Oil: The Long Goodbye

An FP Special Report

It's Still the One

Oil's very future is now being seriously questioned, debated, and challenged. The author of an acclaimed history explains why, just as we need more oil than ever, it is changing faster than we can keep up with.

BY DANIEL YERGIN

AUGUST 24, 2009




















“The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.”

—William Arthur Ward


On a still afternoon under a hot Oklahoma sun, neither a cloud nor an ounce of "volatility" was in sight. Anything but. All one saw were the somnolent tanks filled with oil, hundreds of them, spread over the rolling hills, some brand-new, some more than 70 years old, and some holding, inside their silver or rust-orange skins, more than half a million barrels of oil each.


This is Cushing, Oklahoma, the gathering point for the light, sweet crude oil known as West Texas Intermediate -- or just WTI. It is the oil whose price you hear announced every day, as in "WTI closed today at …." Cushing proclaims itself, as the sign says when you ride into town, the "pipeline crossroads of the world." Through it passes the network of pipes that carry oil from Texas and Oklahoma and New Mexico, from Louisiana and the Gulf Coast, and from Canada too, into Cushing's tanks, where buyers take title before moving the oil onward to refineries where it is turned into gasoline, jet fuel, diesel, home heating oil, and all the other products that people actually use.


But that is not what makes Cushing so significant. After all, there are other places in the world through which much more oil flows. Cushing plays a unique role in the new global oil industry because WTI is the preeminent benchmark against which other oils are priced. Every day, billions of "paper barrels" of light, sweet crude are traded on the floor of the New York Mercantile Exchange in lower Manhattan and, in ever increasing volumes, at electron speed around the world, an astonishing virtual commerce that no matter how massive in scale, still connects back somehow to a barrel of oil in Cushing changing owners.


That frenetic daily trading has helped turn oil into something new -- not only a physical commodity critical to the security and economic viability of nations but also a financial asset, part of that great instantaneous exchange of stocks, bonds, currencies, and everything else that makes up the world's financial portfolio. Today, the daily trade in those "paper barrels" -- crude oil futures -- is more than 10 times the world's daily consumption of physical barrels of oil. Add in the trades that take place on other exchanges or outside them entirely, and the ratio may be as much as 30 times greater. And though the oil may flow steadily in and out of Cushing at a stately 4 miles per hour, the global oil market is anything but stable.


That's why, as I sat down to work on a new edition of The Prize and considered what had changed since the early 1990s, when I wrote this history of the world's most valuable, and misunderstood, commodity, the word "volatility" kept springing to mind. How could it not? Indeed, when people are talking about volatility, they are often thinking oil. On July 11, 2008, WTI hit $147.27. Exactly a year later, it was $59.87. In between, in December, it fell as low as $32.40. (And don't forget a little more than a decade ago, when it was as low as $10 a barrel and consumers were supposedly going to swim forever in a sea of cheap oil.)

These wild swings don't just affect the "hedgers" (oil producers, airlines, heating oil dealers, etc.) and the "speculators," the financial players. They show up in the changing prices at the gasoline station. They stir political passions and feed consumers' suspicions. Volatility also makes it more difficult to plan future energy investments, whether in oil and gas or in renewable and alternative fuels. And it can have a cataclysmic impact on the world economy. After all, Detroit was knocked flat on its back by what happened at the gasoline pump in 2007 and 2008 even before the credit crisis. The enormous impact of these swings is why British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy were recently moved to call for a global solution to "destructive volatility." But, they were forced to add, "There are no easy solutions."

This volatility is part of the new age of oil. For though Cushing looks pretty much the same as it did when The Prize came out, the world of oil looks very different. Some talk today about "the end of oil." If so, others reply, we are entering its very long goodbye. One characteristic of this new age is that oil has developed a split personality -- as a physical commodity but also now as a financial asset.

Three other defining characteristics of this new age are the globalization of the demand for oil, a vast shift from even a decade ago; the rise of climate change as a political factor shaping decisions on how we will use oil, and how much of it, in the future; and the drive for new technologies that could dramatically affect oil along with the rest of the energy portfolio.

The cast of characters in the oil business has also grown and changed. Some oil companies have become "supermajors," such as ExxonMobil and Chevron, while others, such as Amoco and ARCO, have just disappeared. "Big oil" no longer means the traditional international oil companies, their logos instantly recognizable from corner gas stations, but rather much larger state-owned companies, which, along with governments, today control more than 80 percent of the world's oil reserves. Fifteen of the world's 20 largest oil companies are now state-owned.

The cast of oil traders has also much expanded. Today's global oil game now includes pension funds, institutional money managers, endowments, and hedge funds, as well as individual investors and day traders. The managers at the pension funds and the university endowments see themselves as engaged in "asset allocation," hedging risks and diversifying to protect retirees' incomes and faculty salaries. But, technically, they too are part of the massive growth in the ranks of the new oil speculators.

With all these changes, the very future of this most vital commodity is now being seriously questioned, debated, and challenged, even as the world will need more of it than ever before. Both the U.S. Department of Energy and the International Energy Agency project that, even accounting for gains in efficiency, global energy use will increase almost 50 percent from 2006 to 2030 -- and that oil will continue to provide 30 percent or more of the world's energy in 2030.

But will it?

From the beginning, oil has been a global industry, going back to 1861 when the first cargo of kerosene was sent from Pennsylvania -- the Saudi Arabia of 19th-century oil -- to Britain. (The potential crew was so fearful that the kerosene would catch fire that they had to be gotten drunk to shanghai them on board.) But that is globalization of supply, a familiar story. What is decisively new is the globalization of demand.

For decades, most of the market -- and the markets that mattered the most -- were in North America, Western Europe, and Japan. That's also where the growth was. At the time of the first Gulf War in 1991, China was still an oil exporter.

But now, the growth is in China, India, other emerging markets, and the Middle East. Between 2000 and 2007, the world's daily oil demand increased by 9.4 million barrels. Almost 85 percent of that growth was in emerging markets. There were many reasons that prices soared all the way to $147.27 last year, ranging from geopolitics to a weak dollar to the impact of financial markets and speculation (in all its manifold meanings). But the starting point was the fundamentals -- the surge in oil demand driven by powerful economic growth in emerging markets. This shift may be even more powerful than people recognize: So far this year, more new cars have been sold in China than in the United States. When economic recovery takes hold again, what happens to oil demand in such emerging countries will be crucial.

The math is clear: More consumers mean more demand, which means more supplies are needed. But what about the politics? There the forecasts are murkier, feeding a new scenario for international tension -- a competition, even a clash, between China and the United States over "scarce" oil resources. This scenario even comes with a well-known historical model -- the rivalry between Britain and "rising" Germany that ended in the disaster of World War I.

This scenario, though compelling reading, does not really accord with the way that the world oil market works. The Chinese are definitely new players, willing and able to pay top dollar to gain access to existing and new oil sources and, lately, also making loans to oil-producing countries to ensure future supplies. With more than $2 trillion in foreign reserves, China certainly has the wherewithal to be in the lending business.

But the global petroleum industry is not a go-it-alone business. Because of the risk and costs of large-scale development, companies tend to work in consortia with other companies. Oil-exporting countries seek to diversify the countries and companies they work with.

Inevitably, any country in China's position -- whose demand had grown from 2.5 million barrels per day to 8 million in a decade and a half -- would be worrying about supplies. Such an increase, however, is not a forecast of inevitable strife; it is a message about economic growth and rising standards of living. It would be much more worrying if, in the face of rising demand, Chinese companies were not investing in production both inside China (the source of half of its supply) and outside its borders.

There are potential flash points in this new world of oil. But they will not come from standard commercial competition. Rather, they arise when oil (along with natural gas) gets caught up in larger foreign-policy issues -- most notably today, the potentially explosive crisis over the nuclear ambitions of oil- and gas-rich Iran.

Yet, despite all the talk of an "oil clash" scenario, there seems to be less overall concern than a few years ago and much more discussion about "energy dialogue." The Chinese themselves appear more confident about their increasingly important place in this globalized oil market.

Although the risks are still there, the Chinese -- and the Indians right alongside them -- have the same stake as other consumers in an adequately supplied world market that is part of the larger global economy. Disruption of that economy, as the last year has so vividly demonstrated, does not serve their purposes. Why would the Chinese want to get into a confrontation over oil with the United States when the U.S. export market is so central to their economic growth and when the two countries are so financially interdependent?

Oil is not even the most important energy issue between China and the United States. It is coal. The two countries have the world's largest coal resources, and they are the world's biggest consumers of it. In a carbon-constrained world, they share a strong common interest in finding technological solutions for the emissions released when coal is burned.

And that leads directly to the second defining feature of the new age of oil: climate change. Global warming was already on the agenda when The Prize came out. It was back in 1992 that 154 countries signed the Rio Convention, pledging to dramatically reduce CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere. But only in recent years has climate change really gained traction as a political issue -- in Europe early in this decade, in the United States around 2005. Whatever the outcome of December's U.N. climate change conference in Copenhagen, carbon regulation is now part of the future of oil. And that means a continuing drive to reduce oil demand.

How does that get done? How does the world at once meet both the challenge of climate change and the challenge of economic growth -- steady expansion in the industrial countries and more dramatic growth in China, India, and other emerging markets as tens of millions of their citizens rise from poverty and buy appliances and cars?

The answer has to be in another defining change -- an emphasis on technology to a degree never before seen. The energy business has always been a technology business. After all, the men who figured out in 1859, exactly 150 years ago, how to drill that first oil well -- Colonel Drake and his New Haven, Conn., investors -- would, in today's lingo, be described as a group of disruptive technology entrepreneurs and venture capitalists. Again and again, in researching oil's history, I was struck by how seemingly insurmountable barriers and obstacles were overcome by technological progress, often unanticipated.

But the focus today on technology -- all across the energy spectrum -- is of unprecedented intensity. In the mid-1990s, I chaired a task force for the U.S. Department of Energy on "strategic energy R&D." Our panel worked very hard for a year and a half and produced what many considered a very worthy report. But there was not all that much follow-through. The Gulf War was over, and the energy problem looked like it had been "solved."

Today, by contrast, the interest in energy technology is enormous. And it will only be further stoked by the substantial increases that are ahead in government support for energy R&D. Much of that spending and effort is aimed at finding alternatives to oil. Yet the challenge is not merely to find alternatives; it is to find alternatives that can be competitive at the massive scale required.


What will those alternatives be? The electric car, which is the hottest energy topic today? Advanced biofuels? Solar systems? New building designs? Massive investment in wind? The evolving smart grid, which can integrate electric cars with the electricity industry? Something else that is hardly on the radar screen yet? Or perhaps a revolution in the internal combustion engine, making it two to three times as efficient as the ones in cars today?

We can make educated guesses. But, in truth, we don't know, and we won't know until we do know. For now, it is clear that the much higher levels of support for innovation -- along with considerable government incentives and subsidies -- will inevitably drive technological change and thus redraw the curve in the future demand for oil.

Indeed, the biggest surprises might come on the demand side, through conservation and improved energy efficiency. The United States is twice as energy efficient as it was in the 1970s. Perhaps we will see a doubling once again. Certainly, energy efficiency has never before received the intense focus and support that it does today.

Just because we have entered this new age of high-velocity change does not mean this story is about the imminent end of oil. Consider the "peak oil" thesis -- shorthand for the presumption that the world has reached the high point of production and is headed for a downward slope. Historically, peak-oil thinking gains attention during times when markets are tight and prices are rising, stoking fears of a permanent shortage. In 2007 and 2008, the belief system built around peak oil helped drive prices to $147.27. (It was actually the fifth time that the world had supposedly "run out" of oil. The first such episode was in the 1880s; the last instance before this most recent time was in the 1970s.)

However, careful examination of the world's resource base -- including my own firm's analysis of more than 800 of the largest oil fields -- indicates that the resource endowment of the planet is sufficient to keep up with demand for decades to come. That, of course, does not mean that the oil will actually make it to consumers. Any number of "aboveground" risks and obstacles can stand in the way, from government policies that restrict access to tax systems to civil conflict to geopolitics to rising costs of exploration and production to uncertainties about demand. As has been the case for decades and decades, the shifting relations between producing and consuming countries, between traditional oil companies and state-owned oil companies, will do much to determine what resources are developed, and when, and thus to define the future of the industry.

There are two further caveats. Many of the new projects will be bigger, more complex, and more expensive. In the 1990s, a "megaproject" might have cost $500 million to $1 billion. Today, the price tag is more like $5 billion to $10 billion. And an increasing part of the new petroleum will come in the form of so-called "unconventional oil" -- from ultradeep waters, Canadian oil sands, and the liquids that are produced with natural gas.

But through all these changes, one constant of the oil market is that it is not constant. The changing balance of supply and demand -- shaped by economics, politics, technologies, consumer tastes, and accidents of all sorts -- will continue to move prices. Economic recovery, expectations thereof, the pent-up demand for "demand," a shift into oil as a "financial asset" -- some combination of these could certainly send oil prices up again, even with the current surplus in the market. Yet, the quest for stability is also a constant for oil, whether in reaction to the boom-and-bust world of northwest Pennsylvania in the late 19th century, the 10-cents-a-barrel world of Texas oil in the 1930s, or the $147.27 barrel of West Texas Intermediate in July 2008.

Certainly, the roller-coaster ride of oil prices over the last couple of years, as oil markets and financial markets have become more integrated, has made volatility a central preoccupation for policymakers who do not want to see their economies whipsawed by huge price swings. Yet without the flexibility and liquidity of markets, there is no effective way to balance supply and demand, no way for consumers and producers to hedge their risks.

Nor is there a way to send signals to these consumers and producers about how much oil to use and how much money to invest -- or signals to would-be innovators about tomorrow's opportunities.

One part of the solution is not only enhancement of the already considerable regulation of the financial markets where oil is traded, but also greater transparency and better understanding of who the players are in the rapidly expanding financial oil markets. But regulatory changes cannot eliminate market cycles or repeal the laws of supply and demand in the world's largest organized commodity market. Those cycles may not be much in evidence amid the quiet tanks and rolling hills at Cushing. But they are inescapably part of the global landscape of the new world of oil.

Daniel Yergin received a Pulitzer Prize for The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power, published in an updated edition this year. He is chairman of IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates.

AUGUST 31, 2009

Raft of Deals for Failed Banks Puts U.S. on Hook for Billions

By DAMIAN PALETTA


WASHINGTON -- The biggest spur to deal-making among banks isn't private-equity cash or foreign investors. It is the federal government.

To encourage banks to pick through the wreckage of their collapsed competitors, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. has agreed to assume most of the risk on $80 billion in loans and other assets. The agency expects it will eventually have to cover $14 billion in future losses on deals cut so far. The initiative amounts to a subsidy for dozens of hand-picked banks.

Through more than 50 deals known as "loss shares," the FDIC has agreed to absorb losses on the detritus of the financial crisis -- from loans on two log cabins in the woods of northwestern Illinois to hundreds of millions of dollars in busted condominium loans in Florida. The agency's total exposure is about six times the amount remaining in its fund that guarantees consumers' deposits, exposing taxpayers to a big, new risk.

As financial markets heal and the economy appears to be pulling out of recession, the federal government is shifting from crisis to cleanup mode. But as the loss-share deals show, its potential financial burden isn't receding. So far, the FDIC has paid out $300 million to a handful of banks under the loss-share agreements.

The practice is largely a response to the number of bank failures of the past 18 months, which has stretched the FDIC's financial and logistical resources. The FDIC had just $10.4 billion in its deposit-insurance fund at the end of June, down from more than $50 billion last year. The agency said Thursday it had 416 banks on its "problem" list at the end of the second quarter, which means the list of banks at a higher risk of insolvency has been growing.


Many of the government programs aimed at attacking the financial crisis have carried high price tags, including the Treasury Department's $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, which includes major government investments in American International Group Inc., Citigroup Inc., Bank of America Corp., and the U.S. auto industry. But federal money isn't just going one way. Some of the emergency programs put in place last year, including TARP, have brought in billions of dollars for the government.

On a range of rescue programs run by the Federal Reserve, such as loans to investment banks and purchases of mortgage-backed securities, the Fed earned $16.4 billion through the first six months of 2009. The FDIC said earlier this year that it earned more than $7 billion on the fees it charged through a program that guaranteed debt issued by banks.

On Aug. 14, Alabama's Colonial Bank collapsed, felled by bad commercial-real-estate lending. The FDIC, assuming its traditional role, brokered a sale of the bank's deposits to BB&T Corp., ensuring that customers wouldn't see any interruption. It also agreed to help BB&T buy a $15 billion portfolio of Colonial's loans and other assets by agreeing to absorb more than 80% of future losses. Under the deal, the most BB&T can lose is $500 million, the bank says, and that is only in the unlikely event that the entire portfolio becomes worthless. The FDIC is on the hook to cover the rest.

In June, Wilshire State Bank, a division of Wilshire Bancorp Inc. in Los Angeles, agreed to buy $362 million in deposits and $449 million of assets from failed Mirae Bank, also of Los Angeles. The FDIC agreed to assume most future losses on roughly $341 million of those assets, largely commercial real estate and construction loans in Southern California.

Loss-share agreements made a brief appearance in the early 1990s during the savings-and-loan crisis, but haven't been used this extensively before. The FDIC sees the deals as a way to keep bank loans and other assets in the private sector. More importantly, it believes such deals mitigate the cost of cleaning up the industry.

The FDIC contends it would cost the agency considerably more to simply liquidate the assets of failed banks, especially with the current crop of troubled institutions and their portfolios of loans on misbegotten real estate.

The FDIC's premise is that banks that take on the troubled assets will work to improve their value over time. The agency estimates the loss-share deals cut will cost it $11 billion less than if the agency seized the assets and sold them at fair-market value.

"This is an issue the FDIC is grappling with because the loss rates they are estimating on these failed banks are pretty amazing," says Frederick Cannon, chief equity strategist at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods Inc.

By potentially mitigating losses -- or at least stretching them out over time -- the deals provide some protection for the agency's insurance fund. "It's a great opportunity for banks," says James Wigand, deputy director of the FDIC's division of resolutions and receiverships. "It's a great opportunity for us."

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The federal government is on the hook for billions of dollars in bank losses if the economy doesn't recover. It will carry that burden for a long time. Many of the loss-share deals will be in place for up to 10 years.

Some industry officials worry that bankers might tire of the partnerships with the FDIC and put little effort into reworking the soured loans because the bulk of losses will fall to the government. FDIC officials maintain that because banks still have a "material" exposure, they will be reluctant to do this.

"There is certainly an incentive for the banks to play fair and do right, but there is never a limit on the ability of the private sector to shift cost to the government," says John Douglas, a former FDIC general counsel who now advises banks as a partner at the law firm Davis, Polk & Wardell LLP.

The FDIC's inspector general has said he is examining the controls designed to ensure that banks play by the rules.

Since Jan. 1, 2008, 109 banks in 29 states have failed, ranging from one of the smallest banks in the country, Dwelling House Savings and Loan in Pittsburgh, a one-branch bank with $13.4 million of assets, to Washington Mutual, which had $307 billion of assets and was the largest bank failure in U.S. history.

Those collapses have cost the FDIC $40 billion, putting a huge dent in its reserves. The FDIC was created during the Depression to maintain consumer confidence in banks by guaranteeing deposits. If its deposit-insurance fund runs out, the FDIC would likely have to borrow money from the Treasury Department or slap higher fees on the banks whose contributions keep the fund afloat.

During the savings-and-loan crisis in the 1980s and early 1990s, more than 1,000 banks failed. The government set up the Resolution Trust Corp. to take over assets from failed banks and sell them. Such a structure doesn't exist now, which means that the FDIC has to take on those assets or somehow persuade healthy banks to do so.

Last year, the agency struck only a handful of loss-share deals with healthy banks. That left the government with lots of troubled loans from failed banks to sell.

"The hardest part today in the acquisition game is valuing assets or determining real equity, and with a loss share you can do that," says Len Williams, chief executive of Home Federal Bank in Idaho, which picked up $197 million in assets from the failed Community First Bank in Oregon on Aug. 7, most of it covered by a loss-share agreement.

Over the past 12 months, no bank has been a buyer of more failed banks than Stearns Bank of St. Cloud, Minn., which began as an agricultural bank. It bought the deposits and most of the assets of Horizon Bank in Pine City, Minn., on June 26; of Community National Bank of Sarasota County and First State Bank, both of Sarasota, Fla., on Aug. 7; and of ebank in Atlanta on Aug. 21.

It brokered loss-share arrangements on all the deals, covering $619 million in assets. The acquisitions expanded the bank's assets by 60%, with limited risk of future losses.

By comparison, when Stearns agreed to buy the deposits of failed Alpha Bank & Trust in Alpharetta, Ga., last year, loss-share deals hadn't yet become common. Stearns purchased just $39 million of Alpha's $354 million in assets, leaving the rest for the FDIC to sort out.

Stearns has entered into more loss-share deals than any other bank. "We have had to bid on [each of the banks], so everybody has had the same opportunity," says Chief Executive Norman Skalicky.

In most cases, the FDIC agrees to cover 80% of future losses on a big portion of the assets, and 95% on the rest. The FDIC says it doesn't anticipate facing the 95% loss-coverage scenario on any deal.

Typical assets include loans on commercial real-estate developments, condominiums and single-family homes. Banks are required to report at least every quarter on estimated loan losses, and to have a team in place working full time to maximize the value of the assets. Banks must get permission from the FDIC to sell any loans.

Big banks also have used the deals to grow with minimal risk. On Aug. 21, BBVA Compass, a unit of the giant Spanish company Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria, bought $12 billion in loans and other assets from the failed Guaranty Bank in Austin, Texas. As part of the deal, the FDIC said it would cover most losses on a $9.7 billion portion of that pool.

The Office of Thrift Supervision said last week that more than half of Guaranty's loans were "higher risk," including commercial, construction and land loans.

BBVA Compass said the deal would have the FDIC "bear 80% of the first $2.3 billion of losses and 95% of the losses above that threshold." Its chairman, José Maria Garcia Meyer-Dohner, described it as a "low-risk transaction." The arrangement made BBVA Compass the 15th largest bank in the U.S.

Veteran banker Joseph Evans saw the loss-share deals as a major opportunity.

He approached State Bank and Trust Co., a tiny bank in Pinehurst, Ga. with just $35 million in assets, with a proposition: He would take charge of the bank, find investors to pump $300 million of capital into it, then buy up the assets of failing banks in Georgia.

Mr. Evans, who has spent years selling distressed assets, recruited investors, and on July 24 he put his plan in motion. The FDIC shut down six affiliated Georgia banks and agreed to sell $2.4 billion of deposits and $2.4 billion of assets to Mr. Evans's team.

The FDIC agreed to absorb most losses on $1.7 billion of those assets. Overnight, the small bank became one of the largest in the state.

"From a turnaround guy's perspective, I've never had this kind of downside protection," Mr. Evans says. "I don't believe we would have either been interested or found interested investors to enter the banking industry at this moment in time, absent the FDIC assistance."

He says there's a good chance his team will make a strong profit. He estimates it will take roughly four years to work through the bad assets in the portfolio.

The FDIC wouldn't have to resort to such deals if it could easily sell the assets of failed banks. But last year, most healthy banks refused to bite.

In 20 of 2008's 25 failures, banks acquired less than 30% of the assets of the failed banks. When ANB Financial failed in Bentonville, Ark. on May 9, 2008, for example, Pulaski Bank and Trust Co. of Little Rock agreed to buy only $236 million of the $2.1 billion of the failed bank's assets.
Last month, Galena State Bank in Galena, Ill., bought most of the assets of failed Elizabeth State Bank in Elizabeth, Ill., under a loss-share agreement.

As a result, Galena's portfolio now includes delinquent loans on two log cabins in the area. Andrew Townsend, Galena's chief executive, say his people have yet to visit the properties, which were often rented out to tourists.

"There's a lot of work to getting your arms around everything and working through credit issues and conversion issues and valuation," he says. "Relatively speaking, that shouldn't take forever, and at the end of the day, we should have a nice pool of earning assets and clientele."

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TRIBUNA: JUAN GOYTISOLO

El dulce señuelo de la inmortalidad

JUAN GOYTISOLO

31/08/2009


Cuando leí la propuesta de una diputada argentina de trasladar solemnemente los restos mortales de Borges desde Ginebra, en donde falleció, al cementerio bonaerense de La Recoleta para su eterno reposo junto a los próceres y padres de la patria, incluida Evita Perón, me puse a temblar. ¡Otra vez la ceremonia grandiosa, los discursos grandilocuentes, la exposición del féretro en el Congreso de los Diputados, las notas vibrantes del sacrosanto himno nacional! Quizás esta dichosa exhibición de autobombo a la que son tan proclives -probablemente por contagió francés- los países de lengua hispana convenga a los héroes y caudillos o a los vates y artistas identificados con los valores y rasgos del país en el que nacieron.

Pero, en el caso del autor de El Aleph, es puro disparate. Borges, como los grandes creadores, disfruta del privilegio de la extraterritorialidad. No pretendió hacer carrera alguna en el gremio de las letras ni puede ser invocado por ninguna agrupación religiosa, ideológica ni nacional. Como Joyce, Proust o Kafka pertenece a sus lectores. Su obra concierne tanto a un lector argentino como a un árabe, chino, escandinavo o brasileño. La tajante oposición de María Kodama al proyectado festival de patriotismo y de uniformes de gala me llenó de alivio y reconocimiento.

Conservo fresco el recuerdo del acarreo del cuerpo de Jean Moulin, el héroe de la Resistencia antinazi, paseado con gran pompa por la Rue Soufflot hasta el Panteón mientras los altavoces y los medios informativos transmitían el elogio fúnebre de André Malraux con el tono a la vez emotivo y declamatorio adecuado a la circunstancia. Nadie había solicitado obviamente la autorización del muerto para aquel magnificente despliegue y pensé que su arriesgada acción clandestina no obedeció sin duda a ningún anhelo de gloria. El fasto desplegado avivaba más bien la autosatisfacción de los vivos y me pareció absurdo.

La distinción establecida por Milan Kundera entre el pequeño contexto (el de la repercusión de la obra de escritores y artistas en un ámbito local, provinciano, autonómico, nacional) y el gran contexto (el de su aportación nueva y fecunda a lo que yo llamo el árbol de la literatura) resulta indispensable para entender que si este ceremonial elegiaco y necrófago conviene a los representantes del primer apartado es a todas luces inútil y hasta grotesco para los incluidos en el segundo en razón de su extraterritorialidad creadora.

En los países de nuestra lengua resulta frecuente hallar bustos, estatuas y monumentos en honor de las glorias locales y provinciales como recordatorio piadoso de su paso fugaz por el mundo: dichos recordatorios, así como las fundaciones destinadas a perpetuar la difusión de su labor de cara a las generaciones futuras, me parecen tan vanos como patéticos. Nadie sabe si una obra será leída o no en los siglos venideros (si es que la presencia humana en nuestro planeta minúsculo subsiste aún y si el hábito de leer perdura). Borges, como Joyce, Proust o Kafka, no requieren patrocinio alguno: su difusión es la del polen transportado por el viento, que, como escribí a propósito de las Mil y una noches, disemina "las semillas de las palabras a tierras remotas mediante una forma más vasta y sutil de abejeo polinización".

Esta percepción de la realidad humana no obsta así para que crea en la perdurabilidad relativa de las obras representativas del gran contexto. Los novelistas antes citados están ahí para demostrarlo. Mas ellos, y una pléyade de autores, ya fueren de Grecia, Roma, Europa, India, Irán o Bagdad, no encarnan valores identitarios ni esencias perennes. No forman parte de rebaño nacional alguno, y por ello mismo no deberían ser manipulados post mortem por credos, patrias ni ideologías. Transportar sus cadáveres a hombros de mílites o, peor aún, en cureñas envueltas con la bandera del país natal, a algún templo o panteón glorioso es una apropiación abusiva.

Quienes pertenecemos al club de los agnósticos podemos invocar con orgullo no sólo a Sócrates, Epicuro, Omar Jayam, Voltaire, Diderot y a los padres de la Revolución Francesa, sino también a peninsulares de siglos lejanos, como esos "desarrados" (escépticos) tan poco estudiados hasta la fecha reciente: desde algunos autores del Cancionero de Baena al genial creador de La Celestina. Todos ellos nos dicen de formas distintas que nada hay después de la muerte. Remover huesos ilustres es por lo tanto vanitas vanitatum, et omnia vanitas. La felizmente frustrada exhumación/inhumación de Borges -el traslado de sus restos con escolta de honor- subraya la conveniencia de una incineración generalizada para evitar en adelante tanta fanfarria e interesada promoción.

Suscribo del todo las últimas voluntades del pedagogo y dirigente republicano Francisco Ferrer Guardia dictadas al notario Permanyer antes de su bochornosa ejecución por fusilamiento en las fosas del castillo de Montjuïc, falsamente acusado de los sucesos de la llamada Semana Trágica barcelonesa:

"Deseo que en ninguna ocasión ni próxima ni lejana, ni por uno ni otro motivo, haya manifestaciones de carácter religioso o político ante los restos míos, porque considero que el tiempo que se emplea ocupándose de los muertos sería mejor destinarlo a mejorar la condición en que viven los vivos, teniendo gran necesidad de ello casi todos los hombres".

Juan Goytisolo es escritor.