract the brows in a sullen, displeased or angry manner" or "have a gloomy or threatening look." I’d say threatening, not gloomy. Why do people like him so? No me.

The Road Not Taken

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Green Shoots With Aphids: The Bleak Present As Prologue

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Disenchantment About Obama

Needed (and provided): a new name for the economy

Roger Federer, Again

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