Should We Bring Back the Leisure Suit?

The economy in America and Europe is stagnant. Gas prices have risen sharply in recent years, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports rising inflation. The job market stinks. Business investment has ground to a halt. America is unwinding from unpopular wars. Young people just entering the labor force believe they face a lifetime of limited opportunity and lower living standards. They envy their parents, who seem to have had it so good. Prospects for the future seem like a blurred swirl in a porcelain bowl. Whether you believe history repeats itself or simply rhymes, the times are looking a lot like the 1970s. Maybe we should bring back the leisure suit.

The leisure suit had many attributes. It was casual, a rejection of the stuffy old formality of the 1950s. It usually came in pastel colors, brightening things up as the lights dimmed for electricity conservation mandated by rising energy prices. It was made of polyester, which thankfully led us to rethink the whole idea of better living through chemistry. It was flashy, ideal for mindlessly dissipating evenings in artificially fogged discos. Considering today's pervasive gloom, a bit of self-referential, sartorial frivolity might be just the thing we need.

But thinking of the 1970s reminds us of how glad we were to escape the malaise of those times. What is worth examining is how we made the escape. The fundamental economic problem then was price inflation. Already a nagging problem in the 3% range at the beginning of the decade, inflation was aggravated by OPEC oil price fixing, which escalated it to 13% by the end of the decade. Wages tended to keep fairly close pace with inflation, but the value of savings was eroded as interest rates lagged (does this sound familiar?). The stock market stunk, worth much less after inflation than it was worth at the beginning of the decade.

As students of economic history know, then Fed Chairman Paul Volcker raised interest rates sharply at the beginning of the 1980s to stabilize prices. In the process, the U.S. economy belly flopped into recession, with unemployment rising above 10% and stocks falling. Despite a tidal wave of criticism from the left, right, Democrats, Republicans, and just about everyone else standing on or about a bully pulpit, Volcker held firm, like a latter day Rock of Chickamauga. And prevailed. The recession of 1981-82 wrung inflation out of the economy, and it has never returned at any level approaching the confidence sapping double digits of the 70s. With inflation whipped, real economic growth resumed, employment levels rebounded, and the stock market took off on an 18-year bull run. The bond market, even more amazingly, took off on a bull run that hasn't ended even today.

An essential, virtually forgotten lesson from the disco era is that real pain had to be endured before the economy could be set on the right track. Investors, workers, businesses, savers, and homeowners all made sacrifices. There was no easy way out. Inflation had created economic distortions that had to eliminated. The relatively lax Fed of the 1970s was replaced by a stern, unyielding inflation slayer who wielded a mighty halberd.

Such is the path America must take today if it is to end today's dreary replay of the 1970s. The economy is distorted by asset bubbles, the leverage that made them possible, the fantasy mortgage loans that can't be collected but haven't been written off by the banks, Fed-prescribed low interest rates that encourage speculation while discouraging savings, and the dependence of the private sector on federal stimulus. Private businesses won't hire or invest unless there is a prospect of more federal intervention. Everyone wants a risk-free environment, or absent that, a federal bailout. Free enterprise, which means taking risk, barely exists any more and can usually be found only in the small business sector, where federal manna is scarce.

If the Fed wants to stimulate risk taking, what it must do is reverse the tide of moral hazard and stop the endless stream of largely futile accommodations. It should force business executives to take risk, not force savers to gamble their hard-earned retirement funds on dodgy financial instruments. When businesses realize that they will have to make their profits the old fashioned way--by taking risks and managing those risks to attain profitability--then we will see organic economic recovery. No amount of Fed coddling of corporate interests, and no amount of Fed punishment of savers and holders of capital, will achieve the spontaneous and self-sustaining growth that produces lasting prosperity.

Before there was a Federal Reserve, there were recessions, and bad ones at that. There were also recoveries from those recessions that led to sparkling prosperity. It's not like America endured an unrelenting stream of recessions followed by more recessions until the clouds parted and the Federal Reserve System was handed down to someone on Mount Sinai. The Fed has a legitimate role in stabilizing the financial system, and has done yeoman's duty in that respect. But it isn't and can't be the progenitor of all prosperity in America. In a free enterprise system, private enterprise must take on that job, and if corporate interests hold back in hope of yet another federal bailout, they must be made to understand it won't be forthcoming.

America is becoming like Japan, moribund and without a vision of the future. We don't want to take risks any more, and we don't want to accept pain. Blame and culpability are denied by the most powerful, even though their responsibility is greatest. The less powerful and the powerless are made to suffer the worst consequences of the Great Recession, even though their ability to cope is the least. Capitalism requires that blame and responsibility be assessed, and that losses be imposed appropriately. Without right and wrong, there can be no morality. And without losses as well as gains, there can be no free enterprise. We can have all gains only if we become one big government enterprise (and those gains would ultimately prove ethereal). We can't escape our current predicament by having the federal government (and, even worse, the EU) artificially support or inflate assets that are in reality worthless. There won't be a revival of sustained economic growth as long as the government holds out the promise of yet another bailout, yet more accommodation. While there remains a legitimate role for government in taking on tasks for which the private sector isn't well-suited, like building and maintaining infrastructure, and funding and conducting basic research (recall that the Internet started off as a Defense Department project), the government should stop trying to alleviate general business risk.

Otherwise, we might as well bring back the leisure suit. A dose of self-delusion as we circle the drain will numb the process of decay and decline. If we're going to stop thinking about tomorrow, we might as well have fun while we can.