emergent ink

And so the inevitable happened. The Yankees, a perfect symbol for these modern times, won the World Series.

I suppose I should congratulate all of the Yankees fans out there whose lives are now slightly better than mine (even if that’s only in their heads).

No, really: Congratulations. Even I could tell that you were rooting for a team that was the best ever assembled to play the game of baseball. You deserve to enjoy this.

I call the Yankees a perfect symbol for these times because they are, like Goldman Sachs and the rest of Wall Street, Too Big To Fail. (In this analogy, the Red Sox and Phillies are Morgan Stanley and Citibank, while the Mets are Lehman Brothers. They were not too big to fail.) Think about it: if the YankeeMegaCorporation, operating out of its $1.5 billion taxpayer-funded cathedral, had managed to lose this World Series, what could they possibly have added to next year’s team in order to guarantee a win? Another starting pitcher? Half their rotation did not get to play in the postseason. Where would the next superstar free agent slugger play? Was there room in the lineup for another hitter? Hideki Matsui, the World Series MVP, is possibly not even going to be re-signed next year, because they do not need another designated hitter. (Perhaps what the American League needs to do is allow for an “extra hitter” so the Yankees could collect more millionaire sluggers, and they wouldn’t just sit in the dugout, the Yankees could put them to use.)

Failure was not an option. Victory was inevitable. Necessary. It was important for the Yankees to win the World Series, just as it was important for General Motors to be rescued. Because America Makes Cars, and America Loves the Yankees. Just ask anyone. Anyone that lives in Michigan or New York. New York can now schedule a ticker tape parade for the conquering heroes. Since there is no more ticker tape, I hope someone saved the shredded remains of Lehman Brothers and the more than one hundred banks that went under so far this year. New York can celebrate, it deserves this just as it deserves a mayor who spent $100 million to serve a third term whether or not there is a law that says mayors can serve only two terms. New York… Wall Street… Yankees… Bloomberg… perfect together. Who better to hand the keys to the city to the Yankees than the man who actually owns it. If you have the money, this is the way the game is played. It’s perfectly legal. It’s the free market. And even as I point this out, don’t automatically assume that I endorse socialism in baseball, or the enforcement of election laws and democracy, for that matter.

When victory is this inevitable, it’s really no big deal. Besides, they already had won 26 of these things before. To see Yankees fans jumping up and down like this, as if it hasn’t happened before… the phrase “irrational exuberance” comes to mind. If this is how Yankees fans feel after World Series Number Twenty Seven, I fear for Mets fans, who will have to keel over dead with joy if their team should manage to win their World Series Number Three. But that won’t happen; man will walk on the moon before the Mets win again. Make that one of Jupiter’s moons.

If you have the money, this is the way the game is played. This is the way the free market works, whether you’re trying to win the world series or an election, want to defy term limit laws, or just want a little health insurance. (Why am I bringing health insurance into this? because if you have the money, like Goldman Sachs and CitiGroup, then you are Too Big To Get Sick, and you don’t have to wait in line for those swine flu vaccines that are in such short supply for regular Americans.) And if you don’t have the money, the next best thing is to take a lot of vitamin C, and root for those who do have the money. Because, hey, it’s important: 27 World Series wins, and in the last decade, 9 playoff appearances. 8 division titles. Four pennants. Two world titles… this is important stuff, and it makes our lives better, doesn’t it? And after the glow of the Yankees win wears off, we can all go back to watching the Dow Jones creep up… what a historic rise in stock prices this year… stocks are up 6 out of the last 7 months… there’s a stat that should make you feel good about yourself… as the fed-sponsored artificial investment bubble of 2009 “lifts all boats” in the words of Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan.

What if you don’t have a boat?

At some point more of us may realize that we don’t get World Series rings for rooting for a team, and there was no lifting for us boatless ones. We may realize that the government gave money (our money) to institutions in order to “save” them, at zero percent interest, and that those institutions turned around and poured that money into the stock market and made fortunes for themselves, their employees, their shareholders, while jacking up the interest rates on all us shmucks who lent them the money in the first place. This is the Finance Industry, the only one we have left, and we all better chip in and keep it humming because it is a life-sucking parasite that has drained the rest of the country dry, and now we depend on the Finance Industry’s minions for our own life function and to buy the very expensive season tickets to the New Yankee Stadium. When you look at America you see a shambling zombie, something that should be dead, and the only reason it’s moving is that malignant thing growing out of the place on its chest where New York City is. The rest of our vital signs went overseas, with our jobs, in order to feed that thing. And now we’re pouring every last dollar we’ve got, and every dollar our children and their unborn children will have, into keeping that thing alive just so we can continue to stagger around and buy a few more things, things like officially hologrammed championship t-shirts just like the ones our favorite team wore when they won it all, and go to a ticker tape parade. At some point we’re going to realize that our lives are no better off no matter who we root for, and we’ll look up through the fluttering “ticker tape” at those yachts floating on top of that bubble and wonder where our boats are. When that happens, more of us will start rooting for that bubble to pop, even if it means the end of us all. Just so we can get to see those yachts fall to earth and crash into a million pieces. This time, we won’t catch them. We’ll happily sift through the wreckage looking for chum, or survivors, who better hope there’s a government around to prosecute them and put them in jail before some angry people turn those survivors into more chum.

Now it’s time to hand out the World Series bonuses to a bunch of multi-millionaires. Hoo-ray. And it’s almost time to hear about the year-end bonuses for all those hard-working Finance Industry executives. As for the average American… you’ll all just have to put up with it. Consider this Yankees victory a gift. It is a distraction from the depression of 10% unemployment, or a $25 gift card to the mall (that was my Christmas bonus last year, and I am so looking forward to another one) or a phantom recovery (to what, we don’t know). All that doesn’t hurt as much now, because the Yankees won the World Series, and the Dow got back to 10,000 today! And don’t mind that sucking thing attached to your chest.