Fun with Dick and Jane

Dick and Jane are average parents in their early 40s living in a typical successful suburb of D.C. with their children Dirk, 10, and June, 12. Dick is a business lawyer, Jane a dermatologist, and both have thriving practices. Their children love and trust them and honor the moral precepts Dick and Jane have taught them, including honesty and thrift. They are about to be surprised.

Dirk and June will find out that their parents have kept from them that the banks holding their parents’ home mortgage and an equity line of credit have each recently threatened foreclosure because there have been no payments in two months. Nor have Dick and Jane told their kids—of course not—that each has been having an affair, and that each gambles heavily—Dick on the stock market and Jane on horses. Gambling and other living beyond means have consumed the family finances. Still, each parent has just bought a new car . They used money they got from their own parents to make mortgage payments, in turn borrowed on homes long since paid off. They rewarded themselves for their ‘hard work in their professions’ by trading in their year-old cars on new ones. Dirk and June have just found out about all this from other kids in the neighborhood.

Fortunately, this story is an allegory. We are the ones who have been abused and misled, by the captains of the financial and banking industries. Dick and Jane have no hope of renewing their relationship with their children, and their children—although resilient—risk never getting back on an even keel.

The only hope is if Dick and Jane humbly and sincerely beg forgiveness after admitting all they have done.

Still, as an allegory this story tells us what must happen if the American lending system, and hence the entire American economy which depends on it, can be restored. No amount of tinkering with cash infusions, buying out bad assets or other tricks of the economists’ toolbox will succeed, although they are necessary.

No, American bankers and financial CEOs and their cohort must do what Japanese business managers do when they have totally screwed up. They must resign in abject dishonor. They know who they are, and must act voluntarily for the good of the country.

Rituals serve a purpose, and by no means only in Japan . Such an expiation ritual and nothing less—not the blathering routinely served up to Congressional committees --will flush out the emotional toxins and the odors of greed, dishonesty, unearned bonuses and deferred compensation that pervade our economy today.

That would be change everyone could believe in. When we again believe in each other and ourselves, then our economic plight will disappear like miasma in sunlight, but not until.