An Obama T-shirt In Argentina

I had an opportunity last week to travel to San Carlos de Bariloche in Argentina. I was in the company of people from several different countries including Argentina, Sweden, the U.S., Portugal and Pakistan. I did not know the social norms for talking politics with people from these different cultures, so I brought my Obama t-shirt featuring Obama's face on the front. When language fails, we always have symbols. My non-verbal attempt to start up dialogue with people from other cultures was successful a couple times. The most notable was a conversation I was able to have with a small group of Argentinian scientists (I was able to have this conversation because of their language acumen, not my own).

Over lunch a middle aged Argentinian man asked me what I thought about the American elections and noted my t-shirt. What unfolded was a conversation where I worked to be open to any questions he had, and to answer them with honesty and veracity (to the best of my ability, anyway). He seemed most interested in how EXACTLY the housing market fell apart. Understanding the love for detail scientists seem to have across cultural and geographic divides, I summoned the most technical explanation I could manage, which was not particularly technical I admit. I explained the use of physicists and mathematicians on Wall Street to conjure algorithms of pay schedules and magical concoctions of diced mortgages that would somehow solve the tediously human problem of loan defaults.

I felt a need to defend most of my fellow Americans and pointed out that 94% of home mortgages were being paid on time. The Argentines seemed particularly impressed by this data. I likened the mess to poisoning an apple, though most of the apple is good, the poison spreads and ruins the whole fruit. My analogy seemed to go over well. I was proud of myself, like a little girl winning a spelling bee where I was able to spell all the words, including the ones I didn't know the meaning of.

I hope my explanations were accurate enough to be truthful. It was clear the Argentinians and others were very interested in how someone inside the country perceives what is going on, even if that person fails to meet expert status. I was also very interested in hearing what other people were hearing in their country about this mess. The same Argentinian man said his government was trying to tell the people the economic implosion of its northern neighbor would not effect them, but he and the other Argentinians at the table shook their heads at this. Not for a moment, it seemed, would they believe that fairy tale.

I went on to caution this is a much larger problem than a banking problem, that our economy has been deteriorating for decades. I pointed out the crushing expenses to the middle class, housing, education and health care, and that we haven't seen any corresponding increase in wages. I told them the poison economic policies began in earnest with Reagan nearly thirty years ago and would take a long time to correct. The seemingly naturally serious Argentinians appeared to become more solemn when they heard my opinion, but nodded their heads if not in agreement then not in disagreement.

I learned later the Argentinian economy was taking some significant hits that week and the people, who quite recently survived a complete economic meltdown, may be vulnerable to another.

We are in a fine mess and it was clear by my interactions abroad that this is not lost on our neighbors. The only politician I've heard tie this odious economic trend to Reagan is Obama. Only he, from what I've heard, is clear on the natural results of letting large corporations decide tax law, government regulations and trade agreements. This has been a long time coming folks. With a good leader we have a lot of hard work in front of us. Without a good leader, we may be at the end of the line with our status as world leader.

The difference between a first and second or third world country is not wealth, but how this wealth is developed, managed and distributed. It is time our childish ideas about perfect freedom leading to perfect economic justice be shed. We need to wise up and get serious about ourselves and our prospects. No more illusions about easy money and no more fantasies of quick fixes. We're in this for the long run and we are all of us, Argentinians included, in this together.