Book Review: "Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street & Washington Fought to Save the Financial System – & Themselves", By Andrew Ross Sorkin

Publisher Synopsis:


From inside the corner office at Lehman Brothers to secret meetings in South Korea, Russia and the corridors of Washington, Too Big to Fail is the definitive story of the most powerful men and women in finance and politics grappling with success and failure, ego, greed, and, ultimately, the fate of the world's economy.

"We've got to get some foam down on the runway!" a sleepless Timothy Geithner, the president of the Federal Reserve of New York would tell Henry M. Paulson, the Treasury Secretary about the catastrophic crash of the world's financial system would experience.

Through unprecedented access to the players involved, Too Big to Fail recreates all the drama and turmoil, revealing never-disclosed details and elucidating how decisions made on Wall Street over the past decade sowed the seeds of the debacle. This true story is not just a look at banks that were ‘too big to fail’, it is a real-life thriller about a cast of bold-faced names who themselves thought they were ‘too big to fail’.

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Book Review: "Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy," by Raghuram G. Rajan

Publisher Synopsis:

Raghuram Rajan was one of the few economists who warned of the global financial crisis before it hit. Now, as the world struggles to recover, it's tempting to blame what happened on just a few greedy bankers who took irrational risks and left the rest of us to foot the bill. In Fault Lines, Rajan argues that serious flaws in the economy are also to blame, and warns that a potentially more devastating crisis awaits us if they aren't fixed.

Rajan shows how the individual choices that collectively brought about the economic meltdown--made by bankers, government officials, and ordinary homeowners--were rational responses to a flawed global financial order in which the incentives to take on risk are incredibly out of step with the dangers those risks pose. He traces the deepening fault lines in a world overly dependent on the indebted American consumer to power global economic growth and stave off global downturns. He exposes a system where America's growing inequality and thin social safety net create tremendous political pressure to encourage easy credit and keep job creation robust, no matter what the consequences to the economy's long-term health; and where the U.S. financial sector, with its skewed incentives, is the critical but unstable link between an overstimulated America and an underconsuming world.

In Fault Lines, Rajan demonstrates how unequal access to education and health care in the United States puts us all in deeper financial peril, even as the economic choices of countries like Germany, Japan, and China place an undue burden on America to get its policies right. He outlines the hard choices we need to make to ensure a more stable world economy and restore lasting prosperity.

Remember, this book won an award the: "Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award 2010".


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Climate Change - Some Geological Facts on Global Warming

Many people are concerned about global warming; some due to the potential ill effects climate change can have on our planet and the human race.

While others are concerned about global warming talk providing governments with a means of control over private enterprise. These folks want their liberty and freedom to do what they want to do, when they want to do it, regardless of what others think about the results or consequences of their actions.

I say "ONE DOES NOT TRASH SCIENCE" out of a fear the scientific theory has gained interest from government regulators. If you want to fight the government regulation do so, trashing the #Facts of climate change is like denying the theory of evolution/

We first need to understand that the apparent root cause of the underlying problem is the burning of fossil fuels.

Carbon dioxide concentrations in our atmosphere to a large extent determines the present world climate, with temperature an important part.

Earth was formed some 4,540,000,000 years ago; with passage of geologic time, in the beginning, the Earth's atmosphere contained very little oxygen (less than 1% oxygen pressure). Carbon dioxide continued entering the atmosphere from natural sources such as volcanic eruptions and weathering of rocks, has been gradually used by vegetation, through the process of photosynthesis.

During the last half billion years, living creators, animals developed and evolved. These creatures help keep a natural balance using a process called respiration, they return some of the carbon stored in the standing biomass back to the atmosphere. They survive by eating and burning food, i.e., organic matter and this process returns carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and replenishes it. There is a natural balance ("dynamic equilibrium") between outputs and inputs of carbon dioxide: outputs through photosynthesis and inputs through respiration.

In the past two-and-a-half billion years, carbon has been temporarily stored above the Earth's surface as standing biomass and litter. During this time, excess quantities of carbon have been permanently stored below the surface as fossil deposits of coal, petroleum, and natural gas.

In recent times, humans have raced through the development of machines & equipment, a period we call the "Industrial Revolution". Our populations have more than doubled in the past 4 decades alone. Industrialized countries have passed on the torch to industrializing countries. Systems & equipment populations continue to grow.

These systems aren't so different than the animal creatures previously described. Call them man made "Creatures", as they burn fuel, which is normally organic matter. To power the equipment, humans burn fossil fuels, i.e., the surplus carbon stored in the soil substrate through geologic time. The burning of this fossil fuel may be threatening to the delicate balance of nature as more carbon enters the atmosphere than can be extracted from it by natural means. Does this send mother natures balance into a spin?

Scientists have conclusive studies show that a sizable fraction of the excess carbon dioxide is accumulating in the atmosphere. "The records at Mauna Loa, Hawaii, show an increase in the mean annual concentration of carbon dioxide, in the middle layers of the troposphere, from 316 ppm in 1959 to 386 ppm in 2008, i.e., a 22% increase in the past 50-yr period!", according to the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

Fossil fuels may be taken as nature's surplus energy, accumulated in geologic time through the soil substrate, effectively sequestered excess in order for the world's present climate to be preserved. A predicament for modern civilization: These fossil fuels are put away by nature; taking them out (in a relatively short time) at rates exceeding natural absorption will effect the world's present climate.

Rational thinking suggests the global community rethink system processes and make gradual moves away from burning fossil fuels for future industrial systems. The focus ought to be on development of sustainable energies such as: solar, wind, hydro, and biomass. Today, technological advancements have made these movements technically feasible.

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