The Infinite & the Infinitesimal: Space Exploration, the Hadron Collider & Mankind's Perspective

From the cosmos and astrophysics to the subatomic world and quantum mechanics, physicists search for the context and history of what we are, where we came from, and where we might be going. It's only a piece of the puzzle, we know, and the work of evolutionary biologists and paleontologist most often seems to have more relevance to the earthly origins and existence we can better relate to. But it is the work of physicists in the infinite expanse of the cosmos, and the infinitesimal world of the subatomic--the beyond-our-world science (and science fiction)--that so captivates our imagination.

Other than Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking may be the best known physicist in the world today. This is because of his notable professional accomplishments, of course, but also his popular, illustrated books on physics and the universe--and his much-publicized, extreme physical disability from Lou Gehrig's Disease. So, when he makes a public stand in the area of space exploration policy, he more likely finds recognition and an attentive audience.

Hawking believes it is important that we again make manned space travel a policy priority in the US and around the world. And in a Cosmos magazine article, "The Final Frontier," he makes all the arguments for the proven importance of expanding space exploration and renewing our commitment to manned space travel, including the always-titillating possibility of finding extra-terrestrial life. But he adds another which could be a little unnerving:

The human race has existed as a separate species for about two million years. Civilisation began about 10,000 years ago, and the rate of development has been steadily increasing. But, if the human race is to continue for another million years, we will have to boldly go where no one has gone before.

But as Hawking looks outward across the universe for greater knowledge and a better perspective of life on earth, many of his cousin quantum physicists peer into the physical world of the very smallest things, the world of subatomic particles. Colliding subatomic particles--protons, for example--fired at each other near the speed of light through miles-long "accelerators" have intrigued physicists and provided new insights and understandings about the world of quantum mechanics for many decades. And for some time now, the European nuclear research organization CERN has been about building the largest of all accelerators, the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, Switzerland. And after getting past some concern that theoretically, at least, a small "black hole" could be created, the physicists of the world appear unabashedly giddy about the prospect that sometime in 2009, we may have a much better understanding of the conditions in the universe less than a second after the Big Bang, the beginning of everything as we understand it. A CNN.com article, among many others, and Wikipedia chronicle the background of the collider and the possibilities for the work that will soon be done there.

After the plain language explanations of process, purpose, and possibilities, however, I am quickly lost in the arcane scientific jargon and mathematics. Perhaps that is your experience, too. But some things, at least, seem clear to me. The more we know, and the greater the perspective we gain on the reality of the larger worlds that extend infinitely outward and the smaller world that extends indefinitely inward, the more we should feel compelled to understand and address the realities and limitations of this very small earth-world we live on. The more commonly shared these understandings, the more common ground may be found for coordinated action with the collection of nations and peoples who share this little globe with us. Together, then, standing at the crossroads of understanding the greatest and smallest things--miraculously, wonderfully evolved and reasoning creatures that we are--aren't we more likely to meet our collective responsibilities in managing our place and future together?

And more, can't we better test and assess how well our various religious, philosophical, or day-to-day experiential perspectives serve humanity and God--or the truth, purpose and potential of creation and existence, however understood? Faced with the advancing scope of these unfolding realities and implications, shouldn't there be a greater sense of humility and transcendence of place occasioned by our search for meaningful identity, and recognition of our fragile existence in this much greater scheme of things?

http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/node/2209/full

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/09/10/lhc.collider/

Better Regulated Capitalism is Better Capitalism

An MSNBC article today asks whether this worst financial crisis since the Great Depression will bring about "The End of American-Style Capitalism?" Of course, your answer depends on how you define and how you view America's brand of free-market capitalism. Not all of us agree.

Much of the American marketplace is well and wisely regulated. We've learned over the years--the decades--that unregulated business and markets are decidedly not in society's interest. Yet, let's be clear: given human nature, it is undisputed that a market economy provides the strongest, healthiest, and wisest incentives for a productive society. The opportunities and incentives bring out the most creative and productive qualities of individuals and business organizations in society. But, regrettably, they also bring out the most aggressive, selfish, winner-take-all attitudes and behavior, which too often move them toward and past the borders of professionally, ethically and publicly responsible behavior.

Over the last century or so, industry after industry, in one marketplace after another, have too often proved their lack of accountability to society and its citizens: workplace safety, fair wages, environmental responsibility, market manipulation, truth in advertising and selling, quality and safety of products, among other areas of abuse. And some of these issues continue to pose occasional problems even today. After all, the nature of man and the dynamics of markets remain dominant factors, even with some level of regulation in most all these areas. And now, many of today's businesses are looking for ways to abandon any responsibility for employee pensions and health care.

And yet, throughout my 24 years as a corporate tax and financial executive, my conclusion has been that business and market players most often play by the rules set out for them. And they play to win; they have to. For very often, if they don't win, they lose, or their company loses, and their employees and shareholders lose. That's the nature of a very competitive marketplace, and the well understood natural rules that obtain there. The stakes are often large and very personal.

Human nature and these natural market dynamics often move participants to compete as aggressively and as close to the legal and ethical boundaries as they can. Naturally, they oppose new laws, taxes, and regulations that would constrain them or reduce profitability, and they lobby and contribute as much money as possible to sympathetic legislators who might support them. Then, together, they contest and attempt to eliminate existing laws or regulations wherever possible. They employ public advocacy to assert that the limitations and burdens of more regulation will weaken American business, the American economy, and American employment. But, in most cases, it is just not so. It's not about what is best for society. It is about what is best for them. They are playing to win, and aggressive legal and public advocacy are part of how the system works.

The only problem is that the advocates for society's broader interests are not as strong, well-financed, or as effective as business interests. They emphasize, as well as they can, that a particular economic model enjoys support by a society only when it best serves all the interests of that society. One might reasonably think it should be those broader public interests and the health of society--all elements of society--that define how business and markets will best serve them, not visa versa. Yet, business interests and free-market ideologues too often advocate quite unabashedly and unrepentantly for the opposite--that the best societies grow out of the most unregulated marketplaces. That is, what is best for the market, is best for society. And their definition of "best" is a "free," unregulated market where "trickle-down" economics define social responsibility. To the extent that remains the view of many Americans, it is an increasingly isolated view in today's modern world.

Unfortunately, predictably, when the competitive environment of a poorly regulated marketplace grows white-hot, greater "creativity" and "productivity" (read that, profitability) is too often found only in rationalized ventures beyond the reasonable boundaries of the law, professional ethics, or public responsibility. And the rationalizations are just as creative.

And as this volatile, often destructive process has played out again and again, needed, prudent regulation has often proceeded in its wake. But one area where regulation has a spotty and uneven history is the financial markets: S&Ls, mortgage companies, banks, and particularly the investment banking houses. Free-market conservatives and ideologues, when in power, have sometimes successfully deregulated in these market areas, as well as turning back needed new regulation. Such was the case with regulation of institutional leverage limits and some of the more exotic and risky derivative financial instruments which are at the heart of the current market crisis. We can only hope that will now change.

A healthy market economy is essential to the most successful and healthy societies. But prudent market regulation is also essential to control for the excesses of human nature under such powerful incentives. Aggressive, unregulated free-market ideology is today an anachronism. It is a conceptual vestige of the 19th and mid-20th century. By now, we should be beyond all narrow, limiting ideologies. Let's hold fast to the best ideas about market processes and productivity, and how markets best reward effective producers, yes, but also insist that the role of the market's institutions and ambitions be understood as subordinated to a societal obligation to finance and provide--directly and indirectly--for the greater needs and interests of an advanced and humane society. For, at best, the market is the economic engine that provides for the needs of the greater society, no more, no less.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27112481

Treasury Mulls Cash for Bank Stock

Cash for stock. Straight up. That's what Treasury is considering now. It's simpler, to be sure, and would take us out of the business of pricing, owning, managing, and reselling all those junk securities, and the additional cost, I might add. I believe it was my own RI Sen. Jack Reed who pressed for getting stock warrants with any purhcase of distressed mortgage-backed securities--although it was not clear to me just how that would work or how the two elements would tie together from a value/pricing perspective. But I don't remember hearing about unequivocal authority to simply, directly infuse capital into financial institutions for equity shares. Perhaps they just reasonably infer that authority as a functionally equivalent alternative way of putting money into the system: just take back the equity shares, but leave the junk securities behind.

I've read references to research indicating a history of success with such an approach in a lot of cases in smaller economies, many academic economists also now back it, and Britain announced such an approach yesterday. So I am actually relieved that we may take this simpler, more streamlined approach, and not get mired in valuing, managing and reselling all those distressed securities--at least in appropriate cases. They would have to be confident that the chosen institutions will survive or else the equity shares can become worthless, and the taxpayers would have been better served by owning the distressed securities that in the aggregate will likely be worth near what we pay for them. And I assume that as soon as the banks are healthy again--and our equity shares show a nice profit--the Treasury (we) will get out of the business of owning financial institutions, and into the business of better regulating them.

We're doing a lot of things right: increasing FDIC insurance, buying corporate commercial paper where necessary, and leading a coordinated international interest rate reduction. And while I really like Bernanke's and Paulson's current emphasis about getting it right, as well as getting it done as fast as practicable, I'll feel better when we actually get some significant infusions of cash into the financial system.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27094961/

60 Minutes: Crisis Phase 3, "Credit Default Swaps"

I think you should see and understand this. CBC's "60 Minutes" last night exposed in understandable terms the most complicated and incredible last shoe to drop in this increasingly frightening financial crisis. It is about the last irresponsible act of investment banking's principal role in a drama they primarily authored.

They encouraged and exploited the unprincipled expansion of the sub-prime mortgage market by buying and packaging portfolios of these mortgages and selling high-risk securities backed by them. You know that. And I discussed their evolution in my e-mail/blog post of 9/29/08. But then to shore up the marketability of these high-risk, sub-prime mortgage-backed securities, they also bought and sold a form of complicated hedging/"insurance" contract to cover them called "credit default swaps (CDSs)." They were like insurance, but with no reserves to back them up. "60 Minutes" called it the "Shadow Market," and it's nominal value may be as high as $60 trillion--give or take $10 trillion or so. Yes, trillion, but they are very difficult to value reliably. And whatever their value, it is disappearing fast as they too are being defaulted on.

In my earlier e-mail/blog article, which was primarily about supporting the rescue plan, I focused only on the principal offenders (the investment bankers) and their central weapon of choice (the sub-prime mortgage-backed security), trying to keep to basic themes in what was alread a long article. But it was pointed up to me that I should have addressed the complicit role of government, and it also became clear from my reading that the credit default swaps were playing a bigger role than I realized. So I edited my 9/29 post to add some coverage of the sad supporting role of the federal government, but primarily to add this paragraph about CDSs:

And the hedging/insuring vehicle of choice for the mortgage-backed investments was often the so-called "credit default swap" (CDS), a non-regulated, highly complex "insurance" instrument that could be structured, valued and understood, if at all, only using space-age mathematical models. Then speculative players started buying them, too. The investment banks, commercial banks and insurance companies that created and owned them (without any regulatory requirement for adequate loss reserves) eventually had no meaningful way of dealing with or representing what the value at risk in these huge portfolios might be. Warren Buffet referred to them as "financial instruments of mass destruction."

So, as the housing market fell and mortgages defaulted, the sub-prime mortgage-backed securities market also defaulted and failed, in turn so did the credit default swaps in the face of the huge obligations with no reserves to cover them. The failure of these instruments played a major role in the failure or weakness of many of these institutions, including Bear-Stearns, Lehman Bros., and particularly in the demise of AIG. (Hyde Park's Corner, http://www.hydeparkgh.blogspot.com/2008/09/bail-out-bastards-we-have-to.html )

But from the piece by "60 Minutes," I can only conclude that I still failed to appreciate how frightening a role the CDSs are playing. Steve Croft interviews several with insider knowledge, including James Grant, who for many years has been one of the most respected and knowlegeable commentators on credit markets (Grants Interest Rate Observer). He unflinchingly, matter-of-factly characterized our situation: "This is a full-blown financial storm and one that comes around perhaps once every 50 or 100 years. This is the real thing."

You can see the entire "60 Minutes" piece as reported by clicking on the link below, then clicking on the video picture that says "Wall Street."

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/10/05/60minutes/main4502454.shtml

The Rescue Plan & Implications: Charlie Rose interviews Warren Buffet

Last night, I happened on a live, hour-long Charlie Rose interview with Warren Buffet on PBS. It is worth seeing, whether you are as big a fan of Buffet as I am, or not. Is the situation as serious as so many people are treating it? Buffet calls it "an economic Pearl Harbor." He talks candidly about the rescue plan/"bail out" and why he thinks something like it is necessary now, and about the related economic issues and implications now and in the future. And importantly, he asks us to bear in mind that the rescue plan will likely avert financial market and economic disaster, but will not keep us from continuing down the road of recession we are now on--and likely will be for some time. Good stuff.

You can see it by clicking here or on the link below and then clicking on the video screen with the picture of Mr. Buffet. If you are not that familiar with Warren Buffet or his background, accomplishments and philosophies, your can find a pretty informative summary on Wikipedia.com.

http://www.charlierose.com/shows/2008/10/01/1/an-exclusive-conversation-with-warren-buffett

Bail Out the Miscreant Bastards (To Protect Us All)

Saving the world is a thankless task. The only thing beyond dispute in the $700 billion plan of Hank Paulson, the treasury secretary, and Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, is that everyone can find something in it to dislike. The left accuses it of ripping off taxpayers to save Wall Street, the right damns it as socialism; economists disparage its technicalities, political scientists its sweeping powers. The administration gave ground to Congress, George Bush delivered a televised appeal and Barack Obama and John McCain suspended the presidential campaign. Even so, as The Economist went to press, the differences remained. There was a chance that Congress would say no. [And today it did.]

Spending a sum of money that could buy you a war in Iraq should not come easily; and the notion of any bail-out is deeply troubling to any self-respecting capitalist. Against that stand two overriding arguments. First, this is a plan that could work (see article). And, second, the potential costs of producing nothing, or too little too slowly, include a financial collapse and a deep recession spilling across the world: those far outweigh any plausible estimate of the bail-out’s cost.

--The Economist (10.3.08), Leaders, "America's Bail-Out Plan"

I've not cared for investment bankers, not for the most part. And across the final 15 years or so of my career as a corporate tax executive with adjunct acquisition/divestiture responsibilities, I had the opportunity to work with many from Goldman, Salomon, Morgan Stanley, and other investment banking houses. To me, most were just unctuous salespersons--but with Ivy-League MBAs. I came to distrust them, and disrespect them, too.

I know that their principal functions are important, and especially the essential function of efficiently facilitating the flow of capital from where it is available to where it is needed. Over the years, they structured and marketed increasingly complicated equity, preferred equity, and debt capital offerings for participants in US and world markets--and the hybrid instruments and structures they designed became ever more creative. These would include "derivative" instruments such as "interest rate swaps" and "foreign currency swaps," primarily hedging vehicles, which also became increasingly complex.

Some of these instruments were quite ingenious. But as could be predicted, after exhausting real creativity and pressing up against the constraints of common sense, they turned increasingly to raw aggressiveness in bending and reinterpreting tax laws, accounting principles, and financial understandings. This process, this culture, has evolved one step at a time over many years. And it has proceeded without meaningful regulation.

These so-called "products" were sometimes so shamelessly aggressive that they had to go forum shopping for lawyers and accountants who might write them even a carefully qualified opinion--and many of the best lawyers often refused to do even that. And more than once I was advised that there was enough of a "color of argument" to the merits of a particular product that if there were enough companies participating, we would likely be protected by "herd immunity." That is, rather than go after the many big companies participating, the IRS would likely pursue only prospective changes in law and regulations. Caveat emptor. But as if from a scene in Alice in Wonderland, when the potential benefit was viewed as material enough, many companies chose to go down the rabbit hole, making such investments to keep pace with their "peer groups." (The company I worked for was a welcome exception.)

But even I was surprised by the bold abandon and unfettered "creativity" fired by the broad-based greed in the sub-prime mortgage/mortgage-backed securities campaign. And a white-hot, competitive campaign is what it became. Investment bankers competed to acquire as many mortgages as possible--and of necessarily declining quality--and "securitizing" them (or packaging them and selling debt instruments secured by the mortgages), or dividing the packages into pieces so they could be marketed and sold in such a way as to further allocate or "spread the risk" of the riskier elements of these mortgage pools. And there were "insurers" of these mortgaged-backed securities--including the investment banks who issued them--who rushed in at the opportunity for more revenue. But the riskiest sub-prime mortgages came to predominate, and the banks and mortgage companies could hardly write enough of them to meet the demand of the investment bankers' market for these mortgage-backed securities. Even individual speculators ran rampant in their buying and "flipping" of houses and condos in the climate of near free money and endlessly increasing home prices.

Of course, the banks somehow accepted this tortured risk-spreading rationale, writing and keeping many of their mortgages and buying lots of mortgage-backed securities, too--to remain competitive with their peer banks, of course. Ominously, irresponsibly, the government-sponsored but publicly owned and managed "Fannie Mae" (FNMA) and "Freddie Mack" (FHLMC), owners or guarantors of nearly half the nations mortgages, joined fully in supporting the sub-prime mortgage insanity (with the urging of some key congressional leaders, it should be noted). And then there were the insurance companies who insured mortgage-backed securities and invested in them, too. To a point, they all clearly knew what they were doing, these "best and brightest," but their unfettered ambition and boundless greed apparently blinded them to the implications: the likely and severe damage to the US and world financial structure and, as a result, to the US and world economy.

And the hedging/insuring vehicle of choice for the mortgage-backed investments was often the so-called "credit default swap" (CDS), a non-regulated, highly complex "insurance-like" instrument that could be structured, valued and understood, if at all, only using space-age mathematical models. Then speculative players started buying them, too. The investment banks, commercial banks and insurance companies that created and owned them (without any regulatory requirement for adequate loss reserves) eventually had no meaningful way of dealing with or representing what the value at risk in these huge portfolios might be. Warren Buffet famously referred to them as "financial instruments of mass destruction."

So, as the housing market fell and mortgages defaulted, the sub-prime mortgage-backed securities market also defaulted and failed, in turn so did the credit default swaps in the face of the huge obligations with no reserves to cover them. The failure of these instruments played a major role in the failure or weakness of many of these institutions, including Bear-Stearns, Lehman Bros., and particularly in the demise of AIG.

How could they be so smart and yet so blind? Uncontrolled greed is the only apparent answer, I guess. What other explanation is there? And the resulting failure of any sense of accountability or responsibility for the trust, the good-steward's role, implied by their critical place in the financial system and the economy was probably predictable. Many informed observers saw, wrote or spoke about the coming problems, some for several years. And with their insight, even folks like me could see it developing. The only questions were: When will the cards all fall, how much damage will be done, and will anyone do anything about it?

(And, as a friend is quick to remind me, this financial debacle could not have advanced this far if the government had not first set the table. The congress urged the quasi-governmental Freddy Mac to also buy high-risk sub-prime mortgages. And up to their knees in irony, it was a stalwart free-market Federal Reserve chief, Alan Greenspan, urged on by a conservative Bush administration, that engineered the artificially low interest rates that allowed the the housing bubble to develop in the first place. How Greenspan, previously a heroically principled overseer of our money markets, could succumb to the pedestrian voices of George W. Bush and his band of fools I cannot imagine, and couldn't at the time. But he did.)

If there were perfect justice, some of them, many of them, perhaps, would go to prison. And they would have to "disgorge," give back, the huge bonuses and golden parachutes they nonetheless awarded themselves throughout this period of professional and ethical failures. For what they did was "criminal," in a sense. We have appropriate laws that day-in and day-out put white-collar criminals in jail for simple fraud or embezzlement, things far less damaging than what these financial leaders have wrought. After all, the fraud or embezzler usually does no systemic harm, and usually affects only a relatively few people. But these holders of the public trust, these miscreant executives in the investment banks and their counterparts in commercial banks and mortgage companies, working in concert, directly or indirectly defrauded and impoverished vast numbers of American people. And many more--all of us, in one sense or another--remain very much at risk.

But just as there were inadequate regulatory constraints on what they were doing, there were not relevant criminal laws to constrained them as they placed America and Americans in harms way. Some of them belong in prison, but there may be no legal basis for putting them there. They should have to give up their ill-got millions, but there is probably no legal basis to require that either. We will have to wait on any shareholder suits or class-action suits that could succeed only against the companies, not the individuals--and many of those companies are gone or legally restructured. So then, explain to me what's so wrong with regulating professionals in trustee-like roles? We do, you say. Yes, lawyers, accountants, real estate and stock brokers, and many others--but not investment bankers. Why is that again?

The investigations will continue, to be sure; the blame will be more definitively, more accurately assigned--probably in painful, embarrassing detail. The legislators, regulators, their consultants and advisers will take the required time to wisely write appropriate new rules and regulations. They will also consolidate and restructure regulatory oversight of financial markets. This will happen. But right now, we must be more intent on protecting our future than addressing the guilty. Right now, we must be focused immediately and completely on healing our financial markets and protecting our economy.

While no one can be quite sure of how bad "dire" is, or what the perfect rescue plan would look like, we do have to trust someone. The combination of Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke, with all their advisers and talented teams, with what information there is available to them, are, to me, a reliable team in which to place our hope and our trust. Even though as an investment banker he contributed notably to the problem, no one knows financial markets and the workings of those markets better than Hank Paulson, now Secretary of the Treasury and previously the respected CEO of Goldman Sachs. Unless, of course, it is Ben Bernanke, the respected Chairman of the Federal Reserve, former acclaimed professor of economics at Princeton, and a leading authority on financial market disasters.

They come from different worlds with different orientations and accountabilities--although they both serve a conservative, Republican administration, one not normally inclined to intervene in market processes (or to regulate them). And if Paulson could be suspected of unconsciously overweighting Wall Street interests, I think it clear that he in fact serves America's interests first--and that he is deeply embarrassed and despairing over Wall Street's egregious excesses. He wants to be part of an effective solution, the best solution for the country and its taxpayers, for you and me. He wants to set it right, so far as he can. And Bernanke owes nothing to Wall Street. I wouldn't be at all surprised if he shared some of the views of those like me toward "the Street." That both the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates support the rescue plan is telling and important, as is the support of business and the US Chamber of Commerce. Even the House Republican leadership now support it, even if many of the ideological purists among their members do not. And I believe we all should, too.

You don't have to be an investment banker or economist to recognize the threat to our markets and economy, and our critical need to free up the flow of capital in the financial markets. Although no one can bring themselves to utter the word "depression," it is implied, alluded to, and all but said by many of the most credible voices. One of those credible voice, that of Warren Buffet, referred to the U.S. "going over the precipice" if something like the Paulson/Bernanke rescue plan were not soon approved and effected.

What might that mean? The now depressed and skewed market for these troubled assets would continue to produce panic-sale write downs of their carrying values, which reduces bank capital further, which further limits lenders' ability to lend and frightens them about doing so--even to each other. The result is frozen financial markets, which damages or destroys many business because they cannot borrow even week-to-week working capital, which reduces production, puts more everyday people out of work, denies them needed loans, and further reduces demand for goods and services. Many people and their 401(k)s are further impoverished as the stock market declines further. And of course, many more mortgaged homes are forced into foreclosure. Not a pretty picture; and I hope it is overstated. But some of this is already happening, and it will surely get worse. I don't know just how bad bad is when we call it "dire," and I don't know how far down we may plummet when we "go over the precipice"--and I don't want to know.

But it is our economy, yours and mine, much more than the investment bankers' and commercial bankers' who have betrayed us. We and our political representatives were just outright fools to trust them with such unregulated control of the financial markets that we all depend upon so much more than we know. But protecting our economy should now be our first priority--and at any cost necessary. (And do bear in mind that a material amount of the cost incurred by the government--perhaps most of it--should be recaptured when these distressed assets are later sold in normalized markets.) We cannot--we must not--fail to understand that in submitting to our vindictive emotions of anger and resentment, we risk doing more harm to ourselves than those most culpable, those bastard executives of Wall Street and other financial institutions.

And by opposing the rescue plan, the so-called "bailout" of these financial institutions who hold these distressed mortgages and mortgage-backed securities, we also influence our politicians to oppose it, too--as they did today--and assure that things will likely get worse for us, not better--and likely, much worse. Am I positive about that? No, but in the absence of more useful information and sufficient historical precedent, I am compelled to rely to a considerable extent on the most authoritative knowledge and experience available in our professional and leadership ranks. And as I've said, I'm far more confident, more comfortable with the knowledge, experience and leadership of the Paulsen/Bernanke team than the spokespersons or leaders of alternative approaches. (But do understand, please, that this rescue plan will likely avert financial market and economic disaster, but will not keep us from continuing down the road of recession we are now on--and likely will be for some time.)

In addition, in circumstances such as these, my bias favors action, especially when things could go very badly if we fail to act. And what precedent there is supports that. Even if the rescue plan had only a 50-50 chance of solving or significantly limiting the potential problem, I'd rather take that chance than what I see as a higher risk if we do nothing. But I expect the probability of the plan's success is higher (although, assessing what is relative success, or what might have been more or less effective will likely be very difficult in retrospect). Then too, the psychology of market confidence is an inherent part of the problem--and a rescue plan like the one proposed will surely help in that area. I recognize that there is a possibility I could be wrong, but lacking sufficient relevant data, precedent, and experiential instincts in such matters, the various factors I've stressed are the most meaningful, instructive considerations for me, the only way I am confident handicapping the basic options.

In summary, considering what is knowable at this point, however painful and unsettling the conclusion, I am persuaded that the most promising rescue plan for our financial markets, for our economy--for all of us, really--is some variation of the plan proposed by the administration's Paulson/Bernanke team. I'm not happy about it. And neither are you. After all, we shouldn't be in this threatening, costly situation. But let's support the most reasonable course left to us, the one our most knowledgeable and experienced leaders in this area assure us is necessary. Let's bail out the miscreant bastards of Wall Street and elsewhere. Let's hold our noses, clench our teeth, and do it--in order to protect our economy and ourselves. I think we have to.

http://www.economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=12305249

Retreat of New Democracies

With evangelistic zeal and self-righteousness, G.W. Bush became an aggressive imposer of democracy on the world. And particularly in the least likely and least prepared places. The shared sense of wisdom and prudence of earlier times was repudiated. It was no longer deemed effective enough to patiently allow the invisible hand of global market economics to function as the inevitable agent of change. It was no longer deemed wise and prudent enough to trust that the Western democracies could be effective role models and mentors for those countries who had developed to the point that they were promising candidates for more democratic government and institutions--and themselves sought it. "Regime change" was added to economic coercion as the U.S. means of choice.

And if the folly of all this isn't yet clear, we need only look at the many countries that in earlier decades prematurely took upon themselves, or were coerced by us, to institute more democratic principles of government--and observe their clearly failing condition, their proven lack of readiness for such radical change. But the clearest lesson emerging may be the recurrent affirmation that the sine qua non of stable democracies is the development of an economically and politically stable social middle class. An article from the Boston Globe, "Democracy on the Wane," chronicles the growing pains and failings in many of these struggling new democracies.

After being hailed as a democratic success story in the 1990s, Thailand has only gone backward....The events unfolding in Thailand are part of a gathering global revolt against democracy. In 2007, the number of countries with declining freedoms exceeded those with advancing freedoms by nearly four to one, according to a recent report by Freedom House, an organization that monitors global democracy trends.

And the villains, surprisingly enough, are the same people who supposedly make democracy possible: the middle class. Traditional theories of democratization, such as those of Harvard professor Samuel Huntington, predict a story of middle class heroics: As a country develops a true middle class, these urban, educated citizens insist on more rights in order to protect their economic and social interests. Eventually, as the size of the middle class grows, those demands become so overwhelming that democracy is inevitable. But now, it appears, the middle class in some nations has turned into an antidemocratic force. Young democracy, with weak institutions, often brings to power, at first, elected leaders who actually don't care that much about upholding democracy. As these demagogues tear down the very reforms the middle classes built, those same middle classes turn against the leaders, and then against the system itself, bringing democracy to collapse....

This is a process now being repeated in Africa, Asia, and parts of Latin America, regions that once seemed destined to become the third and fourth waves of global democratization, following the original Western democracies and the second wave in southern Europe and several other regions. The pattern has become so noticeable - repeated in Venezuela, Russia, Bangladesh, and other states - that one must even wonder about democracy's future itself.

What is truly remarkable is the consistent failure of the United States and the mature democracies of Western Europe to recognize in other countries the evolving conditions necessary for stable democracies to develop. You can't just market it, export it, or impose it on countries without these patiently evolved social and economic characteristics. Otherwise, they are unprepared, and under the best of conditions, new democracies are fragile ventures. Even the casual observer could not fail to notice that the resilience and strength of successful, stable democracies have evolved over centuries.

What conditions are necessary? It would seem essential that the society share broadly religious or philosophical values that are compatible with a democratic, representative form of government. The rule of law is also essential: that is, there must be a stable history of accepted law and rule making, enforcement and adjudication based on widely embraced constitutional principles. People must respect and trust the law of the land; they must have confidence in its fair administration. And without an economically healthy, politically stable, emerging middle class that includes a significant majority of the people, there is a failure of popular support. Without all these characteristics, new, fragile democracies lack the necessary foundation on which to develop, strengthen and endure; they will predictably suffer and likely fail.

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/09/14/democracy_on_the_wane/?page=full

Genes & Political Identity

Yes, your genes can predispose you to political attitudes and identity: Republican, Democrat, communist, whatever. At least that's what an increasing number of researchers have been reporting in recent years, and what this article, "The Body Politic: Biology May Shape Political Views," reports in the Chronicle of Higher Education as it reviews new research in the area.

The researchers' report, published in today's issue of the journal Science, suggests that genetic differences may help explain why some people favor capital punishment and the Iraq War, while others support gun control and foreign aid. It's part of a growing field, called "genopolitics," that is threatening to rewrite the rules of political science, which hold that political beliefs are shaped by people's environment and experiences. To work in the new field, political scientists are scrambling to learn genetics, neuroscience, and other aspects of biology.

But the research is in its early stages and has a way to go to win over some in the academic world, and particularly some political scientists. And no one is suggesting that there is a single gene that determines one's political identity or behavior. Like so many other individual traits or characteristics, there are likely a number of genes that work together to influence our predispositions. And as with other traits or behaviors, they are also influenced by learning or conditioning in families, cultures and schools.

"We're not arguing that biology is in any sense the whole story," said John R. Alford, an associate professor of political science at Rice University who was involved in the study. "We're just arguing that biology is a piece of the story and it's a completely ignored piece of the story."

Despite some detractors, this research continues to create excitement and attract more people from other disciplines to join in the work. Eager, multidisciplinary research teams are forming that may include geneticists, political scientists, behavioral economists, social psychologists, and neuroscientists. In that vein, Jonathan Haidt, a psychologist at the University of Virginia explores the counterintuitive dimensions that belie narrow political analysis in an Edge article provocatively titled, "What Makes People Vote Republican?"

What makes people vote Republican? Why in particular do working class and rural Americans usually vote for pro-business Republicans when their economic interests would seem better served by Democratic policies? We psychologists have been examining the origins of ideology ever since Hitler sent us Germany's best psychologists, and we long ago reported that strict parenting and a variety of personal insecurities work together to turn people against liberalism, diversity, and progress.

But now that we can map the brains, genes, and unconscious attitudes of conservatives, we have refined our diagnosis: conservatism is a partially heritable personality trait that predisposes some people to be cognitively inflexible, fond of hierarchy, and inordinately afraid of uncertainty, change, and death. People vote Republican because Republicans offer "moral clarity"—a simple vision of good and evil that activates deep seated fears in much of the electorate. Democrats, in contrast, appeal to reason with their long-winded explorations of policy options for a complex world.

Actually, I first read serious reporting and commentary on the influence of genes on political identity and behavior in the 2002 book, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Behavior by Steven Pinker, acclaimed professor of cognitive and evolutionary psychology at Harvard. His chapter on "Politics" asserts but qualifies and gives context to the importance of the role of genes in influencing political attitudes.

Liberal and conservative political attitudes are largely, though far from completely, heritable...not, of course, because [these] attitudes are synthesized directly from DNA but because they come naturally to people with different temperaments. Conservatives, for example, tend to be more authoritarian, conscientious, traditional, and rule-bound. But whatever its immediate source, the heritability of political attitudes can explain some of the sparks that fly when liberals and conservatives meet. When it comes to attitudes that are heritable, people react more quickly and emotionally, are less likely to change their minds, and are more attracted to like-minded people...

That voices of the contemporary left and the contemporary right are [now] both embracing evolutionary psychology after decades of reviling it shows two things. One is that biological facts are beginning to box in plausible political philosophies...A popular bumper sticker in the 1990s urged, QUESTION AUTHORITY. Another bumper sticker replied, QUESTION GRAVITY. All political philosophies have to decide when their arguments are turning into the questioning of gravity. The second development is that an acknowledgment of [the existence of] human nature can no longer be associated [only] with the political right. Once the [liberal] Utopian Vision is laid to rest, the field of political positions is wide open...

The ideologies of the left and right took shape before Darwin, before Mendel, before anyone knew what a gene or neuron or a hormone was. Every student of political science is taught that political ideologies are based on theories of human nature. [But] why must they be based on theories that are three hundred years out of date?

I recommended this book by Steven Pinker in an e-mail a few years ago. I do so again, and as strongly as I can. Matt Ridley, a science writer and author of Genome--also worth reading--gushes that it's "the best book on human nature that I or anyone else will ever read. Truly a maganificent job."

But having said that, it is arguable that Professor Pinker's optimism about the implications of revealed science remains somewhat idealistic, even naive. For even if there were broad acknowledgment of the factual errors in these historical theories of human behavior--which many conservatives and liberals nonetheless remain attached to by temperament--politicians and others would nonetheless recognize the enduring effectiveness of political tactics that exploit those temperamental predispositions to attract or frighten people and win elections. Professor Haidt, above, is probably quite right and more practical in observing that many people relate best to the simpler, "Republican offer [of] 'moral clarity'—a simple vision of good and evil that activates deep seated fears in much of the electorate." And Steven Pinker, like many Democrats, may be appealing in vain to reason with his "long-winded," but more accurate explanations of human nature and their implications for a more complex American society and a more complex world.

http://chronicle.com/temp/email2.php?id=bfB9QZsymRTcQQws3Br2RP5yxzwThqGj

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/haidt08/haidt08_index.html

Lost Boys of "Guyland"

I won't grow up! (I won't grow up)
No, I promise that I won't (No, I promise that I won't)
I will stay a boy forever (I will stay a boy forever)
And be banished if I don't! (And be banished if I don't)
I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up
Not me, Not I, Not me!
So there!

--Song of Peter Pan's Lost Boys

A recent Newsweek article, "Why Young Men Delay Adulthood to Stay in Guyland," chronicles what might be viewed as a new and extended phase 2 of the old sociological phenomenon, "the boy problem." Young men in their twenties and later are refusing take on the mantle of adult responsibilities as defined and modeled by prior generations. They don't want to, and apparently think they don't have to.

Once the preserve of whacked-out teens and college slackers, this testosterone-filled landscape is the new normal for American males until what used to be considered creeping middle age, according to the sociologist Michael Kimmel. In his new book, "Guyland," the State University of New York at Stony Brook professor notes that the traditional markers of manhood—leaving home, getting an education, finding a partner, starting work and becoming a father—have moved downfield as the passage from adolescence to adulthood has evolved from "a transitional moment to a whole new stage of life." In 1960, almost 70 percent of men had reached these milestones by the age of 30. Today, less than a third of males that age can say the same.

And these are not just young men without education, skills, or potential opportunity. These are most often college-educated young men who would be considered good candidates for successful futures.

In almost 400 interviews with mainly white, college-educated twentysomethings, he found that the lockstep march to manhood is often interrupted by a debauched and decade long odyssey, in which youths buddy together in search of new ways to feel like men. Actually, it's more like all the old ways—drinking, smoking, kidding, carousing—turned up a notch in a world where adolescent demonstrations of manhood have replaced the real thing: responsibility...The trouble is that the very thing they're running from may be the thing they need.

But that is not to say that notable changes in the social and economic environment have not played a role. These factors too provide some of the reasons or rationalizations for these men's preference for their own version of a "drop-out" subculture over directly engaging the realities and exigencies of 21st-century society.

A bad attitude about marriage is not the only thing that's holding these guys back. A series of social and economic reversals are making it harder than ever to climb the ladder of adulthood. Since 1971, annual salaries for males 25 to 34 with full-time jobs have plummeted almost 20 percent, according to the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University.

At the same time, women have crashed just about all the old male haunts, and are showing some signs of outpacing their husbands and boyfriends as breadwinners and heads of family, at least in urban centers. Last year, researchers at Queens College in New York determined that women between 21 and 30 in at least five major cities, including Dallas, Chicago and New York, have not only made up the wage gap since 1970—they now earn upwards of 15 percent more than their male counterparts. As a result, many men feel redundant.

And the result? The result as reported is discomfiting--and, I hope, somewhat exagerated. But what if it is not?

Today's guys are perhaps the first downwardly mobile—and endlessly adolescent—generation of men in U.S. history. They're also among the most distraught—men between the ages of 16 and 26 have the highest suicide rate for any group except men above 70—and socially isolated, despite their image as a band of backslapping buddies...

The happy family man, on the other hand, is an alien concept in Guyland, and all too scarce in popular culture. Men like me, who actually embrace married life in their 20s, are seen as aberrations—or just a bit odd...But while the glorified Isle of Guy makes many men feel inadequate, its attractions are often illusory—or worse. ...Beyond the practical dangers, the world of twentysomething males can also be an alienating place, where the entrance fee is conformity and the ride is less than advertised. ...on their own and without their liquid courage, there is also isolation and discontent. A 28-year-old Emory graduate, who declined to be named for fear of ridicule, talked of feeling ashamed of his life..."

But as if reaching out with a lifeline to former "lost-boys" comrads, the author evangelizes about marriage and a healthy, stable family life--knowing, I think, that his words and concerns are too often falling on deaf ears among those sojourning in Guyland.

Meanwhile, the angst associated with adulthood may not be warranted. A raft of recent studies suggest that married men are happier, more sexually satisfied and less likely to end up in the emergency room than their unmarried counterparts. They also earn more, are promoted ahead of their single counterparts and are more likely to own a home.

"Men benefit from just being married, regardless of the quality of the relationship. It makes them healthier, wealthier and more generous with their relatives," says Scott Coltrane, author of "Gender and Families" and dean of the University of Oregon College of Arts and Science. It accelerates men's journey toward stability and security. "In general, those are the things that lead to happiness," he adds.

However many there actually are, however late and behind the learning curve they may be, I expect that, eventually, many or most will look upon themselves and their situations, open their eyes, and get on about a more productive life. I hope so--and sooner rather than later. After all, don't we all in some way have an interest in it?

http://www.newsweek.com/id/156372

McCain's Campaign: Not the Same Man We Liked, Respected

I have mostly liked and respected John McCain--at least since the time he was found to have exercised "poor judgment" in his involvement with the Keating Five. Still, I don't support his presidential aspirations, and I have some issues with his ideological predispositions. But as a Vietnam-era Marine, it is easy for me to respect his sacrifice and suffering for our country. And his public candor, his political courage, in pointing out the problems with his own party's positions, including his president's positions, on things like finance reform, irresponsible tax policy, immigration, off-shore drilling, and global warming, were bold and refreshing--and more than that, they were right.

But those days appear to be gone. He is now swallowed up in a Republican campaign machine led by many of the same folks that led the last Bush campaign, pandering as they do to conservative ideologues and the Christian Right, and "swift-boating" political opponents.

My disappointment in him is summed up by two quite different perspectives in recent articles reflecting puzzlement and dismay at the new John McCain. The first is from Time, the second from The Economist.

Time's "What Bush Taught McCain" was written by Joe Klein. Joe Klein is a left leaning centrist who over the years has found much to like and commend about John McCain, even if there was also much to disagree with him about. But he finds the new John McCain discomfiting and unlikable.

The woman, a venture capitalist from the Denver area...decided she just couldn't vote for John McCain this year. "I supported him enthusiastically in 2000, but he's hired the same people who ran him into the ground last time to run his campaign," she said. McCain's tone was more negative now. "It breaks my heart."

...Ronald Reagan never staged an ugly August. He attacked his opponents, but on the high ground of policy...But then Reagan was operating at the beginning of a political pendulum swing, utterly confident that his ideas were better than the tired industrial-age liberalism and post-Vietnam pacifism of the Democrats.

Michael Crowley of the New Republic recently observed that the McCain campaign was the most sarcastic in memory. He's right: sarcasm comes naturally to the fighter jock. He disdains all those — his colleagues in the Senate, his political opponents — who aren't as courageous as he thinks he is. But McCain has proved a selective maverick, surrounded by special-interest lobbyists who shape his foreign and fiscal policies. In fact, I suspect that this year's McCain is closer to the real thing than the noble 2000 version. This one is congenitally dark, the opposite of Reagan — not confident enough in the substance of his ideas, especially on domestic policy, to run a campaign that features them. Instead, his natural sarcasm has enabled him to perfect the Bush way of politics.

The Economist's "Bring Back the Real McCain," in the "Leaders" section, reflects more a sense of disappointment over an old political friend now lost, than Klein's writing off of a previously respected maverick and sometime opponent. After noting that they particularly like McCain for his past political courage, "his robust commitment to free trade, and his firmness in the face of American losses in Iraq," they also note their concern with his advancing age (72) and his "legendary volcanic temper," both of which they concede have been managed well so far. But they are a little more troubled about his unbridled hawkish views:

Many Americans see him as a warmonger, a man who would be happy to bomb Iran if that is the only way to prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons, who is more than ready to confront Russia, and who supported toppling Saddam Hussein before George Bush was elected and New York and Washington were attacked. This fear is surely overdone: even though Mr McCain is presumably more minded than Mr Obama to attack Iran, neither the joint chiefs of staff nor most of his advisers think that is a good idea. But it is not a completely unreasonable worry. Mr McCain needs to find ways of correcting this perception, rather than making jokes about bombing.

Yet their biggest concern is his apparent, unprincipled abandonment of some core beliefs:

This is not so much true of foreign policy. But even here, he used to talk much more about multilateralism than he does now. On the campaign trail, Mr McCain has tended to stress the more hawkish side of his nature, for instance by promoting his idea for a "league of democracies" that risks being needlessly divisive.

But it is on domestic policy that Mr McCain has tacked to the right more disquietingly. Doubtless he feels he needs to shore up his support among the conservatives who mistrust him. But the result is that he could easily alienate the independent supporters who are his great strength. Mr Obama will sensibly hope to woo them away.

Mr McCain used to be a passionate believer in limited government and sound public finances; a man with some distaste for conservative Republicanism and its obsession with reproductive matters. On the stump, though, he has offered big tax cuts for business and the rich that he is unable to pay for, and he is much more polite to the religious right, whom he once called "agents of intolerance". He has engaged in pretty naked populism, too, for instance in calling for a "gas-tax holiday". If this is all just a gimmick to keep his party's right wing happy, it may disappear again. But that is quite a gamble to take...

Hawkish foreign policy, irresponsible tax cuts, more talk about religion and abortion: all this sounds too much like Bush Three, the label the Democrats are trying to hang around the Republican's neck. We preferred McCain One.

And then there are the more recent revelations about his quixotic choice of running mate: 44-year old Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, a lady of the NRA and Christian Right. A Pentecostal with creationist beliefs, she prays and calls for prayer that the Bush administration is sending our soldiers to Iraq "on a task that is from God." Once the mayor of a very small Alaska town and now governor for two years, she has only little experience with Washington and national issues, and none with international and geopolitical issues. Not likely the profile that will attract many Hillary democrats, or many independents or centrists either, women or men. John McCain's self-assessed claim to strong judgment could again be reasonably questioned. Perhaps he serves us best where he has served for so long: in the U.S. Senate.


http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1836890,00.html
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12009710

Group Headed by Dobson: Pray for Rain at Obama Acceptance Speech

This is what it has come to. This article, below, is the kind of thing we hear more and more of--and so does the rest of the world. Yet another spokesman for the so-called evangelical Christian Right has provided to the world their view and their example of what it is to be a follower of Jesus and reflect his love, patience, compassion and trust in God to the world. This is their take on what it is to live and share Christ in such a way that the world will feel His love for them. How could it come to this? How could confessing Christians become so co-opted by secular politics, and so distort the Christian walk? I am so sad and sick about it.

Last week, however, Focus [on the Family] unveiled a new video, asking politically-conservative Christians to pray for rain on Aug. 28, in order to disrupt Barack Obama's speech at the Democratic National Convention.

Shepard called for "abundant rain, torrential rain ... flood-advisory rain." He adds, "I'm talking about umbrella-ain't-gonna-help-you rain ... swamp-the-intersections rain." Explaining why he wants everyone to pray for rain, Shepard explains, without a hint of humor, "I'm still pro-life, and I'm still in favor or marriage being between one man and one woman. And I would like the next president who will select justices for the next Supreme Court to agree."

In other words, Obama disagrees with the religious right on culture-war issues, so Focus on the Family wants God to smite Obama with rain. Got it.

And this is the image of evangelical Christianity that for some time has been set in the minds of non-evangelical Christians and non-Christians. Despite your earnest protestations and historical explanations, evangelical Christianity (the contemporary, protestant definition and interpretation, that is) is now inextricably linked and identified as a right-wing political identity and right-wing political machine. And James Dobson joins with both parachurch and church organizations in leading it.

But I don't sense or hear any direction remotely like this in the voice of Jesus I encounter in the Scriptures, nor the voice of the gentle, humble Jesus that I hear in prayer through His Spirit that indwells me. I don't know about you, but the evangelical Christian Right does not reflect my Christian identity, nor the walk I feel called to by my Lord. It is not my identity--and I want people to know it.

Greg Hudson

[Thanks, Laura.]

http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/94853/group_headed_by_james_dobson_asks_christians_to_pray_for_rain_at_obama_speech/

The Population Paradox: Time Bombs, Where & Why

Population growth is a problem--just not the problem you think it is. Yes, it's hard to forget a book like The Population Bomb (Paul Erlich, 1968). It remains memorable for its stark, frightening prognostications of overpopulation. And the troubling Malthusian hypothesis is still recycling generation after generation, reflecting as much nationalistic and racial paranoia as concern with overpopulation--always pointing at other groups as the problem, most often the poorer, less educated countries or ethnic groups. But for some decades now, a different type of problem has been evolving: declining birthrates and aging populations in Europe, the U.S. and Asia, and continued high population growth rates in large areas of the third world and the developing world.

The implications and reasons have been speculated about for some time, but this article in the British Independent World covers this global issue rather well, reflecting what is known and what remains speculative.

The implications of all this are enormous. Low-birth Europe is faced with an ageing population, a pensions crisis, later retirement, changes in work patterns, shrinking cities and a massive looming healthcare cost. Nations of children with no siblings, cousins, aunts or uncles – only parents, grandparents, and perhaps great-grandparents – will face the burden of paying for the care of a massive older generation. The same prospect of an older, more conservative, less vigorous or inventive culture looms in China, Japan and much of the Far East.

Meanwhile high-birth Africa will remain stuck in a vicious circle unless it gets economic growth, agricultural reform, improved world trade terms, infrastructure investment, better health and education systems, more girls into school and a wider availability of family planning. A tall order, though the example of Bangladesh shows change can come...

[Still] the United Nations has had to revise downwards its prediction that the world population would reach 11.5 billion by 2050. The human race is now expected to peak, according to one of the world's top experts, Dr David Coleman, Professor of Demography at Oxford University, at 9.5 billion people. Then, around 2070, it will begin to decline. We have reached a demographic crossroads which will have dramatic consequences for large sections of the world – including us.

Interestingly, the article introduces the topic by referencing a piece in a leading British medical journal that calls for the British to reduce the number of children per family further in order to curb global warming and the depleting of environmental resources.

His argument was straightforward. The mushrooming population of the world is putting extreme pressure on the planet's resources and increasing the output of greenhouse gases. Every single month there are nearly seven million extra mouths to feed. And because a child born today in the UK will be responsible for 150 times more greenhouse gas emissions than a child born in Ethiopia the obvious place to start cutting back is here rather than there.

Talk about failing to see the forest for the trees! Talk about blinkered, draconian solutions that ignore the wider array of global problems--and the need for integrated, interdisciplinary answers! He apparently believes government policy, technology, and individual behavior cannot change--and that more of Africa and less of the UK would consitute a better world.

Regardless, the thrust and remainder of the article stresses the new reality of contracting populations in many Western and Eastern areas. It addresses the paradoxes, the counterintuitve facts and factors, the likely reasons for differences in population growth in different parts of the world.

The span of fertility across countries has never been wider," says Dr John Cleland, Professor of Medical Demography at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. "Both extremes cause their own problems. If Europe continues at 1.5 [children per family] the population will halve every 65 years. If Africa continues with half its population under [age] 15 it will continue to consume more than it produces making it harder to escape from poverty and illiteracy...

A country's population is determined by three things: how many people are born, how soon they die and how many leave or enter the country. Fertility, as we have seen, is rising in Africa and parts of the developing world but falling in Europe and the Far East. Mortality, by contrast, thanks to medical advance, is falling almost everywhere: global life expectancy has risen from 46 in 1950 to 65 in 2008 and is expected to reach 75 by 2050; in Europe it will be 82 by mid-century. Migration, despite the heat it generates as a political issue, is a marginal factor in population issues. It would take massive numbers of immigrants – some 700 million throughout Europe – with unthinkable cultural and identity tensions, to counter the low-birthrates. Fertility is the key engine to population rise and fall.

But the most interesting elements of the article are the explorations of the changing economic and cultural realities in different regions and countries--and among different groups within those regions and countries--and the resulting changes in population growth. Those elements also address the likely reasons for the unlikely results: the qualified role of poverty, the role of education and outside work for women, the countering role of more conservative or fundamentalist religion, and perhaps most important, the level of emacipation and status of women, and the changing, accomodating roles of men and government programs.

In the US, like Japan, 20 per cent of women born between 1956 and 1972 are childless and likely to remain so. The figure could rise to 25 per cent. Revealingly, the incidence rises with education and income. A third of women graduates in their late thirties have no children. And only 20 per cent of women with MBAs have kids, compared with 70 per cent of MBA men. [That is, 80% of women with MBAs have no children.]

By contrast 40 per cent of college-educated American women are not in the workforce, but they are still not having many kids; the number of women with only one child has doubled since 1976. And in that same year 36 per cent of women had four or more children but less than 10 per cent do today. Childlessness is now a fashionable lifestyle choice, as it is in Germany where 27.8 per cent of women born in 1960 are childless, far more than any other European country. (In France the figure is just 10.7 per cent.)

The article provides many more interesting examples and more explanatory analysis. It is well worth reading. But we should also bear in mind a point of caution and qualification tucked into the middle of the article:

How seriously should we take all this? "All population projections are wrong," concedes Professor Coleman. "The question is by how much?"

Too true. But we know the changes that have already occurred, and that we are continuing in that same direction. And we know the resulting problems about to be visited upon us.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/population-paradox-europes-time-bomb-888030.html

Plight of the Little Emperors: China's Only Children

We are by now all aware of China's long-standing one-child policy. And we are also aware of the continual speculation about the resulting demographic imbalances, national preoccupations, and adverse impact on the country, it's families, and it's children. This article in Psychology Today places in perspective these speculations and concerns, what is myth and what is fact, what is better and what is worse than we might have expected.

First, the policy was set in place not only as a method of population control, but with designs on creating an elite generation of high potential and high-achieving youngsters. They could not have known how successful they would be.

When China began limiting couples to one child 30 years ago, the policy's most obvious goal was to contain a mushrooming population. For the Chinese people, however, the policy's greater purpose was to turn out a group of young elites who would each enjoy the undivided resources of their whole family—the so-called xiao huangdi, or "little emperors." The plan was to "produce a generation of high-quality children to facilitate China's introduction as a global power," explains Susan Greenhalgh, an expert on the policy. But while these well-educated, driven achievers are fueling the nation's economic boom, their generation has become too modern too quickly, glutted as it is with televisions, access to computers, cash to buy name brands, and the same expectations of middle-class success as Western kids.

Still, there is no way to reasonably expect a new market economy to grow as dynamicly and broadly as would be required to fully accomodate the new generation with the kinds of jobs they had prepared themselves for. For that matter, it is not reasonable for the most robust market economy to provide a disproportionately large percentage of jobs for the professional and management ranks. The most successful economies still need a significant percentage of labor-class workers. And so disappointments, and on a large scale, were inevitable.

The shift in temperament has happened too fast for society to handle. China is still a developing nation with limited opportunity, leaving millions of ambitious little emperors out in the cold; the country now churns out more than 4 million university graduates yearly, but only 1.6 million new college-level jobs. Even the strivers end up as security guards. China may be the world's next great superpower, but it's facing a looming crisis as millions of overpressurized, hypereducated only children come of age in a nation that can't fulfill their expectations.

But the failure of China's economy to provide the expected jobs, social status and lifestyle is just the final blow for so many only children and their families. The destabilizing process had already forced unhealthy, imbalanced lives on them from early childhood.

The pressure to succeed was all the greater given that his parents' own dreams had been dashed during China's Cultural Revolution, when Mao Zedong closed schools and sent difficult-to-control intellectuals to be "reeducated" by working the fields. His own dreams destroyed, he poured all his hopes and ambitions into his son. "Because of the Cultural Revolution, my parents literally wasted 10 years," explains Wang, 29, who was among the first Chinese only kids born under the one-child policy. "I was explicitly told that they had lost a lot in their lives, so they wanted me to get it back for them."

Then, how could we be surprised when competitive, self-preservation instincts of parents were carried to extremes by the all-or-nothing, one-child policy forced on them and their children? (And why should we be surprised that the perverse social extremes visited on one Chinese generation should result in an equally perverse social exteme of another sort being visited on the next?)

In recent years, however, Chinese parents have sometimes blurred the line between sacrifice and slavery in aiding their child's success: Mothers carry their child's backpack around; couples forgo lunch so their kid can have plentiful snacks or new Nikes. Vanessa Fong recalls meeting one mother who resisted hospitalization for her heart and kidney troubles because she feared it might interfere with her daughter's gao kao preparation; when Fong gave the mother money for medication, it mostly went to expensive food for her daughter.

"In China, the term for a one-child family is a 'risky family,'" says Baochang Gu, a demography professor at Beijing's Renmin University who advises the Chinese government on the one-child policy. "If something happened to that child, it would be a disaster. So from the parents' point of view, the spoiling is all necessary to protect them."

It is understandable, then, that Chinese students tend to have fewer friends; they most often view classmates as competitors in a zero-sum game they must win. And talking to their parents, who cannot allow themselves to be understanding or sympathetic, is a waste of time and a sure way to create further misunderstanding. So where do they find escape and psychological release?

Many young only children opt for escape from reality through online gaming worlds. Every day, the nation's 113,000 Internet cafés teem with twitchy, solitary players—high school and university students, dropouts, and unemployed graduates—an alarming number of whom remain in place for days without food or sleep. Official estimates put the number of Chinese Internet addicts at over 2 million, and the government considers it such a serious threat that it deploys volunteer groups to prowl the streets and prevent teens from entering Internet cafés.

The mostly male youth who turn to virtual realms find there a place to realize ambitions that are frustrated in real life, says Kimberly Young, a psychologist and Internet addiction expert who has advised Chinese therapists. "With the click of a button, they go from a 19-year-old with no social life to a great warrior in World of Warcraft," Young says.

But, for those inclined to conclude that all the problems were unavoidable with a generation of only children, the article is quick to make the point that being only children was not by itself the problem.

Yet despite the stereotype, the research has revealed no evidence that only kids have more negative traits than their peers with siblings—in China or anywhere else. "The only way only children are reliably different from others is they score slightly higher in academic achievement," explains Toni Falbo, a University of Texas psychology professor who has gathered data on more than 4,000 Chinese only kids. Sure, some little emperors are bratty, but no more than children with siblings.

It's just that their psychological issues stem not from a lack of siblings but from the harsh academic competition and parental prodding that pervade their lives. Susan Newman, a New Jersey psychologist and only-child expert, says the notion that little emperors are bossy, self-obsessed little brats is simply part of the greater myth of only kids as damaged goods. "Pinning their problems on having no siblings is really making them a scapegoat," she says. Being an only child is not the problem.

Perhaps, so. But in the case of China's one-child policy, it is still hard to separate the conditions imposed by families and culture on their only children, from the existence of a generation of only children. That is, being only children may not be the problem, per se, but the problem unavoidably follows from the reality of a generation of Chinese only children.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/index.php?term=pto-20080623-000004&print=1

It's Time: 80% Want Overhaul of U.S. Health Care

Yes, over 80% of Americans now agree: the U.S. health care system needs to be completely rebuilt or requires fundamental change. That's what a recent Harris International poll found. And that's true regardless of income and insurance status: 81% of those who were insured for the prior year and 89% who were uninsured called for either fundamental change or complete rebuilding. Only 16% of adults said the health care system works relatively well and needed only minor reform.

But how can that be, you ask? Isn't ours the great, market-driven health care system, the international standard-setter? Well, let's see:

• At least 47 million Americans do not have health insurance at all (as of 2005).

• Inefficiencies and rising costs have resulted in over a 100 percent increase in health premiums for private sector employers and their workers in just over a decade. The average premium for a family insurance plan rose to $11,381 in 2006, from $4,954 in 1996, while the average cost for a single premium rose to $4,118 from $1,992;

• Americans spend double what people in other industrialized countries do on health care: $6,697 per capita on health care in 2005, or 16 percent of gross domestic product, compared to $3,326 in Canada, or 9.8 percent of GDP.

• And, contrary to the propaganda of our health care industry, Americans often have more trouble seeing doctors, and are the victims of more errors and go without treatment more often than people in other industrialized countries.

I'd say it's time, wouldn't you? I'd say 80% of American voices should be heard, wouldn't you?

There are some national social services that are considered by modern civilized societies to be the rights of all citizens--and also in the best interest of a robust and growing economic system. As such, they must be administered fairly and equally to all people. This is not something that markets do. Markets develop and provide the very best to those with the most money through those incentivized by profit to provide the best, most expensive products and services. People with less money can afford only lesser products and services. People with little or no money can afford none.

We Americans all recognize this with respect to education and subsistence retirement incomes. They are administered by the government for the equal benefit of all--but supplemented by private market products for those who wish to get more and pay more for it. The combined national and private systems work relatively well. Everyone wins.

But the rest of the industrialized, civilized world also recognize that health care, and certainly basic, preventative health care, must also be provided to all in the same fair and equal way. It is not only what a civilized country should guarantee to its people, it is absolutely necessary to provide healthy and well-educated workers for a modern workforce and well-functioning economy.

But not our United States government. Or, I should say, not our government as influenced primarily by lobbyists for the enormous private healthcare industry in the U.S.: Big Pharma (the big pharmaceutical companies), big high-tech healthcare products manufacturers and, of course, big healthcare providers (hospitals and their doctors). They are the principal architects and beneficiaries of this unequal, inefficient, uncontrollable brier patch of a health care system that the market's "invisible hand" has wrought. They've patched it together based primarily on their own interests and reward, not on delivering effective health care for all people. That's the way markets work, after all. That's what we thought we wanted. But the context and nature of their roles must now evolve. The needs of our country and our people have changed.

It's time. It's just time.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26077335/

"Sleeping on It" Improves Memory, Problem Solving

Understanding the importance of sleep just keeps growing more important. You haven't been paying attention if you've failed to noticed the parade of studies over the years that have revealed more and more about how critical sleep in its various phases is for emotional health, attention, cognition, memory and, in one sense or another, problem solving.

Even in college, I recognized that if I could prepare for exams early enough to get a full night's sleep before taking them, my memory and command of the exam material was notably better and easier the next morning. I didn't understand it, but it worked. In a similar way, I and others have shared throughout our school and professional lives that solutions to problems that eluded us the evening before were somehow so urgent and clear at 4-5 am in the morning. Not knowing how it occurred, there was no question that it did.

This article in Scientific American provides an informative, readable review of what we now know about the critical functions and considerable activity of the brain while we sleep. Particular attention is devoted to the increasing body of knowledge about the brain's organizing, storing and strengthening of memory, and it's organizing, analyzing and solving of problems--again, while we sleep.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=how-snoozing-makes-you-smarter&print=true