The Backbencher

My Devalued Marriage

I recently kissed my wife good-bye at the airport and took off for California, where, just days before, a federal district court had declared a ban on gay marriage to be unconstitutional.

Many of those who support the ban on gay marriage argue that marriage between a man and a woman will be devalued if same-sex couples are allowed to marry. "Huh?" you may be thinking. "How could that possibly be the case?" 

I know, it sounds absurd. But amazingly enough, though it defies logic, I actually noticed the effect as soon as my plane crossed into California airspace. It was weird, but I could actually feel my marriage devaluing.

It doesn't seem like all that long ago that I married my wife Kit in Santa Monica, Calif. We had a caterer, a florist, a bunch of guests, a cake – all that stuff. Kit got her hair done and wore a special dress for the occasion. I wore a tux. At the time it seemed extremely special. But being back in California after Judge Walker's ruling, it all felt so ho-hum, so devalued. Riding the BART train from the airport, I found myself wondering if it would have helped if we had hired a live band for the reception. It was hard to know.

That night I actually had trouble sleeping because my wedding ring felt uncomfortable and foreign on my hand.

Here's the really weird thing – while I was experiencing all this marriage devalument, I wasn't even thinking about the court case! It didn't hit me until I was flipping around through the cable news channels. That’s when I figured it out: It was the Equal Protection Clause! That was why my marriage felt so dull and generally unspecial.

But how could this happen? How could two dudes (or dudettes) getting married to each other possibly affect my marriage?

Well, I was fortunate enough to see a person interviewed on one of the cable shows who explained it. This guy put it in language that I, as a law professor, could understand. He pointed out that counterfeit currency devalues regular currency. (I had to admit that was true.) So, he reasoned, gay marriage, as a kind of counterfeit marriage, devalues everybody's regular marriages.

The force of this argument is really undeniable. Tried though I have, I can not find even the tiniest hole in this guy’s analysis. In fact, the more deeply you think about what he was saying, the more sense it makes. It's really one of the smartest things I've ever heard anyone say. It shows an uncommonly strong grasp of economics, sociology, and some very basic rules of logical thinking. Wow.

Anyway, it got me to figuring, we should not only amend the Constitution to ban gay marriage, we should also take affirmative steps to strengthen the institution of traditional marriage.

Mmmmm, gold.
(Images courtesy U.S. Mint.)

U.S. currency was strongest back in the 1960s when we were still on the gold standard. Ergo, we should put marriage on a gold standard. Think about it: If every married heterosexual could, at any time, freely convert his or her spouse into a specified quantity of gold bullion, then every person who is married would value their marriage more. Divorce rates would plummet. That's just logic.

A lot of the same conservative talk show hosts who are opposed to same-sex marriage are also enthusiastic supporters of returning America to the gold standard. That’s why it’s such a public service for radio talk show hosts to tell us about important gold investment opportunities. It is my hope that thought leaders like Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity will realize the synergy here and support the adoption of a marital gold standard.

My own personal story has a happy ending. I got through the whole trip without trying to hook up with any of the women around me. Now, that wasn't because my marriage felt like it was worth anything at the time. It's undoubtedly because I was attending a conference of law professors. That's its own libido kill. 

Most importantly, now that I am safe and sound back home – outside of the jurisdiction of California – my marriage once again feels like it is valuable. (Granted, not as valuable as it would be if I could take Kit down to a federal reserve bank and turn her in for gold, but, you know, still pretty valuable.)

Why We Need the Bailout

We, as a nation, are facing a critical choice: Should we give Wall Street something in the neighborhood of a trillion dollars so that it can continue doing the outstanding job it’s doing? Or should we let Wall Street collapse and see if the rest of America can get by without all those "financial services" that Wall Street provides?

To help you, and all Americans, understand why we need this bailout package – and we urgently do – I’ve decided to answer all your questions. Right here, right now.

Why should we give this money to Wall Street? I mean, if the economy needs to be spurred by an injection of billions of dollars, why not give it to us?

That’s a funny question. You already have it! Ha ha! What sense would it make to take money from taxpayers and give it straight back to taxpayers? That’s just silly. The whole point is to take the money from taxpayers and give it to someone else – preferably some hedge-fund manager who doesn’t pay taxes at all thanks to his tax-sheltered yacht parked off Antigua. I know it’s hard for you to understand, but the fact is that, after all is said and done, the money actually will come back to you, the taxpayer. How? As a result of rescuing Wall Street, banks and yacht captains will be able to extend loans to people on Main Street. That way, Main Street businesses will be able to make the investments that are needed to keep the economy going.

If the problem is that people on Main Street need loans, then why don't we just loan the money directly to them, instead of giving away it to the people on Wall Street?

You need to look at the broader picture. Farmers need to buy seed for their field, ranchers need to buy feed for their cattle, and bankers need to buy drinks for their congressmen. Everybody plays their part. That’s how the economy works.

I completely fail to understand why it helps anything to buy bad loans from banks. If banks made bad loans, shouldn’t the banks suffer the losses?

The problem, with all due respect, is that you simply don’t understand enough about economics and finance to form your own judgment about these sorts of things. Don’t forget that officials in the Bush administration have carefully thought this through. Do you think you could have done a better job evaluating pre-war intelligence from Iraq? Or deciding exactly how many days to wait before sending help to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina? I’m sure you don’t.

More importantly, you need to realize that this situation is not the fault of the bankers. Everybody thinks they can Monday-morning quarterback the whole situation, but that’s unfair. It’s easy now to say, “Well, you shouldn’t have accepted loan applications filled out in crayon.” Or, “It was a mistake to give five mortgages to a single 19-year-old who listed his employment as ‘watching Flip That House! on cable tv.’” The fact is, it’s not productive to look backward. We need to reject the impulse to lay blame, and we need, instead, to figure out how we are going to solve this crisis.

Hmmm. Let me see. Um. Oh! I’ve got it! How about we keep our money and just see how things go?

That may seem like a tempting course. But we simply cannot wait. As the Bush administration has explained, without the bailout, Wall Street will collapse, and the misery will quickly spread to Main Street.

How? How exactly will the misery spread from Wall Street to Main Street?

Think about it this way: If Wall Street collapses, tens of thousands of investment bankers, stock brokers, and other financial-industry professionals will be out of a job. While they will retain their education, skills, and knowledge, the companies they work for will no longer be able to pay their salaries. At that point they will be forced to leave Wall Street and come to your town looking for work.

Do you really want them to set up a hedge fund inside your local Wal-Mart between the optical center and the portrait studio? I didn’t think so. You wouldn’t be able to get from the self-checkout to the greeter table without some pinstriped MBA trying to sell you a collateralized derivative-backed forward-swap debenture. And believe me, you don’t want that. It’s worth however many hundreds of billions we have to pay to keep these people in lower Manhattan, where they just sell these things to each other.

Okay, you’ve convinced me. How can I help?

Please, support the bailout by writing or calling your congressional representatives as soon as you read this. Do it first thing in the morning. If you wait until 3 p.m. in the afternoon, they’ll probably have already left to go drinking with the bankers.

Update: The Canadian Change Menace

[The following is an update to my post of February 8, 2008, in which I broke news of an international financial scandal when I noticed I stopped getting Canadian coins in my change after the U.S. dollar plummeted below the level of the Canadian dollar.]

Well, it finally happened. At 5:46 p.m. on April 2, 2008, I received one Canadian penny with my change at the Taco John's drive-thru. It was the first Canadian coin I've gotten in my change since the currency inversion on September 20, 2007.

I was very excited. Now, for the first time ever, I got a Canadian penny and didn't have to feel cheated.

So I came home, beaming with contentment, and I looked up the exchange rate to see how much I made in the transaction. Guess what?

THE CANADIAN DOLLAR IS NOW UNDER THE VALUE OF THE U.S. DOLLAR!!! My Canadian penny, as of April 2, 2008, is worth only 0.9843 American pennies. I cannot believe it! By happily accepting the penny and not handing it back to the cashier, I lost 0.000157 dollars on the con.

There are forces of malevolence in this world that you could never comprehend.

To America's Financial Services Companies: Please Shut Up

After last week, when I told you how afraid I am of slipping on ice, and how, I injured my neck by “moving to sit down,” you may be asking how old is this guy?

Well, let me tell you. I am old. Very old. Actually, I’m 36. And let me tell you, that’s old enough. My 35th birthday was very hard to take. Much harder than 30. When you are 30, you are still in the 18-to-34-year-old demographic. Advertisers are still encouraging you to buy an engagement ring, take out a lease on a Mini Cooper, and even “go out” on Friday night.

But as soon as you turn 35, you’re an entirely different beast as far as America’s corporations are concerned. You’ve just passed into the 35-to-59-year-old demographic. And that means you start getting commercials for vitamins that are “specially formulated for your active lifestyle.” Worst of all, you begin to receive the considerable attention of a group of outfits called “financial services companies.”

I think I speak for everyone here on planet Earth when I say: Financial services companies, PLEASE SHUT UP.

The worst is when these financial services companies merge with one another and change names. Upon such an occasion, they will spend the next several months engaging in an orgy of advertising trying to impress you with how great that is.

“USB Warcus Pinkberg Globotrade and TD Ameriswiss Fidential have now joined forces to become USBTDPG AmeriGlobo Pinktrade. Learn how the power of USBTDPG AmeriGlobo Pinktrade is the Power to Dream.”

I’m not even sure what these companies do. They are not banks. I understand what a bank does. Thanks to the modern convenience of “direct deposit,” a bank gets all the money you earned from your job, and then charges you a fee if you ask about it.

Okay, I get that. I can wrap my head around that. But financial-services companies do something entirely different. How is it different? I can’t tell you, but for one thing, even though they are in the “financial services” industry, they apparently do not provide services at all. Instead, they provide “financial products.”

What is a “financial product”? Your first thought might be “money.” What other kind of financial product could you need? And if helpful American corporations are trying to give me money, that would be something I’d definitely be interested in, and I bet you would be too. But, as it turns out – and this is not a real shocker – these companies actually want you to pay them money in order to receive a “financial product” in return.

So, once you have a financial product, what can you do with it? Well – and this is the good part – with a financial product, you will be able to do no less than go out into the middle of the desert and achieve your dreams.

At least this is how Dennis Hopper explained it to me as he was sitting on a chair in the center of a vast dry lakebed. And since I’m now in the 35-to-59-year-old demographic, I tried really hard to pay attention.

Now, the thing about Dennis Hopper is, I’m not sure I find him incredibly persuasive when it comes to financial services. Several months ago in L.A., when I was driving on to a movie studio lot at about 4 a.m., I saw someone who looked like a bleary-eyed, unshaven Dennis Hopper half-asleep in the driver’s seat of a car parked immediately in front of the security booth. In fact, he looked exactly like Dennis Hopper, except that he looked very old, not very tall, quite drawn and wizzened, and, like I said, he was nearly passed out in a car parked just outside security at 4 a.m.

Now, there is a rule you learn about celebrity sightings when you live in Los Angeles. It is this: An apparent celebrity sighting is never not-to-be-believed because the person you see is (1) too short, (2) too old, (3) too thin, or (4) doing something extremely weird.

When my car’s headlight beams hit his face, he looked at me like I was the biggest jerk in the world for disturbing his nap. I will just say that it was not the look of someone from whom I want to take advice regarding financial products.

So I still have many decisions to make regarding financial products and services. But at least I’ll have plenty of time to think about it. All of us in the 34-to-59 demographic will – now that Sally Field has invented once-monthly Boniva. Because who could possibly deal with the slave-like drudgery of taking our osteoporosis pills EVERY SINGLE WEEK?!?