Word of the day: bezzle
The late economist John Kenneth Galbraith once observed an interesting aspect of herd behaviour that seems to reoccur in every bubble. According to Galbraith, whenever we reach the end of a bubble, the "bezzle" (corruption) always rises. As a bubble inflates the early euphoria of "new money" begins to ebb and as the end nears the players closest to the action get frantic and begin to grab whatever they can off the table before everything falls apart.
The bezzle turned up in the New York Times two years ago, after the extent of the Madoff swindle had become known and the perp had been cuffed. Language changes, however, and the Urban Dictionary teaches us that around San Francisco "bezzle" is slang for the club drug ecstacy(MDMA): "that party was crackin last night i musta popped like 2 and a half bezzles mane i waz feeling myself".
But back to Galbraith, in a typical beautiful City Journal essay, Theodore Dalrymple praises the elitist academic's elegance before turning the screw. The man's gullibility in the face of the crimes of socialism and communism was breathtaking and Dalrymple's takedown is delightful: "Let it not be said, however, that Galbraith was entirely uncritical of China during the Cultural Revolution. 'At the close of almost every meeting one is asked for 'your criticisms' of the institution or the New China,' he recounts. 'I've found one that is true, irrefutable and well-received. 'You are smoking far too many cigarettes.'" Millions of people beaten, tortured, and humiliated, the remains of a millennial civilization wantonly smashed, and Galbraith bravely takes up the antismoking cause!"
Dalrymple's closing deserves to be memorized: "Galbraith has come back into fashion: not only his ideas, which imply the need for a huge and expanding class of redemptory politicians and bureaucrats to save people from a fate that would be wretched without them, but his aristocratic assumption of unchallengeable moral superiority, written in his prose as it appears to be written on President Obama's face. How delightful to be so generous, so very right all the time, and yet make a fortune and stay at the Ritz!"
Time to put and end to this bezzle, too.
