I guess we will need to watch the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) for the next couple of days. The first thing this morning, it dropped about 70 points and has pretty much stayed there for until now. In a fundamental sense, the DJIA doesn’t mean much. But in this case, it is a gauge of how nervous the bankers are. Clearly, they aren’t freaking out. Yet. But the federal government will hit the Debt Ceiling on Thursday, and I fully expect if we don’t hear some hopeful news as the day progresses, tomorrow we will see some very bad numbers. And Wednesday would be even worse.

Right now, I suspect the relative calm will last for a bit. The bankers are doing what we are all doing: waiting and watching. All of us are cautiously optimistic. After all, the Congress has always managed to raise the Debt Ceiling before. And especially with the last two Congresses, we’ve gotten used to last minute deals. But I can’t help but believe that overall the government shutdown and especially the Debt Ceiling crises are depressing market enthusiasm—not that it is a bad thing.

On Friday, the DJIA was way up as it looked like a deal was near. The initial drop this morning was probably the result of dashed hopes over the weekend. Regardless of what happens, once these crises are resolved, the market will rebound, just as we saw on Friday. These people are looking for any reason to be optimistic.

But think about what the Republicans currently want: government spending cuts. These would be bad for the economy and although they wouldn’t have the kind of effect that a Debt Ceiling breach will have, they would hurt the market. But what the Democrats want is an end to the Sequester—in other words, government spending increases. These would be good for the economy and thus the market.

The real question is why the Republican brand is as the party of business. This is nonsense. What it is really is the party of the wealthy, many of whom own businesses. So what’s good for business is generally the Democratic policy. But most business owners are not rich. They are just getting by like everyone else. And like the rest of the non-wealthy citizens, their voices are hardly heard in Washington—especially by the Republican Party. This is why it will be interesting to watch Wall Street the next couple of days. If the Republicans won’t listen to them, I’m not sure what the party is anymore.

Afterword

Currently, the market is rallying a bit—down by about 30 points. Waiting and watching.

Update (14 October 2013 11:13 am)

Now the DJIA is up 50. So maybe they don’t care. But I am sure this will change if the crisis continues for two more days.

Update (14 October 2013 2:48 pm)

The DJIA finished up 65.15 points. Of course, the news in the Senate negotiations has been good throughout the day.

Take the human eye, one of the creationist’s favorite examples. Some people see dark spots on their eyes when staring at very bright light (or sometimes even the blue sky). Those spots are caused by the fact that the blood vessels serving the eye are positioned in front of the optical nerves. This is a rather annoying feature, which a competent engineer would have certainly avoided. In fact, cephalopods (ie, squids, octopuses, and the like) have their eyes (which evolved independently from the vertebrate’s) built the other way around, so they don’t have to suffer from this inconvenience. The only possible conclusions are: a) god didn’t design the thing; b) god is pretty sloppy and not worthy of all our unconditional admiration; c) god likes squids a lot better than humans.

—Massimo Pigliucci
A Case Against God (pdf)

As you probably know, the Washington Redskins have been at the center of a controversy over their name. Many people say that the name is offensive but the owner of the team, Daniel Snyder, refuses to change the name. I’ve been thinking about the issue. It occurs to me that the term “redskin” is like one of my favorite joke words, “darky.” The word “darky” was once a deeply offensive term but no one uses it as an insult anymore. So I use it to lampoon modern people, calling them both racist and stuck in the past at the same time.

I think the same thing is going on with “redskin.” It isn’t a term that people use to insult Native Americans anymore. But it used to be, and even in my lifetime. I think this clarifies the issue. No one would think it was alright to have a football team named the Washington Darkies. But people continue to try to make the case for Redskins.

Rick Reilly wrote a curious article over at ESPN, Have the People Spoken? It is one of those Thomas Friedman kind of columns, “I talked to a cab driver and he agrees with me so that settles it!” In Reilly’s case, he talked to a Native American (his father-in-law, Bob Burns) and he didn’t have a problem with the name. Even worse, he talked to people at a couple from high schools with the redskins name that are majority Native American. And they said the kids loved the name. Case closed!

I’m not sure what’s going on here, but I suspect this is what I refer to as “Why does mom get to call you that?” Conservatives often get upset that minority groups get to use derogatory terms for themselves that whites cannot use. But that’s just the way it is. And if the kids at Wellpinit High School, with its 91.2% Native American student body, like the name “Redskins” it might be because of its offensiveness, not despite it.

On Friday, Dave Zirin reported on another problem with Reilly’s article, Blackfeet Elder Refuses to Be Son-in-Law Rick Reilly’s “Uncle Tom.” It seems that his father-in-law didn’t say what Reilly thought he said. He does find the redskins name offensive. Of course, we didn’t need to get confirmation of that. The whole argument is just so much, “All Indians walk in single file! At least the only one I ever saw did.”

Zirin focuses on how those who want to protect the name seem to hear only what they want to hear. I’m sure the Redskins name’s days are numbered. But it brings up a broader issue in team naming: is it really okay to have any team names that refer to Native Americans in a league that is overwhelmingly owned by white men? These are men who continue to prosper because of white privilege and the large scale theft and genocide of the Native Americans who made the mistake of once owning this land. I’m not at all sure it is acceptable to even have names like “Indians,” much less what seems to me to be the even more offensive “Cherokees.” Time will work this out I suppose.

Afterword

I mentioned the Cherokees because based upon my (admittedly limited) knowledge, no other tribe worked so hard to get along with the United States government and do things according to their social norms. The Cherokee Nation repeatedly took different parts of the US government to court. This happened most notably in Worcester v. Georgia where the Supreme Court found more or less that tribes were independent and that Georgia couldn’t pass laws limiting how the Nation ruled its own land. President Jackson notably refused to enforce the ruling. The point is that all the talk of the rule of law and all that stuff is bullshit. What was done to the Native peoples was racism pure and simple.