Monday's first meeting between Mayors Herenton and Rout and their respective negotiating teams was, all things considered, a good first step toward resolving the current impasse in city/county relations caused by last spring's Chapter 98 legislation and the suburban-incorporation frenzy which it encouraged.
We're not Pollyannaish; the negotiators' first stated goal -- to resolve the issue of library administration -- seems over modest, given the impending votes of several would-be municipalities on December 9th. And we're not sure whether Herenton's partial lifting of the city moratorium on sewer extensions ("for economic development only") was good citizenship or a case of his having blinked first during the eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation.
By and large, though, we continue to approve both Mayor Herenton's strategy and his tactics in dealing with the crisis. And we continue to wish that Mayor Rout would speak forthrightly to the rights and wrongs of Chapter 98 rather than merely peeling his fingers back and sonorously citing his technocratic numbers.
But that is as nothing compared to our disappointment with the refusal of Governor Don Sundquist -- repeated again last week -- to even consider himself a party to the issue. Sundquist knows that Chapter 98 was sneaked through the legislature, that it was equivalent to the swindling of a blind widow out of her homestead by a door-to-door con man.
Sundquist could long ago have called for the special session which would have allowed legislators to give an honest up-or-down vote on the merits of Chapter 98. His failure to do so has been both craven and irresponsible and should be well noted, here in his ostensible home bailiwick, during his race for reelection next year.
"I learned that salesmen lie."
That's what Fred Smith has said about the early days of Federal Express, when only a handful of packages showed up for shipping. Whether the stock market crashes or rallies, remember that line.
This week we are seeing "downward pressure" on stocks, but nervous investors are being advised to "sit tight" and regard further declines as "buying opportunities." Maybe so, but remember that in stock-market lingo, "hold" means "sell," and "downward pressure" can mean "rout." Compared to the brokerage business, a poker game at a Tunica casino is an exercise in full disclosure.
The current decline is said to be "an overreaction to economic events in Asia." By the same token, however, the runup in stock prices was partly an overreaction to the notion that Asian economies were "tigers" that were going to put a VCR, a Chevy, and a recliner in every Asian home.
"Sit tight and don't sell." Why not? If your 1997 gain is only 10 percent instead of 20 percent, that's still twice what you can get from the U.S. Treasury.
"Stocks will go up over time. They always have." But not always this fast. And never without a few precipitous bumps and dips along the way. The events of this week on Wall Street may be business as usual, but that doesn't make the business any less painful to live with. No matter what the salesmen say.