Portrait of FDR as a Young Man: How He Became a Radical

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/10/17/portrait-of-fdr-as-a-young-man-how-he-became-a-radical.html
Harvey J. Kaye

A new biography looks at how FDR’s thwarted dream of serving in a Navy uniform primed him to eventually become president. But Harvey Kaye says the preparation came even earlier.

What made Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the wealthy son of Hudson River valley aristocrats, the liberal, indeed, the radical he became? When and where did he develop the ideas, sensibilities, and commitments that would propel and enable him to mobilize Americans to pursue the great democratic labors of the New Deal and lead the nation in a war against European Fascism and Japanese Imperialism and for the Four Freedoms—freedom of speech, Freedom of religion, Freedom from want, Freedom from fear—which he proclaimed in January 1941?

Both FDR’s friends and biographers have speculated on the origins of his progressivism. His “chief of staff” Judge Samuel Rosenman said that Roosevelt’s democratic politics seemed built into his very being, into the very “heart and soul of the man, in his love of people, his own sense of social justice, his hatred of greed and of exploitation of the weak, his contempt for the bully—whether it was a Hitler or a Mussolini or an owner of a sweatshop, or an exploiter of child labor.” But most historians have ended up subscribing to the view of FDR’s Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, who knew Roosevelt from his days as a New York state senator (1911-13) and served him both in Albany when he was governor of New York (1929-1933) and in Washington all the way through the 12 years of his presidency (1933-45).

As Perkins saw it, Roosevelt in the 1910s was a young man who had “little, if any, concern about social reforms … and a deafness to the hopes, fears, and aspirations which are the common lot.” And while she acknowledged that he apparently matured somewhat during his years as assistant secretary of the Navy in the Wilson administration, the real change, she insisted, came in his battle with polio in the 1920s. “The man emerged completely warmhearted, with humility of spirit and with a deeper philosophy,” she said. “Having been to the depths of trouble, he understood the problems of people … he showed that he had developed faith in the capacity of troubled people to respond to help and encouragement.” Moreover, his convalescence involved a continuing “liberal education.” His wife and political partner Eleanor became more active in the Democratic Party and urban reform efforts, and introduced him to people like her Women’s Trade Union League comrades from whom he learned all the more about the demands and struggles of working-class life.

But I think FDR’s political understandings and commitments began to develop even earlier than Perkins recognized. Whatever their precise origins, Roosevelt’s politics were motivated not simply by ambition, but also by a powerful faith and confidence in America, its prospects and possibilities, and the capacities of his fellow citizens to pursue them—all of it firmly grounded in a deeply felt sense of history. “Franklin Roosevelt knew American history,” his friend Frank Kingdon would say of him, and FDR always had a fascination for the past. Yet what struck Kingdon even more was that Roosevelt “recognized himself as an instrument through which the forces of the past were channeled into the present and towards the future … American history was alive in him and he did all he could to make sure he would live in American history.” Even as a young man, Roosevelt spoke appreciatively of the democratic currents that ran through American history. In a college paper, he attributed his forebears’ success to their “democratic spirit” and a belief that they had to “do their duty by the community.” And in a 1912 speech, he contended that although the struggle for “representative government … and liberty of the individual has been accomplished,” a new struggle for freedom was emerging, a “struggle for liberty of the community.”

In Young Mr. Roosevelt: FDR’s Introduction to War, Politics, and Life, historian and biographer Stanley Weintraub does not attend to the question of what made Roosevelt a small “p” progressive. Rather, he focuses on what made him an effective War President—that is, he tells us of Roosevelt’s experiences and actions at the Department of the Navy during World War I and how they prepared him to later serve as Commander in Chief. Doing so, Weintraub tells us a lot. Readers will enjoy his narrative and the details he affords, for they address both FDR’s public and private lives.

Weintraub presents the young FDR, an already accomplished sailor, as a “Navy man” who wanted not only to rebuild the Navy as quickly as possible, but also to serve in it as a commissioned officer, an aspiration stymied by the administration’s need of his skills and talents in Washington, and then the actual conclusion of the war in 1918 before he had a chance to get into a uniform. Whatever Roosevelt’s frustrations were, his experiences in Washington, as Weintraub reveals, were invaluable.

At the Navy Department, FDR learned how to mobilize human and material resources for war, manage industry and labor in the process, and handle America’s allies, the British and French, who had their own concerns, ambitions, and priorities. In fact, as Weintraub recounts, in 1917 Roosevelt negotiated, without Wilson’s prior approval, the lending to Britain of 30 U.S. destroyers for escort duties in the Atlantic, a deal that he would re-enact on a grander scale in 1941. And FDR likely learned about how to be a War President by witnessing Wilson’s many mistakes, such as his failure to create a War Cabinet that included both Democrats and Republicans.

Woven into these chapters is the tale of FDR’s sorry affair with Lucy Mercer that nearly ended his marriage and political career. An historian could have ignored it in favor of the bigger questions of war and politics, but Weintraub the biographer could not. Fortunately for all of us, Eleanor was committed enough to Franklin, their family, and what they might accomplish together to stick by him—though not in bed. As Weintraub notes, she had already suspended their sexual relations in order to avoid another pregnancy (they had six children, one of whom died in infancy). She now vowed to never sleep with him again.

Weintraub apparently accepts Frances Perkins’ argument about the later development of FDR’s progressive ideals and vision, for he makes no direct reference to them. And unfortunately, it reduces the potential value of his work. Did FDR believe only in himself and his own future in these years—or did he believe in America’s promise and possibilities and want to play a leading role in advancing them? Weintraub does not tell us.

Weintraub does hint at a more progressive Roosevelt-in-the-making when he quotes a speech by the young Assistant Secretary in Reading, Pennsylvania in 1913 in which he said: “The administration believes that the national government should be conducted for the benefit of the 99 per cent, and not as has sometimes been the case in the past, for the benefit of the 1 per cent…”  However, he fails to explore the future president’s thinking at the time about American freedom, equality, and democracy, or the sins committed against them. Had he done so he might have told us more about not only the formation of Roosevelt’s political vision.

Failing to attend to the development of FDR’s ideas about America and its promise, Weintraub gives us little insight into what led FDR to become not just the president and commander-in-chief who led the United States to victory in the Second World War, but also the man who led a generation of young Americans to reject authoritarianism, beat the Great Depression, recognize their “rendezvous with destiny,” and fight for the Four Freedoms at home and abroad. When we choose our leaders, our representatives, and our presidents in particular, we should listen closely to how they speak of American history, how they comprehend the making of democratic history, how they might pursue America’s promise, and how they might engage us in that pursuit. FDR saw history as a struggle to enhance democracy, a struggle to be advanced not by statesmen alone, but by all of us. It’s not just about knowing more of the past. It’s about making more of the present and the future.

How British the justice system lost out to Islamic extremism

http://www.express.co.uk/comment/expresscomment/457359/How-British-the-justice-system-lost-out-to-Islamic-extremism

SHOULD any of us be unfortunate enough to be called to appear in front of a court any time soon we can at least take some comfort. We may no longer have to show our face.

By: Douglas Murray

That isn't to say we won't be obliged to turn up. For the time being at least that will probably remain necessary. But we will not need to actually show our face. For a great precedent has now been set. Earlier this week fanatical Muslim convert Rebekah Dawson made legal history in this country. Up in court on charges of witness intimidation Dawson - who wears the full Islamic face covering - simply refused to show her face.

This was the fanatical 22-year-old convert to Islam who (although she could not be named at the time) made headlines last September when a judge asked her to remove her face-covering in court and she refused. Indeed Dawson's barrister Susan Meek argued at a pre-trial hearing that her client had a right to remain fully veiled in court, revealing only part of her eyes.

The barrister's defence was that her client's "right" to do this was protected by the European Convention on Human Rights. Did those learned, if misguided, minds who put together that ill-fated convention ever imagine this was where their legal system would end up? IN ANY case, stuck on the issue the judge at Blackfriars Crown Court Peter Murphy reached what was soon applauded as an eminently sensible British compromise. It was suggested by the judge that the defendant should not have to show her face when listening to the evidence of others but only when giving evidence herself.

In that moment a fatal compromise was made between British justice and Islamic fanaticism. For the principle that it is important that the judge and jury should be able to see the face of the accused is as old as trial by jury itself.

It is based not just on the court knowing that the person in the dock is the person who is meant to be in the dock. It is also based on the fact that one of the ways in which a jury can reach a verdict is by observing the defendant, when they are listening to others give evidence and when they are giving evidence themselves.

In compromising a part of this principle last September Judge Peter Murphy took a fatal step. But it was one which in any case the woman we now know to be Rebekah Dawson had no intention of obeying.

Dawson continued to refuse to show herself, eventually waiving her right to give evidence. Her insistence on the most fundamentalist interpretations of Islam thus led to endless cost and waste of court time.

Not just in the endless to-ings and fro-ings over whether the accused should have to show her face. It was also wasted in steps being taken such as a female police officer having to repeatedly go into a private room at the court and ask the defendant to lift her veil so the policewoman could confirm that the person under the veil was the accused.

How Dawson herself got to this belligerent position is itself telling. Of Jamaican origin and raised in a Christian family her father was a convicted drugsmuggler.

For whatever reason in recent years she fell into the orbit of Muslim fanatics, including some centred around the notorious Finsbury Park Mosque. Indeed it was a caretaker at the mosque who Dawson was on trial for intimidating.

The caretaker was attacked by Dawson for allowing "naked women" into the mosque. By "naked women" Dawson meant women who were not covered in the complete body and face veil she adopted only in 2012.

Her story is relatively typical. It is often a cause for despair among mainstream Muslims that converts so often flee to the wildest extremes of their religion. Over years of studying such radicalism I have seen this many times.

Women who wear the full-face veil are still a minority but often converts or those who are otherwise rebelling against their upbringing adopt this exclusionary and intimidating practice.

Dawson fits this trend. Her behaviour in court was all part of the contempt that the wearing of the full veil displays - not just for British justice but for British society as a whole.

LATE last year I took part in a discussion on the wearing of this garment at the East London Mosque. All the women in the audience - specially selected for the occasion - wore the full burka or niqab. Their contempt for British society was complete. I afterwards learned that they had attacked a Muslim woman who was on my side and wore only a headscarf, hissing at her for daring to even sit next to what they called (using the quasi-racist term for non-Muslims) "a kafir man".

Throughout her trial Dawson showed just that contempt. After she was permitted to go through the trial fully covered it is unsurprising that the jury had trouble reaching a verdict. The only surprising thing was that having wasted so much court time at the final stage the defendant suddenly pleaded guilty after all. She will be sentenced at a later date.

In his summing up the judge told the jury: "This is not a ruling about religion. It is about the ability of the court to hear a fair trial." Indeed. But in letting someone ride roughshod over our norms and bending our system to fit the most extreme Islamic principles this was a ruling about British justice. And in this latest round of a long-running battle it is once again our society, and our justice system that showed itself to be weak and wanting.

Homophobia Is a Real Fear … but of What, Exactly?

http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2014/01/30/what_is_homophobia_why_straight_men_are_right_to_be_afraid_of_homosexuality.html
By Zach Howe

To be a homophobe in 2014 is, increasingly, to find oneself on the fast track to social scorn. In an environment of growing acceptance, we condemn homophobic feelings, particularly in men, because we think they come from inside the individual and are thus his full responsibility. A man who says hateful things about gays is “backward.” He’s protecting his social status, or maybe he’s secretly gay himself. He needs to grow up or come out already.

However, the continued existence of homophobia—despite the obvious downsides—raises questions about its basic nature: Do psychological theories like those above really explain why gayness, specifically, evokes such fear, the kind that can sometimes even lead to violent speech and action? Do they account for why homophobia is such an easy bulwark against masculine insecurity? Why does coming out seem so impossible to some men? The only way to answer these questions is to stop thinking of homophobia as a personal choice and understand it as the inevitable and deliberate result of the culture in which American men are raised.  

Clearly, men in America have grown up learning to be scared of gayness. But not only for the reasons we typically think—not only, in the end, because of religion, insecurity about their own sexuality, or a visceral aversion to other men’s penises. The truth is, they’re afraid because heterosexuality is so fragile.

Heterosexuality’s power lies in perception, not physical truth—as long as people think you’re exclusively attracted to the right gender, you’re golden. But perception is a precarious thing; a “zero-tolerance” policy has taught men that the way people think of them can change permanently with one slip, one little kiss or too-intimate friendship. And once lost, it can be nearly impossible to reclaim.

Put another way, the zero-tolerance rule means that if a man makes one “wrong” move—kisses another man in a moment of drunken fun, say—he is immediately assumed to be gay. Women have a certain amount of freedom to play with their sexuality (mostly because society has a hard time believing in lesbian sex at all). Male sexuality, on the other hand, is understood as unidirectional. Once young men realize they are gay, they become A Gay Person. We don’t hear about gay men discovering an interest in women later in life, and we rarely believe men when they say they are bisexual—the common, if erroneous, wisdom is that any man who says he is bi is really just gay and hasn’t admitted it yet.

The result of all this is that men are not allowed “complex” sexualities; once the presumption of straightness has been shattered, a dude is automatically gay. That narrative does not allow much freedom to explore even fleeting same-sex attractions without a permanent commitment. I knew a guy who, straight in high school, hooked up with dudes for the first semester of college. He was then in a monogamous relationship with a woman for the rest of college; in the weeks before graduation, I would still hear people express confusion about the existence of their relationship.

The zero-tolerance policy is legitimately scary, then, not just because it sticks you with a label, but also because it erases a lifetime of straightness. One semester of experimentation was worth more than every other hook-up and romance of this guy’s life—both before and afterward.

Indeed, such erasure is scary even if homosexuality itself isn’t a bad thing. Even if religion andEsquire didn’t teach men to be scared of each other’s bodies, they would still be afraid of the way a brush with gayness can so suddenly erase the rest of their sexuality. With so much on the line, it’s no surprise that men take up the job of policing this boundary themselves, lest it be policed by someone else, to their detriment.

It’s worth noting that men confront their fear with brilliant creativity. High-schoolers accuse each other, their activities, and even objects of being gay with precisely the zero-tolerance attitude that they themselves are navigating. A popular game in high school was “fag tag,” where boys slap each other’s packages with the back of their hands.  In college they played chicken, where two guys each slide their hand up the other one’s inner thigh. Whoever gets freaked out first loses—or wins, really. These games aren’t just grounded in disgust with homosex; they are playing out exactly what society has taught men about heterosexuality: One wrong move, and you’ll be permanently marked.

Homophobia, then, is precisely a fear, and one that these men are not at all foolish for entertaining. The behavior it engenders is a perceptive response to a sick system, rather than a sickness itself. That’s why I don’t hold a grudge against the kids in high school who said “fag,” or the occasional bartender who makes a weird comment about my date—they’re understandably more scared of me than I am of them. 

General George C. Marshall (1880-1959)

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/macarthur/peopleevents/pandeAMEX105.html



As V-E Day drew to a close, Secretary of War Henry Stimson gathered a group of top generals and officials in his office and sent for Army Chief of Staff George Marshall. "I have never seen a task of such magnitude performed by a man," Stimson said to Marshall in front of everyone. "I have seen a great many soldiers in my lifetime and you, Sir, are the finest soldier I have ever known." 

Such flattery usually sounds insincere or ridiculous, but not when applied to George Catlett Marshall. The only man to ever serve as both secretary of state and secretary of defense, his greatest achievement may have been devising the Marshall Plan, which rebuilt a devastated Europe after World War II. Born in the same year as Douglas MacArthur, he is perhaps the only other military man to play major roles in both World Wars as well as the early years of the Cold War. But Marshall was as reserved as MacArthur was flamboyant, as self-effacing as MacArthur was egotistical. The two men offer a fascinating study in contrasts. 

Growing up in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, Marshall developed a love for the outdoors evident in the early-morning horseback rides he maintained even during the war. After graduating from the Virginia Military Institute (he had been rejected by West Point), Marshall quickly made a name for himself in the Army. He performed so brilliantly at the Army Staff College that in 1908 he was made an exception to the rule that barred anyone below the grade of captain from serving as an instructor. During the war in France, Marshall cemented his reputation as a brilliant staff officer under General Pershing, who faced unprecedented logistical and strategic difficulties. Again, the contrast with the romantic, swashbuckling MacArthur is irresistible: Marshall is largely credited with planning the decisive Meuse-Argonne offensive, which included the battle at the Cote de Chatillon, scene of MacArthur's most conspicuous acts of bravery. "In many ways," comments Marshall biographer Mark Stoler, "Douglas MacArthur was the last great 19th century soldier, while George Marshall was the first great 20th century soldier." 

The inter-war years were alternately fulfilling and frustrating for Marshall. He enjoyed his time at Fort Benning, Georgia, where he helped lay the foundation for the army he would lead in the next war. In the words of historian Eric Larrabee, "Benning became Mother Church, spinning off disciples and replicate institutions that could carry the Word, center of a True Faith that radiated outward in concentric circles like the ripples on a pond, until they reached every corner of it." The low-point came in the early 1930s, courtesy of Chief of Staff MacArthur, who assigned him to run the Illinois National Guard. But even there the experience he gained in working with civilians would later serve him well. 

Two weeks after the Munich conference in the fall of 1938, Marshall was named deputy chief of staff. Less than a year later, as the Nazi war machine went into high gear, President Roosevelt passed over 33 more senior generals to name Marshall Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army. Taking the oath of office on September 1, 1939, the day Hitler invaded Poland, Marshall spent the next six years building and running an army charged with winning the greatest military conflict the world had ever known. He proved such a gifted administrator and global strategist that Franklin Roosevelt was forced to give the job Marshall coveted, the command of Operation Overlord for the invasion of France, to Dwight Eisenhower, saying to Marshall, "I didn't feel I could sleep at ease with you out of Washington." Winston Churchill probably came the closest to describing Marshall's importance in the war effort when he cabled Washington late in the war: "He is the true 'organizer of victory.'" The debt Europeans owed Marshall only deepened in the late 1940s, when, as Secretary of State, he crafted and sold to the American people the generous and far-sighted Marshall Plan, for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1953. 

In November of 1945, President Truman made Marshall his personal representative to China, where he tried to broker a settlement of the civil war between the Nationalists and Communists. The failure of the mission, coupled with the "loss" of China to the Communists in 1949, resulted in vicious attacks on Marshall and members of the State Department from anti-communist crusaders like Senator Joseph McCarthy. Given Marshall's unquestionable patriotism and postwar role in formulating the Truman administration's strong anti-communist policies, such attacks were ludicrous. Suffering from serious health problems, Marshall retired in 1949, only to be called back to duty as Secretary of Defense during the next great crisis: the war in Korea. 

Parallel careers and divergent temperaments had placed Marshall and MacArthur in opposition many times before: in World War I, it was the staff officer vs. the front line warrior; in World War II, the global manager vs. the theater commander with a bad case of "localitis." During the war in Korea, Marshall's reluctant but unwavering support of the President's dismissal of General MacArthur placed the two in conflict once again. But on balance, when one considers what each man accomplished during a long and often perilous stretch in history, one thing seems clear: America was lucky to have them both. 

The Marshall Plan

http://www.marshallfoundation.org/TheMarshallPlan.htm

The Need

Europe was devastated by years of conflict during World War II.  Millions of people had been killed or wounded.  Industrial and residential centers in England, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Belgium and elsewhere lay in ruins.  Much of Europe was on the brink of famine as agricultural production had been disrupted by war.  Transportation infrastructure was in shambles.  The only major power in the world that was not significantly damaged was the United States. 

Aid to Europe

From 1945 through 1947, the United States was already assisting European economic recovery with direct financial aid.  Military assistance to Greece and Turkey was being given.  The newly formed United Nations was providing humanitarian assistance.  In January 1947, U. S. President Harry Truman appointed George Marshall, the architect of victory during WWII, to be Secretary of State.  Writing in his diary on January 8, 1947, Truman said, “Marshall is the greatest man of World War II.  He managed to get along with Roosevelt, the Congress, Churchill, the Navy and the Joint Chiefs of Staff and he made a grand record in China.  When I asked him to [be] my special envoy to China, he merely said, ‘Yes, Mr. President I'll go.’  No argument only patriotic action.  And if any man was entitled to balk and ask for a rest, he was.  We'll have a real State Department now.” 

In just a few months, State Department leadership under Marshall with expertise provided by George Kennan, William Clayton and others crafted the Marshall Plan concept, which George Marshall shared with the world in a speech on June 5, 1947 at Harvard.  Officially known as the European Recovery Program (ERP), the Marshall Plan was intended to rebuild the economies and spirits of western Europe, primarily.  Marshall was convinced the key to restoration of political stability lay in the revitalization of national economies.  Further he saw political stability in Western Europe as a key to blunting the advances of communism in that region.   

The European Recovery Program

Sixteen nations, including Germany, became part of the program and shaped the assistance they required, state by state, with administrative and technical assistance provided through the Economic Cooperation Administration (ECA) of the United States.  European nations received nearly $13 billion in aid, which initially resulted in shipments of food, staples, fuel and machinery from the United States and later resulted in investment in industrial capacity in Europe.  Marshall Plan funding ended in 1951. 

Results

Marshall Plan nations were assisted greatly in their economic recovery.  From 1948 through 1952 European economies grew at an unprecedented rate.  Trade relations led to the formation of the North Atlantic alliance. Economic prosperity led by coal and steel industries helped to shape what we know now as the European Union. 

Emerging markets: Don't panic

http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2014/01/emerging-markets-0?fsrc=rss
by R.A. | LONDON

QUICK on the heels of any emerging-market financial wobbles comes public fretting that it is the Asian crisis all over again. As my colleague pointed out yesterday, current financial developments do not really resemble those in 1997-8, for several reasons. Exchange rates are more flexible now. Debt levels are far smaller, relative to reserves, than they were in the 1990s. And the crisis, if it amounts to that, is so far focused on economies that are experiencing acute political difficulties. I think this post from last August still stands up.

But there are probably a few more things that can usefully be said about the current financial situation. The first is that it shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone, and not simply because the rich world has been pursuing "ultra-loose" monetary policy. In fact, Fed tightening cycles have consistently generated capital flow reversals over the past 30 years—the era of financial globalisation. The IMF's World Economic Outlook from spring of 2011 noted:

'Net capital flows to emerging market economies have been strongly correlated with changes in global financing conditions, rising sharply during periods with relatively low global interest rates and low risk aversion (or greater appetite for risk) and falling afterward. Furthermore, economies that have a direct foreign financial exposure to the United States experience an additional decline in their net capital flows in response to U.S. monetary tightening over and above what is experienced by economies that have no such direct U.S. financial exposure. This negative additional effect is larger when the U.S. rate hike is unanticipated and sharper for emerging market economies that are more integrated with global financial and foreign exchange markets, but smaller for economies with greater financial depth and relatively strong growth performance. Finally, the additional response to U.S. monetary tightening is deeper in an environment of low global interest rates and low risk aversion'.

In other words, if one wishes to tap into global capital markets, one must understand the associated risk: that when the world's monetary hegemon changes tack it will dramatically affect the level of capital flows into one's economy. Emerging markets have mostly learned this lesson and developed a strategy that looks reasonably effective at mitigating the worst effects. First, they have discovered it is a bad idea to peg one's interest rate. And second, lightly managing one's exchange rate by intervening in foreign exchange markets to dampen appreciation looks like a good idea; it leans against inflows and yields a pile of foreign exchange reserves that can be deployed to cushion the economy against outflows on the other side of the cycle.

There are downsides to this strategy, however. One is that it can distort domestic investment. A more serious problem may be that it forces central banks to sacrifice some monetary independence; a central bank may be forced to choose between moderating an overheating economy and slowing its currency's rise. On the flipside, emerging-market reserve accumulation also makes it harder for the Fed to maintain adequate demand in America. In other words, emerging markets' chosen strategy for managing the financialisation of the global economy seems to drive a wedge between appropriate monetary policy in economies on both the sending and receiving end of capital flows (though one could argue that removing China from the picture makes things look a bit less difficult).

Is there an alternative to the current emerging-market strategy? Will one might be to dial back global financialisation just a bit. Last year Helene Rey argued that perfect capital mobility may be incompatible with an independent monetary policy. Macroprudential policy, like actions to tighten limits on bank leverage when credit growth accelerates, could deflect some capital inflows while generally safe-guarding the domestic financial system. Some economists worry that macroprudential policies are little more than currency manipulation by another name. Maybe so, but the point seems to be that there is a political demand for policy that allows economies to enjoy the benefits of open capital markets while reducing the risk of destabilising capital flows. The question is whether "macro pru" is a healthier way to do that than outright foreign-exchange market interventions. (On the other hand, research by Michael Klein and Jay Shambaugh suggests that moderate capital-flow limits don't do much to guarantee monetary independence; one has to employ quite substantial capital controls, as China does, to achieve the desired effect.)

What does seem clear is that central banks which unnecessarily sacrifice monetary independence by overreacting to a falling currency are making an unforced error. When exchange rates plunge, central banks are often tempted to lean against the decline by raising interest rates—potentially squeezing the life out of their domestic economies, worsening the domestic financial climate, and doing little to stem outflows. These moves are often justified by the argument that depreciation sends import prices soaring and presages a jump in inflation. Dangerous inflation pressures have been cited by the central banks of Turkey and India, among others, as reasons for recent interest-rate hikes.

Yet research by Joseph Gagnon suggests the inflationary consequences of depreciation are overstated. He examines big currency declines between 1970 and 2004 and finds that in most cases—unless inflation expectations are high and rising—government bond yields typically fall amid a depreciation, and inflation rates are "remarkably stable" after currency crashes.

Central banks should therefore be careful not to make things worse than they need be. Meanwhile, the latest financial-market gyrations would seem like a good time to reinvigorate a discussion on global capital flows that remains woefully incomplete a half decade after the global financial crisis.

Families and Physicians Debate the True Meaning of Brain Death

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/01/14/families-and-physicians-debate-the-true-meaning-of-brain-death.html
Dr. Anand Veeravagu
Richard Joseph

In simpler times we were here and then gone. But recent cases have shown us there is a complicated grey area where the brain is dead but the heart is very much alive.

Advances in modern medicine, particularly in life sustaining treatments, have produced unintended consequences and stirred great ethical debates.

In the intensive care unit, we are able to manage each patient by treating separate organ systems—heart, lungs, kidneys, brain—and carefully titrating medications and adjusting machine settings to ensure optimal function. For those with serious, but treatable conditions, these measures are life saving.

The danger, of course, is that this capability allows us to straddle the increasingly blurred line between life and death for indefinite lengths of time. And for those who are beyond the point of saving—those whose bodily systems lack coordinated action and will never function independent of this intensive medical care—these measures may provide a false sense of hope while draining the emotional capacity of a family.

The brain, that mysterious organ that makes us human and allows us to feel, think, and be unique selves, is ultimately responsible for coordinating and integrating our bodily functions. The death of the brain almost always spells the death of the person. While this sounds simple, the lines are never clear in medicine. Depending on the extent of injury and the brain regions involved, some types of brain damage are reparable or even reversible, while others spell irrevocable death.

In between these extremes is a murky gray zone where factors like the age and health of the patient, time to treatment, and a sea of unknowns influence the outcome.

This is a debate had by physicians and families all across the world, every day. Cases currently in the national spotlight illustrate the discrepancy between medical and personal definitions of death. In early December, on a dental chair in Hawaii, 3-year-old Finley Boyle received a suspected overdose of sedatives for her root canal procedure, went into cardiac arrest, and suffered massive brain damage. Subsequent tests by doctors showed that Finley was in a persistent vegetative state, leaving her parents with the heart-wrenching decision to withdraw life support. And at Children’s Hospital Oakland, 13 year old Jahi McMath suffered brain death after a surgery to remove her tonsils and adenoids was complicated by massive blood loss and cardiac arrest.

Despite being pronounced legally dead by doctors, her parents contend that the presence of a heartbeat indicates that Jahi is still alive and should be provided with all possible life sustaining measures. A weeklong struggle pursued in the courts between the hospital, which contended that Jahi should be removed from ventilator support because it is unethical to perform medical procedures on a deceased person, and the family, who maintained that she showed signs of life and deserved the best chance for survival. The final agreement allowed Jahi to be transferred to a new facility that would continue her care.

These cases have resulted in embroiled legal battles, raising the issue of what brain death actually means and demonstrating its misconception. A key problem here is that medicine has its own language and a large information gap persists between medical professionals and patients. Those who are not versed in the lexicon are often left confused, frustrated, and misunderstood.

So to clarify, brain death is death, plain and simple, because the brain is essential for integrating critical functions of the body. Brain death implies the complete and permanent absence of neurological function in the cortex and the brainstem. The central nervous system is the maestro of high level functions like reasoning and stimulus response, breathing, hormone management, temperature regulation, appetite, speech, movement, and the list goes on. In reality, everyone ultimately succumbs to brain death and the final common pathway is a lack of oxygenation and glucose to the brain, whether it be because of a massive stroke or failure of the heart. The diagnosis of brain death is usually made at the bedside with corroborating clinical and neuroimaging evidence. Multiple physicians from different specialties work together and conduct advanced neurologic exams to demonstrate absent cerebral and brainstem function. Such tests may include an electroencephalogram (EEG) and cerebral blood flow studies, which show absent electrical activity and blood flow to the brain.

The problem with the medical-legal term “brain death,” is that when used amongst nonmedical professionals, it may convey partial or incomplete death. Since the brain is not the entire body, if the heart still beats, if muscles still move, and blood still flows, one could reason that death is incomplete and a part of the patient still be alive. One could take it a step further to say that terminating “life support” implies that the patient is victimized by the decision to end care. The confusion is confounded by the fact that, despite our best attempts, consciousness is still a nebulous concept without a concrete definition and method of assessment.

The medical approach attempts to tease apart degrees of consciousness based on verbal behavior, arousal, brain activity, brain blood flow imaging and purposeful movement. Consciousness appears to exist along a continuum, the degrees of which are informed by disorders or altered states such as sleep, locked in syndrome, coma, persistent vegetative state, and death. Somewhere in the middle of the spectrum resides coma, which is characterized by lack of both awareness and wakefulness even though some cortical and brainstem activity persists. Comatose patients have the potential for recovery or to survive in a persistent vegetative state, in which most higher-level cognitive function is lost.

Ariel Sharon, Israel’s prime minister who suffered a massive stroke eight years ago and recently passed away was in a coma. Terri Schiavo, on the other hand, was in a vegetative state. Both were medically and legally alive.

Since the body of a brain dead person can still have a heartbeat, can still produce urine, and can still accomplish oxygen exchange with the help of a breathing machine, those who have not dealt with brain death may conclude that at least a part of the patient is still alive and perhaps the other parts are on the mend with appropriate time and support. Sure the cost of care, logistics, and wishes of the patient make the withdrawal of support seem like a financial and functional decision, but in all honesty, those are a big part of it.

Caring for a patient who is functionally deceased is very expensive and laborious, and the question is—can you, even with all the resources, provide a meaning existence for this person? These topics are particularly challenging in children, who likely do not engage in end-of-life discussions with their parents, and probably, rightfully so.

In many cases, however, the sad reality of extended life support for a brain dead person is a vicious cycle of infections, medications and procedures as organ systems deteriorate without coordinated orchestration from the brain. What’s more unfortunate is that this losing battle can take weeks, months, and even years to resolve, leaving emotional and financial wreckage in its wake. This is not fair to any party involved and it only adds to the widespread confusion and frank avoidance of ethical issues surrounding end of life care.

Moving forward, we must determine and demand the adoption of strict standards for the diagnosis of brain death across institutions nationwide such that an already gray zone does not get unnecessarily hazier. The extremely rare, but real cases of patient’s waking up after being mislabeled as brain dead offers a false sense of hope which families naturally cling to, at all costs. Variability in adherence to published guidelines and documentation of brain death criteria must be strongly discouraged to minimize confusion among the general population, many of whom will be in similar circumstances facing end-of-life decisions down the road.

As evidenced by the McMath case, when the legal system gets involved to arbitrate, the nature of the situation changes—a sad and mournful tragedy transforms into a bitter and accusatory sociopolitical battle for an impossible justice. Somewhere in the equation, the actual patient—the once living, breathing, thinking person—gets lost and dehumanized amidst a long and miserable decline in the intensive care unit and 24-hour media coverage.

When anguish, fear, and confusion trample the spirit of those we love and those we mourn, true justice is but a dream.

Income Inequality Was Quickly Forgotten at Davos

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/01/26/income-inequality-was-quickly-forgotten-at-davos.html
Christopher Dickey

"It kind of disappeared," said one woman at the end of the World Economic Forum when someone asked what happened to perhaps the greatest issue facing the world today.

The witching hour had come to Davos. Inside the convention center, workmen walked the halls where, earlier in the day, world leaders paraded among their entourages. The guys in overalls were pulling the signs off the walls; they were striking the sets and stages in the conference rooms on Saturday night. This is the way the World Economic Forum ends every year, not with a bang, but a whimper.

In other corners of this snow-covered town nestled high in the Swiss Alps, the last of the extravagant networking parties were winding down. A farewell gala boogied on at the hideous new Intercontinental Hotel that looks, as one woman remarked, “like an enormous version of the golden egg laid by the goose.” But, soon, even there, the asparagus mousse disappeared, the Chateau de Pez 2006 stopped flowing, and the last of the elite invitees boarded shuttles back to their far-flung hotels.

“Whatever happened to inequality?” someone asked in my van. “It kind of disappeared,” said a woman from Montreal. “Oh, we talked about it a lot,” said a young delegate from South Africa. Everyone else looked puzzled.

Inequality was on the agenda at the WEF. Sure. The conference opened with the forum organizers themselves calling on the 2,500 people in attendance to address the explosive imbalance between the world’s astronomical rich and those who live in grinding poverty. A message from Pope Francis (arguably the world’s most admired leader at the moment) was polite but blunt: “I ask you to ensure that humanity is served by wealth and not ruled by it,” he said.

But once the conference was in full swing, few people talked, and even fewer seemed to care, about inequality. Indeed, they appeared to be living it, loving it, and laughing about it. Without question the most popular video on laptops and iPads was Jon Stewart’s “Mountain Few” segment on “The Daily Show” about the hypocrisy of the event. Citing the stunning statistic that 85 people on this planet control as much wealth as 3.5 billion, Stewart said “Jesus Christ [pause] would not be very happy about that.”

The consensus among the rich guys I talked to (most of whom had left in their chauffeur-driven Audis and private jets on Friday), was that Davos this year was just the way it should be: a place to make more deals face to face with more people much faster than they could anywhere else – then spend a few hours on the slopes or taking in the esoteric offerings on the conference agenda, like Goldie Hawn talking about meditation. “I like to improve my mind,” one influential American CEO told me.

For those determined to be serious about the state of the world – most notably the journalists who cranked out literally hundreds of thousands of articles about the confab – there certainly were some headlines to be made. While many reporters are treated as third-class citizens, after the Audi crowd and the also-ran delegates, it’s obvious that the global media, both mainstream and social, are an essential component of Davos. Stories get thrown at them like cows getting tossed to piranhas, and they’re just as rapidly torn asunder.

This year one of the biggest controversies came when Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe compared the tensions between China and Japan to the tensions in Europe before World War I – but it appears now he didn’t quite say that. There may have been a slip in the English translation of his remarks at a media event. “Japan’s Leader Compares Strain With China to Germany and Britain in 1914,” read the headline in The New York Times, and many other English-language publications took a similar view. But an aide to Abe said the remark – “I think we are in a similar situation” – was improvised by the interpreter, and no such words were uttered by Abe in Japanese, as evidenced by a tape of the original remarks.

Most of the other big headlines grew out of what seemed a Middle Eastern marathon.  

Syria was much talked about, and talked about, and talked about. An extraordinary 3D video-game-style depiction of a street in Aleppo as it’s hit with a mortar allowed participants to feel the virtual reality of the war. But any real-reality initiative to end the fighting was left to the negotiators meeting last week in Montreux and now in Geneva. And those talks, in their early stages, have as yet achieved nothing.

I moderated a Davos panel with several Arab officials, including Egyptian Minister of Finance Ahmed Galal. None had a solution for Syria. But none wanted to talk about Iran, either. And naturally none would admit the errors of the regimes they serve. Some took umbrage at the mere mention of “human rights.” From the audience, Amr Moussa – former foreign minister under Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, former head of the Arab League, former failed presidential candidate, and a co-author of the new constitution embarrassingly approved by 98 percent of the Egyptians who voted in a referendum – said that any suggestion of particular problems with human rights in Arab nations was “racist.”

Sigh. No headlines came from that panel’s parallel universe. And on Saturday in Cairo scores of people died in protests marking the third anniversary of the uprising that overthrew Mubarak.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani showed up at Davos with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif on a relentless charm offensive, followed by Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu talking up Israel, with reason, as “the innovation nation” -- to which a former minister from Lebanon responded, “How about ‘the occupation nation’?”

To the credit of the World Economic Forum, its organizers really do want to promote peace, and as the main events wound up at the Davos convention center on Saturday evening, a sequel started at a Davos hotel. Called “Breaking The Impasse,” or BTI, it continued Sunday with hundreds of Israeli and Palestinian business owners in attendance, many of them very rich and very well known to each other.

The atmosphere was civil, and even friendly. All hope they can encourage Secretary of State John Kerry to keep pushing for a solid peace agreement between the two peoples that inhabit Israel-Palestine. All hope they can press Netanyahu to take the plunge toward peace. And all know the parameters: two states with mutually agreed adjustments to the old borders of 1967; mutual recognition; a settlement of the Palestinian refugee issue that would not involve repatriation of the Arab exiles and their descendants to what’s known as “Israel proper”; solid security guarantees; and an arrangement allowing the Palestinians to claim East Jerusalem as their capital.

While waiting to get into one of those Impasse events I overheard, in passing, a remark by a very wealthy Israeli woman, who told a friend, “I can visit East Jerusalem. I visit Paris, I visit London, I don’t need to own them.”

Sometimes life seems so simple when you’re rich.