What Ought To Be Done, and With Despatch

“What to do? What to do?” – the cry goes out. As the American economy turns into a pile of green slime, like the monster at the end of a “B” horror movie, and the perpetrators head for the tall grass, there is a natural desire for vengeance. Somebody has shattered our dreams, and they’ve got to pay. As it happens, I was just reading a classic essay by Florence King, in which she quotes, from a collection of Cato’s letters, the following. (This is Cato – actually a pseudonym for two polemicists – call them the bloggers of their day – “channeling” John Ketch, “England’s legendary executioner”.) The issue was the South Sea Bubble, which, much like the stock market of today, turned out to be “air surrounded by wind”, as my father would have put it. So here is the executioner’s plan for how to deal with the perpetrators:

“I did likewise bespeak, at least, a dozen curious axes, spick and span new, with rare steel edges; the fittest that could be made, for dividing nobly betwixt the head and the shoulders of any dignified and illustrious customer of mine… Being bred a butcher, I can comfort my said customers with an assurance, that I have a delicate and ready hand at cutting and tying; so let them take heart, the pain is nothing, and will be soon over… And so, for the ease of my mind, I beg that I have those sent me, whom I may truss up with a safe conscience. My teeth particularly water, and my bowels yearn, at the name of the brokers; for God’s sake, let me have the brokers.”

Can a more satisfactory resolution of our current difficulties be imagined? I think not.