From the Empirical Archives: On the Importance of Being Radical by John Cobb

On the Importance of Being Radical

John Cobb

PHOTO: Museum Boerhaave, Leiden, Netherlands

Originally Published in the July 2012 issue of Empirical

Is it bad to be “radical?” Often one hears the statement that so-and-so is a “radical” as a reason not to pay attention to what he or she says. To label people as “radicals” may be a way of warning others that they are dangerous. It has much the same effect as calling them “communists” or “terrorists.” This fear of radicals is not without reason. They do propose new ideas that undercut some of those to which most people are attached. They question the need for institutions and practices that others consider essential and beneficial. From the point of view of those who are benefited by the status quo and those who think that things are going well, radicals are dangerous.

When the modern period began in Europe, Christian institutions and beliefs were very well established. A few brave modern people raised radical questions that undercut the authority of Christian institutions and the credibility of supernaturalist Christian teachings. Some of these radicals paid dearly for their efforts. Christian institutions and beliefs did not disappear, but they changed drastically. The change in their role in Western societies has been even greater. The work of radicals has led to the replacement of Christian societies by secular ones. Modern scientists were often in the lead in advancing radicalism of this sort.

What is less noticed is that radicals are just as threatening in other aspects of society. Political organizations, governments, professions, academic disciplines, and educational institutions resist and oppose their work just as religious communities often did. Sadly, this is true also of modern sciences that profess to be fully open to evidence. In all these contexts, radicals engage in just the questioning that is not wanted. While modern culture celebrates the work of the radicals of earlier times, it is no more hospitable to contemporary radicals than were the established leaders of those earlier periods.

Many of us, at one time or another, have been irritated by people raising questions of a theoretical nature in a group whose job it is to deal practically with a problem. The zeal of radicals to go deeper simply slows us down in getting our work done. Not all radicals have good judgment about when and where to raise their questions, and for many people the answer to the question of when and where radicals should seek attention is: never and nowhere. It is easy to understand and even sympathize with those who abhor radicals.

But modern society has needed radicals as much as earlier. A century ago a few voices were pointing out that American society was rooted in racism and sexism. The vast majority of Americans dismissed such talk as “radical” and therefore irrelevant. They were right that it was radical. But these radical voices finally forced themselves into the public consciousness. More and more people recognized that the call for radical change had truth and righteousness on its side. There is still a lot of racism and sexism in American society, but they are no longer supported by law and official thinking. The work of radicals has changed society radically. Even many who were once irritated and even angered by them are now grateful for their work. Today the most glaring problems in American society are economic. Accordingly, this is the area most in need of radical investigation.

We need radicals to go to the roots of these problems. This could lead us in a variety of directions. The financial sector now dominates the economy; so we could focus on how this has gained so much power. The increase in inequality in the distribution of income and wealth has grown very rapidly. Radicals ask for the deepest reasons for this development.

Einstein was a radical in science. He is standing in this photograph with Lorentz in 1921.
PHOTO: Museum Boerhaave, Leiden, Netherlands

Some of the reasons that radicals will find are grounded in political power and personal acquisitiveness. But there are strictly theoretical contributions to these evils. There is a good deal of synchronicity between economic teaching and governmental and global practice. Accordingly, one place to apply radical analysis is the dominant economic theory.

Let’s take a simple example. The discipline of economics is founded on the assumption that bigger is better. It is supposed that the more economic activity takes place, the better off people are. Economists take their role to be showing how to make the economy grow. From time to time radicals have asked whether growth is the right goal for the economy, but within the academic departments of philosophy, the question has not been seriously discussed. Those who have tried to do so have not been well treated.

Asking that question is threatening to the discipline of economics as it has long been constituted. On the other hand, failing to ask it out of respect for the current authorities has the same kind of effect as failing to ask about racism or sexism out of respect for the existing authorities of an earlier day. The global growth of economic activity on a finite planet is responsible for such serious problems as global warming. If the economics guild continues to silence those of its members who raise this question because it is “radical,” the danger to human life is increased.

The crucial question is simple, but radical. Is growth a final good in itself ? Or is it good only insofar as it improves the human condition? If the latter, should we not investigate how the increase of economic activity, guided by the principles of standard economics, is actually affecting the human condition? That is a “radical” thing to do. It is also empirical.

To be empirical is to pay close attention to the facts. That is, itself, a “radical” thing to do. In some cases, the facts will not support the patterns of thought of many people, perhaps not those of any of us. Science at its best calls on us to accept the facts even when we wish they were otherwise. For example, many people prefer to think we are fundamentally disconnected from all other living things and, for a long time, science supported that idea. But the evidence for evolution became overwhelming. However unsettling the truth may be, it remains the truth, and many of us hold to the radical idea that we should affirm the truth and adjust our way of thinking to it.

I have spoken of “science at its best.” Sadly, science is not always at its best. Modern scientists like to point to one particularly dramatic example of failure at this point: the case of Galileo. It is often presented as an instance of science vs. religion, but it was in fact a matter of a new development in science that opposed the scientific consensus of its day. The church supported this consensus.

The best science of the medieval period was based on Aristotle. The church shared the scientists’ respect for Aristotle. Aristotle thought that heavenly bodies were fundamentally different from the Earth. The scientists who followed him were persuaded by his arguments. Galileo used a new technology to introduce evidence that did not fit into this understanding of the universe. The scientists who represented the scientific consensus of that day refused even to look through the telescope. They wanted to silence Galileo’s radical challenge to established science. Modern scientists have liked to condemn the resistance of late medieval Aristotelian scientists to the evidence provided by Galileo. They often imply that this was a failing of medieval scientists that modern science overcame. Sad to say, modern scientists engage in the same kind of practice even today. They strongly resist attending to evidence that does not fit into their worldview. To point this out is to be a “radical.”

Charles Darwin
PHOTO: Ed Uthman
ART: Joseph Boehm (1885)

For example, most modern scientists are committed to a worldview in which events in the physical world can be affected only by other events in the physical world. There is an enormous amount of evidence that physical events are in fact affected by what happens in human subjective experience. That my hands type one set of words rather than another certainly seems to be affected by my thinking. That mental activity plays a role in bodily behavior is not only common sense but also has an immense amount of evidence in its favor. But the metaphysics with which modern science is closely associated says that it is impossible. Accordingly, such affirmations are rejected by most scientific guilds as impossible. Most scientists refuse to look at the evidence. This exclusion of a great amount of evidence is not science at its best.

Asking science to open itself to evidence that does not fit into its worldview is a radical act. It is as difficult for modern scientists to do this as for Aristotelian scientists to accept the evidence provided by Galileo. One reason for this difficulty is the commitment of scientists to what they call “empiricism.” This empiricism was shaped by philosophers and scientists in the early modern period. It affirmed the view that the only access to the world external to the individual thinker is through the sense organs. For practical purposes, scientists and philosophers limited themselves to what could be seen or touched. We can call the resulting idea about how we know anything about the world “sensory empiricism.” Scientists found that it was possible to agree on a great many things when they limited themselves in this way. They celebrated the “objectivity” of science. They often identify “science” as such with the body of theory that developed out of sensory empiricism.

This magazine is certainly committed to “empiricism,” in the broad meaning of this term. We must begin all our reflections in experience. In order to explain our experience, we may have to posit some things we do not experience. Indeed science does this in spades. These days scientists tell us that most matter and most energy can never be experienced at all. They call them “dark.” But these theories, and all our theories, should be tested again and again in experience.

There is no question of the crucial importance of experience. However, we need to ask more radically about it. When we do so, we find that it includes much more than the deliverances of the sense organs. In fact scientists have to assume a great deal that they cannot derive from sense experience.

I limit myself to one example. Much of science is engaged in explaining how things come to be through time. Causality is usually understood as the impact of the past upon the present. But vision and touch give us only the present. Of course, we assume that we see things following one upon another. But that assumption requires something other than the immediate delivery of visual or tactile experience. We have to remember the previous visual experience in order to see that there is a change or motion.

"Galapagos Islands"
PHOTO: Michael R. Perry

If this point is not immediately clear, take a little time to think about it. Focus on what you are seeing in a single moment. It will be a complex pattern of colors. Now you are very likely to think that you see changes taking place. But if you limit yourself entirely to what is given you through your eyes this is not quite true. In the new moment you are seeing a slightly different pattern of color, but you are no longer seeing the previous one. Without memory, you cannot compare them. You do not see the change. We do not see or touch memory.

Puzzles of this kind have long been formulated by philosophers but they have rarely been taken seriously by scientists. If one does take them seriously, one is pushed to a more “radical” empiricism, one that examines experience as a whole with greater care and sees the interrelationships of its ingredients. William James contributed this term: “radical empiricism.” Our actual experience is one of constant change. It is not wrong for science to talk about changes in the world based on experience. What is wrong is to claim to limit itself to the objective world as known only through sight and touch. Science does not do this. It cannot do this. Unfortunately, it does not attend to the contribution of other aspects of experience, and it gives support to a very truncated view of reality.

Those who build their understanding of reality on what contemporary science offers tend to devalue value. The reality of our experience is that it is profoundly value-laden. We have hope and fear, satisfaction and dissatisfaction, enjoyment and misery, and so much more. We are constantly involved in questions of better and worse. Scientists may acknowledge that such feelings occur, but modern scientific orthodoxy insists that they have no effect upon the world. The world is value free, and science is supposed to be value free. Now research universities are supposed to be value free as well – which means that their only value is money.

Radical empiricism is another matter. For it, feelings, beliefs, sensory experiences, memories, anticipations, bodily experience, and intellectual activity are all equally real and very much bound up together. We can, of course, abstract certain sensory experiences from this whole and concentrate upon them. Much can be learned in this way. But when this limited aspect of knowledge is given special privilege and all the rest is disparaged, we are in serious trouble.

The real world, the world of the radical empiricist, is much richer. It calls forth concern and commitment as the purely “objective” world does not. It opens us to fresh approaches in economics and in physics, and in everything else as well.

In 1955, it was "radical for Rosa Parks (1913-2005), because of her skin color, to insist on sitting in the front of a Montgomery, Alabama bus.
PHOTO: USIA

Earlier I mentioned the overwhelming evidence that evolution has taken place and that the human species emerged through evolutionary processes. But radical empiricism opens us to an understanding of evolution quite different from the one to which sensory empiricism, with its purely objective world, has led us. One example is the explanation of the emergence of new species. Standard academic teaching that fits the narrowly scientific worldview is that all the variations in plants and animals among which natural selection operates are caused by random mutation of genes. Lynn Margulis disagreed, saying that at least some of them occurred by symbiogenesis, that is, by diverse organisms combining. She gave as her most important example the emergence of the nucleated cell. She said this did not come about by random mutation of genes but by one bacterium swallowing another and not digesting it. Her idea was long rejected, even ridiculed, because it did not fit the standard model. But the evidence finally forced its acceptance. Sadly, despite this important realization, and even though Margulis provided evidence of the role of symbiogenesis elsewhere as well, the standard account of evolution has not been modified to make a place for it. Radical empiricists, in contrast, are completely open to the evidence.

More broadly there is a great deal of evidence that purposive actions on the part of animals, especially human beings, play a large role in evolution. But mainstream evolutionary theory ignores the effects of the action of animals on evolution because this would give an opening to acknowledging a role for some sort of purpose in evolution.

The exclusion of purpose from evolutionary theory is one of its sacred principles. We find evolutionary biologists vigorously denying that purpose plays any role in the world for the purpose of maintaining ideas that do not have empirical support. Radical empiricists do not see why we should ignore the evidence for the role of the purposes of the evolving animals, especially human beings.

PHOTO: Harley Pebley

Late Medieval science allied itself with Aristotelian philosophy and gave much too large a role to purpose. Modern philosophy allied itself with materialism and denied purpose altogether. Wouldn’t it be better for science to pay attention to the evidence, all the evidence, instead of being enthralled by its companion philosophy? Let’s join radical empiricists and this magazine in the truly open-ended quest for truth.

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Our Pacific Northwest

Our Pacific Northwest

Seahawks Surge Past Washington with Griffin Wounded

After facing a 14-point deficit early in their wildcard match-up against an equally hot Redskins squad, the Seahawks scored 24 unanswered points to claim their first post-season road win in nearly three decades. Although Seattle’s stingy defense kept Alfred Morris (second only to Adrian Peterson in rushing yards this season) under 100 yards, and a solid performance from rookie quarterback Russell Wilson, it was the knee of Washington quarterback Robert Griffin III that drew most of the attention throughout the game on Sunday. Griffin, who appeared to re-injure a knee still healing from a sprain against the Baltimore Ravens on December 9, 2012, remained in the game despite showing obvious discomfort. While the Washington faithful will have an entire off-season to ponder the health of their rookie phenom, and whether or not he should have remained in the game after Marsawn’s Lynch’s trademark beast-mode playoff touchdown, the ‘hawks prepare for a battle of the birds in Atlanta this weekend. The Falcon’s went 13-3 in their 2012 campaign, but have wavered in recent playoffs. The Pacific Northwest will anxiously wait to see if the Seahawks can win another road game and earn a spot in the NFC Championship game, where they could potentially meet their divisional foes, the 49ers, for a trip to the Super bowl.



From the Empirical Archives: A Tale of Two Crashes Part I by Emanuel Stoakes

A Tale of Two Crashes: The Financial System and Our Planet 

Emanuel Stoakes

PHOTO: NASA/Goddard

The East Asian and global economic crises resulted in mass suffering both at home and abroad in the recent past. However, the greatest crash in human history is yet to come–something we must not forget if we care about the fate of our species. 

The United States of America, the most wealthy and powerful nation that has ever existed, was founded by a group of men who rebelled against the tyranny of imperial rule. A great number of those who had come to the “The New World,” including many of the forebears of the founding fathers, left from England and sought a place where they could freely express their religious and/or intellectual convictions far from the pressure cooker of European society with its political oppression, poverty, disease, and rigid class system.

America represented a new start. Many took the ten-week Atlantic crossing from Plymouth, Bristol, or elsewhere to forge a bold new life–and many found that. Even thousands of miles away from home, they were still subjected to manifestly unfair taxation and laws designed to subjugate the population to foreign rule. This had consequences. An epochal moment occurred on the July 4th, 1776 (as the reader will know) with the Declaration of Independence. It expressed the intention of the colonies to establish an independent sovereign nation, founded in rebellion against just such domination-by-proxy. The victory of General Washington’s Continental Army over the British in the Revolutionary War promised a chance for Americans to live according to their rights, as opposed to being subjected to the dictates of Westminster.

Jefferson Memorial
PHOTO: P. Couture

The principal author of America’s Declaration of Independence–the document that affirmed and sanctified the values of this brave new world–was Thomas Jefferson, a man revered since his day as an iconic champion of individual liberty. Nearing the end of his life he wrote a letter to his friend John Taylor, in which he reflected on the state of the nascent nation. While writing with approval about the Constitution and its virtues, he complained about “the system of banking” of the present day that he and Taylor “have both equally and ever reprobated.” Jefferson evidently took the banking system very seriously, describing it as “a blot left in all our constitutions, which if not covered, will end in their destruction.” He evinced in the final lines of the letter the frank opinion that “banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies,” a statement now well-known. 

Jefferson’s view on banking is elucidated further in another letter held by the Library of Congress and not generally quoted, written this time to his friend Thomas Cooper. “Everything predicted by the enemies of banks, in the beginning, is now coming to pass,” he complained. After which he stated: “We are to be ruined now by the deluge of bank paper [a reference to inflation]. It is cruel that such revolutions in private fortunes should be at the mercy of avaricious adventurers, who, instead of employing their capital, if any they have, in manufactures, commerce, and other useful pursuits, make it an instrument to burden all the interchanges of property with their swindling profits, profits which are the price of no useful industry of theirs.”

Jefferson’s observations, it seems to this writer, were apt, insightful, and tragically prescient. Jefferson’s vision of the banks of his day prefigures the potent role of private money in America’s future fortunes. The self-interested agents of finance and their allies in the corporate world, modern-day “avaricious adventurers” hungry for “swindling profit”–so often enabled by our politicians, particularly those in the party that Jefferson founded–have imposed a great deal of suffering on this nation, and on large areas of the world, as we shall see. 

ART: Luming Marr*
Luming Marr has constructed a composite photograhp based on original photographs of the Lincoln statue (by Sean Hayford O'Leary), the young girl (by xenia/morguefile), and balloon flag (by US Navy Illustrator Draftsman 1st Class Moises M. Medel).

By the time of the earlier twentieth century President Woodrow Wilson would complain of “an invisible empire” of “special interests,” which he described as occupying a position of influence “above the forms of democracy,” seeking its own agenda. As the twentieth century continued in its path, the Great Depression would issue the nation an object lesson in the dangers posed by the stock market on society as a whole, resulting in powerful regulatory measures being passed into law by Congress. The Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 was an example of such legislation, which separated investment and commercial banks, in order to avoid “improper banking activity”–in particular the involvement of the latter form of banking in the stock market. However, regardless of such legislation, the power and influence of Wall Street remained enormous. The philosophies of modern “Chicago School” economists such as Milton Friedman acquired influential devotees among the West’s political leaders, leading to the gradual un-weaving of regulatory legislation from the seventies onward, a process generally agreed to have continued up until the 2008 economic crisis.

America was a country built on the back of a rebellion against the impositions of an imperial power, particularly the politically-active merchant and aristocratic classes that managed to influence London’s foreign policy to suit their own interests. Adam Smith, a contemporary of Jefferson and a man whose philosophy would come to influence US economists hugely, complained in his day of how “the merchants and manufacturers” of Britain acted as “the principal architects” of government policies, who thus ensured that their special interests were “most peculiarly attended to.” Their eye was fixed on Britain’s imperial wealth as much as it was domestic concerns.

Living in the post-crash era, it appears that the current of power in this country is concentrated in the economy and is channelled to the custodians of market forces, a state of affairs that calls one to ask whether the masters of money have too much influence, yet again, over American life. The Nobel-Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz observed how during the bail-out of big banks in the aftermath of the big crash in 2008: “as we pour money in, they can pour money right out” given that there exists no mechanism for the public to control how the banks spend the people’s money, a rule that would hardly apply if several hundred billion dollars had been handed-over to the same companies from the private sector.

The question of whether corporations and banks have too much power is an urgent one. At present the excesses of unregulated capitalism threaten the decent survival of many inhabitants of planet earth, our species included. This is chiefly owing to the impact of anthropogenic climate change, caused by the massive–still increasing–carbon emissions produced for centuries by Western industry and infrastructure despite decades of warnings about the results of not reigning such pollution in. Recently, developmental programs in India and China have contributed to this problem significantly; while well-funded global warming-skeptic groups in the US still attempt to influence Congress to not adopt legislation that takes the issue seriously, regardless of the interests of the wider human race.

At present, lobbying by special interests–including representatives of corporations who are both among the biggest carbon emitters and most generous donators to congressional candidates–has successfully stalled real movement to neutralize the multiple threats to our future posed by climate change. Presidents Reagan, Bush Senior, his son, and their international partners in the English-speaking world must share a great deal of the blame for this. Bush Junior in particular, who failed to ratify international treaties on carbon emissions against the wishes of most of the world, opting instead to protect US industry from the inconvenience of the Kyoto protocols.

Sadly, the prospective inheritors of Bush’s mantle differ little in their policies toward climate change. During the recent campaign for the Republican Presidential nomination, there were few who did not sincerely take the position that the issue poses little to moderate threat, or is questionable, regardless of the findings of academic research, as their allies at Fox News also prefer to do. The proposals of the incumbents go some way to deal with the problem, but hardly far enough.

To this we will return. First it may be worthwhile to revisit the past, specifically the period that led to our present state of affairs–a period that may prefigure the future devastation of our world at the hands of those who seek “swindling profits” without consideration for what they leave in their wake. 

The Greenspan False Economy 

Alan Greenspan with his wife, Andrea Mitchell
PHOTO: Financial Times/flickr

William Jefferson Clinton was elected President of the United States in 1992, having won the election that year with promises of improving life for the middle classes and other members of society he claimed were neglected by the previous administration. On making it to the White House, the new President met with Alan Greenspan, at that time the head of the Federal Reserve, who advised him that his plans for social reforms were unrealistic in the economic environment he was set to be operating in. The budget deficit, Clinton was told, was so large that if he borrowed more money to finance his planned reforms interest rates would go up dramatically–a taboo action for “neoliberal” economists like Greenspan–and damage economic growth, leaving everyone worse off. Greenspan suggested that the Clinton administration should cut government spending instead of investing tax money in social intervention and predicted that as a result of decreased interest rates the markets would soar, producing widespread and fiscally affordable benefits to all in society.

Greenspan was reportedly surprised when Clinton took his advice, which initially paid off spectacularly. The boom happened. As share prices rose and the markets ostensibly seethed with rude health, a new confidence gripped the world of finance leading to a growing belief that America’s economy had found the holy grail of modern economics–a boom without a bust. As absurd as this might sound now, the seductive belief that America was experiencing a boom that could lead to endless growth began to be adopted by respected members of America's intellectual elite.

As the 2011 BBC documentary All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace detailed, this belief was fueled by the development of computers that could perform complex mathematical models that, so it was believed, could assess with accuracy the risk of banks making any loan or investment. Thus, to use the terminology of the marketplace: if a risk could be predicted with confidence, investors could offset their potential losses by “hedging” against it. To hedge against something means that an investor will invest in many financial products at the same time, so that if one of the investments does not yield a return, another set of purchases (if chosen shrewdly) will be calculated to offer a return that covers any losses from the companion investment.

As a result of this, banks lent many millions to people that they never would have dreamed of lending money to in the past, believing that they could do so safely with the aid of this new technology coupled with strategic hedging. Stephen Roach, Chief Economist of Morgan Stanley throughout a substantial period of the 1990s, appearing in the aforementioned BBC documentary, described the thinking he encountered at the time: "Whether they came from Silicon Valley, from Washington, from academia, or from Wall Street there were a number of leading individuals who basically articulated a body of thought now known as 'the New Economy'; it was based on the premise of a dramatic and permanent increase in the rate of productivity growth sparked by new information technologies that would let this thing go on forever. This was manna from heaven . . . You don't have to do anything, you just press a button and "presto!" [sic] you have a brand new economy that creates jobs and prosperity."

Belief in the New Economy and early Clinton-era growth with its remarkable, ostensibly attendant low inflation and high employment is now believed to have led to overly optimistic forecasting from respected and influential sources within the banking establishment and subsequently many flawed high-level business plans. The seeds of the recent crash were being planted in the soil of America's economy, but few were paying serious attention to the warning signs.

Greenspan, however, had concerns. In 1996 he gave a speech suggesting that the American stock market may have been going through "a period of irrational exuberance," and that a potentially destructive speculative bubble was being created. The response from politicians and the business world, Roach notes, was venomous. "You would have thought the world had come to an end. Politicians attacked him from the left and the right, Main Street was upset with him, Wall Street was upset with him." Subsequently, Roach observed, "he knuckled under to political pressure" and decided to change his mind. Peer pressure, it seems, exists at every level of society.

Meanwhile, in Washington, the power of financial figures with strong ties to Wall Street had grown significantly, largely due to the political capital wrought by the economy's strength. In accord with co-thinkers in key roles at powerful institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, there were those who believed (echoing a Reagan-era world-view) that America had a manifestly heroic role in creating global economic prosperity and stability. The way to achieve this, according to leading "free marketeers" from those within the high finance community and to many within the IMF, was to encourage the free flow of capital through the world's economies by pressing nations to lift all restrictions on foreign investment.

The East Asian Crisis and Its Injustices

Many took their advice, and many bitterly regretted doing so. As the British journalist George Monbiot observed in 2003, going back even to the eighties “the IMF began to destabilize some of the most successful economies in the developing world” such as Thailand, South Korea, the Philippines and Indonesia. This set of countries, some of whom were recovering from the centuries-old damage of colonialism had “become rich by doing precisely what the IMF and World Bank had been telling them not to do,” by controlling capital flows in their economies, actively investing in education and supporting domestic industries, Monbiot observed.

During the Clinton era those countries were enthusiastically encouraged to liberalize their economies and, by following orders, expedited the process of opening themselves up to the flows of international capital and foreign direct investment in addition to borrowing large sums of money from the IMF.

Reflecting on this period from recent history, Stiglitz paints a picture of predatory pillaging: "The countries in East Asia had no need for additional capital, given their high savings rate, but still capital account liberalization was pushed on these countries in the late eighties and early nineties … [the IMF] pushed these policies even though there was little evidence that such policies promoted growth, and there was ample evidence that they imposed huge risks.” As a consequence of East Asian nations adopting the advice of the IMF, domestic industry suddenly had to compete with Western corporations and speculators who swooped on the new markets with gusto.

Monbiot recollects, accurately, that Thailand was for all intents and purposes economically plundered by Western activity in the currency market. Having world-leading GDP growth rates building to 9% per year from the mid-eighties up to 1995, Thailand was a major success for years– that is, until it fell victim to the machinations of aggressive currency traders. These people “made their money by a simple game” Monbiot wrote in his 2003 book The Age of Consent, which ran as follows: “You borrow a huge quantity of baht from a Thai bank, while the currency is valuable. You convert the baht into dollars. If you do so suddenly enough, and in sufficient quantity, the value of the currency collapses. Baht, as a result, are now much cheaper than they were before. You then pay off the loan with some of your dollars, and pocket the difference.”

Bangkok, Thailand skyline
PHOTO: Hendrik Dacquin

The apparent results of such a cruel speculative ruse were devastating for Thailand’s economy which went into near meltdown. Before long the Thai stock market lost 75% of its value while massive lay-offs and the liquidation of leading Thai companies followed after. A real estate crisis added to the problem, as there were masses of housing projects built for Thailand’s nouvelle riche, with suddenly no one able to afford them. Thailand’s economy was traumatized and needed help. The IMF flooded the country with loans in response. These carried “conditionalities” that were imposed upon the country, leading to cuts in programs intended to improve the lot of the ordinary citizen in key areas such as healthcare and education.

The crisis then quickly spread beyond borders. In Japan, South Korea, and south-east Asia, panic gripped the stock market. In Indonesia, a nation which had in 1997 very positive macroeconomic indicators in terms of low inflation, a healthy banking sector, a trade surplus, and large foreign exchange reserves, the economy was plunged into chaos within months. This was owing to a decision in Jakarta to increase and then abandon what is known as a “currency band” (the currency band represents the percentage of hard money tied to the value of a currency when it is floated on the foreign exchange markets), which invited massive speculative raids on the economy as in Thailand.

ILLUSTRATOR: Mark Hurwitt

The rupiah, Indonesia’s currency, plummeted. As a result, domestic companies that had borrowed in dollars had to face the higher costs of repayment caused by the rupiah’s fall, and local businesses responded by simply purchasing US currency by selling their holdings of Rupiah, further undermining the value of their national currency. Before his exit, under international pressure, after initially resisting fiercely, Indonesia’s autocratic President Suharto signed an IMF agreement in early 1998, watched over by the head of the foundation, Michel Camdessus. Accordingly, Indonesia received a huge loan to ease its economic woes. Shortly thereafter Indonesia’s currency disintegrated dramatically, losing 80% of its value and bringing the country to the edge of all-out implosion.

Initially, economists were mystified about what had happened. The truth soon became apparent: just as in Thailand, the IMF loan agreement that Suharto was induced into signing caused a brief settling of the markets–and then all of a sudden, great amounts of money left the economy as the Western investors called in their loans and fled. Later, the economist and Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz would state on the matter: “The interests of the financial community dominated over other interests. By providing mega-billion dollar loans, the IMF was bailing out Western investors and leaving the taxpayers in the countries further in debt–because they had to repay the IMF.” 

Tremors were felt, though not quite as disastrously, in South Korea, the Philippines, and elsewhere, where significant economic trauma also occurred during this period. Asia’s most carefully nurtured economies were brought to the brink of implosion by governments who adopted the advice of those global institutions (like the IMF) designed to assist their development, according to the so-called “Washington Consensus”–the prevailing wisdom of the day.

There were those in East Asia who did not follow the prescriptions of Washington and the IMF, however. China, for example, resisted pressure to follow “international norms” and maintained control over its economy, and saw substantial growth continue from that period to the present day. The Chinese evidently watched and learned as Western forces massed to abuse the suddenly weakened economies of their regional neighbors. They have since ensured that they could have some leverage over North American and European economies by buying huge amounts of US securities, government bonds and debt, particularly when the Western-led “global” crash happened.

According to a congressional research service paper of last year: “As of June 2010, China was the largest holder of US securities, which totalled $1.6 trillion. China’s holdings of US Treasury securities, which are used to help finance the federal budget deficit, totalled $1.17 trillion as of June 2011, which were 25.9% of total foreign holdings.” 

With China looking set to overtake the US economy in little under five years from the time of writing, in terms of gross domestic product (the total amount of wealth produced by a nation in a year) according to IMF figures, with a future of potential Chinese superiority in the arena of trade by 2030, it seems that the future is set to see a new race between two superpowers. Having made many enemies in East Asia during the crisis years, the US is left with slim pickings for regional partners to combat the expansion of Chinese influence in the East, inadvertently aiding the prospects of a future Beijing hegemony.

As far as self-inflicted wounds go, the unintended consequences of Western and IMF interference in East Asia would soon be totally diminished by the deep wounds issuing from another crash, one that occurred approximately a decade after the Eastern free fall – a man-made disaster with its epicenter in the heart of America’s financial establishment.

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From the Empirical Archives: A Tale of Two Crashes Part 2 by Emanuel Stoakes

A Tale of Two Crashes Part II
Emanuel Stoakes 

PHOTO: Francisco Diez

Originally Published in the August 2012 Issue of Empirical

In the first part of this two-part series in the July and August 2012 issues of Empirical (available for purchase here) we revisited the beginnings of colonial American and US history and examined how founding fathers like the libertarian-leaning Thomas Jefferson critically regarded aspects of the banking sector in his day. We also looked at the remarkable construction of the so-called “New Economy” during the Clinton years, a development that led to increased lending to new markets based on the belief that risk could be accurately assessed and hedged against through new mathematical models, assisted by emerging technology. Additionally examined were the forces at play in the East Asian crash of the late nineties, and, in particular, the destabilizing influence of “Washington consensus” economics pushed by the US government and powerful global institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF). 

We return to the story at the turn of the century.

The Great Crash of the New Century

The East Asian crash of the late nineties devastated the lives of the poor and the burgeoning middle-classes in those Eastern nations that had, prior to the crisis, seen remarkable growth by adopting economic policies at variance with many of the prescriptions of the IMF and Washington. Roughly a decade later, the global crash of 2008, which had its epicenter in the United States, had a parallel impact on the same groups of people.

House foreclosures, evictions, job losses, prolonged unemployment, house-value slumps and negative equity hit ordinary Americans hard. 

In the case of the East Asian crash, as addressed in Part I, the damage to the economies assaulted by predatory speculators who made serious money out of currency manipulation was intended to be cushioned by IMF loans. However, according to leading economists like Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, these same loans ended up effectively bailing-out Western investors, who promptly removed their money from the ailing eastern economies, leaving Asian taxpayers to foot the bill.

In the United States, as Stiglitz also observed, something not entirely dissimilar occurred. “As we pour money in” to the banks, “they can pour money right out,” he stated at the time, referring to taxpayer bail-outs of major banks and the imperiled mortgage sector. The public could not easily trace where exactly the money dispensed to these beneficiaries was going at the time, despite the fact that the taxpayers were those who salvaged the banks–arguably, the American economy as a whole. It is impossible to imagine a similar situation occurring if a private source provided $700 billion or more in an act of comparable generosity. 

Journalists, such as Matt Appuzzo from the Associated Press, tried and failed to get a meaningful response to queries about the big banks’ use of public money. That reluctance persists to this day. 

Returning briefly to the Clinton years, parts of laws dating from the Great Depression designed to protect ordinary people from the predation of Wall Street were repealed, such as those produced by the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 (signed into law by Franklin D. Roosevelt), which was shoved into history by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999. Glass-Steagall separated investment (stock market) banking from depository banking. The legislation that replaced it allowed commercial banks, investment banks, securities firms, and insurance companies to consolidate, giving them access to large amounts of formerly protected funds and a carte blanche, to some degree, to speculate with them. 

US Treasury Dept.
PHOTO: DB King

The Bush camp that followed Clinton looked even less favorably on regulatory legislation than their predecessor, doing little to protect ordinary Americans from the coming crisis, which they, instead, proceeded to expeditiously deepen. The treasury was occupied by followers of the laissez-faire school of neoliberal capitalist economics who entrusted the fate of the American economy in the hands of powerful banks and corporations, adopting the reflexive belief that “the market knows best” and that its workings inevitably lead to efficient outcomes.

Not long after the East Asian crisis and few months into the Bush presidency, a recession hit America caused by the first pin prick of reality to pierce the “New Economy.” The “dot-com bubble,” as it is known, burst in 2000: caused by a sudden fall in the value of the information technology markets that had previously been so buoyant. The bursting of the “dot-com bubble,” in conjunction with a drop in business outlays, investments, and the events of 9/11 contributed to a minor recession. 

The Enron scandal followed two weeks after 9/11, drawing back the curtain on the widespread corporate mendacity. A number of leading American firms had committed large-scale fraud in order to maintain an appearance of success to keep share values high during the boom years. Following Enron, it was exposed that many leading corporations faked evidence of profits and had hidden their debts, allegedly in collusion with respected accounting firms. 

The US economy, hit by a triple shock in such a short period, looked to be set to go through a period of crisis unprecedented for a decade. The new challenges posed by these problems called for action. Greenspan’s bold and controversial response was to drastically lower interest rates in order to encourage greater borrowing, spending, and consumption. This created a gargantuan consumer boom, without the dreaded side effect of inflation–a result that gave the impression that America’s economy was once again in the best of health.

Meanwhile, the Chinese deliberately held their exchange rate at a low level, meaning that their exports were cheap and therefore highly attractive to American corporations, leading to a huge inflow of US dollars into China and a re-stimulated American economy. The Chinese then immediately purchased American bonds, which contributed to keeping the US economy in health– and ensured greater Chinese influence over the US, allegedly an intentional strategy by the Chinese politburo.

Yet again it seemed that Greenspan’s inscrutable wizardry injected health into the economy, leading to a temporary boom. As the appearance of well-being continued, widespread lending activity akin to that seen in the period of the first Greenspan boom occurred. Again, loans were made available to members of American society who would not normally have been lent to under ordinary circumstances. Borne from this, a massive housing bubble was being constructed involving a new frontier in the housing loan market–the “subprime” mortgage.

Protesting the close ties of the Treasury Department and Wall Street
PHOTO: takomabibelot

The Housing Bubble

According to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, “sub-prime” lending occurs in a market intended “for persons with blemished or limited credit histories. The loans carry a higher rate of interest than prime loans to compensate for increased credit risk.” Roughly translated, this means that people who have a reasonable chance of not being able to repay are given loans anyway, with big interest charges to compensate for the risk to the lender–the obvious effect being that the risk of default is great, and the risk of further indebtedness for a consumer of this financial product is increased. The ethics of this financial product were as questionable as loans to “sub-prime” borrowers were imprudent.

As recent history reveals, sub-prime mortgages turned out to be a very bad deal for both the lenders and their customers. The now-infamous Lehman Brothers invested heavily in the subprime market by “bankrolling lenders across the country that were making convoluted loans to questionable borrowers” as well as producing their own subprime loan offers, Time magazine recalls. Lehman “took all those loans, whipped them into bonds and passed on to investors billions of dollars of what is now toxic debt,” the Time piece continues. When the debt bubble broke, the American economy took a hit. Operating in this market helped Lehman CEO Dick Fuld earn around half a billion dollars for himself in the process, while effectively steering the company he managed to ruin. 

The fall of Lehman coincided with a decline in housing prices from a historical peak in 2006 to ever more worrying levels in 2007. As a result of the permissive lending environment of the Clinton-Bush years, the ratio of American debt to disposable personal income reached a high of 127% in 2007, largely owing to the opening up of the mortgage market. A slump in housing values meant that many Americans who held subprime mortgages with adjustable rates saw their repayment costs increase just as times were getting harder for everyone. Mortgage delinquencies became common, and financial instruments such as securities backed by mortgages, which constituted a big market, increasingly lost their value.

The housing slump was also helped by Greenspan’s decision to lower interest rates after the “dot-com crash.” He would later admit that the housing bubble was “fundamentally engendered by the decline in real long-term interest rates,” which he had intentionally kept low in order to stimulate the economy, knowing that they would have to be raised again eventually–with unpredictable results. In the meantime money on credit became more available to borrowers who would eventually simply default on their payments as times got tough. All of a sudden a lot of money that was owed and which was backed-up financial instruments owned by Wall Street could not be accessed, with a sweeping domino effect throughout the economy. 

PHOTO: Jeffery Turner

The consequences for the average American, as already established, were horrendous. Moreover, the cost of the economic crisis was borne primarily by the taxpayer–just as much of the benefits of the boom years had flowed to private companies, the costs of rescuing many of the biggest offenders got paid for by ordinary people.

The manifest injustice of the situation can be adequately demonstrated by looking at figures between 2007 and 2009: the top 1% who owned 34.6% of the nation's wealth in 2007 increased their proportional share to over 37.1% by 2009, while nearly two-thirds of Americans saw a decline in wealth. 

The dream of the self-regulating market was assaulted by reality in the form of the crash of 2008. The notion of trickle-down wealth was no less bruised. 

There are those, however, who contend that many of the ideological truisms of modern economic thinking are myths, particularly in the “Gordon Gekko” age of no-holds barred wealth-seeking. Respected economists, such as the Nobel laureate and New York Times contributor Paul Krugman, have drawn attention to why the “greed is good” culture that has dominated Wall Street and influenced politics so profoundly since the 1980s was no less as miraculous or socially salutary as Greenspan’s 90s boom, despite common assumptions. 

Considering “how trends changed after 1980 or so, when the underlying rules of American business (and politics) shifted” this 23rd May in the New York Times, Krugman noted that “productivity growth has actually been slower” since that period. Additionally, he observed that, coupled with this, “income distribution became radically more unequal,” and that the notion that the US “began selling competitively on world markets instead of running big trade deficits” is also demonstrably false. 

On the Threat of Environmental Catastrophe

The influence of private power over human fate is as strong as it has ever been and looks set to have an impact generally on much of life on earth if the reckless and single-minded pursuit of profit so often associated with modern capitalism is not reigned in. The gravity of the problem is almost certainly unrivaled by any threat to the species in recent history since the Second World War or the Cuban missile crisis.

Yet the danger is not posed by the familiar boogeyman of corporate greed per se. The threat is represented by the effects of significant global climate change, presently on course to occur barring some miracle. 

An authoritative government report released last year indicated that in only the next decade New York would be under threat from temporary or partial submergence by rising sea levels and increased storm activity similar to Hurricane Irene, causing enormous damage with a massive economic price tag attached to the mess. Yet this scenario, entirely plausible and very worrying, is only a taste of what looks set to be a part of our future.

In November last year the International Energy Agency released a report described as the “most thorough analysis yet of world energy infrastructure,” which indicated that if global fossil-fuel-producing infrastructure (i.e. coal and power stations) is not widely replaced or significantly altered in the next five years, then it would “become impossible to hold global warming to safe levels, and the last chance of combating runaway climate change will be lost for ever.” 

Additionally, around the same time as the IEA report was published last year, the US Department of Energy reported that the “biggest jump” in carbon dioxide (a major cause of climate change) outputs ever measured occurred in 2010, indicating that the trajectory of risk from the effects of global environmental cataclysm is rising steeply. 

World-leading academics like John Reilly, a senior climate change researcher at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), have warned that some of the most widely-accepted estimates of the effects of global warming have been far too conservative. Reilly’s team at MIT forecast carbon emissions scenarios, their likelihood, and what the most likely outcomes are in the event they occur. What they discovered recently does not bode well. According to an Associated Press report, a “[UN-organised International Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, report’s] worst-case scenario was only about in the middle of what MIT calculated are likely scenarios.” It is interesting to note that, to many climate skeptics, the IPCC report was widely derided as being “too alarmist.”

The IPCC estimates foresaw a rise in global temperature of somewhere between 4 and 11 degrees Fahrenheit (2.4-6.4 Celsius), with the most likely outcome being a rise of 7.5 Fahrenheit (4 degrees Celsius). To put this in perspective, the generally-agreed baseline for “safety” in terms of climate change would see an increase in global temperatures by only 2 degrees, in itself a global climate shift that would still have profound consequences. 

However, topping the safety line things begin to look really scary. At 3 degrees alone the consequences for humanity are close to nightmarish. 

According to British newspaper The Guardian’s science correspondent Alok Jha, who compiled the predictions of researcher Mark Lynas, the World Bank’s “Stern report,” and Britain’s Met Office, at 3 degrees: “Billions of people are forced to move from their traditional agricultural lands, in search of scarcer food and water. Around 30-50% less water is available in Africa and around the Mediterranean.” At 4 degrees “Italy, Spain, Greece and Turkey become deserts and mid-Europe reaches desert temperatures of almost 50 degrees Celsius in summer. Southern England's summer climate could resemble that of modern southern Morocco.” 

PHOTO: Hamed Saber

At 5 degrees and above, the picture becomes apocalyptic. The results would see “global average temperatures … hotter than for fifty [million] years.” Additionally, Jha said that “most of the tropics, sub-tropics and even lower mid-latitudes are too hot to be inhabitable. The sea level rise is now sufficiently rapid that coastal cities across the world are largely abandoned,” with a risk that at 6 degrees and over, “there would be a danger of "runaway warming," perhaps spurred by release of oceanic methane hydrates,” risking that the “human population would be drastically reduced.” 

That’s quite some bad news. However, at present a 5-6 degree rise is not guaranteed, nor yet confidently forecast. There’s a lot of work to be done however to prevent or mitigate the worst effects of probable temperature rises above 2, 3 or even 4 degrees Celsius. God forbid anything higher.

Yet despite the urgent need for action on this issue, there are those who would try to convince the average citizen that climate change, a problem of planetary significance that Western industry has had an unrivalled role in creating, is merely the product of “liberal propaganda”–a kind of modern-day myth. 

Oil companies like Exxon-Mobil are still largely the biggest in the world, and these groups have been proven to have funded climate change skeptics. 

As the “carbon bubble” is being readied for bursting by rising emissions, a drop in media coverage of the effects of climate change has been measured by groups monitoring the news, helping to efface the issue from the public mind in an election year, where the aftermath of the economy still rides high among concerns for most people. 

Yet regardless of the economic woes that still persist for many people, through little fault of their own, something has to shift in the world if it is to be rescued from the threat of climate change.

A Stark Choice

If this is to be done, a stark choice between submitting to the imperatives of the economy’s endless need for profit or protecting the future of the planet may be required of us. As environmentalist Bill McKibben articulated recently: “If we spew 565 gigatons more carbon into the atmosphere, we’ll quite possibly go right past that reddest of red lines. But the oil companies, private and state-owned, have current reserves on the books equivalent to 2,795 gigatons–five times more than we can ever safely burn. It has to stay in the ground. Put another way, in ecological terms it would be extremely prudent to write off $20 trillion worth of those reserves. In economic terms, of course, it would be a disaster, first and foremost for shareholders and executives of companies like ExxonMobil … If you run an oil company, this sort of write-off is the disastrous future staring you in the face as soon as climate change is taken as seriously as it should be, and that’s far scarier than drought and flood. It’s why you’ll do anything–including fund an endless campaigns of lies–to avoid coming to terms with its reality.”

“Growth for its own sake,” so the saying goes, “is the ideology of the cancer cell.” Regardless of the cliché of this thoroughly-abused slogan, its message is apt to our present crisis: the interminable desire for gain required by our present way of life may yet so damage the organism from which it derives sustenance (our planet) that it sabotages its own existence. This negative-sum game is given license to continue apace because it is inexpedient for those with real power to challenge it.

Endless clamoring for growth has meant that along with development, massive pollution has shadowed the steps of Western prosperity–yet the effects of this on the climate, now widely accepted as fact, are an “externality” not incorporated into market calculations. Climate change thus remains a total irrelevance to the closed system of global capitalism, regardless of its long-term impacts on the future of the sine qua non base that supports the market itself: human beings and their labor, the environment and its resources. 

For big business, even when there are devastating economic crashes, somebody always benefits. Goldman Sachs famously reaped massive rewards by betting on the housing crash that they themselves contributed to, helping to consolidate their leading position in the banking world. However shocking this may seem, however such acts stink of grotesque immorality–they are merely consistent with the demands of the system in which they operate, and the rigid logic of the market. 

It remains for politicians to act on this issue. But they are not doing enough.

As a result of runaway climate change, losses in the future may be so broadly and profoundly felt, however, that future generations can hardly be expected to accept with equanimity what history may teach them about how the miserable state of the world they have inherited came to be. Explaining to our grandchildren that the Earth was left to go to hell because it was deemed too much for our politicians to reign in corporate and industrial irresponsibility will not be easy, but it won’t stop it from being true–if we do nothing.

It is time to forget what is convenient or ideologically appealing, and address what is real–for our children’s sake.

There is still time, although barely, to act to influence our politicians to deal with this most serious of global issues–that is, if we care about something so petty and meaningless as the future of life on Earth.

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January Excerpt: Small Change by Richard Hartwell

Small Change

Richard Hartwell

Newport Beach, California
PHOTO: YoTut/Flickr

Like so very many kids raised and suckled at the beach, particularly those reared in the Newport Beach of the early fifties–descendants of divorcees and married boredom–my cousin and I learned to build sand castles repeatedly. It’s too bad that relationships can’t be rebuilt as easily as sand castles. The lap and lapse of waves did not trouble or defeat us, as day upon day our moods changed in the early summer from the somber gray of dawn in May or June to the brilliantine of cobalt blue and then to gold by mid-afternoon in August and September. By then our rosette bodies were speckled with the whiter dots and dashes of the Morse code created by un-rinsed salt and sand.

Salt-matted blonde hair was usually strewn to the left of my cousin’s face, revealing her right-handed cowlick, balanced by a small mole on her left cheek that she tried to hide. My own hair then was always cut way too short to hang anywhere but straight up, like a severed shock of hay, each stalk raised in supplication to the sun and sky. Like my back and shoulders and nose, my scalp too was pitted with the itchy white shadows of sand and salt and the inner red glow of sunburn almost matched the outer beacon of what they called carrot-red hair, much too short to hide any of my outside blemishes.

I have no memory of our clothes; perhaps swimming trunks or bathing suits sometimes, but most likely cut off jeans for both of us and an old white tee shirt for my cousin’s blooming modesty. I only remember the bodies; both growing lithe and strong, chubby fat giving way to stretched muscles, elastic and elongated, pulled by years and adolescence, like taffy lying bulbous in the pan and then stretched out and thinned and fine and resilient.

We shared much together, my cousin and I: our interwoven dysfunctional families; our money-making scams; a love of the beach and sun and air and sea; and, of course, the company of each other, separated only by eight months in age. We had even been enrolled in kindergarten together until the educational power brokers realized that the dissimilarity in last names didn’t cancel out the similarities in build, features, temperament, or sanguinity. I was quickly hustled away and into another classroom. I remember we both cried. Still, other than at school, my cousin Jocelyn–Josh as she was called then–and I were most often inseparable boon companions; at least inseparable by others until the time when I created a chasm in our youthful camaraderie into which we both slipped and from which we never escaped.

That day of our distancing started much the same way as any other early summer day did for us at the beach. That dawn was inseparable from any other gray dawn. Our interests for that day were as like-minded as those of the day before, and, as far into the future as we could see; they were as alike as those expected of the days to follow into infinity. The only anomaly that seemed to mark that day different from all surrounding others was the fact that we had money.

Now, by money I don’t mean to imply we were flush and fulsome with loose spending change donated happily or begrudgingly by others, be they parents or guardians or other relatives or unsuspecting bystanders. No, what I am noting is that we had between us that day money acquired by ill means and, therefore, needful of immediate use. It was burning holes in our pockets!

If you would like to read more of this story in Empirical, the January issue is now available at your local bookstore and online at our website.

The Week In Review (1/5/2013)

The Week in Review

Nick Dobis

Gimmie Shelter

Just when it seemed the circus on Capitol Hill would end with Congress finally reaching an agreement on the “fiscal cliff,” it appeared only to be a warm up for their second act. Earlier in the week, the Senate passed a $60.4 billion bill to aid the recovery efforts for the continuing aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. But House Speaker John Boehner adjourned the session without a vote, infuriating representatives from both sides of the aisle, particularly those from New York and New Jersey. Facing a mounting storm of criticism, the House finally agreed on Friday to pass a relief bill 357-67. 

The new measure only covers insurance claims made by residents whose homes were destroyed or damaged by Hurricane Sandy, greatly reducing the initial aid amount by $50.7 billion. The Senate unanimously approved the measure, which President Obama will likely sign into law. House members who opposed the initial aid package said the bill was filled with earmarks unrelated to the hurricane relief efforts, including $150 million for fisheries in Alaska and $2 million for re-roofing museums in Washington, according to a New York Times report. Despite this, the nation looks forward to a day when bills can be passed by our leaders efficiently without the flair for the dramatic. 

Bottom’s Up in the West

 

 

The Spurs, with Tim Duncan freakishly playing like he’s 25 again, and The Thunder’s explosive line-up have largely dominated the Western Conference, but it’s the former doormats of the league that have been making the most noise in recent months. The Clippers have served notice of a new era of showtime in Los Angeles Friday night, with Blake Griffin and Chris Paul putting up sensational performances in a largely dominant 107-102 victory against a star-filled, yet struggling Laker team. Before losing to the Nuggets Tuesday and a surprisingly hot Warriors team Wednesday, the Clipper’s had a 17-game win streak dating back to November 28th, 2012. The Clipper's currently share the lead in the Western Conference with the Thunder, and are a half-game ahead of the Spurs.

Transocean Settles to Splash Cash for BP Spill

This week Transocean Ltd., the owner of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, reached a $1.4 billion settlement with the Justice Department, according to the Associated Press. According to the report, $1 billion of the settlement will be paid in civil penalties, with an additional $400 billion to be paid in criminal penalties. Most of the funds will be utilized to aid environmental restoration efforts, as well as spill prevention research and training. British Petroleum, which leased the oil rig from Transocean during the colossal oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, has already agreed to pay $4.5 billion in penalties and plead guilty to manslaughter charges for the 11 workers killed as a result of the explosion leading to the leak.

Delhi Rape Suspects Formally Charged

Five men accused of raping and eventually murdering a woman on a bus in Delhi in December 2012 were formally charged this week, potentially facing the death penalty if convicted (a sixth suspect is expected to be tried in a juvenile court, according to the BBC). The crime has sparked an unprecedented national outcry for increased protection of women, a nation historically patriarchal with an overall poor record on women’s rights.

In a report by the BCC, a friend of the slain woman who was with her during the attack gave his first interview. The man, who was beaten unconscious before the attack began, was critical of the local law enforcement’s slow arrival to the scene, involving themselves in a jurisdictional dispute, and taking the dying woman to a distant hospital, bypassing a closer one. India’s top officials also met this week to discuss the possibility of reforms, including increasing the number of female staff at each police station and recruiting female officers. The growing economic giant will certainly need to make more monumental reforms as their youth have filled its streets, heaving cries calling for justice, security, and equality. 



Our Pacific Northwest: The Floating Remains of a Calamity

Our Pacific Northwest

The Floating Remains of a Calamity

The Seattle Times reported earlier this week that Washington scientists from the state’s ecological department will examine a dock that landed on the shores of Olympic National Park on the state’s northwestern tip. Why so much attention to a perceived useless floating piece of dock? According to the Times report, it is believed the debris is highly likely to have originated from the tsunami that devastated Japan in March 2011. Scientists point to evidence of the debris’ uncanny characteristics to one that floated on the Oregon shore near Newport, which has been confirmed to have broken lose from a fishing port in Japan. Representatives from the Park Service and Fish and Wildlife will be assigned the task of removing any of the 30 species identified on the dock considered to be invasive to the national park. The assessment of the dock could not only give state scientists insight, but also serve as a reminder of one of the greatest natural disasters in human history, traveling 32 months and roughly 5,000 miles to reach the shores of the Pacific Northwest.



January Excerpt: Deadly Dreams by Laura Rittenhouse

Deadly Dreams 

Laura Rittenhouse

Sydney, Australia
PHOTO: Dom Pates

The unrelenting heat pounded against the side of her car as Ellen drove the well-worn track to work. She absently stabbed her finger against the bottom of her sunglasses when they slipped down the fine layer of sweat coating the bridge of her nose. The back of her cotton shirt stuck to her skin, imprinting the pattern from her seat cover across the damp material. Though Ellen didn’t hold much store in intuition, she had one of those nagging hunches that this wasn’t going to be a good day. She turned up the fan on the air conditioner in her old but reliable car knowing as she did so, that it wasn’t up to the task of the morning’s heat.

A thump followed by a whump, whump broke Ellen’s pessimistic contemplation. The car started to veer off the road so she pulled over to the gravel shoulder, turned off the engine, yanked on the hand brake, switched on the emergency flashers, and got out. She walked purposefully around the car to find the source of the problem; it was the back left tire, flat beyond repair. It definitely wasn’t going to be a good day.

Leaning against the back of her undrivable car, Ellen now faced the equally unpleasant options of phoning for help, or digging around in the back of her car for a jack and the spare. There was nothing that Ellen hated more than a woman who needed a man to help with the more physical tasks of life–unless perhaps it was figuring out how to stabilize a jack on the crushed red gravel of the shoulder.

As Ellen pondered her choices, she gazed back at the traffic traveling the same road she had been on only moments before. A white SUV was headed toward her and a tiny green car was trying to pass it. She heard and felt the semitrailer coming in the opposite direction and spared a moment to wonder how all three vehicles were going to manage to pass her parked car. The tiny green car accelerated the best that it could and the SUV hit its brakes. Ellen heard a soft screeching sound and anticipated the smell of burnt rubber that would soon reach her. At the last minute, the green car swerved, its back bumper just brushing the front of the SUV. This slightest of nudges sent the SUV straight toward the shoulder and Ellen’s car.

If you would like to read more of this story in Empirical, the January issue is now available at your local bookstore and online at our website.

Empirical Magazine: Fiesta Bowl Preview

 

Duck's Fly South to Clash Against Kline and the 'Cats

 

Nick Dobis

 

The eyes of the Pacific Northwest, along with many across the nation, will be set on tonight’s duel in the Arizona desert between the Oregon Ducks and Kansas State Wildcats. This bout between two offensive heavyweights was at one point set to decide this year’s national champion, were it not for the fateful evening of November 17, 2012 when the Ducks ran into a defensive buzz saw against the eventual Rose bowl champion Stanford, and the Wildcats were routed by Baylor 52-24.

 

The single blemish on their records allowed fellow one loss Alabama to sneak into the title game, but this Fiesta Bowl may be THE bowl college football fans will be talking about until teams strap the pads on again next fall. The hype has centered on the contradicting, yet highly effective styles of offenses. Oregon quarterback Marcus Mariota and K-State Quarterback Colin Kline, a Heisman Trophy Finalist, have combined for 5,001 passing yards, 1,580 rushing yards, 71 touchdowns and only 13 interceptions.

 

 

How these quarterbacks orchestrate their offenses will be pivotal to their team’s success. Kline will look to put the game clock into a meat grinder, while Mariota will seek to set Oregon’s offense on its usual dizzying pace. But both teams will be fielding underrated defenses against each other, which may very well postpone the points early in the ball game. The Fiesta Bowl X-factor may very well be Oregon’s DeAnthony Thomas, who always seems to save his best stuff for the national limelight. Thomas introduced himself to the nation after torching the Wisconsin Badgers in last year’s Rose Bowl, going 155 yards and two touchdowns after two, yes, two touches.

No matter the outcome of tonight’s Fiesta Bowl, the biggest question may be the future of Oregon’s head coach Chip Kelly. His phone has been ringing early and often this week from NFL General Managers after the great head coaching purge earlier on Monday. Win or lose, Kelly will have to decide in the coming weeks whether to seek the green pastures of the NFL, or lead the Green and Yellow in the hunt of reclaiming the Pac-12 title and garnering another BCS appearance next season.

 

 

 

January Excerpt: Paradigm Lost by Emmanuel Williams

Paradigm Lost

Emmanuel Williams

ATM in the Alps, Switzerland
PHOTO: bigbirz

Most of our ways of doing things–our priorities, processes, and systems–are increasingly dysfunctional. We face huge problems environmentally and economically, and we don’t seem to be able to collaborate to solve them, or even agree that they exist. We urgently need to break our habits, to disrupt our patterns. We need a new paradigm.

I’ve spent nearly 50 years working as a teacher with all age groups in countries all over the world. For most of my life I have, like all teachers, been working to create the future. I now believe that if we are to have any future at all then two things must happen:

There is a worldwide, spiritual revival.

We revolutionize our schools.

A worldwide spiritual revival is God’s business. A revolution in our schools is way beyond my aegis, but I do want to talk about it. I don’t have major answers to propose; I intend rather to raise some issues, consider some possibilities, and include ideas I’ve come across in my reading.

Currently I work as a poetry-teacher member of California Poets In The Schools. Most of the schools I teach or have taught in are organized and run in ways that no longer work. The factory-style school is obsolete. As Diamantis and Kotler suggest in Abundance: “The industrialized model of education, with its emphasis on the on the rote memorization of facts, is no longer necessary. Facts are what Google does best.”

Children learn best when they have at least some freedom to decide what they are doing, when they’re interested in what they are doing, and when they feel safe and valued. Most schools, however, give students little or no freedom to choose what they do, and most students most of the time aren’t interested in what they’re doing in the classroom. (According to the research, boredom is the primary factor behind the rising drop-out rate among American high school students). Most teachers like their students (if they don’t they shouldn’t be teaching!) but at the middle and high school levels particularly, because of the increasing size of their classes, they are unable to give individual students the time and attention they need. Also, most teachers I talk to are less motivated than they used to be. Their freedom to choose what they teach according to the abilities and interests of their students has been drastically curtailed, and their effectiveness as teachers is measured largely by test results, a totally inadequate criterion. Additionally, children are spending more time in the media-rich, addictive world of cell phones and video games and TV than in the much less stimulating environment of the classroom with its tests, grades, and homework assignments.

So our schools aren’t working. I believe that even if they were working within the parameters imposed upon them by schemes like No Child Left Behind and Race To The Top, they’d be failing, because the parameters themselves are no longer relevant. Our systems of education are based on what Sir Ken Robinson, in Out of Our Minds, calls: “… one dominant way of thinking–the verbal, mathematical, deductive and propositional…. intelligence as a linear process of rational thought.”

If you would like to read more of this article in Empirical, the January issue is now available at your local bookstore and online at our website.

Our Pacific Northwest: Sutro Sam

Our Pacific Northwest

A resident of San Francisco has returned after over 50 years of absence. The San Francisco Chronicle reported today that naturalists have found a river otter who has made a home of the Sutro baths near the Golden Gate Bridge. Sutro Sam, as local ecologists have fondly named him, is the first recorded river otter in the San Francisco Bay in decades. His species once thrived in the Bay Area until the rise of the fur trade drove the river otters to the brink of extinction in the 19th and early 20th century. Local naturalists told the Chronicle they believe the little fella likely swam down from Marin County, where the increase in river otter population has prompted local residents in Larkspur to post an “Otter Crossing” sign. Although it is believed Sutro Sam is the only otter in the immediate area making refuge of the baths, it is the hope of many ecologists in the city and throughout the region to see a return of this iconic creature of the Pacific Northwest.



Our Pacific Northwest: Nolan Roquet

Our Pacific Northwest

The University of Washington has announced this week it will award Nolan Roquet with a well-deserved degree. Unfortunately, the dean-listed student with graduate school offers from Stanford and MIT isn’t alive today to accept it. Roquet died September 4, 2012 at the age of 24 after a nearly six-year battle with osteosarcoma, a form of bone cancer. Although Roquet was diagnosed the summer of his freshman year in 2006, The Seattle Times reported Roquet excelled as an engineering student, volunteered at a Ronald McDonald House for children hospitalized with life threatening illnesses, and tutored high school students for the SAT. Roquet was only a few credits from graduating before his death, prompting the Uuiversity to award a rarely given posthumous degree. Empirical magazine would like to take this opportunity to recognize and celebrate the incredible life of Nolan Roquet, a young man who embodied the Pacific Northwest’s pioneering courage and spirit in the face of insurmountable adversity.

January Excerpt: The Corpsman by Kenneth Weene

The Corpsman

Kenneth Weene

Vietnam
PHOTO: Luis Algerich

They called him Doc. It wasn’t his title or even his nickname, but it was what they called him. He knew if he were ever hit, killed, air-vacced out, they’d call the next guy Doc, too. Doc was better than the other name, “Medic, Medic.” That was what they called when somebody was hit, hit bad, bad enough to need him. Some nights it still woke him–in his dreams, them yelling, “Medic, Medic.” Him paralyzed, unable to help.

He is a bright guy. Career Navy, he’d worked his way up from corpsman to officer, gone to school–college. For all that education, he still didn’t have any insight, no self-awareness. Self-awareness isn’t something that comes easy with PTSD. Too busy reliving, too busy trying to keep his shit together.

Retired, going a bit to gray and pot, he and his wife were on a trip; they were staying at the same Bed and Breakfast as my wife and I. The ladies had gone to bed; so there we were: just two guys sitting in a comfortable living room in small town Arizona.

He starts out telling me that he doesn’t much like being with people, being part of a group, doesn’t really join in, stays to himself. Then he spends the evening talking. Talking and sharing and talking some more. Guess what he really doesn’t like is listening. If the other guy is talking, how can he be back there, back then, reliving?

He starts by telling me about PTSD. I don’t interrupt–to tell him that I’m a shrink–not until he finishes telling me about what a Navy psychiatrist had explained to him–how if you take a cat, nice little cat, and put him in a backyard and start shooting at him and blowing shit up around him and then you take him back into the house, why that cat will be changed

and that was how post-traumatic stress worked.

Then I told him about my background; I mentioned there was usually something else about Post Traumatic Stress–something that cats couldn’t figure–not just the being scared but the guilt that somehow you should have changed things.

That’s when he talked about the ambush. He was supposed to go out with this patrol. They were going to do a sweep and set up an ambush, a standard night operation in Vietnam.

If you would like to read more of this story in Empirical, the January issue is now available at your local bookstore and online at our website.