Profmsf's  Instablog

I saw the musical Billy Elliot last night.  For those who do not know the plot, it tells the story of a 12 year old miner's son from Newcastle (UK) who wishes to become a ballet dancer.  The social issues of gender stereotypes play out against the backdrop of the year-long miner's strike in Britain in 1984 that pitted the Thatcher government against one of Britain's strongest labor unions.  Thatcher's ability to hold her government together until the miners buckled in 1985 cemented her reputation as The Iron Lady and led to her third landslide victory in 1987.  It also marked the end of the power of British trade unionism over the management of the British economy, the beginning of the great wave of privatisation, and arguably paved the way for the prosperity that Britain enjoyed from then until the financial crisis of 2008.

I traded bonds in London from 1986-1990 so I remember those years well and with great fondness.  The show triggered nostalgia and reminded me that my salad days are history.  It also made me wonder if the Billy Eliots of 2009 are more likely to come from families shaken directly by the financial crisis that from what remains of "the working class."

As the show makes clear, the miners truly believed that they were fighting to preserve not just their livelihoods, but their communities and the values of solidarity and shared sacrifice on which they were built.  Billy's individual success stood out, not just because it occurred in a field not considered "manly" but because it was individual and not communal.  In that, it represented not just a social challenge to the established order of the mining community but an economic one as it promoted the idea of the individual with skill and drive finding success amid the economic failure of the commune.  It is a fine metaphor for an era defined by a woman who said on 10/31/87 that "there is no such thing as society, only families and individuals."

Fast forward 25 years to 2009.  The world, and especially the English-speaking parts dominated by the economic legacy of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, are in a deep recession.  Major financial institutions remain afloat only through the largess of taxpayer-funded support.  The very governments that have provided these life rafts find themselves in a viscious fight to change the way these institutions do business in order to prevent a repeat of the events of the past few years.  For their part, the banks, like the British trade unions 25 years ago, have wrapped themselves in the flags of their respective countries to proclaim that their way of doing business is integral to the fabric of their societies and should not change despite the problems it has caused for these same societies.

25 years ago, the trade unions were wrong, and Thatcher and Reagan were right to draw lines in the sand and reign them in.  Today, the "too-big-to-fail" financial institutions that want taxpayer-funded insurance with no strings attached are equally wrong.  The public at large cannot bear the costs of supporting these "heads I win - tails the taxpayers lose" business models any more than the British public could support the anti-competitive business practices of socialized British industry.  Parasites are parasites, whether they wear miner's gear or tailored suits.  As they work to re-regulate the financial sector, our politicians need to draw their own lines in the sand today.

Somewhere in Surrey or Fairfield County, CT, a child whose parents expect him to follow them into the money mines of Wall Street or the City is dreaming of a different future.  For all our sakes, let's hope he gets the same chance Billy Eliot got.

Disclosure: No positions.