Satyajit Das

Green Army: Persons of Interest

Economics is not a science.
At best, it's an ideology.
And, at times, a very dangerous one.

— Satyajit Das (1957), The End of Ponzi Prosperity, Big Ideas, ABC Radio National, 23 May 2012.


Jay Gould (1836 – 92) [Financier]:
[The trick is to hire] one half of the working class to kill the other half.
(March 1841)

Kenneth Galbraith (1908 – 2006):
The salary of the chief executive of the large corporation is not a market award for achievement.
It is frequently in the nature of a warm personal gesture by the individual to himself.
(Robert Monks & Nell Minow, Corporate Governance, John Wiley, 2008, p 311)

[Indeed, apart] from the universities … the art of genteel and elaborately concealed idleness may well reach its highest development in the upper executive reaches of the modern corporation.
(The Affluent Society, 4th Edition, Penguin, 1984, p 96)

James Kunstler (1948) [17 October 2005]:
The mortgage industry, a mutant monster organism of lapsed lending standards and arrant grift on a grand scale, is going to implode like a death star under the weight of these nonperforming loans and drag every tradeable instrument known to man into the quantum vacuum of finance that it creates.
(p 203)

The Wizard

[Alan Greenspan was] The Wizard, the man behind the curtain, who mumbled in ways that people couldn't understand, but appeared to be controlling absolutely everything.

— David Wessel (1954), The Warning, PBS Frontline, 2009.


Alan Greenspan (1926):
When I agreed to accept the nomination as chairman of [President Reagan's] Council of Economic Advisors, I knew I would have to pledge to uphold … the laws of land, many of which I thought were wrong. …
[Nonetheless,] I had long since decided to engage in efforts to advance free-market capitalism as an insider, rather than as a critical pamphleteer.
(The Age of Turbulence, 17 September 2007)

What we have found over the years in the marketplace is that derivatives have been an extraordinarily useful vehicle to transfer risk:

• from those who shouldn't be taking it;
• to those who are willing to, and are capable of doing so.

(Robert Manne, Is Neoliberalism Finished?, Goodbye To All That?, Black Inc, 2010, p 27)

[Government] regulation cannot substitute for individual integrity …
[The] first and most effective line of defense against fraud and insolvency is counterparties' surveillance …
(Satyajit Das, Extreme Money, p 279-80, emphasis added)

Bernie Madoff (1938):
[In] today's regulatory environment, it's virtually impossible to violate [the] rules …
[This] is something the public doesn't really understand: … it's impossible … for a violation to go undetected — certainly not for a considerable period of time.
(The Future of the Stock Market, Philoctetes, 20 October 2007).

Satyajit Das (1957):
Generally these people are influenced by one of two novels …

• Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, [or]
• Ayn Rand's, Atlas Shrugged.

One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes; leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world.
The other, of course, involves orcs.
(The End of Ponzi Prosperity, Big Ideas, ABC Radio National, 23 May 2012)

(Alex Gibney, Enron - The Smartest Guys In The Room, 2005)




(Michael Kirk, The Warning, PBS Frontline, 2009)

Joe Nocera (1952) [Journalist, The New York Times]:
[Alan Greenspan said to Brooksley Born,] something to the effect, that:

[We're] never going to agree on fraud. …
You probably think that there should be rules against it. …
I think the market will figure it out … and take care of the fraudsters.

Michael Greenberger [Director, CFTC, 1997-9]:
Greenspan didn't believe that fraud was something that needed to be enforced …
(Michael Kirk, The Warning, PBS Frontline, 2009)

Commentator:
Alan Greenspan was mistaken …
Creditors can be just prone to greed as the latest wizard of Wall Street [and] they are often the last to understand the risks that would ordinarily help fear counterbalance greed.
(Peter Temple, Hedge Funds: The Courtesans of Capitalism, John Wiley & Sons, 2001, p 282)

(Michael Kirk, The Warning, PBS Frontline, 2009)

Anne Manne:
After a lifetime proselytising on behalf of the "producers" and denouncing anyone needing government assistance as "parasites," when [Ayn Rand] became old and sick, she discovered that even a best-selling author could not afford health care in the neoliberal US.
She [reluctantly] availed herself of Medicare and ended her life on what she had [most] despised — Social Security.
(The Age of Entitlement: How Wealth Breeds Narcissism, The Guardian, 7 July 2014)

John Galbraith (1908 – 2006):
[Economic] insecurity is something that is cherished only for others.
(The Affluent Society, 4th Edition, Penguin, 1984, p 90)

The Physical Science Basis

Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change: AR5 Working Group I

Detection and Attribution of Climate Change

Human influence has been detected in warming of the atmosphere and the ocean, in changes in the global water cycle, in reductions in snow and ice, in global mean sea level rise, and in changes in some climate extremes (Figure SPM.6).
This evidence for human influence has grown since AR4.
[There is 99% confidence] that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century.
(p 12)

There has been further strengthening of the evidence for human influence on temperature extremes since the SREX.
It is now very likely that human influence has contributed to observed global scale changes in the frequency and intensity of daily temperature extremes since the mid-20th century, and likely that human influence has more than doubled the probability of occurrence of heat waves in some locations. …

There is high confidence that changes in total solar irradiance have not contributed to the increase in global mean surface temperature over the period 1986 to 2008, based on direct satellite measurements of total solar irradiance.

No robust association between changes in cosmic rays and cloudiness has been identified.
(p 13)

Future Global and Regional Climate Change

Relative to the average from year 1850 to 1900, global surface temperature change by the end of the 21st century is projected to …

• likely … exceed 2°C for RCP6.0 and RCP8.5 (high confidence) …
• as likely as not … exceed 4°C for RCP8.5 (medium confidence).

(p 15)

Adapted from Table SPM.2, Table SPM.3 and Box SPM.1
Cumulative CO2 Emissions (b) (GtC)		Surface Temperature (c) (°C)		Sea Level Rise (d) (m)
Scenario (a) (ppm CO2e)	Mean (Range) (2012-2100)	Global Mean Increase (likely range) (Relative to 1986-2005)
		2046-65	2081-2100	2046-65	2081-2100
RCP2.6 (475)	270 (14-410)	1.0 (0.4-1.6)	1.0 (0.3-1.7)	0.24 (0.17-0.32)	0.40 (0.25-0.55)
RCP4.5 (630)	780 (595-1005)	1.4 (0.9-2.0)	1.8 (1.1-2.6)	0.26 (0.19-0.33)	0.47 (0.32-0.63)
RCP6.0 (800)	1060 (840-1250)	1.3 (0.8-1.8)	2.2 (1.4-3.1)	0.25 (0.18-0.32)	0.48 (0.33-0.63)
RCP8.5 (1313)	1685 (1415-1910)	2.0 (1.4-2.6)	3.7 (2.6-4.8)	0.30 (0.22-0.38)	0.63 (0.45-0.82)

Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP) (a) are identified by their approximate total radiative forcing in year 2100 relative to 1750:

• 2.6 W/m² for RCP2.6,
• 4.5 W/m² for RCP4.5,
• 6.0 W/m² for RCP6.0 and
• 8.5 W/m² for RCP8.5.

Cumulative CO2 emissions for the 2012–2100 period (b) compatible with the RCP atmospheric concentrations simulated by the CMIP5 Earth System Models.

• Most of the CMIP5 and Earth System Model (ESM) simulations were performed with prescribed CO2 concentrations reaching 421 ppm (RCP2.6), 538 ppm (RCP4.5), 670 ppm (RCP6.0), and 936 ppm (RCP 8.5) by the year 2100.
• Including also the prescribed concentrations of CH4 and N2O, the combined CO2-equivalent concentrations are 475 ppm (RCP2.6), 630 ppm (RCP4.5), 800 ppm (RCP6.0), and 1313 ppm (RCP8.5).

Projected change in global mean surface air temperature (c) and global mean sea level (d) rise for the mid- and late 21st century relative to the reference period of 1986–2005.

• The total increase [in combined land and ocean surface temperature] between the average of the 1850–1900 period and the 2003–2012 period is 0.78 [0.72 to 0.85] °C, based on the single longest dataset available.
  (p 3)
• Based on current understanding, only the collapse of marine-based sectors of the Antarctic Ice Sheet, if initiated, could cause global mean sea level to rise substantially above the likely range during the 21st century.
  There is medium confidence that this additional contribution would not exceed several tenths of a meter of sea level rise during the 21st century.

[The decrease in surface ocean pH due to ongoing ocean acidification] by the end of 21st century is in the range of

• 0.06 to 0.07 for RCP2.6,
• 0.14 to 0.15 for RCP4.5,
• 0.20 to 0.21 for RCP6.0 and
• 0.30 to 0.32 for RCP8.5 (see Figures SPM.7 and SPM.8).

(p 19)

Carbon budget required to limit global surface temperature rise to less than 2°C (531 [446 to 616] GtC was already emitted by 2011)
Likelihood	Maximum cumulative CO2 emissions since 1861-80 (GtC)
>66%	800
>50%	840
>33%	880

Climate Change Research Centre:
In 2000-2009, about 350 [GtC of CO2 were] emitted …
(Abrupt Change, Tipping Points and Past and Future Climate, The Copenhagen Diagnosis, 2009)

IPPC:
[Annual emissions of CO2 alone] have grown between 1970 and 2004 by about 80%, from 21 to 38 gigatonnes (Gt), and represented 77% of total anthropogenic GHG emissions in 2004.
(Climate Change 2007, Synthesis Report, p 36)

A large fraction of anthropogenic climate change resulting from CO2 emissions is irreversible on a multi-century to millennial time scale …
{[Up] to 40% of emitted CO2 will remain in the atmosphere longer than 1,000 years.}

Surface temperatures will remain approximately constant at elevated levels for many centuries after a complete cessation of net anthropogenic CO2 emissions.
[Ocean] warming will continue for centuries.

It is virtually certain that global mean sea level rise … due to thermal expansion [will] continue for many centuries.
[For] scenario RCP8.5, the projected rise [by 2300] is 1 m to more than 3 m (medium confidence).

Sustained mass loss by ice sheets would cause larger sea level rise …
There is high confidence that sustained warming greater than some threshold would lead to the near-complete loss of the Greenland ice sheet over a millennium or more, causing a global mean sea level rise of up to 7 m.
Current estimates indicate that the threshold is greater than about 1°C (low confidence) but less than about 4°C (medium confidence) global mean warming with respect to pre-industrial.
(p 20, emphasis added)

Abrupt and irreversible ice loss from a potential instability of marine-based sectors of the Antarctic Ice Sheet in response to climate forcing is [also possible.]

[With respect to geoengineering, there] is insufficient knowledge to quantify how much CO2 emissions could be partially offset by [Carbon Dioxide Removal] on a century timescale.

[Solar Radiation Management, if realizable, has] the potential to substantially offset a global temperature rise, but they would also modify the global water cycle, and would not reduce ocean acidification.
If SRM were terminated for any reason, there is high confidence that global surface temperatures would rise very rapidly to values consistent with the greenhouse gas forcing.
(p 21)

Would you like to know more?

(Working Group I, Summary For Policy Makers, 27 September, 2013)

Jonathan Haidt

Green Army: Persons of Interest

An ideology of extreme personal freedom can be dangerous because it encourages people to leave homes, jobs, cities, and marriages in search of personal and professional fulfilment, thereby breaking the relationships that were probably their best hope for such fulfilment.

— The Happiness Hypothesis, 2006, p 133.


The human mind is:

• a story processor, not
• a logic processor. …

[The] worship of reason, which is sometimes found in philosophical and scientific circles, is a delusion. …
Reasoning matters, particularly because reasons do sometimes influence other people, but most of the action in moral psychology is in the intuitions.

— Jonathan Haidt (1963), The Righteous Mind, 2012.


Man is double.
There are two beings in him:

• an individual being which has its foundation in the organism, and
• a social being which represents the highest reality in the intellectual and moral order.

— Emile Durkheim (1858 – 1917), The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, 1915.

The Happiness Pill

Suppose you read about a pill that you could take once a day to reduce anxiety and increase your contentment.
Would you take it?

Suppose further, that the pill has a great variety side effects, all of them good: increased self-esteem, empathy and trust.
It even improves memory.

Suppose finally, that the pill is all natural and costs nothing.
Now would you take it?

The pill exists.
It is [called] meditation. …

(The Happiness Hypothesis, 2006, p 35)