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Today's
Stories
April 5 / 6,
2008
Ramzy Baroud
There
are No Checkpoints in Heaven
April 4, 2008
Dave Lindorff
The
Night I Heard King Had Been Shot
Greg Moses
Missing
King
Ron Jacobs
Two Murders, 40 Years On: Bobby Hutton and Martin Luther King,
Jr.
Alan Farago
Show Me the Size of Your Bail Out and I'll Show You Mine
Alison Weir
Funding
Our Decline: U.S. Aid to Israel
David Rosen
Rape as an Instrument of Total War
Robert Weissman
The Unrealized Dream
Jacob Hornberger
Was Killing Iraqi Children Worth It?
Jackie Corr
Hillary and Obama Head for Butte
Carl Finamore
Taking On United Airlines
Laray Polk
We Are All Dith Pran
Susie Day
Advice for the War-Torn
Website of
the Day
Winter Soldiers: a Video Portrait
April 3, 2008
Peter Morici
The Deepening Recession
Joe Bageant
The Audacity of Depression
Andy Worthington
Cleared But Still Detained:
The Ordeal of Moroccan Prisoner Said al-Boujaadia
Nikolas Kozloff
Condi's Divide and Rule Strategy in South America
Rannie Amiri
The U.S. Disdain for Mideast Democracy
David Macaray
More Labor Strife in Hollywood
Stephen Lendman
Lynne Stewart's Long Struggle for Justice
Website of
the Day
The
True Face of Da Vinci?
April 2, 2008
Diane Farsetta
Indian
Point on the Potomac
Harry Browne
Bertie
Ahern Laid Low by Secretary
Wajahat Ali
The Folly of Attacking Iran: a Conversation with Steven Kinzer
George Wuerthner
Open Season on Wolves
Col. Dan Smith
The
Militarization of America
Philippe Marlière
The Politics of Bling-Bling in France: Sarkozy's Cultivated Anti-Intellectualism
Steve Early
A Purple Uprising in Oakland
Bernard Chazelle
Saving the American Left
Reza Fiyouzat
Bowling in Hell
April 1, 2008
Jeff Leys
Fracturing
the Peace to End the War
Thomas P. Healy
Restoring the Constitution: a Conversation with Daniel Ellsberg
Winslow T. Wheeler
When Pigs Sprout Wings: Mangled Rationales for a Fatter Defense
Budget
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
New Deal Nostalgia
Patrick Irelan
Cocaine, Colombia and the Cartels
Andy Worthington
The Case of Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani
John V. Walsh
The Shunning of Ralph Nader
Michael J.
Smith
Woolly Mamet
Robert Weissman
The New Philip Morris--Even Worse Than the Old?
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Defining Moments
Martha Rosenberg
Brain Mist Disease: Boss Hog's Gift to Humanity
Website of
the Day
Support Briana!
March 31, 2008
Mike Whitney
Dead
on Arrival: Paulson's Fixit Plan for Wall Street
Mats Svensson
Walls,
Tunnels and Daily Humiliations
Paul Rockwell
Hillary's
Lies About Outsourcing
Paul Craig Roberts
A Third American War in the Making?
Patrick Cockburn
Sadr
Calls for Ceasefire
Peter Dale Scott
The Showdown
Alfredo Molano
Cultura Mafiosa in Colombia
Peter Morici
Why Paulson's Reform Plan Falls Short
Uri Avnery
Day of the Land, 32 Years Later
Michael Simmons
The American Bard in New Orleans
Betsy Roberts
/ Karen Orr
The Clorox Coup
Phyllis Pollack
First the Sun and Then the Moon: Scorsese Does the Stones
Website of
the Day
Five Years Too Many
March 29 / 30, 2008
Alexander Cockburn
When
They Pick Up the Phone at 3 AM, What Will They Say?
Patrick Cockburn
Iraqi
Police Refuse to Back Maliki's Attacks on Medhi Army
Mike Whitney
Bernanke's Next Big Bail Out Plan
Christopher Brauchli
The Pastor of Armageddon and the Slave Sale: McCain, Lieberman
and Rev. Hagee
William Blum
China, Tibet and the Propaganda Olympics
Robert Fantina
Iraq
Troika: McCain, Obama and Clinton
John Ross
AMLO, the Comeback Kid? Fighting the Privatization of Mexico's
Oil
Allison Kilkenny
Shady Lending Hits Home
Nelson P. Valdés
Cuba, the Beatles and Historical Context
Suzanne Baroud
The Great Lake of Gaza: a New Crisis in the Making
Richard Rhames
Social Security: Throwing Granny from the Gravy Train
Christopher Fons
Transcending the 60s? Obama and the Baby Boomers
Carl Finamore
Misery at 35,000 Feet: Mergers Stall, Fares Soar, Services Slump
and Consumers Sour
Eamonn McCann
Hillary Misremembers Again!
Missy Beattie
Justice and the Monsters of War
Fred Gardner
Jim Thorpe, All-American
Kim Nicolini
Cock Chuggers and Cheese Curls: Richard Kelly's "Southland
Tales"
David Yearsley
"All the World's a Hospital"
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Booked Up
Poets' Basement
Valentine and Ko Un
Website of
the Weekend
Hidden Iraq
March 28, 2008
Saul Landau
Growing
Dread About Iraq
Alan Farago
Other People's Money: the Chop Shop Economy
Peter Morici
Knocking Down False Economic Gods
Andy Worthington
Plight of the Uyghus: a Chinese Muslim's Desperate Plea from
Guantánamo
Felice Pace
Ashes of Lies: Why No One Trusts the US Forest Service
Peter Montague
Sierra Club Cleans House -- With Clorox!
Dave Lindorff
The Mumia Exception
March 27, 2008
Patrick Cockburn
Basra
Erupts
Binoy Kampmark
Free Market Apostates
Joanne Mariner
"Was George Washington a Terrorist?"
Norman Solomon
NPR News: National Pentagon Radio?
William S. Lind
Mars Only Knocks Once: a Prognosis for Iraq
John V. Walsh
Obama's Speech: a Touch of Bigotry?
Robert Weissman
How Things Work
Ron Jacobs
Meeting Charlie Ehlen
Ralph Nader
Put Impeachment Back on the Table
David Macaray
Court Rules Against Grocery Workers
John Borowski
Clearcutting the History of Forest Destruction
Website of
the Day
Going Out for an English
March 26, 2008
Stan Cox
The
Germs Next Door
Sharon Smith
Greed
Pays: Welfare on Wall Street
Anita Sinha / Jill Tauber
Dreams Turned into Rubble in New Orleans
Matt Vidal
So Much for the Self-Regulating Market
William S. Lind
Operation Cassandra
Joe Mowrey
The Audacity of Hypocrisy: Obama's Pandering to Israel
Dave Lindorff
Duck and Cover (Up): Hillary Under Fire
Ray McGovern
Frontline's War: Too Timid, Too Little, Too Late
Justin Smith
Why Race and Gender are Separate Issues
Sam Husseini
The Winter Soldier Hearings and Indy Media
Martha Rosenberg
Blood on Ice: Gentlemen, Pick Up Your Clubs
Michael Dickinson
Politicians as Dogs
Website of the Day
The Wal-Mart Virus: How the Infection Spread
March 25, 2008
Ishmael Reed
The
Crazy Rev. Wright
Corey D. B.
Walker
The Politics of Jeremiah Wright
Linn Washington Jr.
Racism in America and Other Uncomfortable Facts
Alan Farago
The Money Launderers: a Picnic for Wall St. Insiders
Vijay Prashad
A Glimmer of Hope From the Gulf Coast
Joshua Frank
A Silver Lining to the Bush Years?
Ralph Nader
How Public Servants Can Help End This War
David Rovics
If I Can't Dance: Why is the Left So Boring?
Peter Morici
America's Banks are Broken
Dave Zirin
Olympic Flames: China's Crackdown in Tibet
David Krieger
The Crisis in Tibet
Website of
the Day
Memorializing Iraq
March 24, 2008
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Blonde
Ambition: Hillary's Berserker Campaign for 2012
Peter Morici
Digging Out of the Recession
Uri Avnery
Two Americas
Wajahat Ali
First of the Mohicans: an Interview with Rep. Keith Ellison
Paul Craig Roberts
Inside the Shell Game
George Ciccariello-Maher
The Coming War on Venezuela
Stephen Lendman
Sami Al-Arian's Long Ordeal
Christopher
Brauchli
Possessing Someone Else's Country
Cat Woods
A Letter to Mom on Obama
Stacey Warde
Tax Burden
Dave Lindorff
The American Dead Hits 4,000, But Who's Counting?
Website of
the Day
Live from the Longest Walk
March 22 /
23, 2008
Ralph Nader
Bush
Blisters the Truth on Iraq
Nicole Colson
Can You Afford to Feed Your Family?
James Petras
The Cost of Unilateral Humanitarian Initiatives
Laura Carlsen
From Bombs to Markets: The Andean Crisis and the Geopolitics
of Trade
Greg Moses
Tolerance and the American Pulpit
Andy Worthington
Torture Stories Dog Guantánamo Trials
Michael Dickinson
Art on Trial
John Ross
Bush's Surge Hits Mosul
Missy Comley Beattie
Killer Economics
David Michael
Green
Happy Anniversary, America!
Ramzy Baroud
The Coming Uncertain War on Iran
Martha Rosenberg
Easter Egg Shells from Hell
Paul Watson
Evolution is Going to the Dogs in the Galapagos
Isabella Kenfield
Monsanto's
Raid on Brazil
James Murren
Logging v. Water in Honduras
Jacob Hornberger
Sex and the Immigration Officer
Kathlyn Stone
Ben Heine, Master of the Art of Resistance
Seth Sandronsky
Rethinking New Mexico's History
Kim Nicolini
Class, Gender and Abortion in Communist Romania
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Booked Up: What I'm Reading This Week
Poets' Basement
Wilson, Woods, Gibbons and Orloski
Website of
the Weekend
Merci, McCain!
March 21, 2008
Marleen Martin
Land
Behind Bars: the Hidden Casualties of America's "War on
Crime"
Peter Montague
Run
Your Car on Coal? Maybe Not
Saul Landau
Monroe's
Deadly Doctrine
Anis Hamadeh
Merkel in the Knesset
Jacob Hornberger
McCain's Al Qaeda Scare: Slip or Tactic?
Khalil Nakhleh
Al Nakba of 1948: How Long Will It Persist?
Adam Isacson
Colombia, Paramilitary Threats and Assassinations
Kenneth Couesbouc
Money for Nothing
Madis Senner
Will the Feds Underwrite the Stock Market?
Monica Benderman
The Costs of Freedom: What Are You Willing to Pay?
Website of the Day
Stop Foreclosures and Evictions
March 20, 2008
Damien Millet
/
Eric Toussaint
The
Triple Failing of the Big Private Banks
Mike Whitney
Winding
Up Bear
John Ross
What Do We Owe Iraq?
Dave Lindorff
Paying the Piper: the Bodies and Bills are Piling Up
Wajahat Ali
Pakistan on Fire
Jill Nagle
Memo to Sex Workers: Stop Financing Shock Journalism
Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Obama and the Psychic Auto-Shrink-Wrapping Called Race in America
Dan La Botz
Obama's Race Speech
Robert Weissman
Alternative Power: Shutting Down the API
Stella Dallas
/
Jennifer Matsui
Apostasy Now! Mamet, Enter Stage Right
Website of the Day
The Angry Monk
March 19, 2008
Patrick Cockburn
A
War of Lies
Robert Fisk
The Little Men and the Inferno
Jeff Taylor
Five Years of War in Iraq
Ed Ruggero
From Pinkville to Iraq: the Dark Anniversary of My Lai
Ron Jacobs
Who'll Stop the Rain?
Christopher
Fons
Obama Takes the Race Bait
Sherwood Ross
In Defense of Rev. Wright
Cynthia McKinney
An Urgent Crisis: Confronting America's Racial Disparities
Joshua Frank
The Kool-Aid That Kills
Robert Weissman
Monsanto's Genetic Food Gamble
Walter Brasch
It's a Welfare State--If You're Rich
Yifat Susskind
Iraqi Women Resist the Occupation
Andrew Wimmer
War Demands Its Due
Website of
the Day
Glimpses of Nature
March 18, 2008
David Price
The
Military "Leveraging" of Cultural Knowledge
Paul Craig
Roberts
The
Collapse of American Power
Tim Wise
Of National Lies and Racial America: Jeremiah Wright, Barack
Obama and the Unacceptability of Truth
Patrick Cockburn
One of the Most Disastrous Wars Ever Fought
Conn Hallinan
Afghanistan, a River Running Backward
James T. Phillips
Monsters: Past, Present and Wannabe
Uri Avnery
The Killing in Bethlehem
David Macaray
Could Wal-Mart Revive the Labor Movement?
Marjorie Cohn
Beware an Attack on Iran
Peter Zinn
Obama in New Orleans
Dan La Botz
The Economic Crisis, Labor and the Left
Monica Benderman
Where are We Going?
March 17, 2008
Pam Martens
The
Fed's Wall Street Dilemma
Sasan Fayazmanesh
The US, Iran and the Policy of Dual Containment
Nelson P. Valdés
The Imperial Branding of Simon Bolivar and the Cuban Revolution
Peter Morici
The Corrosive Consequences of the Trade Deficit
Wajahat Ali
Disrobing the Nine: a Conversation with Jeffrey Toobin on the
Supreme Court Since 9/11
Ronnie Cummins
Beyond Progressive Malpractice: Taking Down Big Pharma
Shaun Harkin
Saint Patrick's Day in Fortress America
Ali Khan
No Pardon for Musharraf
Robert Jensen
Beyond Peace
P. Sainath
Oh, What a Lovely Waiver!
Greg Moses
Jeremiah was a Bullhorn
Dr. Susan Block
Advice for Eliot Spitzer
Website of the Day
No Cowboys
March 15 /
16, 2008
Patrick Cockburn
How
to Destroy a Country in Five Years
Mike Whitney
Bearly
Alive: Investment Giant Rushed to ICU by Panicky Fed Chief
Ralph Nader
Of
Laws and Men
Robert Pollin
It's Still the Economy, Stupid
Diane Christian
The Poetics of Perversity: From Boccaccio to Spitzer
Wajahat Ali
Faking the Hood: a Conversation with Ishmael Reed
Tom Wright
/
Therese Saliba
Rachel Corrie's Case for Justice
Alan Farago
Back to Florida: Where Bushtime Began
Greg Moses
Raiding the Family Room in Texas
Michael Hudson
A Grand Global Bargain?
Martha Rosenberg
Why Hillary's Favorite Chicken Company is Eying China
John Goekler
Fourth Generation Warfare in a Fifth Generation Conflict
Uzma Aslam
Khan
A Letter to Barack Obama: Where's the Change, Barack?
Oren Ben-Dor
The Silencing of Gilad Atzmon
David Underhill
Mammon, Morals and the Mobile Tanker Deal
Fred Gardner
The Education of Eliot Spitzer
David Michael
Green
Why Spitzer Should Have Resigned (and Why He Shouldn't Have)
Rev. William E. Alberts
Jesus, Entombed in Heaven
Gail Dines
It's All About the John: Prostitution and Male Power
David Yearsley
Conducting, Anarchy and the Problem of When to Begin
Chris Clarke
Walking with Zeke: the Luckiest of Dogs
Poets' Basement
Anderson, Lodge & Subiet
Website of
the Day
Deviant Art
March 14, 2008
Paul Craig
Roberts
Watching
the Dollar Die
Don Santina
Vichy
Democrats: Pelosi and the Politics of Collaboration
Patrick Cockburn
Iraqi
Mother Vows Revenge on US: How She Lost Her Husband and Her Sons
Tim Rinne
StratCom
Rules! The Next War Will Start in Nebraska
Robert Fantina
In
Torture We Trust
Saul Landau
Letter
to the Presidents-in-Waitings
David Macaray
Common
Myths About Labor Unions
Franklin Lamb
Is
the Bush Administration Switching Horses in Lebanon
Michael Neumann
The
One State Illusion: Reply to My Critics
March 13, 2008
Paul Craig
Roberts
Republicans
and "Free Market" Zealots Bring Disaster to America
Mike Whitney
Meltdown
Looms Larger As Credit Markets Freeze
Assaf Kfoury
"One-State
or Two State?"- Sterile Debate on False Alternatives
Andy Worthington
Afghan
Hero Who Died in Guantánamo: The Background to the Story
Adam Federman
From
Autopia to Autogeddon: Cars Reach the End of the Road
March 12, 2008
Dave Lindorff
Bringing
Down Spitzer: It's the Big Brother Who Should Bother US
R.F. Blader
The
Spitzer Backlash
Yonatan Mendel
How
to be an Israeli Journalist. Never Write "Murder" or
"Palestine"
Jonathan Cook
One
State or Two? Neither. The Issue is Zionism
Bill and Kathy
Christison
Fallon
and Gates -- At Least One Cheer
James J. Brittain
Was
the U.S. Involved in Killing the FARC-EP Leaders
Ron Jacobs
"All
the Money You Make Will Never Buy Back Your Soul"
March 11, 2008
Paul Craig
Roberts
How
to End the Subprime Crisis
Ed O'Loughlin
How
Israeli Troops Invade Homes in Gaza, Brutalize, Smash and Steal
Ramzy Baroud
'Unwavering
Commitment' to Inequality
Kathy Christison
One
State or Two? The Debate Over Israel and Palestine
China Hand
PRC
Plays it Cool, as U.S. Tries to Amp Up Pressure on Iran
John Joslin
Thank
You, Nafta! Welcome to Weirton, Home of the Discount Cigarette
Mike Averko
Serb
Politics, Kosovo and the Moscow-Washington Divide
Ben Rosenfeld
Gavin
Newsom's Kneejerk Plan
Thierry Paquot
High
Rise, Low Spirits:The Curse of the Tower Block
March 10, 2008
Uri Avnery
"Kill
A Hundred Turks and Rest": The Five-Day War in Gaza
Col. Dan Smith
Scoring
the "Surge" and What Lies Beyond
R.F. Blader
Why
"Lock Them Up and Throw Away the Key" is Losing its
Sheen
Michael Neumann
The
One-State Illusion: More is Less
Bob Fitrakis
and Harvey Wasserman
Did
the Republicans Give Hillary Her Victory in Ohio?
James J. Brittain
Anti-Uribe
Protests in Colombia and the World
Missy Comley
Beattie
The
Passion of John McCain
March 8-9,
2008 Weekend Edition
JoAnn Wypijewski
The
Only Way to Fight the Clintons
Mike Whitney
Sorting
Through the Rubble in Post Bubble America
Peter Morici
Fed
and Treasury Fiddle as Economy Plummets
Ralph Nader
The
Silent Violence of Gaza's Suffering that Candidates Ignore
Jonathan Cook
The
Meaning of Gaza's Shoah
Steve Niva
Behind
the Israeli Escalation in Gaza
Bill and Kathy
Christison
Crisis
over Teheran's Alleged Nuclear Plans Nearing Climax
Hervé
Do Alto and Franck Poupeau
Bolivia:
Morales is Checked
Eric Walberg
To
Leave and Stay at the Same Time: Putin to Medvedev to…?
Scott Johnson
City
of A Thousand Foreclosures
Mark Scaramella
James
Brown's Gate
Bill Clinton
President
Clinton's Remarks on Naming William M. Daley as NAFTA Task Force
Chairman
Poet's Basement
St.
Thomasino, Engel, Davies and Willson
Website of
the Weekend
Hillary
Blackens Barack
March 7, 2008
Patrick Cockburn
Why
Iraq Could Blow-Up in John McCain's Face
Robin Blackburn
Question
for Barrack Obama: Why Afghanistan is the'Right War'?
Saul Landau
The
Stupid Economy
Binoy Kampmark
When
Competition is Good: McCain and the Muddled Democrats
Chris Floyd
Crushing
the Ants: Admiral Fallon and His Empire
Andy Worthington
Spanish
Drop "Inhuman" Extradition Request for Guantánamo
Britons
Will Potter
Before
the Smoke Even Clears in Seattle: Bringing Out the T Word
March 6, 2008
March 6, 2008
Vincent Navarro
The
Next Failure of Health Reform
Forrest Hylton
High Stakes in the Andes: Colombia's Cornered President
Peter Morici
Why the Dollar is So Cheap
George Ciccariello-Maher
Counter-Attack of the Bureaucrats
John Ross
Taxi! Taxi! The Dark Side of the Oscars
Jacob Hornberger
No Standing to Lecture on Justice
Paul Watson
Illegal Japanese Whaling by the Numbers
Dan Bacher
Off the Deep End
Website of the Day
A Katrina Reader Online
March 5, 2008
Cockburn /
St. Clair
A
Great Day for John McCain (and Maybe Nader)
Joanne Mariner
After Guantanamo
Fidel Castro
The Raid on Ecuador: Underestimating Rafael Correa
Christopher
Brauchli
The Turkish Invasions
Steven Sherman
Obama and the Prospects for a Renewal of the Left
Dave Lindorff
Busting Bush & Co. in New England
James Murren
Bombing Somalia
Adam Engel
Necropolis Now
Website of Day
Remember Song
March 4, 2008
Wajahat Ali
Mumbo
Jumbo: Naming Names with Ishmael Reed
William Blum
How Could Hillary Have Known?
Bill Quigley
The Cleansing of New Orleans
Ralph Nader
The Prince Harry Solution
Patrick Irelan
Oil and Health in Venezuela
James J. Brittain
/
R. James Sacouman
Uribe's Colombia is Destabilizing a New Latin America
Norman Solomon
The War Election
Jacob Hornberger
Hillary in Waco: the Missing Apology
Andy Worthington
Guantánamo and the European Parliament
Mike Averko
Kosovo and the Press
Website of the Day
Tex-Mex Primary
March 3, 2008
Jennifer Loewenstein
Gazan Holocaust
Alan Farago
American Politics and the Faltering Economy
Richard Gott
Colombian Deaths in Ecuador
Wajahat Ali
Who Speaks for a Billion Muslims? Analyzing the World Gallup
Poll with John Esposito
Paul Craig Roberts
The Mukasey Conspiracy: a Bi-Partisan Attack on the Constitution
Robert Weissman
When Multinationals Say Adieu
Uri Avnery
Good Morning, Hamas
Martha Rosenberg
When Your Meat is a Downer
Eva Liddell
Leave the Next Dance for Bill
Michael Donnelly
Will Ferrell Does Flint
Website of the Day
Muddy Waters: Train Fare Home Blues
|
Weekend
Edition
Apri1 5 / 6, 2008
Rags and Riches
How
Scott Joplin Had Wall Street Down
By DAVID YEARSLEY
A parallel survey of the historical
soundtrack and stock market crashes reveals that musicians are
not deaf to the beat of the financial markets, the euphoric crescendo
and inevitable diminuendo of boom and bust, the ecstatic coloratura
of good times and the gloomy introits to bad. While bottom-line
laments sung by executives in recent years have silenced many
artistic enterprises from across the musical spectrum, financial
indices reflect, even if in inverse proportion, the universal
demand for healing song when things go bad.
How else to explain the fact that the resounding collapse of
1929 led seamlessly into one of the great years of American popular
song: 1930 yielded Hoagy Carmichael's Georgia on Mind,
Johnny Green's Body and Soul, George Gershwin's Embraceable
You, and Cole Porter's Love for Sale to name just
a few. There's also Harold's Arlen's Get Happy. Composed
in 1929 and published the following year, the song might be heard
to respond, if indirectly, to economic depression. Coupled with
Ted Koehler's bouncy lyric, the music is almost ridiculously
optimistic, though it is not the Secretary of the Treasury (then
the tax-evading tycoon Andrew Mellon), but the Holy Ghost that
provides the necessary stimulus package:
Forget your troubles c'mon
get happy,
you better chase all your cares away.
Shout hallelujah c'mon get happy
get ready for the judgment day.
Good humor mixes with apocalyptic
for this much-needed palliative for those newly dark times: the
music and lyrics are all about diverting the listener from the
cruel realities of the present.
Indeed, music has buoyed markets
for as long as they have existed. The greatest musician of the
Dutch Golden Age, Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck had already been
dead fifteen years by the time the tulip craze imploded in 1637,
but his music remained popular at the time of the crash. Sweelinck
had made himself famous in part by playing organ concerts featuring
variations on secular dance tunes in the Old Church in Amsterdam
as traders strolled below, making deals which included rampant
speculation on tulips. That's why I've always heard in the insouciant
charm of his variations something of the effervescent thrill
of high-risk stock trading.
The Old Church was then, as now, in the heart of Amsterdam's
red-light district, so that these schemes were forged with sex
for sale just outside the unconsecrated walls. (In the reformed
church, religious buildings became sacred only when The Word
was present-a convenient theological principle that allowed the
enterprising Dutch to make multi-purpose use of ecclesiastical
edifices.) That the secular songs treated by Sweelinck often
had lascivious texts -- not sung but implicit in Sweelinck's
instrumental elaborations of them -- confirms that his performances
were energized by the same magnetic field that binds sex and
money. Stock-jobbing and prostitution offer kindred, and sometimes
conjoined, forms of arousal, something the recently deposed Sheriff
of Wall Street, Eliot Spitzer, clearly knew but didn't let on
about until the spectacular tumble of his own share price a few
weeks ago.
Before the advent of the Euro, Sweelinck's proud portrait graced
the ten guilder note on what was then Europe's most colorful
currency. This was an apt commemoration for the Orpheus of Amsterdam's
vital contribution to culture and commerce-an artificial distinction
in more than just the case of the entrepreneurial Dutch.
Similarly, I like to think
that Handel penned the music for the South Bubble Sea, which
burst in August of 1720, puncturing a host of similarly corrupt
stock schemes across Europe.
The bubble was born with The Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, a curiously
far-reaching document that concluded the War of the Spanish Succession.
One of its terms granted the South Sea Company exclusive British
trading rights in the South Atlantic slave trade from West Africa
to the Spanish colonies in the Americas. The scheme was set up
by the Lord Treasurer, Robert Harley, to help service the massive
deficits run up during the war, whereby holders of short-term
government debt were convinced to take shares in the new company.
Only two years in London, Handel was called upon to produce the
necessary commemorative music for the religious service to mark
the end of the war and the signing of the treaty; his so-called
Utrecht Te Deum was duly performed in St. Paul's Cathedral
in July of 1713 in all its triumphal splendor. But the work's
sublime pronouncements of righteousness and chaste welcome of
manifest destiny masked the dark secret that a brutal enterprise
carried out "beyond the seas" propped up the military-commercial
complex at home.
Thus Handel launched the South Sea Bubble with his trademark
trumpet blasts and racing strings that never stopped accompanying
the work of Empire, from his own time and into the 20th century.
The seemingly sincere expressions of individual thanks delivered
by the soloists and the collective rapture of mighty choruses
borne aloft on wings of magisterial counterpoint into St. Paul's
famous dome: these were the eternal sounds of peace and prosperity
for a chosen people. And these sublime divine reverberations
only confirmed for the numerous South Sea speculators attending
the service that God, too, was a shareholder.
In its all-consuming reach,
the South Sea craze resembled the heady days of the winter of
1636-7 when tulip futures were available in virtually every Dutch
tavern in the land, and the early fall of 1929 when taxi drivers
and maids were watching the ticker tape as eagerly as company
presidents.
It would have been surprising
if Handel hadn't gotten into the act, too. He invested relatively
early in South Sea stock, probably around 1716, and fortuitously
sold in 1718, well ahead of the crash of August 1720, though
also before the ten-fold increase that inflated the bubble over
the first half of the year, when the frenzy swept across the
entire nation and all its classes.
While Handel escaped the financial carnage, his patron during
the 1710s, James Brydges (Marquess of Canarvon and later Duke
of Chandos) did not. Brydges had accumulated his vast wealth
as paymaster-general in the War of the Spanish Succession, and
then became a significant investor in the South Sea Company.
Confidently treading the well-worn insiders' path that leads
from a killing in war to an even bigger killing in peace, Brydges
now turned to exploiting the very war debt he had helped balloon.
It was at Canons, Brydge's princely house in Edgware on the then-outskirts
of London, that Handel's lovely pastoral entertainment Acis
and Galatea was performed in 1718 at the height of good times.
The music smiles with much that is tranquil and pleasant, but
trouble soon strides into the story in the form of a monocular
giant, who, spurned by Galatea, kills her lover, the shepherd
Acis. I like to hear in this evocation of death lurking in arcadia
a portent of the crash to come: the mascot of shattered share
prices should not be the brute bear, but the one-eyed, two-legged,
skull-smashing phallus, Polyphemus bellowing Handel's "I
rage, I melt, I burn."
When the South Sea bubble burst
Brydges was ruined, hanging tenuously on to his house and status
by marrying into a dowry of 40,000 pounds sterling. But Brydge's
heir inherited only debt, and soon after the Duke's death in
1744, the magnificent Canons was demolished.
It strikes me as unwittingly
fitting that the Harvard Business School is home to the South
Sea Bubble Collection. The riot of engravings and hilarious songs
spawned by the crisis can be trawled through on-line at great
length. The home-page greets visitors with the words "Sunk
in Lucre's Sordid Charms"-a motto which could just as well
apply to the up-and-coming schemers of Harvard Business School
as to the South Sea speculators of yore.
At the time of the 1720 crash
the great lords of England were organizing another stock company:
the Royal Academy of Music, which was to bring Italian opera
back to London after a short hiatus. In spite of the financial
difficulties faced by many of its aristocratic shareholders,
the enterprise went ahead, with Handel at its artistic helm.
Opera was expensive, star singers most of all. Yet the Italian
greats were imported at vast cost, and the aftermath of the bubble
proved to be opera's greatest period in London. The retrenchments
pursued by the Metropolitan Opera House after the 1929 crash,
when outraged singers were asked to take a ten percent pay cut,
were never inflicted on Handel's post-bubble casts.
But this too was a kind of
madness: the great leading man Senesino, the castrato who premiered
the title role of Handel's Giulio Cesare among many other
important parts, returned to Italy after his long London sojourn
and built a lavish mansion with his takings. Over the doorway
was inscribed "this house was built on the folly of the
English."
Though the movie musical fed
a mass market far different than that of Italian opera in early
18th-century London, the appeal of opulent entertainment even,
or perhaps especially, during economic downturns unites Handel
and Busby Berkeley, whose career was born with the Great Depression
and flourished over its course.
While the relationship between music and markets is a complicated
one, the correspondences between them are far from random. It
is not only the fortuitous eruption of the zeitgeist that accounts,
for example, for the appearance John Philip Sousa's most famous
march Stars and Stripes Forever in the same year as the
Panic of 1896, which brought with it an acute Depression. On
the same day that William Jennings Bryan delivered his Cross
of Gold speech at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago
in July of 1896, a spontaneous display of flag-waving broke out
in the New York stock exchange. The long-time broker, H. R.
Halsted, who later died of food poisoning, procured what the
New York Times account called "a large American flag."
As Halsted began marching around the boardroom, "instantly
cheers for the flag arose, and fully 150 brokers fell into line
behind the standard bearer and marched around the room three
times. Mingled with frequent cheering there were cries of 'Give
us sound money!' 'Down with populism!' "The American flag
against the red!' Down with the Anarchists!' &c." (How
different is the present-day attitude on the floor of the exchange
each time soft-money comes sluicing in!) The more recent hoorahs
at the above-mentioned demise of Eliot Spitzer pale by comparison.
An alliance of monied Democrats
and Republicans still familiar to us formed quickly: "Members
of the Bankers and Brokers' Republican Campaign Club had a large
supply of McKinley buttons, and they found plenty of Democratic
brokers willing to wear them." Even trading was halted for
the enactment this outpouring of fiscal responsibility and nationalist
sentiment.
Is not the proper music for
these 19th-century brokers in lock-step Sousa's celebrated march,
just as it could well have been for the draping of the huge stars-and-stripes
across the Exchange after September 11, the brightly colored,
super-thin, anti-terror prophylactic that still sheathes the
erect columns of the building's neo-classical facade? Composed
in a year of financial disaster, Sousa's greatest hit is the
patriotic hymn of unbridled capitalism; whether urged on
by macho trombones or absurdly cheery piccolos, this America
marches unwaveringly towards a brighter future, if not brighter
for everyone, then certainly for the captains of industry and
their faithful lieutenants.
In contrast to music historians
and festival organizers, who habitually capitalize on anniversaries,
market watchers steer a wide course around such commemorations,
since they inevitably direct thoughts towards the cyclic nature
of markets and the unavoidable crash around the corner. Thus
the Panic of 1907, when stock prices dropped by 50 per cent,
received hardly a nod during its turbulent hundredth anniversary
year.
But looking back musically,
we can still see a bright orange cone marking this deep pothole
in America's golden pavements. Composed in the wake of the Panic,
Scott Joplin's Wall Street Rag appeared in 1909 when confidence
in the markets had been largely restore. The unbridled, if blinkered,
gung-ho of Sousa gives way to a good deal of doubt. Joplin was
also adept at playing the patriotic card; the cover of his Nonpareil
rag of 1907 shows Uncle Sam unfurling an American flag.
But Wall Street registers a much wider range of emotion,
even fears, though it, too, never makes claims for great profundity.
The epigrammatic opening of
Joplin's Wall Street is cast in "Very Slow March
Time" rather than the "Slow March Time" of so
many of the composer's other two-steps and rags. It's as if the
poised brightness of these other pieces has been transformed
into a dirge; indeed the cover of Wall Street looks down
towards Trinity Church, and the dark-suited mob assembled in
front of the Stock Exchange looks as if it has gathered for a
funeral. (The brisk tempo of the allegedly original Joplin piano
roll, recorded on a modern instrument and released last year
by Editions Milan Music, must be wrong; as he did on many of
his printed scores, Joplin enjoined the buyers of his music in
the starkest terms not to rush: "Do not play this piece
fast. It is never right to play Ragtime fast!")
The rag's opening section,
"Panic in Wall Street" depicts the "Brokers feeling
melancholy." Nowadays, no one would think to ascribe such
an introspective, contemplative state to momentarily impoverished
Wall Streeters forlornly nursing their martinis and patting their
suit pocket to check for the reserves of pharmaceutical cocaine.
But it is precisely Joplin's elegant handling of this rarefied
sentiment that sends a classy strain of tubercular European salon
music wafting over the manic, money hungry stone and asphalt
caverns of New York's financial district. There is a subtlety
here that Sousa had no time or talent for.
The next section of the rag
moves from these shapely Chopinesque chromatic inflections and
gracefully sliding parallel figures to the rollicking right-hand
chords and thundering bass octaves of "Good times coming."
I'll bet Joplin had Sousa in his ears for this. Soon enough,
of course, "Good times have come" and Joplin focuses
his musical material in the middle-range of the piano, where
the breathless repetitions gather a locomotive's momentum.
The rag closes with financial
worries chased away. Now even the greedy have time for entertainment.
Re-enriched, Wall Street can let itself have fun again: "Listening
to the strains of genuine negro ragtime, brokers forget their
cares." The left hand romps along as the right hand ascends
to the top of its compass, like the surging Dow. The carefree
and poor, as if unaffected by the cycles of the market, and never
burdened by the heavy responsibilities of steering the economy,
offer up their carefree song for the celebration of the financiers.
Thus Joplin feeds the myth: what's good for Wall Street is good
for America.
But this final section is ambiguous. The rag does not embrace
the system without some qualms. "Genuine negro ragtime"
invokes a notion of authenticity -- of noble savagery -- that
the high-collared brokers can never attain: the dividends of
pleasure only music can pay are never taxable.
Yes, Joplin wanted to make a buck, too. In 1899, He negotiated
a royalty of a cent per copy of Maple Leaf Rag, a deal that brought
him some $360 a year for the rest of his life. His publisher
made a lot more money, but Joplin did all right himself. The
outburst of negro joy after a black period in the markets wants
to make us believe that way down at the bottom of the economic
heap someone will always be singing and dancing,
As a whole, too, Wall Street
does what Wall Street wants: it consoles in bad times and
rejoices in good. In spite of the superficial attempt to convey
social unity across class and race, however, the surreal concluding
tableau of Joplin's Wall Street, with its the wealthy
whites dancing in front of the stock exchange to joyful black
music, cannot fully divert our ears and eyes from the more fundamental,
and still operative, truth conveyed by this final image: the
negroes have the rags, the brokers the riches.
The Harvard Business School's
South Sea Bubble collection an be reached at
http://www.library.hbs.edu/hc/ssb/index.html
David Yearsley teaches at Cornell University, and
is author of Bach
and the Meanings of Counterpoint (Cambridge University Press).
He's also a long-time contributor to the Anderson Valley Advertiser.
He can be reached at dgy2@cornell.edu
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