When the Foundation Rots, the Roof Is the Last Thing to Know

Fiscal sense isn't a foreign policy, it's a household rule

I read the paper this morning and it was like looking at a photograph of my own backyard, except the yard was on fire and the people in it were arguing about the color of the garden hose. Some UK fellow named Andy Burnham and his colleague John Healey are in it up to their chins, borrowing costs climbing like a fever nobody wants to name, and the two of them squirming around on the public record like they sat on something they'd rather not identify. I've seen that squirm before. It never ends well, and it never ends quietly.

The old Miller place is what comes to mind. Every soul in Harrow Corners knew the foundation was gone. You could see it in the way the porch listed, the way the windows stopped closing flush, the way the whole structure seemed to be making a private decision nobody was invited to discuss. Nobody wanted to spend the money. Nobody wanted to say the hard thing out loud. Then one night last winter the whole business caved in, and the sound of it carried three miles in every direction. That's not a tragedy. That's arithmetic. You put off what the structure needs long enough, the structure settles the argument for you.

That's what high borrowing costs are. They are the structure making its own decision. You do not get to negotiate with them once they've made up their mind, any more than you could have talked the Miller place into holding together another season. The little people, the ones who pay their taxes and ask for nothing flashier than a road that doesn't eat their tires, they are the ones left standing in the rubble. The bigwigs who ran the numbers wrong are already on to the next thing, looking for someone to explain what happened.

Now, the Hendersons' boy lives just down the road from me, the one the lake gave back. He is not the same as he was, and nobody around here pretends otherwise. Sometimes he talks about things that have not happened yet with the same easy recall as last Tuesday's lunch. Sometimes he's got two shadows when the light is only coming from one direction. It sounds peculiar until you understand what it is, which is a man dealing with the hand he was dealt, practical as anything, one day at a time. He does not carry on about what the lake should have done differently. He just manages. That is more than I can say for most politicians I have read about in any country on any morning.

Martha, who gardens three lots down, plants her tomatoes too early every single year. I have told her. The cold takes them. She mourns them like they were pets. Then she does it again the following spring. That is not optimism. That is a refusal to be taught by experience, which is a different thing entirely and considerably more expensive.

These UK fellows are planting in February and calling it a growth strategy. They let the novelty crowd set the calendar, and now they are staring at a cold snap they were warned about and looking for someone to hand them a blanket. The borrowing costs do not care about intentions. The interest rate does not take a meeting. You either set your house in order before the storm or you explain yourself to the wreckage after, and the wreckage is a poor audience for excuses.

I have lived long enough to know that most disasters are not surprises. They are conclusions. You can see them coming if you are willing to look at what is actually in front of you rather than what you were hoping would be there. The Miller place, the tomatoes, the Henderson boy, the UK budget. Different situations, same lesson. Reckon honestly with what you have, not what you wish you had, and do it before the structure settles the argument on your behalf.

You cannot outrun a foundation problem. You can only decide how long you want to pretend it is not there.

Mind your arithmetic and your roof before you worry about the weather. -- Aunt Dot
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