Memo to Musicians from Timothy Geithner

Attenzione Artists:

It has come to our attention that failure to address the balance between 2009 releases and available lines of corporate credit has led to a useful creativity surplus, but a significant distribution and current-account deficit. Therefore, following the June 30 releases from Wilco and Tortoise, calendar year music releases will be limited to those pre-approved through RIAA-NSA-Treasury Department advance notices. These currently include, but are not limted to:

Son Volt, Arctic Monkeys, Shirley Manson, Pere Ubu, Robert Pollard (permanent trade exemption per GbV Central Dayton Free Trade Agreement), Flaming Lips (subject to irony quotient testing), Susan Cowsill, Built to Spill, Wrens, and Roxy Music if Andy Mackay participates (Eno on at-will basis). Retro acts with new works in preparation, including but not limited to Devo and Gang of Four, are urged to hibernate. Acts known to fail to meet fiscal deadlines, including but not limited to Built to Spill and The Shins, should slack off until 2010 numbers are prepared. Sunburned Hand and Ashtray Navigations are free to release at will, since no one cares and we can't catch them. Everyone else, go home.

This temporary restraining order applies to iTunes digital files, though eMusic and Rhapsody can apply for exemptions. It does not apply to limited-supply works sold through Web sites, fan tables at concerts, and trunks/truck beds/back doors of vans. Any secretly-Canadian attempts at foreign pressings will be stopped at the border.

If you are not on the pre-approved list and feel the government is taking too active a role in setting trade limits, keep in mind that the music community has been far too prolific and creative in a year pre-anticipated to be a crisis period, when all good U.S. citizens were urged to feel sorry for themselves, stick their thumbs up their butts, and whine. Your government is prepared to make good on delays by taking a majority ownership in U.S. labels prior to 2010 releases. That is all.

Timothy Geithner
Department of Redundancy Department
U.S. Treasury

Limbic or Cortical?

As someone who never succumbed to the audacity of hope, I have a hard time deciding how to respond to the anti-Obama alarmism of the post-stimulus week. Since Obama caved on FISA back in July, I was not that surprised to see his administration similarly cave on the secrecy issues raised by the British High Court a week ago, and I am glad to see The New York Times waste no words to tell him this was not acceptable. Similarly, I thought Tim Geithner's bailout plan was almost as lame as Paulson's. Sources inside the White House say he didn't want to over-upset the banking executives, yet as Congress learned Feb. 11, there's simply no nice way to tell someone they need to have their asshole reamed. Punishment implies cruelty.

And yet, it's hard to start taking apart the stimulus package without running into the tin-foil types who seriously believe that Obama is ushering in a socialist dynasty of scary proportions. I consistently set up a rule for those with whom I would engage on debating points: use your cortex, not your limbic system. Apparently, for many people this is hard. Hard for arch-conservatives, of course, but hard for some Obamaniacs as well. Most people do not respond to facts assembled in a linear and logical way, but to emotional appeals to myth. Often, this myth is supporting and covering up a set of deeply racist fears. But even among those who have no subconscious racial blocks in dealing with the new president, there is this narrative from the Hannity-O'Reilly-Limbaugh camp that assumes all financial planning is socialism. At least Mitch McConnell was intelligent enough to say that Obama's stimulus plan could take us further toward a European Union-style economy. Flash news for frantic anti-Obama-ites: There are no socialist nations in Western Europe. McConnell may be right or wrong, but at least he doesn't uphold myths.

There are dangerous potholes ahead as we talk about financial recovery, the U.S. place in a new multipolar world, and even simple things like the 200th anniversary of Darwin. We can't remove the influence of our limbic system, but we can choose to relegate our emotions to a second order, beneath the cortex. The more the emotions or the hormones speak first regarding complex topics like economics, the more we sound like primates - and ones not very highly evolved.