By Scott Graber
Recently a friend asked why I repeatedly cite articles found in the Wall Street Journal.
“For the most part you seem like a reasonable, rational, well-adjusted man; but why don’t you ever quote the New York Times?”
I do like the Journal’s news reporting — it’s reportage — but I am intimidated by the Financial section and usually avoid the Journal’s editorial writers who reliably crucify President Biden. But admit, here and now, that I love the Journal’s Review section that is published every weekend.
“I Used To Judge Women Who Got Boob Jobs — Then I Got One;” “When Spirituality and Morality Meet;” “Building the Spanish Empire;” and “The Spies of Miami” are but four of the many articles offered-up in the April 27-28 Review section.
I was, of course, initially drawn to the piece on breast augmentation but was diverted into reading “GDP and the Dow Are Up. But What About American Well-Being?”
“Seriously Scott,” you are thinking, “You left ‘Boob Jobs’ for an article on the gross domestic product and the Dow Jones average?
I will understand if you stop reading this column now.
But the piece in question says the four, tried and true economic indicators — Gross Domestic Product; Dow Jones Average, Unemployment and Inflation—were (recently) moving in the right direction. And yet …
“Polls tell a different story. While public assessments of the economy are slowly improving, they still show profound dissatisfaction. … The problem is that most of the prominent measures of the economy are not focused on the actual lives of Americans.”
Several days ago I rode my big-wheeled beach bicycle to a Parker’s Convenience Store where I noticed that a gallon of gasoline costs $3.25. But then, when I went inside looking for a cherry flavored Tootsie Roll Pop, I found it cost 79 cents!
Although I reluctantly coughed-up the cash, I was saddened and then, angered, as my teeth busted through the hard candy exterior and into its chewy-chocolate interior. Had I been asked about the economy at that very moment would have said, “The American economy is going to hell.”
The WSJ has noticed this disparity and decided there was something missing with those four, classic “metrics.”
So it has created four new measurable elements — economic security, economic opportunity, health and political voice.
Let’s look at “economic security” — this particular metric coming from a “trove of credit bureau data on finances.”
(Presumably the credit bureau “trove” showed many Americans didn’t have much cash in the bank; live paycheck-to-paycheck, and explains why they feel bad in spite of an expanding economy.)
But I think what’s really happening here is that nobody really understands our economy. While most Americans understand that inflation is a bad thing, and that just seven (“The Magnificent Seven”) stocks were responsible for 29% of market capitalization in the S&P 500 Index; everything else is “mumbo jumbo.”
It would be one thing if we really knew the relationship between inflation and bond yields. It would help if we were conversant with 10-Year Treasuries, or the fluctuating cost of natural gas, or the future relationship between Iran and Israel, or Intel’s 9.2% decline, or the precipitous collapse of the real estate market in China, or if there is life after TikTok.
Who really understands that as the yield from T-bills rises, there is a corresponding “steep stock decline” that could send us back to the dark, dangerous days of 2022. Most of us — including this columnist — don’t know about these relationships and so we cling to phrases like, “this is causing volatility inequities;” “the bond market is waking up to the fact that inflation is stickier than we thought” and “choppy waters ahead.”
It seems to me that this economic uncertainty — together with the inability of our State Legislature to account for $1.8 billion recently found sloshing around unknown and unspent in the Treasurer’s Office — is fueling the anger that has destroyed our optimism.
Wait a minute, I know, let’s use this found money to pay down the $2.3 billion (we rate-payers are paying) for the failed expansion of the VC Summer Nuclear Station.
I, for one, might recover just a little bit of my former optimism if I wasn’t still on the hook for that $2.3 billion. And it occurs to me that the optimism and productivity that followed World War II, the happy climate of my youth and young adulthood, was the magic elixir that fueled our economic expansion.
Scott Graber is a lawyer, novelist, veteran columnist and longtime resident of Port Royal. He can be reached at cscottgraber@gmail.com.
