MOST INTERESTING ESSAYS 12/4/25: THEORY & TRUTH, MEMORY & INTELLIGENCE, PSYCHIATRY, WRITING, EGYPT IN 2019, LIVE OR DIE, GARDEN OF EDEN, SOCIAL DYSFUNCTION, DEATH ROW, RIGHT & WRONG, FRANTZ FANON, TRUTHINESS, CONSPIRACY, LIBERALITY, LIFE IS LIQUID, BECOMING god-LIKE, TIPPING POINT, VANISHING WORLD
Every human being grows to be who they are alone. Life is a solo journey, influenced by birth, living, and death.
Books of Interest Website: chetyarbrough.blog
Solo (When the heart gets lost, let the music find you.)
By: Kwame Alexander with Mary Rand Hess
Narrated By: Kwame Alexander
KWAME ALEXANDER (AMERICAN WRITER OF POETRY AND CHILDREN’S FICTION.)MARY RAND HESS (POET, WRITER, MULTI-MEDIA ARTIST.)
“Solo” demonstrates an added value to listening rather than just reading a novel. Kwame Alexander and Mary Rand Hess tell a story of the struggle for personal identity. This is a journey of a young man whose father is a famous musician. It offers some insight to what it is like to be a boy growing to be a man in a family of a successful professional musician.
The boy’s father is a recovering addict who has had success as a guitar playing singer.
His mother died when he was seven. As a young man of 21, he is surprised to find he is an adopted son. He chooses to find his birth mother who lives in Africa to better understand where he came from and why his birth mother gave him up. He is estranged from his family for various reasons ranging from his father’s addictive behavior to the failure of his parents to have told him of his adoption.
In the boy’s journey to a remote area of Africa, he meets various natives who live in the poverty of a small village.
The boy’s birth mother is away from her village to help natives of another village in the hill country of the area. The young man decides to wait for her in his mother’s home village. He meets a young African girl who speaks English and is helpful in explaining what life is like for her in the village. They become friends with a sense of something more in their future. The boy’s waiting is interrupted by his father’s arrival with a film crew to vivify the story of their familial relationship.
His father’s arrival disrupts the boy’s plan of waiting for his birth mother’s return. A decision is made for the entire group to journey to the village where his birth mother is working.
The journey takes several hours and exhausts his father as well as the rest of the Americans in the group. The boy’s birth mother recognizes her son as soon as he arrives. She is young. She gave birth to her son at age 15. The hardship of raising a child appears to have been too much for her at her young age.
His father’s interruption in the boy’s journey to find his birth mother leads to a reconciliation with his father and a better understanding of his journey to become a man.
Musical interludes in the story entertain the listener and offer some understanding of what it is like to be raised by a famous musician who loves his family but is handicapped by drug addiction.
On their return to the birth mother’s village, a refrigerator is delivered at the expense of the boy’s father. This is a great benefit to the village. The boy’s father becomes ill and dies.
Every human being grows to be who they are alone. Life is a solo journey, influenced by birth, living, and death.
Trump is threatening government employees with being fired for doing their job and Congress for being the third branch of the American government.
Personal Commentary Website: chetyarbrough.blog
Political Grandstanding
By: Chet Yarbrough
Those who have read book reviews in this blog know some of my political beliefs. The more I read, listen to, and review books written by others, the more I know I do not know what is true and not true. We all get trapped in our own world of experience, belief, and understanding. With concern over that personal trap, this personal opinion is written.
America’s current President is a man of inherited wealth and privilege.
Trump’s popularity comes from attracting attention, impressing followers with strong public stances on issues of which he has little understanding or willingness to educate himself about. His focus is on self-aggrandizement with hyperbolic misrepresentations of facts that appeal to those wishing for definitive answers to multifaceted social issues.
LYNDON JOHNSON (36TH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES)RICHARD NIXON (37TH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES)RONALD REAGAN (40TH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES)RONALD REAGAN (40TH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES)GEORGE WALKER BUSH (43RD PRES. OF THE UNITED STATES)BARACK OBAMA (44TH PRES. OF THE UNITED STATES)
Trump is not the only elected representative or President to oversimplify issues to appeal to voters. Johnson’s war on poverty was used to justify policies that ineffectively addressed needs of the poor. Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” used coded language and policies that indirectly targeted African Americans. Reagan’s “War on Drugs” disproportionately affected minority communities and contributed to mass incarceration. George W. Bush emphasized the threat of weapons of mass destruction (WMD’s) to justify invasion of Iraq. Obama’s red line rhetoric threatened commitment to military intervention, which never happened when lethal gas was used to kill Syrian citizens. Trump’s rhetoric on immigration inferred most immigrants were criminals and a threat to national security. In all of these examples the common denominator is, at worst a lie or at best, a misrepresentation of truth to gain public support.
So, what is the difference? Trump does not care about the impact of his lies.
Trump focuses on self-aggrandizement to promote himself as powerful and important. He is a school-yard bully who scared banks and subcontractors with the fear of handing a financially bankrupt casino back to the bank, and who threatened subcontractors’ pay who worked for him.
Now, Trump is threatening government employees with being fired for doing their job and Congress for being the third branch of the American government. In the end, Trump is threatening the American people who either did or did not vote for him.
Mahaffey is a supporter of nuclear energy and its potential for earth’s energy needs. He argues fission can be made a useful source of energy while fusion research holds the best opportunity for humanity’s future.
Books of Interest Website: chetyarbrough.blog
Atomic Adventures (Secret Islands, Forgotten N-Rays, and Isotopic Murder-A Journey into the Wild World of Nuclear Science.)
By: James Mahaffey
Narrated By: Keith Sellon-Wright
James Mahaffey (Author, Research scientist at Georgia Tech Research Institute)
“Atomic Adventures” is a reminder of the race for the atomic bomb, its wide pursuit by nations of the world, and research for the holy grail of atomic fusion. Mahaffey’s science explanations are tedious for non-scientists, but his history of the secrets and use of atomic energy are interesting and surprising.
The United States, with the help of the UK, may have been first to acquire the atom bomb in 1945, but eight more nations acquired it by 2006.
United States: Acquired in 1945.
Russia (formerly the Soviet Union): Acquired in 1949.
United Kingdom: Acquired in 1952.
France: Acquired in 1960.
China: Acquired in 1964.
India: Acquired in 1974.
Israel: Believed to have acquired in the late 1960s, though it maintains a policy of deliberate ambiguity.
Pakistan: Acquired in 1998.
North Korea: Acquired in 2006
It is somewhat ironic that Pakistan did not acquire the atom bomb until 1998 when Pakistan’s “father of the bomb”, Abdul Qadeer Khan, became a rich man by selling technological know-how of the bomb to nations like North Korea, Libya, and Iran.
Abdul Qadeer Khan (1936-2021, father of Pakistan’s atomic weapons program, died at age 85.)
As a singular discovery, Einstein’s E = mc² offered a dual opportunity for the world, i.e., destruction and/or survival of the human race. The bomb suggests destruction while nuclear fusion offers an inexhaustible energy source that could reverse global warming and rocket human beings to other worlds.
Mahaffey notes there were Japanese, as well as better known German scientists, who were working on the creation of a nuclear bomb that could destroy Allied armaments and combatants. The rush to weaponize radiation during WWII surprisingly includes research being done by Japan as well as Germany during WWII. America won the research race because of superior human and financial resources that could be marshalled to complete the scientific research and experimentation needed to perfect a nuclear weapon.
Mahaffey explores the creation and destructive history of the atom bomb.
Surprising to some listeners, Mahaffey explains Argentina’s significant effort to increase its research and development of nuclear power after WWII. Argentina created the National Atomic Energy Commision in 1950. The chief researcher, hired by President Juan Perón, was Ronald Richter (1909-1991), an Austrian-born scientist who headed their plan to create a fusion power facility. Richter fails but nuclear energy remains an important part of Argentina’s history. In the 1960s they built their own research reactors and by 1974 built their first fission nuclear power reactor, Atucha I. By 1984, they had two heavy-water reactors with Atucha I and Atucha II.
Ronald Richter (1909-1991, Austrian-born German who became an Argentine citizen who headed up the Argentine Huemul Project to create a nuclear fusion power plant. He failed, despite the millions of dollars spent to build and rebuild fusion power plants.
Yoshio Nishina (the father of modern physics research), Bunsaku Arakatsu, and Masatoshi Okochi created the so-called Ni-Go and F-Go projects to develop an atom bomb. They did not get beyond the laboratory stage because of a lack of resources, the exigency of war, and the complexity of nuclear technology. The energy of nuclear power, as shown by history, is two edged.
Yoshio Nishina (1890-1945, the father of modern physics research during WWII.)
and potentially provide a clean renewable energy source.
Mahaffey explains how research in fusion can go awry. In a news article, two chemists reported in 1989 that fusion was created in their experiment by involving heavy water (deuterium oxide) and palladium electrodes. They reported excess heat production that they believed was nuclear fusion. As with all scientific experiment, their results had to be confirmed by other scientists testing of their results in the same experiment. Mahaffey, in his role at the Georgia Research Institute, was asked to replicate the experiment. Using the same tabletop experiment, Mahaffey initially confirmed Fleishmann’s and Pons’ findings. However, no other table-top experiments found the same results. What Mahaffey finally found was that the neutron counting device that was recording increased heat was the actual source of the heat increase, not the chemical interaction between heavy water and palladium electrodes. Further research is being conducted but the U.S. Department of Energy concluded in 2004 there is no convincing evidence to support cold fusion. Tests are still being done but Mahaffey infers that research is a scientific dead end. Mahaffey and a colleague tried again in a basement of his colleague’s house to try a similar experiment and failed.
Nuclear power has the potential to revolutionize interplanetary travel. The higher efficiency and power, particularly with the perfection of fusion, will shorten travel times and make trips to Mars and beyond more feasible.
Mahaffey explains how communication will be a challenge when interplanetary travel becomes common. The distance to other planets or galaxies will impede communication because of the limits of the “speed of light”. However, the solution may lie in quantum entanglement’s experimental proof found by Clauser, Aspect, and Zellinger. The complexity of entanglement makes the theory unprovable at the time of Mahaffey’s book.
In theory, quantum entanglement suggests information (communication) may be instantaneously transmitted across galaxies without the limitations of the speed of light.
Mahaffey goes on to explain the risk of radiation in a chapter about a “dirty bomb”. Security measures used to protect the public from radiation leaks make thieves believe something valuable is being secured by government laboratories. Thieves will steal these secure containers only to find they are risking death by opening their booty. Additionally, Mahaffey notes radioactive material is often disposed of illegally and irradiates innocent people who own dump sites that received inadequately contained radioactive material.
Mahaffey is a supporter of nuclear energy and its potential for earth’s energy needs. He argues fission can be made a useful source of energy while fusion research holds the best opportunity for humanity’s future.
Like Proust, Niall Williams draws one into his story to make one think about their past as a child, young adult, and parent.
Books of Interest Website: chetyarbrough.blog
Time of the Child (A Novel)
By: Niall Williams
Narrated By: Dermot Crowley
Niall Williams (Irish Author, writer of novels, plays, and non-fiction.)
“Time of the Child” is a story of an Irish family in 1962 that lives in Faha, Ireland, a fictional town created by Niall Williams in his novel. It is a wonderfully written story about family relationship. It is written from the perspective of a parent with a marriageable age daughter. “Time of the Child” particularly resonates with those of a certain age who remember their parents, their life as a child, their adult marriage or marriages, and the child or children they have raised.
Marcel Proust (1871-1922, died at age 51, French novelist, literary critic, and essayist.)
Like Marcel Proust’s “Remembrance of Things Past”, a listener/reader of Williams’ story looks back at their experience as a child, an adolescent, an adult, and for some, a parent. Williams’ focus is on a 70-year-old father, who is the only doctor in Faha. His wife has died. He has a marriageable daughter who handles household duties and assists him in his practice. The doctor is an introverted, somewhat anti-social, person who laconically addresses his patients and acquaintances with reserved attention and respect. This is a person some would interpret as standoffish but pleasant enough as an important part of their community.
After the death of his wife, the doctor goes about his work as he has in the past.
He visits many of his patients at their homes. Some are elderly and nearing the end of their lives. Their maladies range from minor injuries, to strokes, or advancing dementia. Faha has an extended care facility for the elderly that cannot be taken care of by their families anymore, but it has a reputation as a house of death. Many families refuse to use it and cope with the demise of their parents or older family members on their own. The doctor makes house calls to attend some of these families, though little can be done for those who are beyond the help of medication and treatment.
One of these families with a dying parent has a young son near the age of the doctor’s daughter.
The young man is going to America but has shown an interest in the doctor’s daughter which is noted by the doctor as reciprocated interest. The young man leaves for America without overtly addressing his interest in the doctor’s daughter. The doctor recognizes the importance of the young man’s departure to his daughter and decides to send a letter to America advising the young man he should come to see his mother before her nearing death.
Like Proust, Williams draws one into his story that makes one think about their past as a child, young adult, and parent.
One wishes they had a father like the doctor, i.e. a father who understood more than he explained and acted in ways to make other people’s and their children’s lives better. At the same time, Williams’ idyllic picture reminds one of the faults of their parents when they were children, the harshness of their own lives, and the failures they have made in raising their own children. This does not make Willaims’ story less enjoyable to reader/listeners. It makes one recognize their parents did the best they could do, and hope that mistakes they made raising their own children will be overcome.
Akbar is showing everyone’s life is a struggle. Self-understanding, acceptance of who you are, and not feeling sorry for yourself can make you whole. Death may set you free, but the struggles of life are a better alternative.
Books of Interest Website: chetyarbrough.blog
Martyr!
By: Kaveh Akbar
Narrated By: Arian Moayed
Kaveh Akbar (Author, Iranian American poet, novelist, and editor.)
“Martyr!” is a book that is difficult for a prudish American to read but Akbar writes a story that resonates with one who has suffered from addiction, loss of parental guidance, and the exigencies of American life. Akbar’s main character is Cyrus Shams, a poet and writer, who believes he lost his mother in a 1988 plane crash caused by the American Navy when the USS Vincennes fired two surface-to-air missiles at a passenger plane that was mistakenly identified as an F-14 fighter jet.
(The Vincennes’ mistake occurred during the Iran-Iraq War that began in 1980. The USS Vincennes was deployed to the Persian Gulf to protect oil tankers. Prior to the Vincennes commander’s decision to fire the missiles, there were several skirmishes with Iranian vessels. )
The commander’s catastrophic mistake occurs in an atmosphere of military conflict. The commander is removed from his command but remains in the military until he retires in 1991.
The Vincennes incident resulted in a $61.8 million settlement to the families of the victims in 1996.
Because Akbar’s main character is the son of one of the passengers of the plane, he receives a financial settlement for the death of his mother. As he grows to become a man, he becomes addicted to drugs, cigarettes, and alcohol, has affairs with both men and women, but decides to kick his addictions. In the process of gaining sobriety, he becomes acquainted with a successful woman painter. After her death, he finds the woman was his mother. She had switched identities with the Iranian woman that was on the plane. Her reasons for abandoning her son are unclear but in a chance meeting at one of her art exhibitions, her son strikes an acquaintance with her. She knows he is her son but chooses not to disclose her story. The son is enamored by her art and seeks her out during the following years of her life. She dies and the son is told by the art exhibitor that the artist he admired was his mother.
Everyone searches for meaning in life.
All who have lived through childhood and maturity know living life is a struggle. Whether rich or poor, personal struggle either breaks you or makes you. The end result is mixed. Cyrus Shams is an addict that chooses to become sober, to become a poet and writer, to honor his mother’s life while making his way as a first generation Iranian American. Akbar is showing everyone’s life is a struggle. Self-understanding, acceptance of who you are, and not feeling sorry for yourself can make you whole. Death may set you free, but the struggles of life are a better alternative.
The war in Ukraine will be settled through negotiation. The same can be true in Gaza with the creation of a Palestinian state. It certainly will not eliminate conflict, but it offers a path for peace.
Books of Interest Website: chetyarbrough.blog
All Quiet on the Western Front
By: Erich Maria Remarque
Narrated By: Frank Muller
Erich Maria Remarque (1898-1970, Author, German born novelist and survivor of WWI.)
Revisiting Erich Remarque’s “All Quiet on the Western Front” is a reminder of today’s wars in Ukraine and Gaza. As a former soldier in the German army of WWI, Remarque explains how brutal war is for soldiers and their families. He shows there are no winners in war. The victims of war are the same whether they are aggressors or defenders. Putin’s ambition to restore the empire of Russia appears as foolish as Hamas’s determination to destroy Israel. The result is injury and death for all. Neither Germany nor defending Allied Powers escaped the loss of soldiers and civilians in the two 20th century wars against Germany.
The estimated injury of 109,000 and killing of 46,000 Palestinian citizens is not justified by the atrocity of October 7, 2023, when 1,200 people were killed and 253 were taken hostage by Hamas in Isreal.
Israeli leadership disagrees because of factions in Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon that intend to eliminate Israel from the middle eastern world. Rather than killing and injuring indigenous peoples of the Gaza strip, a diplomatic solution should be pursued to establish a Palestinian State. Every nation-state in the world has militant factions within their borders. Palestine, as a nation-state, would have the responsibility for controlling their militant factions just like every nation-state in the world.
Twentieth century Isreal is formed out of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria after the 1948 Arab Israeli War.
Egypt lost the Gaza Strip, Jordan the West Bank, and Syria the Golan Heights with the formation of Israel. Palestinians, like Israelis, lived in those areas for centuries. With creation of a Palestinian State, International Law and UN Resolutions can aid and diplomatically pressure governments to address nation-state claims.
History of the 20th and now 21st century show war has defeated aggressor governments but at an unconscionable cost to humanity. War’s cost is illustrated by Remarque as injury and death of aggressors, defenders, parents, and children. No one wins and everyone loses. Neither peace nor war have ended human inhumanity. Remarque clearly illustrates the folly of war, but human nature infects peace with a war mentality and ferocity. Diplomacy and negotiation for the creation of a Palestinian state is the only pragmatic solution for peace in the Middle East.
Aggressor nations, as shown by 20th century history, are eventually defeated.
Israel’s military reaction is as dishonorable as the Hamas attack on October 7th. Both are unjustifiable. Creation of a Palestinian state offers a pragmatic solution to the control of Hamas. The need for nation-state control is equally true in Syria’s and Lebanon’s Hezbollah factions. International pressure can only be exerted with nation-state recognition. Only with the creation of ethnically viable nation-states is their hope for peace among peoples of different cultures.
The war in Ukraine will be settled through negotiation. The same can be true in Gaza with the creation of a Palestinian state. It certainly will not eliminate conflict, but it offers a path for peace.
The encompassing meaning of Homer’s “Odyssey” is the maturing of a son and marriage commitment of a husband and wife.
Books of Interest Website: chetyarbrough.blog
The Odyssey of Homer
By: The Great Courses
Lectures By:Elizabeth Vandiver
Elizabeth Vandiver (American classical scholar, Professor of Latin and Classics at Whitman College.)
Professor Vandiver offers an insightful review of Homer’s “Odyssey” in her “…Great Courses” lectures. Each chapter of the “Odyssey” reminds listeners of Homer’s literary skill and his masterful story of Ulyssess’s return to Pennelope and their son, Telemachus, after the Trojan war. Homer’s epic is divided into 24 books, each of which tell of the trials of Ulysses (aka Odysseus) when returning to his Greek Island kingdom of Ithaca after the Trojan War.
The Trojan War is believed to have taken place between the 12th and 13th centuries BCE.
It is said to have been caused by the Trojans when Paris (the son of the King and Queen of Troy) abducts and marries Helen of Troy, the wife of Menelaus (the Greek king of Sparta). When Paris is killed by Achilles, Helen is returned to Menelaus. Ulysses’ return to his Kingdom in Ithaca is the story of the “Odyssey”. The return takes ten years because of his companions eating of lotus flowers that make them forget their home and stay on an island where the flowers grow, his capture by Polyphemus (a one-eyed monster), an errant wind that blows him off course, giants who attack is fleet of ships and destroy all of them except one, a sorceress (Circe) who turns his crew into pigs, a trip to the Underworld to get guidance from Tiresias on how he may return to his kingdom, an island of Sirens who lure sailors to their death, an attack by Scylla and Charybdis (a six-headed monster), his men’s defiance of the sun god who told them not to eat his cattle, and finally, Calypso (a nymph who keeps Odysseus captive on her island for seven years of conjugal ambition).
Each of Ulysses’ delays are entertainments to reader/listeners of the “Odyssey”. The encompassing meaning of the story is the maturing of a son and the marriage commitment of a husband and wife. Telemachus is twenty years old but has not grown into a man who takes responsibility for his life. Penelope is a wife who has remained true to a husband who has been lost to her during the period of the Trojan war and Ulysess’s unknown fate after his success in ending the war. Because Ulysses has not returned for ten long years after the end of the war, there are 108 suitors for Penelope’s hand in marriage. The suitors are from noble families of Ithaca and surrounding islands who have taken over Odysseus’ palace, consuming its wealth and resources while courting Penelope.
As the son of a great warrior, Telemachus fails to grow into a man that would take responsibility for ejecting disrespectful suitors in his family’s palace.
As the story progresses, and Ulysses returns to Ithaca, Telemachus becomes an ally to his returning father in a plan to kill the 108 suitors. Telemachus takes responsibility for hiding the palace weapons so the suitors would only have weapons they might have brought with them. Though Telemachus fails in his effort to hide the weapons, he takes responsibility for his error in not having successfully kept them from the suitors. Homer’s message is that Telemachus has become a man by showing valor as an ally to his father and a man who takes responsibility for his decisions.
Penelope’s commitment to marriage is illustrated by her many years of waiting for a husband who may be lost. She denies all her suitors because of the possibility of her husband’s return. In a similar vein, reunion with her husband is evidence of a man who loves his wife in the face of a temptation by a beautiful and alluring nymph who offers him immortality if he would stay with her.
Ulysses shows a commitment to marriage by returning to his wife despite their many years of separation, the offer of immortality, and his defense of a marriage between a fellow Greek King (Menelaus) and his wife, Helen of Troy. The Trojan war was an attack on marriage, for which Ulysses risked his and his army’s lives.
Vandiver ends her lecture by noting the German archaeologist and businessman, Heinrich Schliemann, discovered the ancient city of Troy in Turkey.
Vandiver notes Schliemann had a controversial reputation because of his destructive method of excavation and suspicious handling of artifacts. However, Schliemann significantly contributed to the study of archaeology and the understanding of ancient civilizations.
What Professor Fullenkamp makes clear is information is key to understanding financial markets, but human judgement is the difference between investor’ success or failure.
Books of Interest Website: chetyarbrough.blog
Financial Literacy (Finding Your Way in the Financial Markets)
By: The Great Courses
Lectures By: Professor Connel Fullenkamp
Professor Connel Fullenkamp (Lecturer at Duke University, economist and director of undergraduate studies in economics.)
“Financial Literacy” may put some listeners to sleep but there is a lot to be learned from Connel Fullenkamp’s lectures. He gives a lengthy description of financial markets extending from Stocks to Bonds, Forex, Commodity, and Derivative Markets. He offers information about how money is used and made in financial markets. Fullenkamp addresses banks, stocks, selling and buying securities, expected returns on investments, how they are priced, controlled, and how information about them is important for personal financial decisions.
It is no surprise to find that banks play a critical role in financial markets.
They provide personal banking services by accepting deposits and providing loans to individuals and businesses. They smooth the flow of money in the economy. Banks can help companies raise capital by offering advice and services for the issuance of stocks and bonds to finance businesses. They offer advisory services for mergers, acquisitions, and other financial strategies. Banks can act as market makers by buying and selling securities for their clients. They can provide asset management services, research and analysis, and ensure legal regulation and compliance with government and international laws. Banks are the backbone of financial markets when they provide efficient allocation of resources and ensure the smooth functioning of the financial system. All of this is true in concept.
However, banks, savings and loan companies, and mortgage lenders are run by human beings who are subject to all the risks of human nature that can lead to catastrophic financial collapse as it almost did in the 2007-2010 mortgage derivative crises.
To be fair to the professor’s presentation, the 2007-2010 crises is not only because of the bad mortgages generated by financial institutions like Countrywide, New Century and Ameriquest. Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, and Merrill Lynch investment banks are equally guilty. They packaged bad mortgages with high-risk mortgages to be sold to the public as safe collateralized securities that were far from safe and ultimately unsound. The result was a near worldwide financial collapse.
The government compounded the failure of 2007-2010 by guaranteeing poorly justified mortgages that were included in the packaged securities.
Rating agencies like Moody’s Standard & Poor’s, and Fitch ratings misled investors about the risks of the packaged mortgage securities. Government oversight organizations like the Federal Reserve and Department of the Treasury did not adequately do their job. Ironically, banks like Wells Fargo resisted the mortgage derivatives while banks like JPMorgan Chase bought and sold them but was too big to fail. Ironically, both banks became vehicles for recovery by taking over some of the lenders that had to0 many mortgage derivatives in their portfolios. (As noted in earlier book reviews, many families lost their homes because of foreclosures caused by lenders who originated the mortgages in these securities.) Fullenkamp explains financial markets are based on information. However, as noted by information computer geeks, “garbage in, garbage out” sunk lenders and victimized many investors, lenders, and homebuyers.
In explaining the stock market, Fullenkamp notes an investor becomes a partial owner of a company which gives them a stake in a company’s future profits, either from dividends or market performance.
Stocks have a dual identity. The difficulty for the investor is in understanding the information provided by the company to predict company performance and reap the benefits of stock appreciation. Fullenkamp gives some insight on assessment of that information, but most listeners seem most likely to pay less attention to professors of finance than to their own judgement.
Fullenkamp goes on to discuss Forex (Foreign Exchange). This is a global marketplace for trading national currencies.
Unlike stock and bond markets, a Forex market operates 24 hours a day because currency is an international trading market with centers in different cities like New York, Tokyo, and London. In the case of Europe and the U.S., the trade would be in Euros and US Dollars or in Japan and the U.S., the trade would be in Dollars and Yen. Exchange Rates fluctuated based on nation-state events. Strategic buying and selling based on those events can create profits and losses for exchange traders. Unlike a singular centralized stock market, Forex is decentralized and conducted electronically over the counter (OTC) by a network of banks, brokers, and dealers.
Fullenkamp also defines commodities markets. There are hard and soft commodities. Hard are like gold, oil, and other naturally produced materials. Soft are agricultural products like wheat, coffee, or cotton.
Most commonly, trading in these products is done with futures contracts. Futures are agreements to buy or sell a commodity at a predetermined price on a future date. The investor is gambling on the commodity to be either worth more or less than what the product is expected to cost at the actual time of purchase or sale. There are several exchanges around the world. The participants are speculators that either take the commodities at the agreed upon price or simply gain or lose money based on the actual price of the commodity when it is deliverable.
There is a great deal to absorb from Fullenkamp’s lectures. The last lecture is on “The Future of Finance”.
He suggests the technology of mobile phones has expanded the lending industry to individuals from institutions. It has already begun in less successful economic societies. Mobile money platforms and digital financial services are being used in Africa. Users of these platforms store, send and receive money by mobile phone owners because traditional banking services are not available. Fintech companies are formed to assess creditworthiness of individuals and small businesses. The vast amount of personal information becoming available with the internet becomes a source of customer approval or rejection of small companies and individuals seeking loans.
What Professor Fullenkamp makes clear is information is key to understanding financial markets, but human judgement is the difference between investor’ success or failure.
Extending Harari’s idea of biophysics research and algo-rhythmic programming suggests a potential for immense changes in society. A singularity that melds A.I. with human brain function and algo-rhythmic programming may be tomorrow’s world revolution. Of course, that capability cuts both ways, i.e., for the good and bad of society.
Books of Interest Website: chetyarbrough.blog
Homo Deus (A Brief History of Tomorrow)
By: Uval Noah Harari
Narrated By: Derek Perkins
Yuval Noah Harari (Author, Israeli medievalist, military historian, science writer.)
By any measure, Yuval Noah Harari is a well-educated and insightful person who will offend some and enlighten others with his opinion about religion, spirituality, the nature of human beings, and the future. He implies the Bible is a book of fiction that is historically proven to have been written by different authors with contradictions that only interpreters can reconcile as God’s work.
“Homo Deus” is a spiritual book suggesting humanity is on its own and has a chance to survive the future but only through the ability of human understanding and effort.
To Harari, the greatest threats to society are national leaders who believe in God, heaven and eternal life who discount human existence and use of science to improve human life on earth. The irony of Harari’s belief is that humanist leaders are the only hope for human life’ survival.
Harari argues science, free enterprise, and the growth of knowledge offer the best hope for the future of human life.
Neither capitalism nor communism are a guarantee of survival because of the increasing potential for error as human beings become more God-like. Advances in engineering, artificial intelligence, and biotechnology may replace the happenstance of human birth. The value of free enterprise is evident in the agricultural, industrial, and technological revolutions of history. However, as science improves the understanding of the mind and body of human beings, the technology of biogenetics offers hope for the future while running the risk of biological error with unforeseen consequences.
Harari’s book is the brave new world written about by Shakespeare in the 17th century and reimagined by Aldous Huxley in his 1932 dystopian novel “Brave New World”.
On the one hand, Shakespeare offers a positive spin as his character, Miranda, sees people from outside her experience and says “How beauteous mankind is! O Brave! That has such people in’t”. While Huxley notes a future society that becomes conformist and lacks individuality and human emotion. Which way society will turn is unknown.
The conformist demands of collective ownership of property and means of production by communism impede creativity. Capitalism is more creative and dynamic. However, capitalist incentive raises the specter of human nature that only sees financial gain without any concern for environmental or human cost. On balance, capitalism appears more likely to accelerate technology because communism more often follows than changes scientific direction.
Some think A.I. will lead the world to greater knowledge and prosperity while others believe it will destroy human life. A sceptic might suggest both views are wrong because A.I. is only a tool for recalling knowledge of the past to help humans make better decisions for the future. The real risk, as it has always been, is human leadership.
Harari believes, like Nietzsche, that God is dead because belief in God is losing its power and significance in the modern world.
Though many still believe in God, it seems more people are viewing God as a myth. The Pew Research Center reports a median of 45% of people across 34 countries still believe in God. However, the variation is wide with Brazil saying 70% believe while in Japan the percentage is only 20%. Harari implies belief in God is in decline.
Harari explains biophysics illustrates that human thought is algorithmic. He argues our thoughts, decisions, and behaviors can be understood to be a result of patterns created in human brains that are pre-determined. There is no “free-will” in Harari’s opinion. This is not to suggest aberrant behavior does not exist, but that human thought and action is determined by our experientially defined brain in the same way a computer is programmed. Experience from birth to adulthood is just part of a mind’s programming.
Harari implies understanding of brain function will change the world as massively as the Agricultural, Industrial, and technological revolutions.
Harari goes on to suggest humans have never been singular beings, but a multitude of beings split into two brains that mix and match their biogenetic and biochemical programming to think and act in pre-determined ways. Experiments have shown that the way the left half of a human brain sees and compels action is different than how the right brain sees and compels action. Each half thinks and acts independently while negotiating a concerted action when both halves are functioning normally. That negotiation between the two brain halves results in an algorithm for action based on the biochemical nature of the brain. The way two halves of the brain interact multiply the person we are or will become.
Extending Harari’s idea of biophysics research and algo-rhythmic programming suggests a potential for immense changes in society. A singularity that melds A.I. with human brain function and algo-rhythmic programming may be tomorrow’s world revolution. Of course, that capability cuts both ways, i.e., for the good and bad of society. Interestingly, Harari paints a grim picture of the future based on an A.I. revolution.
Trump is unlikely to help the middleclass and poor any more than some of America’s past Presidents, but he disrupts the status quo. That is Thomas Frank’s answer to why Trump was re-elected.
Books of Interest Website: chetyarbrough.blog
Listen Liberal (Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People?)
By: Thomas Frank
Narrated By: Thomas Frank
Thomas Carr Frank (Author, political analyst, historian, and journalist)
How could the American people elect a billionaire felon as President of the United States? Thomas Frank offers a compelling answer to that troubling question.
Since WWII, the American people have been misled by the words, policies, and deeds of both Democratic and Republican leaders. No post WWII leader escapes Frank’s frank explanation. Not since Franklin Roosevelt, and Harry Truman have any Presidents effectively reduced income inequality.
Frank embarrasses American voters for complicity in reducing the size of the middle class, ignoring the poor, and making the rich richer. He explains how Presidents of the last 70 years have made the middleclass smaller and the poor poorer. Frank particularly points to Bill Clinton and Barack Obama as examples of Ivy League’ wordsmiths that misled the public and instituted policies that moved America away from the working class and poor.
Clinton and Obama represented education as the primary measure of success in the 21st century. They largely ignored the working class that grew the American economy to be the most successful in the world. With that neglect the Democratic party became adjunct to the Republican party by diminishing the contribution and value of working Americans. Whichever party leads America no longer makes a difference to the middleclass’ and poor. Frank argues there is little difference between a Democratic or Republican President. The middleclass and poor realize those who are elected to lead make little difference in American worker’s lives.
Frank methodically dismantles Clinton and Obama administration’s policies to show how they diminished opportunity for the middleclass and poor. Clinton manages to balance the national governments debt on the backs of working America. Clinton’s welfare reform took many off of welfare by demanding employment as a requirement for any help by the welfare administration. That seems laudable but its impact on single parent households left children home alone and at the mercy of their neighborhoods. A child alone is left to the influence of neighborhoods festooned with gangs, drugs, guns and their societal consequences. In reducing the number of people on welfare, poverty increased.
Clinton’s programs for crime control massively increased prison building and prison populations that disproportionately affected African and Latino American communities.
Clinton repeals the Glass-Stegall Act and allows commercial banks to enter the derivative mortgage business that led to the near future financial collapse of America between 2007 and 2010.
Entry into the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) led to manufacturing job losses in America.
Frank admits Obama helped the middleclass and poor with Obama Care but argues he made the same mistakes as Clinton by supporting the rich at the expense of the middleclass and poor. Obama chose to follow the lead of George Bush’s plan to get America out of the economic ditch of the century by bailing out the financial industry while allowing the working class to fend for themselves. Many lost their homes as a result of banker’s lending greed and mortgage derivatives that came from Clinton’s decision to repeal Glass-Stegall. None of the banks were punished by bankruptcy because the federal government made a deal to keep them in business or subject to acquisition by bigger banks that became even larger. Poverty remained at the same level. Surprisingly homelessness was reduced by Obama’s “Opening Doors” initiative in 2010. However, the trend of aiding the rich at the expense of the working class is re-invigorated by emphasis on higher education and creativity rather than the nuts and bolts of economic prosperity that comes from job creation and a working public.
The trend of aiding the rich at the expense of the working class is re-invigorated by emphasis on higher education and creativity rather than the nuts and bolts of economic prosperity that comes from job creation.
The glaring irony of Frank’s observation led to the election of a billionaire who lauds wealth and power and cares little about the middleclass and poor. Donald Trump, Barack Obama, and Bill Clinton distorted the truth, partly by lying to themselves but also by purposely lying to the public with political policies and actions that did not make the lives of the middleclass and poor any better.
Trump directly distorts the truth but Obama and Clinton lie to themselves about the value of education as the singular path to improvement for the middleclass and poor. People are not only educated by school.
People are also educated by work and their experiences in life. Not every person in America or the world is interested in having a college degree. Shared economic productivity is the key to reducing income disparity. The brilliant oratorical skills of Obama and Clinton were refined by their intelligence and education but not everyone is blessed with the same skill. Trump is no Obama or Clinton, but he appeals to many who feel they have been left behind or can be benefited by his transactional view of the world.
One may agree that economic productivity comes from creativity, education, and work. However, it does not come from emphasis on one thing but on equality of opportunity for all to be employed.
Franks’ cynicism is overwhelming. By the end of his book, which is published before Hilliary Clinton’s political defeat by Trump, one is depressed by the truth of what he writes. The second election of Trump is proof of the failure of the Democratic party, and the Republican party, to live up to a belief in social equality and equal opportunity.
Creativity is an innate human quality. Education comes in many forms which are both formal and informal.
Being employed is a government, private enterprise, and personal responsibility. It is the job of governance to create public policies that support equality of opportunity for people to be creative, educated, and employed. Equality of opportunity ensures national economic growth and prosperity.
Trump is unlikely to help the middleclass and poor any more than some of America’s past Presidents, but he disrupts the status quo. That is Thomas Frank’s answer to why Trump was re-elected.
REVIEWS AND VIEWS OF LIFE 