THERE was a mistake in the way I ordered the last two sentences of the second paragraph of last week’s column on “Oil prices and failed thinking.” Here is the corrected paragraph:
“From Chanco’s column ‘Is deregulation to blame’ — ‘Energy Secretary Sharon Garin remarked that our oil industry deregulation law is good only in normal times but problematic during a crisis. Almost on cue, some legislators now want to repeal the law and go back to the system of going to a government regulatory body for permission to raise fuel retail prices. I get the feeling that our officials never learn from history. We now have a deregulated system because the regulated one didn’t work. No private company will want to sell at a loss. Is that too difficult to understand?’ I don’t think they understand their failed policy has been abandoned elsewhere, including Washington, D.C., (National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan’s speech on April 27, 2023).”
Early in the internet era, I received this witty mass email of the last three quotes, which seems appropriate to remember in these stressful and absurd times. Reading “Quote Origin,” it seems this started in the late 1960s as graffiti in lavatories and has had many variations and attributions. If I am wrong in the attributions, my apologies. The attributions are the three provided to the Times by the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 1971.
To be is to do – Aristotle.
To do is to be – Plato.
Do Bee Do Bee Do – Frank Sinatra.
Similarly, there are popular quotes on history of which Santayana’s has become a cliché that almost always warns me that the person using is a pretentious wannabee. Often with shallow insight but much self-assurance.
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” – George Santayana from “The Life of Reason,” 1905.
“History does not repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” – Mark Twain.
“History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce.” Karl Marx, from his 1852 work “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.” Looks the Trump administration is the opposite.
During times of crisis and difficulty, watch the Santayana quote get rolled out to justify whatever. I prefer the more insightful other two. It also reminds me of the most irritating cliché Western heads of banks in Hong Kong and Singapore like to trot out in times of financial crisis — “The Chinese character for crisis also means opportunity.” In 2008, I had to react when the Australian head of Macquarie Asia said that in a bankers’ meeting. I couldn’t restrain myself and told him to please not repeat that tired and overused cliché which all of us Asians have heard all our professional lives in similar circumstances and shows what a recent arrival you are. At least I can be proud that when I was head of Evercore Asia from 2009 until my retirement in 2022, I never used that tired cliché.
I chose not to write about the Iran war immediately, as I wanted some clarity on how it is going before opining. The direction and consequences are multiple with very different results. The main variant on how it plays out is time, and the ability to absorb pain and cost. We already know the form of resistance — asymmetric warfare — which is common sense. To repeat what I previously wrote, a weaker party does not face an opponent with overwhelming force in like manner, that would be futile. You use asymmetric tactics like the Vietnamese and Afghans did successfully. Key to that was pain. Who could take more of it over time? Clearly, the Vietnamese military and people suffered tremendously over decades, but eventually, the French and American tolerance for pain — casualties, cost and internal dissent — were too much relative to what the Vietnamese were willing to bear. Same with the Taliban in Afghanistan, which is unfortunate given their repressive social policies. Seems to be the same with Iran.
I will not continue with points I made in prior columns but discuss others. I have previously said this decade reminds me of the 1970s with poor economic growth and high inflation (stagflation) plus political and social uncertainty. I recently told people who asked if this could lead to World War III not to be alarmist. It won’t, as the rest of the world is not being sucked into President Trump’s war of choice which has become his self-inflicted quagmire. No one accepted his pathetic invitation to help the United States escort tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, including China. Russia is having a windfall supplying oil (over $150 million a day) sans sanctions as is Iran! Why should the rest of the world interrupt this schadenfreude? Especially with allies being insulted and threatened by Trump over tariffs, taking over Greenland or telling Canada it should be a state of the US. If the Trump administration’s bullying and arrogance results in a self-inflicted wound that reverses his formulation where enemies are treated better than allies, will the rest of the world really complain? Only if the cost to get there becomes too high for them.
Yet, what can upset the eventual resolution into what Nelson Rockefeller told President Nixon to do on Vietnam — “declare victory and leave”? A “Guns of August” scenario? Where from misguided policy, pride and posturing, Europe started WW1 through miscalculation and a series of wrong responses to a dangerous and escalating situation. Could something analogous happen again given the quality of advice and decision the various direct players — the US, Israel and Iran could make? Yes, but just among the three of them. It is highly unlikely to widen as Europe, Japan and others will not be foolish enough to get drawn into something that will further damage them, and they already turned down Trump. Also, would anyone outside the participants mind if the US, Israel and Iran are all weakened and get some self-inflicted mutual comeuppance with no effort from everyone else? Do bee do bee do.
The author is an independent director of the state-run Maharlika Investment Corp.
