Though my interest in baseball has now dwindled to imperceptibility, I have suffered the multigenerational affliction of being a Chicago White Sox fan. I come by this honestly, as my maternal antecedents passed it on to me at a very young age. Took me to the charmingly decrepit Comiskey Park (now replaced by the banally but aptly named Guarantee Rate Field) – ensconced at the corner of 35th Street and the elegant Dan Ryan Expressway, where I spent many weekend afternoons watching the zaftig but effective knuckler Wilbur Wood pitch both ends of a double header:
Other than the appeal that derives from gang bangers dating back to Eazy-E embracing their merch (and that whole episode when Arnold Rothstein paid them to throw the 1919 World Series), it’s hard to imagine a team in any sport with a less geographically dispersed identity than the Sox. They have one but a single title in more than a century. They clearly play second fiddle to the cuddly, misanthropic cross-town Cubs.
The South Siders in Bridgeport and beyond love them, but for the rest of the world, any mention of them draws little but a blank stare. They are the second team, in (what used to be) the Second City, in a barely watchable sport. Yet they have been and remain my team.
They are, however, the original source of one trend that has taken hold– as the organization whose fans first took to singing the hook line from our title song, when they were on the verge of certain victory. Since the late ‘70s “Na na na na, Na na na na …” would echo across the mostly empty grandstands upon rare occasions when a positive outcome for the contest was assured.
Now, everyone does this. In every sport. Across the land.
But more to our purposes, the theme has traversed Chicago, and can be sung to the city itself.
All of which is a glib means of articulating my displeasure at the outcome of Tuesday’s Mayoral Runoff, which produced a winner directly from the ranks of those most likely to euthanize what already was (arguably) a dying metropolis. Ironically, the fellow is an African American named Johnson, which also the moniker of Chicago’s and arguably the nation’s two pioneering, African American-led enterprises – Johnson Publishing (issuers of Ebony and Jet Magazine) and Johnson Products (manufacturers of Afro Sheen, etc.). These corporations, along with HARPO Productions (created by Oprah, who also made her bones in Chicago), set the pace for minority-owned entrepreneurship around the world.
The companies blazed trails, created great products and opportunities for three generations of economically disadvantaged urban minorities.
Mayor-elect Johnson, however, has other ambitions. He is a product of Public Sector Unions – you know, those righteous organizations who have done so much for the communities they serve, and who, according to public records, financed over 90% of his campaign. Chicago is deep in hock, is losing population and businesses at an alarming clip. Crime, as everyone knows, is rampant and on the rise. The schools are collapsing.
The weather, for several months a year at any rate, still sucks.
His answer? Tag large corporations – many of which have little incentive to operate there in the first instance and are now afforded every inducement to leave. Attack school choice. Divert resources from Law Enforcement.
The outcomes are, and will be, inevitable. Corporations will continue to bounce. Cops will depart in droves. The rich and empowered will, other than what they read about in the newspapers, scarcely notice. The teachers will present aggressive bills of fare for campaign services rendered and will be rewarded handsomely for their support.
The suffering classes will bear the brunt for all of this. And this once-great global city will continue to fade into irrelevance.
Oh well, it had a great run. Became, for no reason other than the applied resources of its leaders and population at large, a vital, global socioeconomic force. It was a place to establish oneself – and thrive. Folks went out of their way to visit the city, and, as evidence of this, to this day, it has hosted nearly twice as many Presidential nominating conventions as any city in America – including those that ultimately elected Lincoln, Grant, Garfield, Benjamin Harrison, Cleveland, Taft, both Roosevelts, and Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Superior transportation and lodging facilities were counted among the major alures. But that has recently been on the wane. Nonetheless, Mayor-elect Johnson proposes a substantial incremental room tax on the city’s put-upon hotels. Large corporations found a highly trained, motivated, and able workforce, but now, under the proposed plan, will face a new tax on their headcount. It has already lost Boeing, Tyson Foods, Caterpillar, and Citadel. Local Big Boy Mickey Ds. is downsizing. Expect this trend to accelerate.
But what really frosts me is the proposed tax on financial transactions.
Because Chicago is the birthplace of Exchange-traded derivatives, an industry that provided the city enormous global visibility, and launched many, many thousands of careers (including my own). Automation and Consolidation have reduced the number of boss dog exchanges from three to two, and massacred the headcount needed to support these franchises.
Still and all, and to this day, if one wants to trade Equity Index, Foreign Exchange, Interest Rate or Commodity futures, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) is the place to do it. Single stock options? The Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE).
And now (or as soon as next month when Mayor Johnson takes office), there is a strong possibility of Chicago imposing a toll for such transactions. For a couple of reasons, it’s a fair question as to whether they will be required to.
Because first, there’s absolutely no reason why the CME or CBOE need to stay in Chicago. They’re businesses long ago went all-electronic. All, in fact, that remains in the city is some senior staff, who will be given the alternative to either relocate to Austin (or wherever) or find other employment. Heck, the exchanges won’t even need to change their names if they move. And no one can make them.
The other potential impediment is the State of Illinois’ rotund trustafarian governor J.B. Pritzker, who will need to ink any city-based levies. He’s reported to be on the fence about this (no doubt a severe trial for the fence itself). But if he’s against it, it won’t be due to his desire to protect valuable civic franchises. Instead, he’ll be following a picked over script that routinely plays out in many jurisdictions, including New York. There and elsewhere, avaricious governors often fight with money grubbing mayors in their states to grab the lion’s share of what, after all, is a finite amount of money that can be extracted from the economically productive numbers among their constituency.
My guess is that this here Johnson is gonna have a tough time raising taxes of any kind. I reckon we’ll see, but what I am certain about is that the Windy City financial sector will NOT abide this assault and instead will blow like the February wind off Lake Michigan.
And the political news doesn’t end there. The newswires reported last week that Bobby Kennedy, Jr. has thrown his hat into the presidential ring. Here’s hoping he meets a better fate that his daddy, who was a stone-cold animal – egging Brother John into the Bay of Pigs Invasion and attacking the mob so viciously that he airlifted New Orleans Crime Boss Carlos Marcello into the Guatemalan jungle. That was the ‘60s – a decade that Marcello survived, and the Kennedys did not.
But this is not a political journal. Rather, it is a probing analysis into market economics. A fascinating week awaits us. The banks report, and that should at minimum be amusing. In addition, we have CPI/PPI. Both of which are slated to fall dramatically. Which would be nice.
After that, there’s the fat part of earnings, more macro statistics, etc. The Fed don’t meet again until the calendar turns to May, and who knows where we will be by then? The consensus of the prognostication class is that we’re headed straight into the teeth of a recession. Perhaps. But I don’t think that it will be particularly noticeable – at least at the outset.
I suspect that bi-directional price movement across all important asset classes will continue, without bringing much clarity to the proceedings. It’ll be a tough trade, but the nimble may have a chance to coin a few shekels.
More likely, it will be reminiscent of the trials and tribulations of the Chicago White Sox – early ‘70s vintage. With Wood on the Mound, Walter (No Neck) Williams leading off, and the nine-fingered left fielder Carlos May supplying the juice.
The score will be low, the stands empty. The winds will blow off the Lake, on to a diminishing city of bureaucrats, run by bureaucrats, for the benefit of bureaucrats.
It all makes me sad. But I haven’t even visited the city limits of Chicago in more than four years. I have fewer reasons than ever to amend this oversight. I’ll follow the fortunes of the Sox in the box scores, though, and hope for the best.
And with that, all I can do is bid everyone a (na na na na, na na na na, hey, hey) goodbye.
TIMSHEL