The late Joseph Heller, the master of black humor, in 1961 published "Catch-22," his hilarious classic on the insane brutality of war. He was a good friend of the late Kurt Vonnegut, who wrote his own 1969 masterwork on World War II, "Slaughterhouse Five."
In 1998, Vonnegut gave the commencement address at Rice University, where he told a wonderful anecdote featuring Heller -- an anecdote that ought to be required reading for everyone who is involved in or who aspires to be involved in this nation's financial system.
After Heller's death in 2005 -- and just two years before his own -- Vonnegut told that story again in The New Yorker. This is what he wrote:
Joe Heller
True story, Word of Honor:
Joseph Heller, an important and funny writer
now dead,
and I were at a party given by a billionaire
on Shelter Island.
I said, "Joe, how does it make you feel
To know that our host only yesterday
may have made more money
than your novel 'Catch-22'
has earned in its entire history?"
And Joe said, "I've got something he can never have."
And I said, "What on earth could that be, Joe?"
And Joe said, "The knowledge that I've got enough."
Not bad! Rest in peace.
I was reminded of this story while reading all the back and forth over the multimillion-dollar bonuses that, we are repeatedly told by the titans of Wall Street and their friends on the editorial pages, must be paid to keep on board those geniuses who steered the country's largest financial vessels into the national shipwreck that required American teachers, firefighters, small businesswomen and waitresses to pony up $700 billion.
The American International Group (AIG) must qualify as the Wall Street poster child. In the last quarter of last year, AIG set a new world record by losing $61.7 billion in three short months. Because AIG was, we were told, "too big to fail," American families had to come to the rescue with $170 billion in loans to keep AIG afloat. That meant that we, the people of the United States, suddenly held an 80 percent share of the company.
AIG may have lost billions, but it never lost either its gall or its self-confidence. The company earlier this year had revealed its plans to award $165 million in bonuses to the very same folks who had been at the helm when the AIG ship hit the iceberg it had ignored and sank.
You might remember that when our same federal government intervened with emergency loans to save General Motors and Chrysler, the conditions imposed were that the $29-an-hour autoworkers had to surrender their rights under a negotiated contract with the company and accept major wage cutbacks. So, too, did the Detroit auto executives. But when citizens were universally outraged by AIG's bonus plans, AIG had two stout defenders: the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the Obama administration's Treasury Department.
Is it any surprise that, according to a Time magazine poll, 62 percent of Americans want financial regulations to be tighter, while a whopping 67 percent want the government to force pay cuts on the income of the top people at the Wall Street firms that got federal bailouts?
Tragically, very few of the arrogant and affluent in American finance today are able to say what the late and truly great Joseph Heller could: that I have "the knowledge that I've got enough."
To find out more about Mark Shields and read his past columns, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.
DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM
COPYRIGHT 2009 MARK SHIELDS
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Sir;... Enough is the most beautiful word in the language... It is the magic number... Enough is everything to everybody, really, even if some may think they need more... God, let us see what more for less leads to...We recognize all moral values like justice, and virtue, and liberty, and morality -itself because we all need enough... What enough justice or morality amounts to- without measure -humanity has been trying to determine for at least as long as we have had writing, and perhaps for as long as we have had words...I think the reason is obvious... Without enough liberty or justice we die... Without enough morality and virtue we die, and our societies die along with us...Michael de Montaigne maintained that one man's profit is the loss of another...That is a simple proposition, and easily proved, but in a bountiful land, God can make up the losses of the many again and again so long as the few do not squeeze the very life out of the people... And we can see in America where a fraction of our society, used to squeezing the life out of people, also squeezed the life out of the land, and eventually bagan a mass blood letting such as we have never known for waste, and death, and destruction...Does it matter that the South never made headway, that interests made profits impossible, and that the very immorality of the institution denied the citizens of the place every necessity of a civilized society from roads to libraries??? It was not just unfortunate...It was not only tragic, though there was tragedy beyond all measure...It was a catastophe... The slavery, the war, and the failure of war to liberate humanity has been a catastrophe black and hopeless beyond all measure...There is not enough purple prose in all the world to paint the scene as only human blindness can, of people laying their lives down as a sacrifice to God for liberty on a thousand battlefields only for the living to find their bodies ravaged for ever greater profits...Our Civil War was fought to limit the power of property over the liberty of men, so that justice might judge in every courtroom as once it did in every moot and doom... The thirst of Americans and the world for the positive moral values that humanity has always found essential is unslacked... Our slavery is more profound than the bondage of blacks because we have no point on the compass to which to run for freedom...This is the last and final hope for freedom for humanity, and not because it is firm in our grasp, but because in sleeping we have let our grip relax...At some point, every American if he will be free must realize that rights are freedom, and that no political equality can be maintained in the face of economic inequality; that where ever wealth was assigned to a single class that slavery was the lot of the others... All those melodies of nation we we hold so dear, of inalienable rights, of life and liberty and justice for all now play flat on the heart strings of memory...Our flag, our constitution, our voluminous laws curbing every willful act, our pledges, and parables of a by gone age have a leaden taste on our tongues, and grow empty of meaning in our minds... How many lives does our flag demand??? How many lives will be given this next year to boundless profits while the pain of the people grows boundless???This year is spent, and gone is the life of the people to profits their own government ensures will be collected when possible, if ever, from the sweat of our brows... ...Upon what point can we be united if we are everywhere, and upon every issue divided by wealth and poverty???If this nation were once a fruit filled with promise- if only we would promise our hard work and fidelity, it has been filled with the tyranny and fear of another age without the faith and continence that once forbid injustice and unfair profits... The progress of humanity, once plodding and slow has been turned on its heels... Who runs this place, and who dares to disagree, and who dares demand human freedom and justice for all??? Only those who know that life without freedom has led to lives across this land devoid of hope will stand against greed...If we had enough freedom we would have enough justice...If we had enough virtue and enough moral strength we could demand institutions and forms that would insure justice and liberty for a millenium, instead of making our hopes the object of commerce until all is carted off and buried as treasure...Security is what the rich hope to buy with all our wealth...If they would trouble to educate themselves to human progress they would find in short order that the purpose morality, and justice, and all of the moral forms have served, is security... We can all see the future even when we look away out of fright, and one thing the human spirit demands is security, and it has been our single minded goal, the goal of all our technology...But we all only need enough security to get us through a near future...When the rich take security from the poor as they can do easily enough, then the poor can share their want of security with all... When the rich demand that they have all security, that all the laws, and all the police, and all the technology be used to maximize their security out of the insecurity of the weak, then they have made their lives not secure, but volatile...Every body needs enough... Liberty deserves a common defense because every body needs enough...Every word in the dictionary, and every number we have, we have to help us find justice, enough for all without extremes for any, to each his due, if at all possible...The Civil War has never ended...Humanity still stands against the dregs and dolts of another age...We still must decide if private property will own all our rights... We still must decide if we will be free or slaves bowed and shackled to a hopeless existence...In many respects the journalists of this land only catalogue the failures of the past removed to this time and place...In our liturature and the myths of a distant past we can see their champions making a stand for Justice, and its ever attendent honor...If we will be an honorable people we must have justice, just as if we must have freedom, then we will be moral... We do not have a new battle to fight against those who would reduce every moral treasure to money, but a battle that is as old as human kind, and as essential in olden day to their lives as it is to us in our day....Thanks...Sweeney
Comment: #1
Posted by: James A, Sweeney
Sun Nov 29, 2009 9:30 PM
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