Suite Francaise was written over 70 years ago, yet just saw the light of day 9 years ago. The manuscript sat in a suitcase that was unopened until shortly before it was sent for review to a publisher. The ‘discoverer’, the daughter of the author, Denise Epstein, painstakingly typed out the manuscript from the tiny handwriting she’d found.

Many of the names that Irene used were the same as people in her life. For example: Cecile and the surname Michaud were the first and last name of the Nanny whose family saved the Epstein daughters from extermination after the parents were sent away (Epstein is Irene’s married name). In the book, Cecile and the Michauds are different characters that never meet.

Irene took life around her as she saw it and wove it into a story that she was fairly confident would not be read until much later. In a letter, she indicates it won’t be published until the 50’s, or maybe for a thousand years. The editor posits that she chose that time frame as a reflection of Nazi Germany’s assertion that the Third Reich would last for a thousand years.

What must it be like to create novel characters that are living the life you’re living, when you know that your life will likely soon be cut short? Or did she know? I argued back and forth with myself about this. There were hints, as through her poetry, where it’s clear she was aware of the danger she and her family faced. At other times – particularly when she was planning later parts of the novel – it seems she thought she’d last until the end of the war. It seems these are the details that make the novel as meaningful as it was, at least to me. It’s a case of Alice and the Looking Glass – which side are you on?

I’m also intrigued by the plays on words in the story. Let’s take “Suite” for example. Irene intended the novel to have five parts:

Storm (which became Storm in June)
Dolce
Captivity
Battles?
Peace?

The question marks after the last two chapters were put there by the author. According to the Preface from the French edition, she was modeling the novel on Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. In her notes, she talks about the book having ‘four movements’ (like Beethoven’s Fifth) as well as the rhythm in film that makes it work, like rhythm in music. She was looking to incorporate that same rhythm in this novel, hence the use of the word “Suite”. But there’s another, interesting element to the use of the homonym ‘sweet’, which I referenced in the last post. Sweet France? Was France sweet to Irene and her family? Obviously not, since it was the French authorities that had them sent away.

Then there’s the second section: Dolce. Dolce is an Italian word, as in the Fellini 1960 film title “La Dolce Vita”. The sweet life. Dolce means sweet.

I clearly recognize all this is reading way too much into the words, but who knows what the author intended? She was obviously brilliant, and had achieved a significant level of fame prior to her demise. She created characters based on people she knew and observed around her. The novel itself was likely a cathartic mechanism: her way of coping with how her ‘sweet’ life was unraveling around her.

I just finished re-reading “Suite Francaise” by Irene Nemerovsky. The book was written by Irene in 1941 and early 1942, while she was living in France, under German occupation.

If now was then and technology was available, Irene would have been a blogger or embedded journalist. She captured daily life around her, but presented it as fiction. Why? She was an ex-pat Russian Jew, living in a country that was rather confused about its allegiances. France, like most of the ‘civilized’ world in 1942, suffered from anti-Semitism. The difference, however, between other countries and France was the German occupation of the country.

When orders were given to round up Jews and hold them pending deportation, there was little understanding of what was happening to those deportees. The book’s Appendix includes letters from Irene’s husband to her publisher. The letters begin with a hesitant tone (gee, I hate to bother you, but…) expressing concern about her incarceration. Since Irene had asthma, her husband was concerned about her health. His later letters grew increasingly anxious. He was right to be concerned: within 3 months of her move to Auschwitz, Nemerovsky was dead from typhus. Shortly after revealing his Jewish heritage to authorities (as part of his plea to have his wife’s case ‘reviewed’ because of her fame as a writer), her husband was also deported and was immediately sent to the gas chamber at the same concentration camp where Irene perished. Their two young daughters became war orphans in 1942, ending up being raised by their Nanny and her family in a country village. Her elder daughter kept the suitcase containing the manuscript, as the last vestige of her mother’s belongings. It wasn’t until the middle of the first decade of the 21st century that she forced herself to look at the contents of the suitcase. Where she’d expected a diary, she found the material that became Suite Francaise.

So given this as background:

First question posed: does the background of the author make a difference in terms of the likelihood of the book’s seeing publication?

OK, y’all, your break is over. Back to the heavy stuff.

The title of this post is simple, yet profound. Been talked about since Christ came from New Jersey. Speaking of Christ, let’s start with his good friend and non-savior, Pontius Pilate, who said:

“Quid Est Veritas?” What is truth?

This was said in reply to Jesus who’d just informed Pilate that “Everyone on the side of truth Listens to Me”.

Hmm..then they crucified him…having people on your side for telling the truth can be risky, eh?

Fast forward through history – and again ask the question, What is Truth?

In some training I had when I worked for Proctor & Gamble, a fellow named Will Schutz coined a phrase “levels of truth”, in the context of a training package he called “The Human Element”. This implies that there is no firm and fast and indisputable ‘truth’. There are ‘levels of truth’. But what does that mean?

It means that the face we portray to others, versus the voice that speaks to our inner self are often saying different things.

So what is this all about? Lance Armstrong and Oprah Winfrey.

Lance will be going on Oprah’s show (not sure which one – since she retired from daytime tv and started her own network, it’s lost in the noise). But this will be a ratings peak for her – why? Two levels of truth:

Will he confess all and ask for forgiveness? Or,

Will he put on the ‘outside face’ and do a yabbit? You know, yeah, I did use PEDs (performing enhancing drugs), but … fill in the blank..

Second level of truth:

will Oprah be a mother figure, giving absolution and saying “go back to sports, assume your role as a hero, but sin no more? Or,

You are a liar, a cheat, a thief of the truth, you deserve everything you got and I dismiss you from my sight?

Or something in between…that’s what we all want to see…sort of like the Jews surrounding Pilate as he had to make a live/die decision for Jesus.

The Atlantic magazine has a great piece in this week’s on-line magazine – here’s a link, and this one you should DEFINITELY read – it’s well written.

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/01/who-cares-if-lance-armstrong-confesses/267102/3/

These three sports writers consider all dimensions of this ‘truth’ thing relative to Lance, and come to these three conclusions

First from Patrick, who thinks Lance will likely do the ‘yabbit’. Further, he thinks it ‘might work’, satisfying the public who want Lance to go back to being the “Cancer Jesus”. Wow – now that sure fits with my thesis, yes? But then Patrick says if his wishes were fulfilled, Lance should come out swinging and blame the establishment’s morbid fascination with this little, insignificant thing called taking performance enhancing drugs…yeah .. then

Jake Simpson thinks Emily is right when she says “That’s so yesterday”…in fact he calls it a “Chalk outline of a story”. Hmm. Don’t buy that either…Finally

Hampton Stevens artfully says what I believe: “…greatness can always have a dark side, and we all have flaws. Yet somehow dozens of hall-of-fame caliber athletes in every sport manage to win without being terrible human beings. More importantly, they manage to win within the rules.”

Then he goes on to hope that Oprah “…jams that air tank firmly into the shark’s mouth and shoots true.”

What say you to this? Lookin’ for an answer, here!

Well, y’all, I’m going to give you a break from all this political & economic claptrap, and talk about something cultural – which means, of course, Public Television!

Downton Abbey, Season 3, starts tonight. From the previews, it appears we’ll be treated to more of the shenanigans of the down and upstairs folk, now in post-WW I time frame.

I really enjoyed Season 1. It bore an uncanny resemblance to the plot of the first couple seasons of Upstairs Downstairs, but hey – what’s wrong with repeating success? The monkeyshines of the rich and not so rich kept me enthralled for about 12 hours of programming.

Season 2 seemed to drag on for centuries, even with a segment about catching & dying of the Spanish Flu which is a hot topic with me (see Writing section).

So now we’re up to Season 3, which apparently features Shirley MacLaine as the matron of the manor’s mother – cool, eh?

So enjoy the break from all this stuff, and check out Downton Abbey. You may or may not like it!

Oh, and by the way: if you make it all the way to the end of the first installment – Jack White will be on Austin City Limits right afterward. If you are a fan (as I am) you should enjoy it.

Let me know if you check it out!

As promised, I’m back to guide you through the fascinating nuances of world economics, AEP style (that’s Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, my muse for all things monied…)

The title of the second article was … wait for it …

Stocks to soar as world money catches fire, Calvinst Europe left behind

(Notice he left out the second “i” in Calvinist – budget cuts eliminated editors, eh?)

So the thesis of this article is as follows:

We have a new acronym to add to our economic lexicon: NGDP. That stands for nominal GDP targeting, or as it was known during the Great Depression: “beggar thy neighbor”. I wrote about this a long time ago in the “Economics and Investing” section. Check that out for a brush up on how Hitler got Germany out of the throes of the Depression, and became a mad, sad monster afterward because, like Billy Mumy in that Twilight Zone episode, “It’s a Good Life”, everybody was afraid to tell him “NO”…

So what’s that to do with AEP’s article? Surprisingly, a lot.

The US, China, Japan, Switzerland, and the Scandinavian countries are all adopting different varieties of loose money policies in an attempt to either devalue or stabilize their currencies. In the process, it’s like a game of musical chairs, and the poor cousins of the European Union are going to be the chairless ones. Their adoption of the austerity policies foolishly and ruthlessly required by the rich cousin (Germany) will have the potential to spark a rebellion. Although AEP is not one to predict the where or when of such a thing, looking at the statistics of unemployment in Spain, Greece, Portugal and Italy, there’s every potential for revolt. Will it be the western version of what used to be called the “Arab Spring”? Not likely…

What he’s alluding to is exactly what I described in that piece about the rise of Hitler. And he doesn’t spare France from his doomsday scenario, invoking the name of Marine Le Pen, a right-wing French nationalist who came in third in the election that produced Francois Hollande. What’s to be concerned about there? Anti-immigrant, proponent of the strong French franc (versus the Euro…) Ambrose is intimating that the spark could originate with France. And a Woman… Wow.

So why is the headline of the article saying “Stocks to soar..” as the subject?

This references the same concern as yesterday’s article regarding the bonds held by banks reflecting the sovereign debt of that country. Those bonds were priced for a deflationary period. If the attempts to devalue these stronger nation’s currencies is effective, those bonds will be significantly reduced in value, further causing problems for the poorer countries. The short term effect will be a rush to equities to avoid that pitfall on the part of world-wide investors. Isn’t this good news?

Not if you’re looking long term and expecting a return to global stability and improved world trade – the driver of world-wide prosperity. As a point of fact, AEP essentially calls it the plateau before the next big drop. Ouch…

What’s a little investor to do? Ride the wave while it lasts, don’t buy any sovereign debt (or a Rolex watch from a street vendor) and be prepared to see the potential for another Hitler to rise from those same phoenix ashes we talked about yesterday. When? Only The Shadow knows…

257 members of the House of Representatives voted last night around 11:05 PM to pass the Senate-generated bill to avoid the fiscal cliff. John Boehner voted for it. Eric Cantor did not. It really wasn’t Over, so dead Roy can go back into the crypt.

The new package avoids the tax increases, and punts on sequestration (the significant military and defense spending cuts set to kick in today) for two months.

But something significant happened. They managed to come together and do something. The Republicans are beginning to get it, Cantor & Rubio notwithstanding. They’ll come around soon, or perish in those same ashes from which the baby phoenix arises … but enough of waxing poetic.

Let’s get back to the world situation, now that our petty politics are behind us – at least for the rest of this week while the Elected go sleep this drama off.

My old friend Ambrose Evans-Pritchard is back, with a couple of really good articles in the Daily Telegraph. I’d put the links here, but come on – does anybody even bother to cut & paste ’em to see the text, rather than taking my word for it? You know you don’t!

So I’ll just give you the titles and then we’ll talk..

Japan plans ‘nationalisation’ of factories

Stocks to soar as world money catches fire, Calvinst Europe left behind

So what’s it all about, Alfie? Let’s talk Japan first. We’ll talk about Europe tomorrow, as I must not tax your attention span.

Recall those posts of August & September talking about the effect of all that currency devaluation going on – by us, by China, and by Europe? Further recall that the devaluations in Europe and the U.S. were a function of our economic and political woes, whilst China’s was a function of trying to extend the run of their path to the middle class trap? Yeah, yeah, you say – what of it? Get to it, gal!

OK…here’s the deal. The new Japanese Prime Minister (really a recycled one from a couple years’ back, but this time he’s different!) Shenzo Abe is about to spend 1 trillion yen (the equivalent of over $115 billion) buying up manufacturing capacity in Japan, and then leasing it back to business. To what end? Think China. Again recall the blog post about China’s subsidies of the solar industry in that country, effectively reducing the cost to world-wide consumers by 50%, but bankrupting Solyndra in the process? It appears that Japan is going to use its money to accomplish the same end. One of the byproducts of this action is an attempt to devalue the yen – currently at 87 to the dollar with a goal of 90 to the dollar. This makes their exports more attractive, because it lowers the cost. So don’t run out and buy that new Honda yet – if his strategy works the cost of a new Civic will come down by a bit this coming year.

So this is the chickens coming to roost (Oh, my – back to the damn birds!). And which chickens are those? Ben Bernanke’s QE-infinity chickens, that have devalued the dollar on the world market. Who’d a thunk that Japan would be the first to acknowledge & address what we’ve been doing for over two years? Here’s the quote from Shenzo:

“Foreign countries have no right to lecture us,” he said, accusing the West of failing to abide by a G20 pledge in 2009 to forgo competitive devaluations.

He’s talking about us. Now helicopter Ben has always denied that devaluing the dollar was the primary goal, and I believe him. He’s a scholar specializing in the Great Depression, and he knows the way to dig yourself out of a deflationary spiral is to flood the market with greenbacks. But oops – everybody else is beginning to see the light as well. Well, not everybody..but we’ll get to Europe tomorrow.

Back to Japan and the first article…the question that must be plaguing you at the moment is this: if it was this easy, how come Japan hasn’t done this before?

Andy Xie, a wunderkind writer for China’s Caixin Online, explains: Japanese politicians have kept their biggest demographic group happy for the past few years. Which group is that? The elderly. Well, actually, Japanese baby boomers. The post- World War II babies. The ones that have partially financed the massive expenditures the Japanese government has made to try to spend their way out of deflation with their savings. Deflation makes their money go further. So why change now? Because they’re now old enough to retire, and they’re starting to spend their savings. So? Japan is going to have to borrow from the outside world, versus their own people. As such, they have to worry about becoming the next Spain or Greece if borrowing costs increase because of their debt to GDP ratio. Just for comparison purposes, ours is about half that. Oh, Ollie, you’ve done it now. This is getting way too complex for my taste!

OK, never mind. Here’s the point – Japanese banks own a ton of Japanese government debt. The problem with Abe’s plan is that a devalued yen will make all those deflationary bonds worth less, with a potential run on the bank. That’ll be interesting to watch. Cast your eyes East for a bit, ya’ll…it’s fixin’ to get interesting.

I’m done..for now…

Well, it’s the first of January and they managed to cobble together something passed overwhelmingly by the Senate – including a whole bunch of Republicans. Credit to be given? To those of us who complained loud and long to the poobaas of the legislative and executive branches of government, demanding that they do their jobs. It appears everybody “got it” – that not passing anything was worse than passing an imperfect piece of legislation. Duh!

So what happens next? We move on to deal with lingering issues over the next couple of months.

Here’s what I conclude – the big winners out of this will be Mitch McConnell and those Republicans that voted for the package. They have begun to challenge the myth that raising any taxes at all will get you unelected. If that myth were true, Mitt Romney would have been elected President on November 6th. Yes, Virginia, it’s a package deal. Obama campaigned on the issue and he won. The Republicans – with the notable exception of Marco Rubio – got that message somewhere along the line. Raising taxes on people who make a lot of money won’t kill anybody – in fact, it’s the start of some fiscal sanity. As a result, the market will be up tomorrow, in anticipation of the House getting the memo too. If Boehner is smart, he’ll make that happen.

So was all this high drama? Performance art? Maybe a little bit – but more than likely, it was the same dance every government has performed since George Washington was President. What will come of it? Ups and downs, but after tomorrow’s vote, the world will heave a collective sigh of relief and we’ll be off to making 2013 a better year for everyone.

Tsk Tsk Tsk…They Just Couldn’t Get It Done.

On the Eleventh and Twelfth Days of Christmas,
My True Love Gave to Me…

Eleven Pipers Piping, &

Twelve Drummers Drumming

The consequences won’t be felt right away. The instruction to change the withholding schedule information has been … ‘withheld’, so that gives false hope that after the market swoons this week and people rise up with pitchforks, a deal can be struck.

Now it’s soothsayer time again..12 drum rolls, please!

There will be a shudder in the market this week, but no great crash. Will people even notice the changes? I sincerely doubt anybody other than you, gentle reader, and I, ungentle author, even are aware of this happening.

So who’s the big loser here? Well, let’s start with $110 billion in cuts for both military and domestic spending. These cuts begin to take effect on January 2nd. So, isn’t that good? Haven’t the Republicans been telling us we need to cut spending?

Right now most of the rest of the world is in or on the brink of recession. The only stock markets doing anything are the Hang Seng and – interestingly enough, the Nikkei (China and Japan). Why? China is still likely in the midst of an investment bubble and Japan is just awakening from 20 years of deflation, with the new Prime Minister promising to break the back of this deflation by weakening the yen. This flies in the face of long-held dogma in Japan, so if he’s successful, and deflation becomes inflation, old folks will feel the pinch more than others not on fixed incomes. But hey, go for it, buddy!

Europe is likely to suffer the most if the US does go into recession. There is a clear expectation of one quarter of negative growth, probably the first quarter as a function of poor Christmas spending and the after effects of you and me lowering our spending because of the failure of Washington to agree.

So? Well, time will tell and all I can say is, Shame, Shame, Shame! (Thanks, Gomer…)

I just finished watching an episode of “The West Wing” from 2003 called “Shutdown”. Guess what it was about? A Republican Speaker of the House holding the country hostage for a 3% budget cut when they’d previously agreed to a 1% cut. Sound familiar? Yep, just like the President said yesterday, It’s Deja Vu all Over Again. Some things just never change.

The notion that we can cut spending at a time when the economy is shaky at best is stupid. Most of Europe is a perfect example of what happens when you put penury on a higher plane than common sense. They continue to be mired in recession, with budget cuts chasing revenue declines all the way to the abyss.

And why do we engage in this kind of outrageous behavior? Because we don’t have seriously big problems to solve, and therefore feel entitled to engage in fear-driven behaviors. There’s no reason to rise above the need for personal job security on the part of Republicans, because the precedent was set back in ’95. It’s a little like losing your virginity – shutting down the government. Once you’ve done it, it’s easy to do it again and again.

So with two days left before the cliff, once again I express disdain for and disappointment in the individuals elected to serve the people of this country. Shame on all of you – or as Toby said in that episode above, “It’s a Pox on Both our Houses”. It surely is.

On the 10th Day of Christmas,
My True Love Gave to Me
Ten Lords a Leaping…

Ten Lords a Leaping

Well, on this Saturday night, despite exhorting statements from the President, Minority and Majority Leaders, no updates means no progress. But hey, it’s not December 31st at midnight – plenty of time to wait for the lords of the dance!

Bah Humbug!

Some feeble attempts at compromise, undermined by threats at a hastily-called news conference around 5 today. Geez, the President must be the world’s most inept negotiator ever. Or, he’s getting really bad advice from some folk with some seriously heavy baggage.

So we’re getting down to Saturday, Sunday and Monday…back to the rhyme

On the eighth and ninth days of Christmas,
My True Love Gave to Me..
Eight Maids a Milking

and

Nine Ladies Dancing.

So it’s the female contribution – have we heard from any females on this topic? Nope…guess it takes someone submissive to successfully get herself elected to the House of Representatives or the Senate of the United States of America. Otherwise, you scare those dudes…

Reminds me of that scene in Lincoln when the opposition is suggesting that next, the President will want to ‘enfranchise’ black men. Oh, my! But the biggest reaction he got? When he suggested that such insanity could lead to the notion that the men should allow women to vote! That virtually brought the house down!

So, despite years of progress, we’ve still got a long way to go.