Of Fires That Burn Out
On October 17, those who can even remember it will mark the twentieth
anniversary of the day the great Yellowstone fire was contained.
The summer of 1988 would turn out to be Yellowstone National Park's
driest in recorded history. But there was no way of knowing that in
advance, as seasonal, lightning-sparked fires broke out in May, and
burned into June. More storms in July brought more lightning; the fires
spread and intensified.
Still, it wasn't until late July - when some four thousand people had to
be evacuated from Grant Village, a collection of lodges, restaurants and
a visitor center - that the nation's attention became riveted on
Yellowstone. Hundreds of reporters descended on the park, as more than
25,000 firefighters fought the spreading blazes.
On August 20, which came to be known as Black Saturday, winds of up to
eighty miles per hour doubled the size of the fire to 750 square miles,
and on September 7 the historic Old Faithful Inn had to be evacuated.
(It was saved essentially by a sprinkler system installed just the prior
year.) Four days later the rains came, and by October 17, the fires were
under control. In all, 1,875 square miles burned out - something like a
third of the park -- in what was universally regarded as an ecological
disaster of epic proportions, perhaps the greatest in American history.
No fewer than three separate Congressional hearings were held to review
fire management policies at Yellowstone and on other public lands, and
the National Park Service was pilloried for an alleged "let it burn"
strategy - a policy it had in fact never maintained.
Today, as the leaves begin to turn again in Yellowstone, you will find
it a renewed paradise. Trees have taken root everywhere among the burnt
logs that litter the forest floor. The fires, it seems, cleared out the
overgrown forest canopies, allowing new plants to bloom. Bird and animal
life flourishes. And people who know and love the park say that it's
greener than they've ever seen it. The fires weren't an ecological
disaster at all; they were nature's way of cleaning out and renewing one
of the most beautiful places in America.
This autumn, we find ourselves in the later stages of a great credit
conflagration. Hordes of catastrophists on cable and the Internet decry
an unprecedented disaster burning out of control and engulfing one great
financial institution after another. In their view, the fire is beyond
the capacity of nature and man, is constantly getting worse, and will
surely end in the long-term destruction of the financial system.
It will do nothing of the kind, any more than the Yellowstone fire of
1988 did. Nothing that is occurring today is unprecedented - though it
may be happening on a larger scale - and nothing is unnatural. This is
nature's way of cleaning out the rot. And it will lead to a healthy
renewal of the global financial system in ways that today's doomsayers
cannot even imagine.
Between 2000 and 2002, the world unwound the greatest equity market
bubble of all time. Last year and this, we have been unwinding the
greatest credit bubble of all time. These are horrific processes as one
goes through them, but it is useful to remember that they burn out -
that the rains do come again, even after the driest summer, and that, as
John Kennedy said, no human problem is beyond the capacity of human
beings.
While waiting for the rains, it will be useful to ask oneself: if this
is an unprecedented long-term destruction of the financial system, why
does the equity market refuse to burn down?
From its false dawn last October, the broad equity market declined about
24% peak-to-trough through the close on September 15, 2008. A 24%
decline over nearly a year is hardly a walk in the (national) park, but
neither is it an indicator of Armageddon. Indeed, the October before the
great Yellowstone conflagration, the equity market went down nearly that
much between a sunup and a sunset. (This event, too, sparked any number
of equally spurious Congressional investigations, to equally negligible
effect.) But as the leaves turn yet again - even in this season of
despair - the equity market stands nearly five times higher than it did
that evening.
Perhaps it's time to turn the television off, and to make a weekend of
it in Yellowstone. At the very least, this exercise might restore some
very important long-term perspective.
But be sure to pack your slicker and boots. The rains are coming.