Capitalism and Credit
There was a time, a few weeks ago, when I thought Hank Paulson was the right man for the job of rescuing the economy. Now I don’t think so. Which leads me to worry about who Obama will put in to head the Treasury. Paulson is a creature of the trading desk and his every move has been to save the skins of his fellow traders on The Street. But as he has gotten deeper into the reality of the mess we’re in, he has realized that there is too much worthless paper out there for the Treasury to make an impact buying it up. This has led him to make the insane suggestion yesterday that what we really need is more leverage. Let me explain.
In a must read article in Portfolio, the great Michael Lewis (Liar’s Poker
That’s when Eisman finally got it. Here he’d been making these side bets with Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank on the fate of the BBB tranche without fully understanding why those firms were so eager to make the bets. Now he saw. There weren’t enough Americans with shitty credit taking out loans to satisfy investors’ appetite for the end product. The firms used Eisman’s bet to synthesize more of them. Here, then, was the difference between fantasy finance and fantasy football: When a fantasy player drafts Peyton Manning, he doesn’t create a second Peyton Manning to inflate the league’s stats. But when Eisman bought a credit-default swap, he enabled Deutsche Bank to create another bond identical in every respect but one to the original. The only difference was that there was no actual homebuyer or borrower. The only assets backing the bonds were the side bets Eisman and others made with firms like Goldman Sachs. Eisman, in effect, was paying to Goldman the interest on a subprime mortgage. In fact, there was no mortgage at all. “They weren’t satisfied getting lots of unqualified borrowers to borrow money to buy a house they couldn’t afford,” Eisman says. “They were creating them out of whole cloth. One hundred times over! That’s why the losses are so much greater than the loans. But that’s when I realized they needed us to keep the machine running. I was like, This is allowed?”
What Eisman discovered, which allowed him to make millions shorting the bonds, was the same thing that Hank Paulson has come to discover over the last eight weeks. To have the government buy up this worthless paper would be the ultimate fool’s errand. There were no assets behind most of these CDO’s, just virtual assets. Rosa Luxemburg once wrote, “When the inner tendency of capitalism to extend boundlessly strikes against the restricted dimensions of private property, credit appears as a means of surmounting these limits.” But one does not need to be a Marxist economist to ask the question, is Milton Friedman’s market capitalism totally dependent on cheap and plentiful credit?
Hank Paulson thinks the answer is yes. So having abandoned the idea of buying ”troubled assets” in the Troubled Assets Recovery Program (TARP), he’s going to lever up the rest of the $700 billion 20-1 to get some real bang for the buck by loaning to consumer finance companies.WTF?
The Treasury would contribute 5 percent to 10 percent of the money to finance the lending. But the Fed would raise most of the money by selling what is known as nonrecourse commercial paper to investors.
Treasury officials said the plan would allow them to leverage the government’s money by as much as 20 to 1, meaning that the Treasury would provide 5 percent of the money and investors would provide 95 percent. Using $50 billion in money from the government rescue program, they said, could thus underwrite $1 trillion worth of lending for consumer loans.
This is not only braindead but has the potential to cause another run on the banks and U.S. Treasuries. The 30 year Treasury Bond auction went very badly this morning and the Credit Default Swap market is already saying some government bonds are as risky as Campbell Soup Paper.
Paulson is taking these risks because he is desperate to get consumers back to the mall or the GM dealership. But the consumer knows better. She doesn’t need the $4 Latte at Starbucks or the $400 Manolo’s at Nieman’s. He can wait a year to buy a new car. The citizens know they need to get their financial house in order and reduce their debt. But does the Washington Political class understand this? As long as the Obama Administration thinks their job is to restore the “status quo ante”, we will have similar braindead solutions to a far greater problem–How does American capitalism learn to grow on its own internally generated profits without the use of gigantic amounts of leverage? In other words, how do we plan to live on what we earn?
As I have said before, the transition will be slow, because the government will need to keep borrowing for a few years to fund capital investments in infrastructure. But credit for investment and credit for consumption/speculation are two totally different issues and if the government balance sheet ran like a corporation the capital investments could be amortized over many years. These are important distinctions, but its obvious to me now that a Wall Street speculator like Hank Paulson doesn’t care about the difference. All he wants is to get back to the good old days.
Now THAT is scary. Instead of using sugar to sweeten a bitter meat, he is adding it to water for fast high.
Crikey! Can we just put some of these people in jail and warn others? Even Tim Bray is calling for heads on pikes now.
I wish we wrote regulations like we write software: test driven development. Before a function is written, we write a test to prove the consequences of a failure.
Now THAT is scary. Instead of using sugar to sweeten a bitter meat, he is adding it to water for fast high.
Crikey! Can we just put some of these people in jail and warn others? Even Tim Bray is calling for heads on pikes now.
I wish we wrote regulations like we write software: test driven development. Before a function is written, we write a test to prove the consequences of a failure.
Great Blog — are you sending this to anyone inside the Obama brain trust?
Great Blog — are you sending this to anyone inside the Obama brain trust?
Jon-
This is really good stuff! I just sent this to my congressman – who voted for the bail out, as most others did.
I truly think that the bail out was another place where the shrubophiles, led by Paulson this time, are only out to save themselves. They want to be the first and likely the only ones in the life boats.
Bob Reich has been saying all along that we need to get Americans back to work, and to live within our means.
It is going to be a painful process to deflate/devolve and just plain shrink our economy.
I just love the bonuses being paid with our money – I just love paying some guy who makes about 10 – 100 times more than me even more money.
Jon-
This is really good stuff! I just sent this to my congressman – who voted for the bail out, as most others did.
I truly think that the bail out was another place where the shrubophiles, led by Paulson this time, are only out to save themselves. They want to be the first and likely the only ones in the life boats.
Bob Reich has been saying all along that we need to get Americans back to work, and to live within our means.
It is going to be a painful process to deflate/devolve and just plain shrink our economy.
I just love the bonuses being paid with our money – I just love paying some guy who makes about 10 – 100 times more than me even more money.
Woody,
Nope, Paulson is probably well intended and not as anywhere in league with Abramoff, or Stevens.
The problem is these guys have lived inside a delusion so long they can’t let go, and they can’t fathom that there is no way in hell to ever restore the status quo. Really, they are just now getting it.
It’s a sad little secret, but our pols of all stripes bought into a world view that says that America’s value will always increase at rates that allow us to borrow against it forever, and have the great life now and in the future as well.
It sort of works that way, if you project a reasonable growth rate, and allow for inevitable down turns as world events play out. The Bankers and Traders did neither. And they didn’t really imagine that everyone else was doing it to such an extent.
Paulson is sincerely working in the boiler room of the Titanic trying to keep the power on so the crew can see to repair the damage and keep it afloat.
Noble but doomed.
Woody,
Nope, Paulson is probably well intended and not as anywhere in league with Abramoff, or Stevens.
The problem is these guys have lived inside a delusion so long they can’t let go, and they can’t fathom that there is no way in hell to ever restore the status quo. Really, they are just now getting it.
It’s a sad little secret, but our pols of all stripes bought into a world view that says that America’s value will always increase at rates that allow us to borrow against it forever, and have the great life now and in the future as well.
It sort of works that way, if you project a reasonable growth rate, and allow for inevitable down turns as world events play out. The Bankers and Traders did neither. And they didn’t really imagine that everyone else was doing it to such an extent.
Paulson is sincerely working in the boiler room of the Titanic trying to keep the power on so the crew can see to repair the damage and keep it afloat.
Noble but doomed.
Today’s Special Edition of the NY Times lays all the answers out, it’s really brilliant. If you haven’t seen it yet you have to check it out, it will make your day ;0)
http://web.nytimes-se.com/
Today’s Special Edition of the NY Times lays all the answers out, it’s really brilliant. If you haven’t seen it yet you have to check it out, it will make your day ;0)
http://web.nytimes-se.com/
TARP vs Wall St. is sounding like a sibling squabble:
“Oh yah??? Well I’m gonna make assets with NO VALUE!”
“Oh yah??? Then I’m going to back you with 20-1 money that doesn’t exist!”
“Mommm! He’s hitting me, am not, are too…”
TARP vs Wall St. is sounding like a sibling squabble:
“Oh yah??? Well I’m gonna make assets with NO VALUE!”
“Oh yah??? Then I’m going to back you with 20-1 money that doesn’t exist!”
“Mommm! He’s hitting me, am not, are too…”
Spot on Greg.
Spot on Greg.
It is a rather hilarious commentary on the intellectual bankruptcy of economics that the institution charged with managing the money supply apparently employs zero economists who understood that credit is part of the money supply. The Fed pretends to regulate the money supply through it’s influence on short term interest rates. Yet the notion that leverage is the illicit breeding of money — aka counterfeiting — seems lightyears beyond their professional cognizance. Sure, leverage to the hilt … and then some more!
It is a rather hilarious commentary on the intellectual bankruptcy of economics that the institution charged with managing the money supply apparently employs zero economists who understood that credit is part of the money supply. The Fed pretends to regulate the money supply through it’s influence on short term interest rates. Yet the notion that leverage is the illicit breeding of money — aka counterfeiting — seems lightyears beyond their professional cognizance. Sure, leverage to the hilt … and then some more!
Great post. So far, this recession has been a good thing for my wife and I. We are far more disciplined in our spending and saving than we ever have been. We are seeing our debts go down and our savings go up. It feels great to be acting more responsibly than we ever have been and I doubt we’ll ever go back to our old “home equity ATM” ways. BTW: I had breakfast yesterday with a long-time friend of Barack Obama from Chicago and I refered this person this blog. Hopefully some of Barack’s other colleagues/advisors will see this blog too.
Great post. So far, this recession has been a good thing for my wife and I. We are far more disciplined in our spending and saving than we ever have been. We are seeing our debts go down and our savings go up. It feels great to be acting more responsibly than we ever have been and I doubt we’ll ever go back to our old “home equity ATM” ways. BTW: I had breakfast yesterday with a long-time friend of Barack Obama from Chicago and I refered this person this blog. Hopefully some of Barack’s other colleagues/advisors will see this blog too.
Offtopic: after reading that post (and watching Paulson’s talk yesterday about the need to securitize more loans), the only thing that has made me feel better all day is this puppy-cam:
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/shiba-inu-puppy-cam
Sorry! …but seriously, five minutes of puppy-cam therapy might make you feel better too.
…and on a slightly more serious note, will someone take that bazooka out of Paulson’s pocket? Now, there’s craters everywhere.
Offtopic: after reading that post (and watching Paulson’s talk yesterday about the need to securitize more loans), the only thing that has made me feel better all day is this puppy-cam:
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/shiba-inu-puppy-cam
Sorry! …but seriously, five minutes of puppy-cam therapy might make you feel better too.
…and on a slightly more serious note, will someone take that bazooka out of Paulson’s pocket? Now, there’s craters everywhere.
Lets watch how the Bloomberg suit against the Fed develops. Do these guys think their flash in the pan solutions are going anywhere without the transparency they have claimed to espouse?
I’m not sure if “transition” and “slow” will be terms used to describe what happens between now and January 20th.
Lets watch how the Bloomberg suit against the Fed develops. Do these guys think their flash in the pan solutions are going anywhere without the transparency they have claimed to espouse?
I’m not sure if “transition” and “slow” will be terms used to describe what happens between now and January 20th.
What’s truly infuriating was/is the attempt to blame this on all the little people who took the bad loans.
I’ve been wondering, for quite a while now – how all these numbers – this crisis – seem so much bigger than a collection of bad mortgages.
This post and the Michael Lewis article have provided me with my own “aha” moment.
Thanks Jon.
What’s truly infuriating was/is the attempt to blame this on all the little people who took the bad loans.
I’ve been wondering, for quite a while now – how all these numbers – this crisis – seem so much bigger than a collection of bad mortgages.
This post and the Michael Lewis article have provided me with my own “aha” moment.
Thanks Jon.
What’s truly infuriating was/is the attempt to blame this on all the little people who took the bad loans.
I’ve been wondering, for quite a while now – how all these numbers – this crisis – seem so much bigger than a collection of bad mortgages.
This post and the Michael Lewis article have provided me with my own “aha” moment.
Thanks Jon.
Great blog, Jon — and I am grateful that you take the time to articulate the complexities in recognizable detail. I highly recommend the whole of Liar’s Poker, along with the more difficult and less fun Fooled by Randomness to your readers!
Interestingly, I think this all harkens back to the point last week about how often a single kind of activity (and personality) is rewarded with visible success in the corporate and financial world. Solving big complicated systems problems — and there is no more complicated systems problem than the current global economy — is a job for people who have an unusual mix of (1) knowledge (2) patience with thinking through the system implications of an action and (3) the inclination to act. Items 1 and 2 often go together in some settings like academia and think tanks, but items (2) and (3) so rarely go together that anyone who displays (2) is assumed to lack (3) and is summarily dismissed from the world of action.
I am hoping that what we have seen of Mr. Obama’s ability to keep a strong group around him, be thoughtful, and keep up with the remarkable demands for action made by a very long and hard-fought campaign is an indicator that he has both the sense to choose, the patience to understand, and the ability to help us the public understand the value of real solutions instead of the instant not-so-magic of sand-in-the-air activity and decision-making.
Great blog, Jon — and I am grateful that you take the time to articulate the complexities in recognizable detail. I highly recommend the whole of Liar’s Poker, along with the more difficult and less fun Fooled by Randomness to your readers!
Interestingly, I think this all harkens back to the point last week about how often a single kind of activity (and personality) is rewarded with visible success in the corporate and financial world. Solving big complicated systems problems — and there is no more complicated systems problem than the current global economy — is a job for people who have an unusual mix of (1) knowledge (2) patience with thinking through the system implications of an action and (3) the inclination to act. Items 1 and 2 often go together in some settings like academia and think tanks, but items (2) and (3) so rarely go together that anyone who displays (2) is assumed to lack (3) and is summarily dismissed from the world of action.
I am hoping that what we have seen of Mr. Obama’s ability to keep a strong group around him, be thoughtful, and keep up with the remarkable demands for action made by a very long and hard-fought campaign is an indicator that he has both the sense to choose, the patience to understand, and the ability to help us the public understand the value of real solutions instead of the instant not-so-magic of sand-in-the-air activity and decision-making.
Great blog, Jon — and I am grateful that you take the time to articulate the complexities in recognizable detail. I highly recommend the whole of Liar’s Poker, along with the more difficult and less fun Fooled by Randomness to your readers!
Interestingly, I think this all harkens back to the point last week about how often a single kind of activity (and personality) is rewarded with visible success in the corporate and financial world. Solving big complicated systems problems — and there is no more complicated systems problem than the current global economy — is a job for people who have an unusual mix of (1) knowledge (2) patience with thinking through the system implications of an action and (3) the inclination to act. Items 1 and 2 often go together in some settings like academia and think tanks, but items (2) and (3) so rarely go together that anyone who displays (2) is assumed to lack (3) and is summarily dismissed from the world of action.
I am hoping that what we have seen of Mr. Obama’s ability to keep a strong group around him, be thoughtful, and keep up with the remarkable demands for action made by a very long and hard-fought campaign is an indicator that he has both the sense to choose, the patience to understand, and the ability to help us the public understand the value of real solutions instead of the instant not-so-magic of sand-in-the-air activity and decision-making.
Great post, Jon – and thanks especially for the link to the Michael Lewis article.
If you can, I’d like to hear more from you on this. How do you think it might be possible to sell an alternate plan based on such a gradual transition? Even if the Paulsons of this world are properly discredited, floating the alternative strategy is going to be a big challenge.
Great post, Jon – and thanks especially for the link to the Michael Lewis article.
If you can, I’d like to hear more from you on this. How do you think it might be possible to sell an alternate plan based on such a gradual transition? Even if the Paulsons of this world are properly discredited, floating the alternative strategy is going to be a big challenge.
Great post, Jon – and thanks especially for the link to the Michael Lewis article.
If you can, I’d like to hear more from you on this. How do you think it might be possible to sell an alternate plan based on such a gradual transition? Even if the Paulsons of this world are properly discredited, floating the alternative strategy is going to be a big challenge.
How about some Starbucks branded solar latte makers and a Manolo hybrid or two? Hell, it seemed to work for Eddie Bauer branded SUVs…
Tres vert, tres chic products is what we need.
How about some Starbucks branded solar latte makers and a Manolo hybrid or two? Hell, it seemed to work for Eddie Bauer branded SUVs…
Tres vert, tres chic products is what we need.
Penelope- What we need to produce is leaders with strong synapses between right and left brain. Balanced humans.
Penelope- What we need to produce is leaders with strong synapses between right and left brain. Balanced humans.
Penelope- What we need to produce is leaders with strong synapses between right and left brain. Balanced humans.
Great article. I seem to keep my finances in order and live within my means. Your findings paint a pretty bleak picture.
Great article. I seem to keep my finances in order and live within my means. Your findings paint a pretty bleak picture.
The New York Review of Books has just published a very interesting essay by Soros on the Regan-era policies that led to the creation of the Super Bubble, and the precise nature of the deregulatory view that precipitated the crisis we’re seeing.
It’s fascinating stuff, though not terribly flattering for Greenspan. More like an indictment, really. And while it makes an airtight case for the kind of regulation that’s necessary, it also offers a strong word of caution against the type of regulation that should be avoided, due to its highly corruptible nature, and the obvious source of corruption in the DC lobbyist establishment.
The New York Review of Books has just published a very interesting essay by Soros on the Regan-era policies that led to the creation of the Super Bubble, and the precise nature of the deregulatory view that precipitated the crisis we’re seeing.
It’s fascinating stuff, though not terribly flattering for Greenspan. More like an indictment, really. And while it makes an airtight case for the kind of regulation that’s necessary, it also offers a strong word of caution against the type of regulation that should be avoided, due to its highly corruptible nature, and the obvious source of corruption in the DC lobbyist establishment.
The New York Review of Books has just published a very interesting essay by Soros on the Regan-era policies that led to the creation of the Super Bubble, and the precise nature of the deregulatory view that precipitated the crisis we’re seeing.
It’s fascinating stuff, though not terribly flattering for Greenspan. More like an indictment, really. And while it makes an airtight case for the kind of regulation that’s necessary, it also offers a strong word of caution against the type of regulation that should be avoided, due to its highly corruptible nature, and the obvious source of corruption in the DC lobbyist establishment.
@penelope: To add to Jon’s comment, wikipedia has an article on bicameralism, the theory that ancient human minds worked with a god-follower division (left brain-right brain) until about the time of Homer. The increasing complexity of social structures as civilization and exchange among different tribe increased (communication density and type complexity), bicameralism began to break down in favor of self-aware introspection. It is a controversial theory historically but there is some evidence to support it physically. Bicameralism is associated with religion, schizophrenia, and so on. One controversy is the notion that consciousness is a social construct. Another is the timing of androgynous emergence. In newer theories that combine complexity and chaos theories of emergence, it is possible if not tested that the environment or society plays a role but that the individual genetic predispositiion has to be there as well.
In some art circles, there is reference to the divine androgyne, or androgyny as a more advanced human consciousness than bicameralism or even statistically normal left-right integration. In college, we devised tests for determining distributions of the mind model among populations we had access to. The results surprised us although they were themselves statistically suspicious given the test methods.
Note that the symbol of divine androgyny has a sexual component but that connotates bisexuality. I am not referring to that but to the archetype found in several ancient civilizations such as India as an early symbol of left-right brain integration and its effect on human thought and social evolution.
It is a central tenet of Hermetic teaching as well as tantrism. There is a French term “berdache” found in some modern shamanic traditions that emphasizes the role of sexual expression in spiritual expression and development. It is a component of many goddess-centric religions.
Note the surface contradiction that bicamerality is associated with religious thinking yet androgyny as a developmental practice is most often found in alternative or ancient religious practices including those who iconize the divine androgyne as the combination of the Christ and the Magdalene.
If there is as some theorize both a social and an individual component, then some societies inhibit or give advantage to androgynous emergence among those where the potential exists.
An idea pondered by web theorists is if the introduction of a ubiquitous open and highly dense system such as the web is accelerating the rate of androgyny and therefore if societies that inhibit it such as China are actually inhibiting their own social and physical evolution out of fear of loss of control to the new humans, or are unwittingly accelerating it. An intriguing result in our college testing was the very high scores for androgyny among the local police force. Again, the test instruments may be at fault or as we theorized, the intense paranoia of the job actually heightened the left-right communication through a strengthening of the corpus callosum.
@penelope: To add to Jon’s comment, wikipedia has an article on bicameralism, the theory that ancient human minds worked with a god-follower division (left brain-right brain) until about the time of Homer. The increasing complexity of social structures as civilization and exchange among different tribe increased (communication density and type complexity), bicameralism began to break down in favor of self-aware introspection. It is a controversial theory historically but there is some evidence to support it physically. Bicameralism is associated with religion, schizophrenia, and so on. One controversy is the notion that consciousness is a social construct. Another is the timing of androgynous emergence. In newer theories that combine complexity and chaos theories of emergence, it is possible if not tested that the environment or society plays a role but that the individual genetic predispositiion has to be there as well.
In some art circles, there is reference to the divine androgyne, or androgyny as a more advanced human consciousness than bicameralism or even statistically normal left-right integration. In college, we devised tests for determining distributions of the mind model among populations we had access to. The results surprised us although they were themselves statistically suspicious given the test methods.
Note that the symbol of divine androgyny has a sexual component but that connotates bisexuality. I am not referring to that but to the archetype found in several ancient civilizations such as India as an early symbol of left-right brain integration and its effect on human thought and social evolution.
It is a central tenet of Hermetic teaching as well as tantrism. There is a French term “berdache” found in some modern shamanic traditions that emphasizes the role of sexual expression in spiritual expression and development. It is a component of many goddess-centric religions.
Note the surface contradiction that bicamerality is associated with religious thinking yet androgyny as a developmental practice is most often found in alternative or ancient religious practices including those who iconize the divine androgyne as the combination of the Christ and the Magdalene.
If there is as some theorize both a social and an individual component, then some societies inhibit or give advantage to androgynous emergence among those where the potential exists.
An idea pondered by web theorists is if the introduction of a ubiquitous open and highly dense system such as the web is accelerating the rate of androgyny and therefore if societies that inhibit it such as China are actually inhibiting their own social and physical evolution out of fear of loss of control to the new humans, or are unwittingly accelerating it. An intriguing result in our college testing was the very high scores for androgyny among the local police force. Again, the test instruments may be at fault or as we theorized, the intense paranoia of the job actually heightened the left-right communication through a strengthening of the corpus callosum.
@penelope: To add to Jon’s comment, wikipedia has an article on bicameralism, the theory that ancient human minds worked with a god-follower division (left brain-right brain) until about the time of Homer. The increasing complexity of social structures as civilization and exchange among different tribe increased (communication density and type complexity), bicameralism began to break down in favor of self-aware introspection. It is a controversial theory historically but there is some evidence to support it physically. Bicameralism is associated with religion, schizophrenia, and so on. One controversy is the notion that consciousness is a social construct. Another is the timing of androgynous emergence. In newer theories that combine complexity and chaos theories of emergence, it is possible if not tested that the environment or society plays a role but that the individual genetic predispositiion has to be there as well.
In some art circles, there is reference to the divine androgyne, or androgyny as a more advanced human consciousness than bicameralism or even statistically normal left-right integration. In college, we devised tests for determining distributions of the mind model among populations we had access to. The results surprised us although they were themselves statistically suspicious given the test methods.
Note that the symbol of divine androgyny has a sexual component but that connotates bisexuality. I am not referring to that but to the archetype found in several ancient civilizations such as India as an early symbol of left-right brain integration and its effect on human thought and social evolution.
It is a central tenet of Hermetic teaching as well as tantrism. There is a French term “berdache” found in some modern shamanic traditions that emphasizes the role of sexual expression in spiritual expression and development. It is a component of many goddess-centric religions.
Note the surface contradiction that bicamerality is associated with religious thinking yet androgyny as a developmental practice is most often found in alternative or ancient religious practices including those who iconize the divine androgyne as the combination of the Christ and the Magdalene.
If there is as some theorize both a social and an individual component, then some societies inhibit or give advantage to androgynous emergence among those where the potential exists.
An idea pondered by web theorists is if the introduction of a ubiquitous open and highly dense system such as the web is accelerating the rate of androgyny and therefore if societies that inhibit it such as China are actually inhibiting their own social and physical evolution out of fear of loss of control to the new humans, or are unwittingly accelerating it. An intriguing result in our college testing was the very high scores for androgyny among the local police force. Again, the test instruments may be at fault or as we theorized, the intense paranoia of the job actually heightened the left-right communication through a strengthening of the corpus callosum.
Good post Len. Thanks. I know I’m getting to be repetitive with my constant harping that either/or (bicameral) is a human construct for quick processing of the world, while the world actually requires ask for more sophisticated responses to truly keep up. Nice to see some reinforcement.
Good post Len. Thanks. I know I’m getting to be repetitive with my constant harping that either/or (bicameral) is a human construct for quick processing of the world, while the world actually requires ask for more sophisticated responses to truly keep up. Nice to see some reinforcement.
It’s a provocative topic, Ken, and in my experience in the culture where I live, a highly closed one because it suggests that some parts of the moral right are wrong and yet some emphases are right. Read on.
An interesting research project would be to see what has the greater effect, the interchange rates of information among different communities made possible by the Internet and quite recent (consider thee or me would have been jailed for the emails we send in and out of Moscow freely now), or the fact that many more people now have to type.
These may be combinatoric. We saw a higher degree of integration among those who’s profession required left hand right hand coordination (eg, musicians) and possibly that the higher statistical integration among the left-handed could be attributed to their having to adapt to a dominantly right handed culture.
It’s all theory and speculation, yet it seems possible to strengthen hemispheric communications in a single generation or individual even where not specifically genetically endowed. It would be a fun project.
Then it’s about content.
Another question is whether or not societies have achieved this at some distribution in the past but there are cultural stumbling blocks to perpetuating it. For example, the heavy emphasis on sex may lead to a stumbling block or suboptimum minima and one could speculate that is the emphasis on brahmacharya in eastern philosophies as well as the emphasis on so-called austerities as a means to obtain psychic power.
My Zen master told me once: ‘The siddhi are real enough. They aren’t reliable enough. Common sense is better.”
It’s a provocative topic, Ken, and in my experience in the culture where I live, a highly closed one because it suggests that some parts of the moral right are wrong and yet some emphases are right. Read on.
An interesting research project would be to see what has the greater effect, the interchange rates of information among different communities made possible by the Internet and quite recent (consider thee or me would have been jailed for the emails we send in and out of Moscow freely now), or the fact that many more people now have to type.
These may be combinatoric. We saw a higher degree of integration among those who’s profession required left hand right hand coordination (eg, musicians) and possibly that the higher statistical integration among the left-handed could be attributed to their having to adapt to a dominantly right handed culture.
It’s all theory and speculation, yet it seems possible to strengthen hemispheric communications in a single generation or individual even where not specifically genetically endowed. It would be a fun project.
Then it’s about content.
Another question is whether or not societies have achieved this at some distribution in the past but there are cultural stumbling blocks to perpetuating it. For example, the heavy emphasis on sex may lead to a stumbling block or suboptimum minima and one could speculate that is the emphasis on brahmacharya in eastern philosophies as well as the emphasis on so-called austerities as a means to obtain psychic power.
My Zen master told me once: ‘The siddhi are real enough. They aren’t reliable enough. Common sense is better.”
It’s a provocative topic, Ken, and in my experience in the culture where I live, a highly closed one because it suggests that some parts of the moral right are wrong and yet some emphases are right. Read on.
An interesting research project would be to see what has the greater effect, the interchange rates of information among different communities made possible by the Internet and quite recent (consider thee or me would have been jailed for the emails we send in and out of Moscow freely now), or the fact that many more people now have to type.
These may be combinatoric. We saw a higher degree of integration among those who’s profession required left hand right hand coordination (eg, musicians) and possibly that the higher statistical integration among the left-handed could be attributed to their having to adapt to a dominantly right handed culture.
It’s all theory and speculation, yet it seems possible to strengthen hemispheric communications in a single generation or individual even where not specifically genetically endowed. It would be a fun project.
Then it’s about content.
Another question is whether or not societies have achieved this at some distribution in the past but there are cultural stumbling blocks to perpetuating it. For example, the heavy emphasis on sex may lead to a stumbling block or suboptimum minima and one could speculate that is the emphasis on brahmacharya in eastern philosophies as well as the emphasis on so-called austerities as a means to obtain psychic power.
My Zen master told me once: ‘The siddhi are real enough. They aren’t reliable enough. Common sense is better.”
Well, Hank Paulson is probably a great guy and a financial genius.
But if he was a surgeon, I would not let him take out my appendix.
“Oops!” is one word you don’t want to keep hearing from your Treasury secretary or your surgeon. — Bernie
Well, Hank Paulson is probably a great guy and a financial genius.
But if he was a surgeon, I would not let him take out my appendix.
“Oops!” is one word you don’t want to keep hearing from your Treasury secretary or your surgeon. — Bernie
Len, although there is much speculation on the topic, there is also an increasing amount of brain science. Since a lot of it grew out of the questions relating to how-different-are-girls-from-boys (beyond the obvious), much of the early stuff focused on the differneces in the basic biochemistry, pre-partum development on neural pathways, and the ways that engineering interacted with post-partum phenomena to reinforce or mitigate those differences. There has also been a substantial amount of work that is not focused on gender and other biological infrastructure but on the differences created in neural pathways by varying educational styles, the interaction with the development of language (spoken and sign), the impact of play and music and a whole bunch of interesting things. And there is much more science to be done before we can really parse the cause-effect/nature-nurture/spiritual-physical interactions. But it’s interesting stuff, every step along the way.
However, this I know from years of living in the world, learning, being with others who are trying to learn, teaching, mentoring, coaching: Pavlov wasn’t wrong — if something is rewarded over and over and over again, many people will work very hard to learn what they need to do to get the reward.
I think Jon’s underlying point about developing leaders who are balanced human beings stands . . . . No matter the raw biological material, if we make an effort to teach people to do more and think differently than “what comes naturally” to each of them and create a society that rewards balance and “interspherical connections” as they are occasionally called, the chances are surely greater of creating balanced thoughtful leaders than if we don’t.
Len, although there is much speculation on the topic, there is also an increasing amount of brain science. Since a lot of it grew out of the questions relating to how-different-are-girls-from-boys (beyond the obvious), much of the early stuff focused on the differneces in the basic biochemistry, pre-partum development on neural pathways, and the ways that engineering interacted with post-partum phenomena to reinforce or mitigate those differences. There has also been a substantial amount of work that is not focused on gender and other biological infrastructure but on the differences created in neural pathways by varying educational styles, the interaction with the development of language (spoken and sign), the impact of play and music and a whole bunch of interesting things. And there is much more science to be done before we can really parse the cause-effect/nature-nurture/spiritual-physical interactions. But it’s interesting stuff, every step along the way.
However, this I know from years of living in the world, learning, being with others who are trying to learn, teaching, mentoring, coaching: Pavlov wasn’t wrong — if something is rewarded over and over and over again, many people will work very hard to learn what they need to do to get the reward.
I think Jon’s underlying point about developing leaders who are balanced human beings stands . . . . No matter the raw biological material, if we make an effort to teach people to do more and think differently than “what comes naturally” to each of them and create a society that rewards balance and “interspherical connections” as they are occasionally called, the chances are surely greater of creating balanced thoughtful leaders than if we don’t.
A society that is balanced balances its leaders but the leaders use the media to lean the society.
Pavlov found the lock. Skinner made the key. Semioticians found the feed. Computer scientists made the bowls. Marketeers fill them. Politicians conduct the profits to the minds behind the masks.
Tools shape the hands that shape the tools. It’s an image machine for evolution and control.
We’ve made many discoveries about the means to shape thought and infuse intension. This is where Rand, if not always economically appropriate, was psychologically bang on. Any one who wants to be more than a specimen in the menagerie has to be smarter and tougher than the trainers.
Yahoo.
A society that is balanced balances its leaders but the leaders use the media to lean the society.
Pavlov found the lock. Skinner made the key. Semioticians found the feed. Computer scientists made the bowls. Marketeers fill them. Politicians conduct the profits to the minds behind the masks.
Tools shape the hands that shape the tools. It’s an image machine for evolution and control.
We’ve made many discoveries about the means to shape thought and infuse intension. This is where Rand, if not always economically appropriate, was psychologically bang on. Any one who wants to be more than a specimen in the menagerie has to be smarter and tougher than the trainers.
Yahoo.
Great post. I’m a non-US (UK) non-specialist business school academic trying to make sense of the meltdown. I have also found Lewis’s portfolio article excellent. How it fits with the rest of my efforts to figure it out can be found in a paper `From Demutualization to Meltdown’ which can be downloaded from http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1296482
Although the paper is focused upon the collapse and nationalizaton of two UK banks that were previously mutual building societies – Northern Rock and Bradford & Bingley – the emphasis is upon the role of securitization re. MBSs and CDSs.
I’d welcome comments and criticisms.
And apologies in advance for it being a much less lively read that Lewis! It’s destined for a special issue – on the finanical crisis – of and academic journal, Critical Perspectives on International Business, which is being rushed out and will appear early in the New Year.
Great post. I’m a non-US (UK) non-specialist business school academic trying to make sense of the meltdown. I have also found Lewis’s portfolio article excellent. How it fits with the rest of my efforts to figure it out can be found in a paper `From Demutualization to Meltdown’ which can be downloaded from http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1296482
Although the paper is focused upon the collapse and nationalizaton of two UK banks that were previously mutual building societies – Northern Rock and Bradford & Bingley – the emphasis is upon the role of securitization re. MBSs and CDSs.
I’d welcome comments and criticisms.
And apologies in advance for it being a much less lively read that Lewis! It’s destined for a special issue – on the finanical crisis – of and academic journal, Critical Perspectives on International Business, which is being rushed out and will appear early in the New Year.
Great post. I’m a non-US (UK) non-specialist business school academic trying to make sense of the meltdown. I have also found Lewis’s portfolio article excellent. How it fits with the rest of my efforts to figure it out can be found in a paper `From Demutualization to Meltdown’ which can be downloaded from http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1296482
Although the paper is focused upon the collapse and nationalizaton of two UK banks that were previously mutual building societies – Northern Rock and Bradford & Bingley – the emphasis is upon the role of securitization re. MBSs and CDSs.
I’d welcome comments and criticisms.
And apologies in advance for it being a much less lively read that Lewis! It’s destined for a special issue – on the finanical crisis – of and academic journal, Critical Perspectives on International Business, which is being rushed out and will appear early in the New Year.