May - The North Star Monthly
May - The North Star Monthly
May - The North Star Monthly
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www.northstarmonthly.com MAY 2010 25<br />
FollowtheMoney<br />
“LET US SIT UPON THE GROUND...”<br />
OLD<br />
FRIENDS<br />
SHOP<br />
Come in and enjoy our<br />
spring & summer<br />
fashions<br />
and our<br />
interesting selection of antiques<br />
small household items<br />
books and jewelry!<br />
We still have<br />
toys,<br />
knick-knacks<br />
and of course<br />
our famous<br />
BACK ROOM!<br />
Mon - Fri 11-5 / Sat 10-3<br />
CLOSED SUNDAYS<br />
35 South Main<br />
Hardwick, VT<br />
BY RACHEL SIEGEL<br />
An early spring presents a choice: be swayed by hope and sunshine and dare to<br />
plant when the soil seems warmed, or rely on experience and hold off.<br />
Planting early creates a<br />
longer growing season and<br />
more yield and varieties, but carries<br />
the risk of a late frost destroying<br />
eager seedlings.<br />
Planting later limits the crops<br />
and shifts the risk to the end of<br />
the season when an early frost<br />
can defeat a summer’s worth of<br />
tending. Planting early gives<br />
more weight to current trends,<br />
planting later gives more to historical<br />
returns. What’s a gardener<br />
to do? <strong>The</strong> truth is our<br />
risks are fully hedged by liquidity:<br />
there’s always the farmer’s<br />
market and, if regional blight<br />
strikes, the super market.<br />
But for savers trying to establish<br />
funds to provide some<br />
financial security, a fallback if<br />
nothing else, there is no market<br />
but the capital market. We<br />
endow financial markets with a<br />
moral responsibility because we<br />
are so reliant on them and because<br />
we fear and respect that<br />
dependence.<br />
<strong>The</strong> latest bubble to besiege<br />
and beguile is the boom in smug<br />
commentary. Academics, investment<br />
bankers, regulators, reporters—everyone<br />
has<br />
something to say about the<br />
most recent financial crisis. We<br />
have always been quick to judge<br />
and advise: “Neither borrower or<br />
lender be…” Even Shakespeare,<br />
the great portrayer of kingdomsized<br />
ego, greed, jealousies, and<br />
loves could not refrain from financial<br />
commentary.<br />
Some commentators have<br />
found more human pathos by<br />
focusing on specific risk. <strong>The</strong>y<br />
are anxious to report that those<br />
who ignore history are doomed<br />
to repeat it, those who like being<br />
the smartest one in the room<br />
eventually become the only one<br />
in the room, and those who succumb<br />
to greed are epically<br />
human.<br />
Those who focus on systemic<br />
flaws speak of regulatory<br />
weakness and theoretical myopia,<br />
some to the point of questioning<br />
the role of academia in<br />
trading intellectual capital and<br />
of the market in trading financial<br />
capital.<br />
If it’s just a few bad apples,<br />
we can find them out and lock<br />
them up, or at least shame them<br />
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TUESDAYS<br />
On Select Menu Items<br />
• Seafood<br />
• Steaks<br />
• Chicken<br />
• Sandwiches<br />
• Kid’s Menu<br />
• Vegetarian Items<br />
Weddings, Banquets, Private Dining<br />
Functions...200 Seats Available.<br />
into more inconspicuous capitalism.<br />
If it’s the market itself,<br />
we can restrict and restrain and<br />
regulate and provide watchdogs<br />
where there are none.<br />
<strong>The</strong>n there are those who<br />
would say that it is both, that in<br />
some strange, suicidal symbiosis,<br />
systemic incentives preyed<br />
on those attracted to the markets<br />
and eroded their values,<br />
which they then reflected. While<br />
we strive to deconstruct the failures<br />
and reconstruct a feasible<br />
system, there is another possibility.<br />
<strong>May</strong>be it wasn’t the nature<br />
of market or of man that failed.<br />
<strong>May</strong>be they worked.<br />
Contrarians point out that<br />
the best<br />
SUNDAY<br />
BRUNCH<br />
in the <strong>North</strong>east<br />
two<br />
for<br />
$<br />
22<br />
Bring This Ad In<br />
for discount price<br />
Not Valid on Holidays<br />
Thru <strong>May</strong> 2010<br />
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Wells River, Vermont<br />
802-429-2120<br />
Tues - Sat 5-9<br />
Sun 11-8<br />
Sunday Brunch 11-2<br />
the market did correct, or<br />
rather, was corrected by people<br />
who more accurately saw what<br />
was happening and acted on<br />
their beliefs. Some made fortunes<br />
betting against the bubbles.<br />
Those people were also<br />
driven by ego and greed; they<br />
just came to different conclusions.<br />
In the end, an unsustainable<br />
boom was predictably<br />
unsustainable, and those who<br />
couldn’t see it, fell with it. Markets<br />
froze, but perhaps as much<br />
because participants were trying<br />
to read portents of government<br />
interference—who would get<br />
how much bailout and when—<br />
as from sheer terror.<br />
It’s easy to indignantly focus<br />
on the human suffering, to read<br />
it as a failure of fairness at some<br />
level. It’s even easier to counter<br />
with notions of personal responsibility—who<br />
buys a home<br />
they cannot afford? who makes<br />
a loan they cannot prove? —and<br />
easiest to wallow in dreams deferred.<br />
Trusting and desperate<br />
souls pin their hopes on asset<br />
boom after asset boom because<br />
investors, led by greed, lead by<br />
<strong>The</strong> Pope Memorial Library<br />
publicly thanks the following for making<br />
Kurt & Joanne Adams<br />
Jim & Mary Anne Allen<br />
Joe Barbieri & Rebecca Roth<br />
Walter Barlow<br />
Peace Baxter<br />
Martha & Jim Becker<br />
Kimberly & Edward Behr<br />
Ray & Peg Bergiel<br />
<strong>The</strong> Bergmans<br />
Mary & Paul Berlejung<br />
Tom & Sarah Berrian<br />
Mr. & Mrs. E.A. Bertolini<br />
Kate & Martin Bertolini<br />
Linda Jean Bess<br />
Gordon Bess<br />
Mrs.Alice J. Blair<br />
Virginia Boyle<br />
Sharon Chamberlain<br />
Corinne & David Chamberlin<br />
Patricia Coe<br />
Lance & Linda Comfort<br />
Cathy &Tom Conte<br />
Judy & Stuart Corso<br />
Jack & Roz Daniels<br />
Mary Deaett<br />
Camilla &Tom Dente<br />
Gail & Frank Dolan<br />
Barbara & Gus Enos<br />
<strong>The</strong> Esser Family<br />
Terry Fairchild<br />
Lynda & Gary Farrow<br />
Kathy Fenoff<br />
Sharon Fine & Robert Rotti<br />
Lisa & Bob Fitch<br />
Ginny Flanders<br />
Rita Foley & Jill Kelleher<br />
Jeff Frampton<br />
Arnie &Winona Gadapee<br />
Brent Gadapee<br />
Peter & Jeanne Gallerani<br />
Jeff & Ellen Gold<br />
Skip & Debbie Gray<br />
Marjorie Greaves<br />
Rachel Hadas<br />
Cecil Hall<br />
Gale Hamilton<br />
Lisa Hantman<br />
David & Gail Hare<br />
Calvin & Lois Haseltine<br />
John & Megan Haygood<br />
Pam & Joe Hebert<br />
Sara Heft<br />
Terry & Kathy Hoffer<br />
Russell Houghton<br />
Dave & Jan Houston<br />
Franklin & Donna Hovey<br />
Timothy & Jenness Ide<br />
Barbara Jenks<br />
Allan & Jennifer Johnston<br />
James & Norma Jung<br />
Jane & Guil Kitchel<br />
Mildred La Beur<br />
Olivia Laferriere<br />
Jennifer & Benjamin Lam<br />
Dorothy Larrabee<br />
example.<br />
It would all just be ever so<br />
tedious except that we have no<br />
choice but to participate in the<br />
markets once we have rejected<br />
the mattress as our depository.<br />
We have no choice but to save<br />
for education or retirement or<br />
even just emergencies somehow,<br />
and we cannot possible save<br />
enough in nominal terms, so we<br />
have to give our funds a chance<br />
to grow, and risk the frost in trying.<br />
In the end, there is no perfect<br />
hedge, except wealth itself.<br />
We can debate how and<br />
where and when and what to<br />
save, but save we must. This<br />
new bumper crop of commentary<br />
reflects our intellectual and<br />
moral indignation, and our frustration,<br />
and our hope. An early<br />
spring poses opportunities and,<br />
with them, risks. An early spring<br />
is a taunting thing.<br />
Rachel S. Siegel, CFA, consults<br />
on investment portfolio<br />
performance and strategy. She is<br />
a professor in the business administration<br />
department at Lyndon<br />
State College.<br />
the 2009-2010 Annual Appeal a success:<br />
Judy & Dave Lavely<br />
Justin & Ginni Lavely<br />
Ms. Beaulah Lawrence<br />
Deb & Barry LeBarron<br />
Norm Lewis<br />
Ken & Cheryl Linsley<br />
Penelope Lowe<br />
Wendy MacKenzie & Matthew Langham<br />
John & Barbara Matsinger<br />
Beth McCabe<br />
Jean & Joe McClure<br />
Patricia McGill<br />
Judith McGivney<br />
Jeff & Kellie Merrell<br />
Anne Michals<br />
Steve Mills & Marilyn Beattie<br />
Christine Mulligan<br />
Molly Newell<br />
Bob & Jenn Nixon<br />
Cam & Peter O’Brien<br />
Ernest Osterman & Susanne Gray<br />
Bill & Carol Ottinger<br />
Janice Mae & Dan Ouellette<br />
Passumpsic Savings Bank<br />
Ed & Karen Pcolar<br />
Bill & Betsey Peabody<br />
William & Lucia Pearl<br />
Jane Peck<br />
Hollis & Mary Prior<br />
Mr. & Mrs. J. Ernest Racenet<br />
Record Appraisal Group<br />
Shirley Richardson & Michael Smith<br />
Eleanor Ritchie<br />
Cindy Robbins<br />
Eileen Rossetti<br />
Cathy Rousse<br />
Elizabeth & Robert Sargent<br />
Ray Saufroy<br />
Dan Schmiech & Donna Lambert<br />
Andrea & Paul Searls<br />
Harwant & Nora Sethi<br />
Caroline Sherry<br />
Harriet Shorr & Jim Long<br />
Dawn & Ron Sicard<br />
Anna & Edward Somers<br />
Sarah Spence<br />
Henretta Splain<br />
Laurel Stanley<br />
Marge Ste. Marie<br />
Emmett & Jane Sullivan<br />
Dan & Mary Swainbank<br />
Philip & SusanTallman<br />
Tim & SuzanneTanner<br />
CaroleTeegarden<br />
Doris<strong>The</strong>rrien<br />
GailThorgalsen<br />
Kitty & AbelToll<br />
Christopher & PamelaVance<br />
Edwin & KathleenWalsh<br />
Diane & DuaneWebster<br />
Ida & EdwardWheeler<br />
LoisWhite<br />
JamesWilson<br />
Dan & MaryWyand<br />
Tom Ziobrowski & BethWilliams<br />
In addition to the above names we would also like to give special thanks to those<br />
who generously donated to the Chamber of Combined Community Membership<br />
Drive to benefit<strong>The</strong> Pope Memorial Library.
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