After the Mess, Can Obama Be Fortinbras?

The cost of deregulation

I’ve been thinking recently about how every Shakespearean tragedy concludes with a restoration of order.  The stage may be strewn with corpses and the spectator’s heart may have broken into a thousand little pieces, but (as though to provide some reassurance) someone steps forward at the end to set things straight.

In Hamlet it is Fortinbras coming in to sweep up the pieces, in Macbeth, Malcolm.  Ocavius shows up twice, once to honor Antony and Cleopatra, once (with Antony this time) to honor Brutus. (“This was the noblest Roman of them all,” Antony says.) We are assured that Iago wll get what’s coming to him, and the prince in Romeo and Juliet says “enough, already” to the Capulets and Montagues:

A glooming peace this morning with it brings;
The sun, for sorrow, will not show his head:
Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things;
Some shall be pardon’d, and some punished:
For never was a story of more woe
Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.

Only in Shakespeare’s darkest play is there some ambiguity at the end.  Following the death of Lear and Cordelia, Albany (Goneril’s good but weak husband) is so overwhelmed that he abdicates.  He offers the kingship to Edgar and Kent, but Kent is also prepared to check out:  “I have a journey, sir, shortly to go;
/My master calls me, I must not say no.” (So he knows he’s going to die?!)  That leaves Edgar, who looks like he might be a good king, but the final words of the play (Albany’s) are pure depression:

The weight of this sad time we must obey;
Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.
The oldest hath borne most: we that are young
Shall never see so much, nor live so long.


Little wonder that King Lear didn’t get performed much until the 20^th century.

I’m not at all surprised that Shakespeare clung ardently to dreams of final order.  England had been through one civil war after another for 200 years and had just barely pulled off an orderly succession following the death of Elizabeth.  Shakespeare knew how painful social chaos could be.  To conclude his plays with anarchy would have been too painful.

I started thinking about Shakespearean endings (prepare for a leap) when I read an article by business correspondent Steve Pearlstein in yesterday’s Washington Post.  Pearlstein, a Pulitzer Prize winner, fingers deregulation as the culprit that loosed anarchy on the world.  The push towards deregulation began with Reagan/Bush, was aided and abetted by Clinton, and was accelerated by Bush/Cheney.  The result has been tragedies of Shakespearean proportions:

The biggest oil spill ever. The biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression. The deadliest mine disaster in 25 years. One recall after another of toys from China, of vehicles from Toyota, of hamburgers from roach-infested processing plants. The whole Vioxx fiasco. And let’s not forget the biggest climate threat since the Ice Age.

Even if you’re not into conspiracy theories, it’s hard to ignore the common thread running through these recent crises: the glaring failure of government regulators to protect the public. Regulators who were cowed by industry or intimidated by politicians. Regulators who were compromised by favors or prospects of industry employment. Regulators who were better at calculating the costs of oversight than the benefits. And regulators who were blinded by their ideological bias against government interference and their faith that industries could police themselves.

Pearlstein concludes that, for its own self-interest, business should want more regulation.

It’s time for the business community to give up its jihad against regulation. We can all agree that there are significant costs to regulation in terms of reduced sales and profits, stunted job growth and even, from time to time, stifled innovation. But what we should have learned from recent disasters is that the costs of inadequate regulation are even greater. Strong and efficient economies require strong and effective government oversight.

Think of Pearlstein’s words as a speech delivered by one of those princes at the end of Act V as they gaze at Cordelia dead in the Gulf or Othello dead in the West Virginia coalmines or Iago sharing a cell with Bernie Madoff.  (Some investors wouldn’t mind seeing Madoff get the Iago treatment: “To you, lord governor,
/Remains the censure of this hellish villain;
/The time, the place, the torture: O, enforce it!”)  While we’re at it, let’s say that Hamlet is dead in Iraq. Some things we’ll never get back.

But if Obama and Congress are able to play Malcolm-Fortinbras-Octavius-etc., at least we’ll get a little cleaning up. The challenge is to keep the Regans, Gonerils, Edwards, Claudiuses, Macbeths, and Cassiuses from calling the shots.