Is Natural Selection Enabling Global Warming and Economic Inequality?

Discerning the same pattern in two distinct (yet related) domains likely points to a more fundamental dynamic having its roots in human nature itself—that is, in our species as formed through 1.8 million years of natural selection. Critically, the overwhelming majority of the incremental adaptations to better fit with the environment occurred while homo sapiens individuals lived in small hunter-gatherer “bands.” Our nature, as in our genes and bodies, is a result of a myriad of such “fine-tunings” that occurred in and for a way of life, or “world,” that differs appreciably from that of modern man. We may therefore be hampered internally from being able to cope even with our own messes, and even survive them. In fact, because it will take natural selection a long time to “catch up” with our large and complex living (and working) arrangements, we may actually be unwittingly inclined to make matters worse even to the point that we as a species lose out—meaning go extinct. In this essay, I raise two problems—global warming and economic inequality—as demonstrative of this self-destructive element in our very nature.

In its Climate Change 2014 report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) asserts that the world, “in many cases, is ill-prepared for risks from a changing climate.”[1] This point bears on adaptation to the changes taken as a given, which as a strategy can be distinguished from prevention, which seeks to obviate or avoid the changes themselves.  According to the U.N.’s expert panel behind the report, without “additional measures to contain emissions,” global temperatures would rise about 3 or 4 degrees Celsius (5 to 7 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2100 on top of the 0.8 degree Celsius (1.4 F)increase already “on the books” from when record keeping began in the nineteenth century.[2]  Cuts in emissions of 40 to 70 percent by 2050 would be necessary to keep the rise to 1.2 degrees Celsius (2.2 F), which would be necessary to avert the worst.[3]

Lest government officials around the world conclude that continuing to “kick the political football down field” given the number of years between 2014 and 2050, IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri adds an important economic and political factor: “The longer we delay the higher will be the cost.”[4] Even so, by the sheer gravity of the status quo (and the vested interests behind it), we might expect the de facto choice of going with the higher costs anyway, with current carbon emissions held more or less constant. So it might come as a surprise to learn that the global carbon emissions set a record high in 2012. They rose by 2.2 percent (1 gigaton) a year during the first decade of the twenty-first century—a rate of increasing exceeding those in the previous decades.[5] Meanwhile, the global population continued to increase unabated, ironically making it decreasingly likely that the innately schizogenic[6] species would survive in the “brave new world” of a warmer, more volatile clime.

Globally, we are going in the wrong direction, which is particularly astonishing given the science that was coming in. Even before the evidence of the human (homeogenic) contribution, why exascerbate the problem by adding record amounts of CO2 emissions? The human brain seems to have a (genetic?) blind spot that operates at the expense of its very genes. 

That is to say, not only was the world as a whole not making a dent in the existing emissions level; governments taken as a whole were allowing the problem to worsen. “There is a clear message from science,” Ottmar Edenhofer of the IPCC said. “To avoid dangerous interference with the climate system, we need to move away from business as usual.”[7]  Astonishingly, even with reasonable forewarning of danger to the species and the “relatively modest” cost of “keeping global warming in check” if and only if “the world acts quickly to reverse the buildup of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere,” humanity seems stuck to its “business as usual” mantra as if the species were oblivious to tomorrow, or at least conveniently content living for today with a minimum of obstacles getting the way of our selfish pleasure.[8]

It is as though humanity had been bitten by some insect infected with a virus that renders its victims totally oblivious to their own self-defeating actions and even prompts the creatures to, as it were, smoke even more. I suspect that no virus is necessary—that this pattern exists societally in at least one other major domain, suggesting that something in human nature itself not only dismisses warnings, but also cheers us on to make matters even worse.

The other domain I have in mind is that of income and wealth inequality. As reported in USA Today, American CEOs saw their total compensation—including salary, bonuses, perks, and realized stock and options gains—increase 13 percent to a median level of $10.5 million in 2013, even as the 105 million full-time workers saw their wages go up just 1.4 percent to a median level of $40,872.[9] In other words, for all the warnings of destabilizing levels of economic inequality among Americans, the gap was actually widening.

Both with regard to global climate and American democracy (as distinct as a type from plutocracy, the rule of wealth), two degrees of separation are in play. Not only have efforts not been forthcoming to reduce the imbalances of carbon and income, respectively—this is bad enough—but we are also making the problems worse.  

To be sure, arguments can indeed be, and have been, tendered on behalf of economic liberty and even employment security against hampering business production and capping incomes via progressive taxation. Such objections typically focus on the business and individual levels and more or less assume that the system, whether an ecosystem, society, or government are simply aggregates that do best when the individual units, or parts, perform optimally. Systemic constraints on the latter for the good of the system are thus counter-productive, even unfair, in this line of reasoning.

Antithetically, the “systemists” point to the systemic risk of a unit piercing through the constraints of an ecosystem or the umbrella-like stability of a political economy—Gregory Bateson describes this danger as a schizogenic variable breaching an otherwise homeostatic equilibrium.[10] Even as Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook claims his total compensation in 2013 of $3.3 billion is not too much, and Larry Ellison of Oracle does likely regarding his own $229.8 million and Howard Schultz again for his $163 million at Starbucks, the economic and political power latent in such extraordinary gains in wealth (not to mention the prior years’ incomes accumulated by these three men alone) act as “black holes” both with respect to representative democracy and (relatedly) the interests of the business sector relative to broader interests in long-term human survival on a hotter Earth.

In short, the system being out of balance both globally and in the American context goes beyond the tension between individual rights and the security of the overarching systems; the status quo itself has too much power over our species. Indeed, given that almost all of our species’ existence has involved the pressing survival need to guard against the threat of immediate dangers, such as that of a tiger or lion lurking in a nearby bush, our very nature is oriented to today over tomorrow. The oceans of time necessary for natural selection to adapt our very nature to our complex economic, governmental, and social arrangements means that our species and its even its best form of government yet may succumb to our own misguided devises that are oriented to extending “the party” today (for in the long run we are dead, right?).

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1. Karl Ritter, “U.N. Climate Panel Highlights Lack of Action on rising Temperatures,” April 13, 2104.

2. Ibid.

3. Gary Strauss, Matt Krantz, and Barbara Hansen, “The $100 Million Club: CEOs Get Richer; Workers Get Left Behind,” USA Today, April 4-6, 2014.

4. See Gregory Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind.

5. See http://www.un.org/climatechange/blog/2014/03/31/ipcc-report-severe-and-pervasive-impacts-of-climate-change-will-be-felt-everywhere/

6. Ritter, "U.N. Climate."

7. Ibid.

8. Ibid.

9. Ibid.

10. That is, acting as a variable maximizing its value at the expense of the system, such as an ecosystem.

Alan Greenspan: How to Break the Back of a Market-Bubble

While being interviewed on CNBC on March 7, 2014, Alan Greenspan spoke a bit on the problem of irrational exuberance in a market. Pointing to the failure of the Federal Reserve under his chairmanship to innocuously dissolve the “dot.com” bubble in the 1990s, Greenspan said he had come to the conclusion that asset-appreciation bubbles cannot be “defused” (for reasons he says are in his new book) “unless you break the back of the actual euphoria that generates the bubbles.”[1] Alas, piercing that wave would involve nothing short of unplugging a basic instinct in human nature; both monetary and fiscal policy would doubtless come up short. However, I suspect that the field of rhetoric may have something to say about how we can deflate societal exuberance, but only on the condition that greater clarity will have been achieved in identifying whether a given market is overvalued due to emotional excess (i.e.g, emotive greed having reached a critical mass) circumventing normal risk-aversion.

Greenspan’s prescription may have more to do with social psychology than economic theory. Even though the former central banker’s expertise or ken does not extend to psychology or sociology, the advice darts right to the central question to be researched. I am not suggesting that the claim be swallowed whole; back in 2008 after Lehman Brothers’s financial collapse and the subsequent  portent of a tsunami so powerful it could take the entire global financial system “by Monday,” Greenspan admitted in Congressional testimony that his mental model of financial economics suffers a fatal flaw he had had not seen coming.

Having held a free market, or laissez faire (let it make or do), theory firmly ensconced in his head, Greenspan suddenly realized that the market mechanism may not “price additional risk” once the market volatility reaches a certain point. Instead of asset-prices plummeting until enough buyers return to the market after having been spooked, the financial markets themselves freeze up. This is why Greenspan’s successor, Ben Bernanke, told Congressional leaders in September 2008 that without a bailout “we might not have an economy by next Monday.”

In other words, Greenspan’s paradigm or theory, which had insisted that markets can always self-correct could not account for the credit-freeze that began in the commercial paper market (over-night inter-bank loans). High volatility in a system combines with the high risk (from anticipations of system risk being actualized) shuts down the market mechanism itself. When he ran the Federal Reserve, Greenspan had been very wrong about the impact of the systemic risk on the ability of markets to keep operating.

As if Greenspan's admission had been part of some nightmare or some figment of the imagination, Andy Sorkin, a financial markets host at CNBC, welcomed Greenspan on the air five years later with such vaunted praise that viewers could be forgiven for not having remembered that Sorkin had pointed to Greenspan’s fatal flaw as one factor among several in the near collapse of the housing market in the wake of Lehman's bankruptcy. Surely Sorkin was hardly oblivious to the ex-central-banker's grave error. Why then did the journalist act as if Greenspan were one of the priests at the Greek oracle? 

Even after admitting the fatal flaw he had held at the Fed, Alan Greenspan still enjoyed considerable respect. (Image Source: The Guardian)

The short answer may be that Sorkin did not want to lose any of the rich and powerful friends on Wall Street he had interviewed in 2008 for his book. For a person to admit the existence of a fatal flaw in his or her ideology and therefore in any supporting theoretical models as well, and then be treated as though infallible on another body of knowledge (i.e., international relations) stretches the mind's capacity for holding a logical contraction (i.e., cognitive dissidence). Rather than being limited to Sorkin, I suspect that the refusal or inability to put a person's present statements in the context of his or her past track-record is by now "hard-wired" into American society. The over-valuing of the new at the expense of the past probably enables the denial. 

Regarding Sorkin, his fawning before his notable interviewee, including exclaiming "wow" as Greenspan went on bragging at the beginning of the interview, strikes me as blatant enough to be misleading. Especially in having written a non-fiction book about the financial crisis of 2008, Sorkin should have prepped the television viewers up front, so they would not find themselves back to swallowing wholesale what Greenspan says as the Gospel truth. In fact, Sorkin may have inadvertently opened the door to another systemic bubble hitting us as a complete surprise. 

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1. “Greenspan Revisits ‘Irrational Exuberance,” CNBC, March 7, 2014 (accessed same date).

CNN’s Hosts: Hidden Agendas

Hitting record-low ratings among total viewers and in the 25-54 age demographic, CNN had its overall lowest-rated month in April 2012 since August 2001. In May 2012, the network hit a 20-year low for total viewers during primetime viewing.[1] Something had gone seriously wrong. Perhaps the easiest move when a company takes a nose-dive is to fire the top. Accordingly, Time Warner executives were thinking of replacing the president of CNN Worldwide.[2] While taking off the top might make sense in government because the entire administration is apt to change, business firms tend to be more entrenched even when under new management.

In the case of CNN, the culprit may have been bad hiring decisions. If so, the solution would lie in replacing the staff who made the hires as well as the “personalities” hired. In an age of “media personalities” wherein opinion typically accompanies journalistic interviewing, it is only natural to hire people who have strong personalities. It is far less common to witness interviewees going after hosts in terms of their personalities. In May 2012, Donald Trump laid into Wolf Blitzer during an interview. The real-estate magnet told the journalist that the introduction was inappropriate, but then added a personal insult in remarking, but “that’s okay, because I’ve gotten to know you over the years.”[3] It would appear that Trump and others “in the loop” having had years of experience with Blitzer had come to the conclusion that he could not be trusted. The general public—meaning the viewers—could only surmise on the accusation, knowing only the “on-screen” media personality.

Years before Trump’s revelation, I had already glimpsed a bit of the man behind the curtain when Blitzer wished everyone “a happy holiday and happy New Year.” The meaning of this statement struck me as suggestive of a Jewish prejudice against Christmas, as if the U.S. holiday were only the religious holiday celebrated by Christians. I also saw footage of Blitzer at a Hollywood event as he was desperately trying to get interviewed by a journalist.

My sense that CNN “stars” might be too self-absorbed got a shot in the arm when Piers Morgan admitted on-camera while covering Queen Elizabeth II’s sixty years on the state’s throne that he really wanted to be king. That was too much even for one of Morgan’s co-host, who said in exasperation, “Oh, Piers!” Strangely, he had previously said that he was glad to be a subject (of the Queen).  Might it be that pride in being a subject is really a subterfuge for a desire to be king? Piers’ imagining of himself as king of the island (an interesting fantasy, given that he had been implicated in the Murdoch hacking scandal) was revealing. Two days before, his coverage had been reduced to drawing attention to the rain—a constant refrain during the parade of boats. He even pointed out that there was water on his seat (as if any of the viewers cared). Moreover, he was careful to stress everything that was distinctively British, while generalizing everything American across fifty republics (Britain is one republic). My instinctive reaction was to ask, well then why don’t you stay over there? 

I was not at all surprised to learn of CNN’s low ratings. I suspected that even if viewers had not been aware of it, they had probably reacted in reaction to the arrogance of the major hosts. People were voting with their remote controls even if they couldn’t put their finger on what was behind their decisions. Rather than limit the change to the top brass at CNN, Time Warner executives would have been wiser to demand that the major “stars” of CNN be replaced en masse. Owning a subsidiary does not mean that oversight is limited to the subsidiary’s executive suite, at least if the parent company is being capably run.

1. Rebecca Shapiro, “CNN Considering Leadership Change in Wake of Ratings Woes: Report,” The Huffington Post, June 8, 2012.

2. Ibid.

3. The Atlantic Wire, “Donald Trump Blasts Wolf Blitzer, CNN During Combative Live Interview,” May 29, 2012.

Pressuring E.U. States: The Debt Crisis as Leverage

By mid 2012, the verdict was in on the German-led recipe for restoring states overwhelmed by public- or private-sector debt: Austerity is counter-productive in reducing government deficits. On June 6, 2012, the media reported: “Prolonged austerity is making it harder, not easier, for governments like Greece to become self-reliant again.”[1] Salaries and pensions in the private and the public sectors in the state had been cut by up to 50 percent, leaving Greece 495 million euros short of its revenue targets in the four months ending the previous April, according to the Greek Finance Ministry.[2] With less cash, consumers had to reduce spending, leading thousands of taxpaying businesses to fail. Income expected from a higher, 23 percent value-added tax required by the bailout agreement fell short by around 800 million euros in the first four months of 2012. That is partly because cash-short businesses that were once law-abiding started hiding money to stay afloat, tax officials said.

The complete essay is at Essays on Two Federal Empires.

1. Liz Alderman, “Greece Warns of Going Broke as Tax Proceeds Dry Up,” The New York Times, June 6, 2012.

2. Ibid.

The Wisconsin Recall Election: A Predictor of the U.S. Presidential Election?

According to Paul Abowd of the Center for Public Integrity in 2012, the election to fill the governor’s office in the wake of Scott Walker’s recall “has become a referendum on the future of public sector unions.”[1] That the union of teaching-assistant students at the University of Wisconsin in Madison refused to endorse Barrett precisely because he was not making collective bargaining rights a salient part of his campaign would suggest that Abowd had it wrong. Moreover, it is a mistake to read the election results in Wisconsin as a harbinger of things to come in the U.S. presidential election five months later in November 2012.

During his campaign, Barrett downplayed the public-sector union issue because he figured he already had his base, which had detested Walker for more than a year. Barrett was going for the independents who saw the recall petition as sour-grapes by a vocal interest group (the student union validating this judgment). Most tellingly, the teaching-assistant student-union had even refused to endorse the unions’ own favorite for Democratic nominee, Kathleen Falk, who had lost to Barrett in the primary by twenty points. Falk had promised not to sign any legislation until a bill restoring the public-sector unions' collective-bargaining rights is presented. You cannot get much more pro-union than that, and yet even THAT was not good enough for the graduate students at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. At the very least, it would appear that the graduate school's admissions committees at the university in Madison could have been doing better in their decisions, at least in regard to assessing maturity and judgment. 

I count it as a good thing that Barrett’s position on restoring the Wisconsin government workers’ bargaining right was less “my way or the highway” than was Falk’s position because Barrett was evincing a more mature or seasoned approach to governance. In contrast, the teaching-assistants’ union can be read as evincing the self-defeating and immature rigidity of “my way or the highway.” The contending camps in Wisconsin’s Democratic Party reflected this difference of political culture between Milwaukee and Madison. Hence, the dynamic cannot be assumed to operate at the U.S. level.

Furthermore, Mitchell, a young fireman whose involvement in his union probably won him the Democratic nomination for Vice (or lieutenant) Governor (as an after-thought by most voters), was at the time both too young and inexperienced in terms of public office to occupy the second-highest office in the land, not to mention the highest. At an outdoor rally in a street-alcove after a motley march that took place in downtown Madison the day after the primary, Mitchell easily stood out in video of the event because he was the only person in the warm weather wearing a grey suit. His political inexperience really stood out as he could be seen walking through the crowd, insisting on shaking hands with people even as they were trying to listen to the speakers. Perhaps most tellingly, he bumped into at least one person who preferred to keep listening to the speaker rather than turn around to shake hands. I suspect that Mitchell was trying to be a "professional" politician in a very atypical (and thus inappropriate) context (i.e., the recall). This itself essentially disqualified him from the office he was seeking, especially because it was possible that had he won along with Walker, the young fireman could have found himself assuming the office of governor.

The quality of the Democrats’ choice for vice governor mattered particularly because Walker was being investigated at the time by U.S. and Wisconsin law-enforcement agencies for corruption while he had been chief executive of the County of Milwaukee. In Illinois, Quinn had become the head of state and chief executive of the government when "Blago" was impeached and removed from office for trying to sell Barak Obama's vacated U.S. Senate seat. Were Mitchell to have won even as Bartlett lost, the novice could have found himself eventually taking over for Walker. It is not at all advisable to have a political novice in the highest office in the land. I suspect that this factor weighed on independent voters.

It would be perfectly understandable, therefore, for Wisconsinites in favor of Barrett to have skipped the lieutenant governor race based on principle (i.e., putting the interest of the public good over partisanship), even if that could have resulted in the governor and lieutenant governor being of different parties. Because the lieutenant governor office has some important powers when the governor is not in Wisconsin, such a scenario would certainly not be optimal for Barrett supporters. Therefore, I believe the Democrats in Wisconsin dropped the ball in voting in the primary for a nominee for lieutenant governor. To be sure, they made a good choice in picking Barrett’s mature approach to restoring union rights over Falk’s “my way of the highway” mentality on the "single issue" of a union's bargaining rights. The refusal of at least one union in Madison to back Barrett further compromised the Democrats’ strength in defeating Walker.  These are idiosyncratic elements in the Wisconsin “recall election” that don’t project onto the U.S. as a whole. 

Most obviously, going into the recall election, the sitting governor of Wisconsin was a Republican whereas the sitting U.S. president was a Democrat. Also, whereas Mitchell was a political novice at the time (being plucked out of a fire department union), Obama’s VP was an experienced former U.S. Senator and VP. In terms of the parties, Barrett was not associated with Obama's weaknesses (e.g., Obamacare), and Walker did not have Romney's problems with conservatives. Indeed, some Obama supporters crossed over to vote for Walker--a fact that Obama no doubt had foreseen as he was staying away from campaigning for Barrett.

Moreover, the United States is not a state with a very large back yard. Given the heterogeneous political, economic, religious and social cultures of the republics in the U.S., it is not a good idea to simply project the results in Wisconsin on the U.S. as a whole. Furthermore, there are issues that are only relevant at the U.S. level, such as foreign policy. I must conclude that the U.S.-based media was being much too simplistic in regarding the Wisconsin race as an indicator of the “upcoming” U.S. elections. Lest all politics is local, the results of a U.S.-wide election can be viewed as a quilt of various majorities rather than as one huge aggregate. Yet reductionism to U.S.-level politics seems a preoccupation or obsession, at least for the major American media companies, as if the American republics existed only in so far as they contribute to U.S. races. I suspect that the culprit is American business more generally, as large corporations have found it cheaper to have one set rather than fifty sets of government regulations. Reducing American politics to the U.S. stage serves this purpose.

1. Amanda Terkel, “Wisconsin Recall: Election Law Quirk Could Throw Governance Into Disarray,” The Huffington Post, June 3, 2012. See Paul Abowd, “CPI: Wisconsin Recall Battle Is State’s Most Expensive Election,”MSNBC.com, June 3, 2012. 

European Central Bank to E.U. Leaders: Vision Is Needed

Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank, warned a committee of the E.U.'s parliament at the end of May 2012 that the structure undergirding the euro in the E.U. had become "unsustainable." He criticized political officials for having kicked the can down the road by enacting half-measures or else delaying decisions, thus making the debt crisis even worse than it otherwise would have been. "The next step is for our leaders to clarify what is the vision for a certain number of years from now."[1] Similarly, Olli Rehm, vice president of the E.U. Commission (the E.U.'s executive branch), said that ways must be found to avoid a disintegration of the common currency.

The full essay is in Essays on the E.U. Political Economy, available in print and as an ebook at Amazon.

1. Jack Ewing, "A Terse Warming for Euro States: Do Something New," The New York Times, May 31, 2012.

No State Left Behind: American Education Eclipsing Federalism

Facing a federal requirement that every student be proficient in math and English by 2014, the member-states in the U.S. rushed to apply for waivers in 2011 and 2012. In 2010, 38 percent of the schools had failed to meet their goals for annual progress toward the 2014 goal. The U.S. Secretary of Education thought that figure could soar to 80 percent. When a school fails to meet such goals, the No Child Left Behind law requires “a series of interventions by the district and the state that can culminate in a state takeover. With so many schools failing, “that threatened to create an impossible burden on states and districts,” according to Chester Finn, director of an institute that studies education.[1] The waivers did not come without strings, however. The Obama administration pushed the governments to measure teacher performance, and put increased emphasis on low-performing groups as well as on the lowest-performing schools.

While the waivers can easily be seen as an effort to put the Obama administration’s own priorities on legislation from a prior administration, the Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, claimed that his aim was to get out of a bad law that could overwhelm states that don’t measure up. “Our goal with this waiver process, frankly, has always been to get out of the way of states and districts,” he said.[2] If this were so, however, he would not insist on negotiating for better terms in granting the waivers. Beyond this extent of intervention, that of the No Child Left Behind law requiring “interventions by the district and the state” with failing schools interlards the U.S. Government in a domain that is constitutionally reserved to the states. Absent the enumerated (i.e., listed) powers of the federal government, the fifty republics are sovereign states. While the Congress can spend in the general welfare of the political and monetary union, strings beyond the general purpose trigger a breach of the constitutional design, which should give the republics enough power to act as a check on the other system of government—that of the union itself. That is, specifying down to district intervention meddles inordinately in a state’s system of government to implement federal law.

In terms of education, the role of the U.S. Government should be oriented to regulating the interstate aspects, such as making sure that students are not deprived of equal protection (e.g., not discriminated against) and that out-of-state students are not gauged at the university level. Any spending should come attached to a general purpose (which I believe must be within an enumerated power, especially if there are any strings attached), rather than with requirements for implementation (or penalty). Should a republic not spend the money in line with the purpose (especially if that purpose lies within one of the sovereign domains of the member states), the federal government could sue to get the money back. If this seems to restrict Congressional power unduly, it may be that the federal power had gone so far beyond what is consistent with a federal system that what seems drastic is merely what is necessary to get back in line with it. In terms of failing schools, the underlying problem may be that Americans (i.e., including parents of school children) do not value self-discipline (i.e., at the expense of instant gratification) or education itself enough. Imposing federal requirements and penalties are doomed to fail against such societal disvalues. In other words, we are trashing federalism for nothing.

1. Richard Perez-Pena, “Waivers for 8 More States from ‘No Child Left Behind,” The New York Times, May 30, 2012.

2. Ibid.

Eurobonds for Stimulus Spending

Meeting on May 23, 2012, the E.U.’s European Council failed to come up with a plan to offset the recessionary aspect of Greece’s budget cuts. The pressure was on; the OECD had just warned that the E.U. go back into recession. Interest rates on state debt-namely that of Spain—had reached an unsustainable level the week before due to concern regarding banks based in the state. Besides the debt and banking vulnerabilities at the state level, the E.U. itself was struggling with its political weakness, which can be attributed to the states’ rights (or euro-skeptic) ideology that was not exactly going away in the context of the debt-contagion that had prompted the establishment of a permanent E.U. bailout fund for states in over their heads on debt. In this context, the European Council was at the intersection of debt, banking and political problems.

The full essay is at Essays on the E.U. Political Economy, available in print and as an ebook at Amazon.

Facebook’s IPO: Morgan Stanley’s Conflict of Interest

Morgan Stanley’s underwriting of Facebook’s IPO has been thought by some of the bank’s rivals to be incompetently managed.  According to the New York Times, “(r)ival bankers and big investors have complained that Morgan Stanley botched the I.P.O., setting the price too high and selling too many shares to the public.”[1] Interestingly, the incompetence is positively correlated with unethical policy decisions at the bank. Even as the bankers as underwriters were eager to sell lots of shares, they may have given some of their institutional customers—albeit only the most preferred, as per the bank’s other services—some privileged information. If this charge is true, the conflict of interest at the bank should be closely examined by Congress and any relevant regulators.

The full essay is at Institutional Conflicts of Interest, available in print and as an ebook at Amazon.

1. Evelyn Rusli and Michael De La Merced, “Facebook I.P.O. Raises Regulatory Concerns,” The New York Times, May 22, 2012.

Wealth and Happiness American-Style

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development released an up-dated version of its Better Life Index in May 2012. The U.S. ranked first in income, with average household wealth at $102,000, as well as in housing (Americans spending about 20% of their disposable income on it—the OECD average being 22%).[1] These figures for the U.S. could have been pushed upward by the fact that at the time, the very rich were richer than their counterparts in other countries, for the gap between rich and poor was relatively high in the U.S. For example, 30 million Americans were without health insurance and a record number of Americans were receiving a governmental subsidy for food. Rather than assume that the middle and lower economic segments in the U.S. were better off than their counterparts in other regions of the world, I suspect that the statistics reflect the higher relative pay of American executives and professionals (lawyers, physicians and CPAs). The typical CEO in the E.U., for example, made less than his or her counterpart in the U.S.  This caused trouble in the Chrysler-Daimler merger because the Chrysler executives enjoyed higher compensation even though Daimler was in charge.

Interestingly, the rank of the U.S. in life satisfaction was above average, with 76 percent of people reporting having more positive than negative experiences in an average day (the average in the OECD index being 72%). In other words, the gap between the rich and poor does not appear to have gotten in the way of life-satisfaction. Although economic reductionism is particularly salient in the U.S., such satisfaction does not reduce to dollars and cents. Even in economic terms, the large gap between the rich and poor includes geographic distance. For example, court-orders have had to be used to force some cities and towns to allow subsidized (low-income) housing. Meanwhile, it is not uncommon, particularly in Florida, for people with money to live in gated communities. With the rich out of sight, the poor are less likely to be aware of the economic inequality, which could otherwise put a damper on their life-satisfaction.

As a final observation, my reference to Florida suggests that the OECD should not generalize all of the American states into one figure. For example, life-satisfaction is likely to be higher in Hawaii than in Alabama or Michigan for climatic or economic reasons (or in North Dakota during the winter even considering the economic boom). Housing in New Hampshire is, in general, better than in Mississippi. Income in Connecticut is higher on average than in Arkansas. For states, whether in the U.S. or E.U., to be in a union is not to say that they are identical and thus readily grouped together. In other words, a general statistic in housing or income has less real meaning when applied over such a large area. It is like saying that the average temperature in the U.S. in 2011 was 56 degrees (I don’t know the real figure). It is unlikely that figure applies in any state—certainly not in Florida, Hawaii, Alaska, or Maine. The figure has no real meaning, other than relative to other such figures over time (e.g., to assess global warming). For the OECD to compare the U.S. as a whole to E.U. states such as Denmark, Belgium and Spain suggests that the organization is content to engage in category mistakes. If the figures are relevant on the state level, the OECD should be consistent rather than selectively over-generalize.

1. “OECD LaunchesUpdated Version of Your Better Life Index,” OECD. 

See also MSNBC, “US Ranks No. 1 in Wealth, Not in Happiness.”