Humping Dog Day

Welcome to Hump Day, and the so-called Dog Days of Summer, which actually started about a week ago. Seriously. The term has something to do with the rising of the Sirius dog star and its proximity to the sun during July and August, leading the ancients to believe that hot weather is caused by the wrathful gods. Not too different from the thought processes of our own contemporary climate change denialists, come to think of it.


When I was young and stupid, I thought Dog Days were called that because of the tendency of dogs to become moribund and pant a lot during warm weather. As a matter of fact, I still do think that. I also think of the rabid dog scene in "To Kill a Mockingbird", which I think is one of the best evocations of oppressive summer weather ever written (and filmed.)


Speaking of foaming at the mouth and brain pathology, Dog Days also has a Wall Street/political meaning. Common wisdom has it that August marks the economic doldrums, when the tycoons all retreat to their Hamptons estates, inertia blankets the land, and Congress wakes up from its coma just long enough to go home and collect more bribes raise money. But these too are myths. Writes Theo Francis of NPR:

August is supposedly a quiet month on Wall Street, in Washington, D.C., and for business and finance generally. Except sometimes it isn't — and it's always the run-up to September, which can be pretty eventful in itself (think 2008 and the collapse of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Lehman Bros.)

So this week is shaping up to bring August in like a lion, with several potentially significant economic developments already on the calendar.

Two of the biggest: the potential for major Federal Reserve action on Wednesday (today), and some much-anticipated jobs numbers on Friday.

Francis certainly was prescient. The Algorithm Monster of Wall Street struck again this morning, creating so much volatility that the NYSE had to temporarily suspend the feeding frenzy. Maybe it was Cerberus, the hell dog, at the gates.

And then there's all the blog-snoring about Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner's rehabilitation tour in the wake of the Libor scandal. He is suddenly pretending to be on the side of underwater homeowners through much theatrical hand-wringing over the Fannie/Freddie acting director's refusal to help people write down their mortgage debt. This is one more example of the Obama Administration policy of being "caught trying" to be on the side of regular people. Yves Smith has more on this, making the salient point that "there is enough distress in the heartlands and enough well warranted antipathy for banks that it ought to be possible to make inroads on this front. But with Obama and Geithner dyed-in-the-wool neoliberals in charge, the failure in messaging comes from the top."


Obama has never failed to mention that only "hardworking, responsible" (read solidly middle and upper-middle class) homeowners who have good credit and jobs, who weren't the greedy unqualified homebuyers of right wing mythology, and who have always been on time with payments should get help with mortgage modifications. This leaves out the unemployed, the underemployed, most minorities and single mothers, anybody who got snookered into a sub-prime loan, and just about everybody who is struggling to make ends meet. And that's just about everybody.

The first week of August hangs at the very top of the summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color. Often at night there is lightning, but it quivers all alone. There is no thunder, no relieving rain. These are strange and breathless days, the dog days, when people are led to do things they are sure to be sorry for after.”

-- Natalie Babbitt, Tuck Everlasting.