education and deconstruction.com – Page 2

Month’s Rant – BONUS POST

[Please note: The word “Featured” on the left side above was NOT inserted by this blogger, but apparently was inserted by WordPress, and it cannot be removed. NO post in this blog is sponsored.]

As is well known, America has a mis-prioritized news cycle.
The headlines on deaths resulting from extreme weather last about a week, while the media scandalizes trivia on politicians, celebrities and sports-figures, and revels in their troubles– and the headlines drag on for weeks and weeks.

As is also well known, there is one politician whose scandals are NOT trivial, and whose abominable behaviors on January 6, 2021 and in infinite other episodes, bear repeating until he can no longer terrorize anyone.
This ditty explains it.

MONTH’S RANT

sung to the tune of “Moondance” with profuse apologies to Van Morrison and whomever else the rights may concern.

Well, it’s a marvelous month for a Trump rant,
world domination set in his eyes.
A fantabulous month to make a comeback
with a barrage of October lies.

And the far-Right GOP candidates come calling
to the sound of the sleazy Trump show.
Fox’s hysterical rhetoric is galling.
They need high ratings to rake in big dough.

Election night’s scheming is subject to whisper and hush.
You know the soft money down the line, makes no one blush.

Trump JUST wants the next month to rant with Fox, you know.
Trump JUST wants more and more mean chants with Fox, you know.

Well, Trump loves to be the drama queen EVery night.
He can’t wait till election day comes.
He MUST keep pushing the far Right,
with dirty tricks, sneers and publicity stunts.

His claques, flacks and sycophants will be waiting.
They foolishly THINK that he’ll be true.

But in a month if his dreams are dashed, folks,
there and then he’ll vow revenge-against YOU.

And with all his history, the unprotected tremble inside.
His targets KNOW he’s dangerous; thus,

the October surprise.

Trump JUST wants the next month to rant with Fox, you know.
Trump JUST wants more and more mean chants with Fox, you know.

Well, it’s a marvelous month for a Trump rant,
world domination set in his eyes.
A fantabulous month to make a comeback
with a barrage of October lies.

And the far-Right GOP candidates come calling
to the sound of the sleazy Trump show.
Fox’s hysterical rhetoric is galling.
They need high ratings to rake in big dough.

Election night’s scheming is subject to whisper and hush.
You know the soft money down the line, makes no one blush.

Trump JUST wants the next month to rant with Fox, you know.
Trump JUST wants more and more mean chants with Fox, you know.

a month more of mean chants, against you
then election night, the dangerous Right
la la la la la
then election night, the dangerous Right
Trump JUST wants more mean chants against you, you know…

Confessions of A Wall Street Analyst

The Book of the Week is “Confessions of a Wall Street Analyst, A True Story of Inside Information and Corruption in the Stock Market” By Dan Reingold with Jennifer Reingold, published in 2006.

The author happened to become a telecommunications-industry stock analyst, hopping from one big-name investment bank to another. This, at the start of about two decades of an excessively deregulated, gravy train of greed on Wall Street: the early 1990’s. He described his job as requiring lots of reading and writing, and as having long, long hours. He got to travel around the world to meet his contacts, and gossip with industry competitors. The compensation he collected for doing so was obscene.

The U.S. government had just acted on a wave of anti-trust sentiment, so competitors were scrambling to game the situation. Telephones were going wireless, while their service providers were merging like crazy.

The author detailed the changes in the industry, including how it became corrupted by the usual suspects– greedy Wall Street workers. These included analysts and the departments that trade securities on behalf of their clients and their employers’ compliance departments who looked the other way on the LAWS against analysts’ getting inside information from the said departments.

For example, if the banking arm told an analyst that a certain company was a takeover target before information in connection therewith was publicly disclosed, the analyst could write a report recommending that his employer’s clients (which ranged from huge pension funds to little investors and everyone in between) buy its stock. That is one kind of insider trading.

In the mid to late 1990’s, the author witnessed various episodes in which one particular analyst at a competing big-name investment bank was manipulating the system. There was circumstantial evidence that he was receiving inside information on the stocks he was touting. Later on, one telecommunications company turned out to be not just “cooking the books” but scorching them. The resulting mess turned out to be the largest accounting-fraud scandal to that date.

These and other Wall Street shenanigans (that were bunched together in the course of a decade!) resulted in the usual harm to society and more excessive wealth for the wealthy; more specifically:

The perpetrators (the offending workers and their employers) got a “slap on the wrist” in the form of chump-change fines from regulators, while collecting excessively large fees for servicing the merger transactions and advising their clients on what to trade when– while admitting no wrongdoing;
The mergers resulted in massive layoffs of working-class people;
Taxpayers paid for the salaries of the regulators who bragged about how great they were in catching and punishing the few white-collar criminals they did nab; and
Unsurprisingly, the author retired before he got nabbed but he claimed his employment contract contained no pay-for-performance provision with regard to his employer’s investment-banking revenues.

Anyway, read the book to learn a boatload more about Wall Street’s goings-on in telecommunications from the 1990’s into the single-digit 2000’s, and the author’s career.

Angela Davis

The Book of the Week is “Angela Davis, An Autobiography” by Angela Y. Davis, originally published in 1974. Born in 1944, Davis, who is black, grew up in Birmingham, Alabama. Through the 1950’s, when black people began moving into the previously white neighborhood where she resided, hostile whites bombed the blacks’ houses; the place was dubbed, “Dynamite Hill.”

Davis became a political activist. Through the 1960’s, the U.S. government and law enforcement felt threatened by her because she was black, female, and a Communist. She moved to West Germany for two years beginning in 1964. However, she was unaware of the then-law that all foreign visitors were required to complete paperwork at the local police station informing the government that they were there. But as an American, she was able to travel to East Germany and return from it, too.

In summer 1967, Davis was at an anti-Vietnam-War protest in San Diego. When pressed, a control-freakish police captain explained why three people in the crowd had been arrested: “As long as you are standing on the sidewalk, you may be considered obstructing pedestrian traffic.” Times have changed somewhat regarding incidents occurring on public streets; video has likely been shot from security cameras, body cams and witnesses’ phones. Yet hatred between certain groups and law enforcement, and distortion by the media haven’t changed. So evidential video footage doesn’t seem to be a deterrent to future incidents.

Davis wrote that there were two unrelated groups in the United States that included the words, “Black Panther.” One was the Political Party, and the other, led by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, was the “Party for Self Defense.” Davis became a member of the former. She soon became disenchanted with its sexist men who expected her to be a cheerleader and babysitter, rather than an organizer of the group’s events, such as rallies.

When crimes were committed with a gun licensed to Davis, she was charged with murder, kidnapping and conspiracy. In autumn 1970, she was extradited from New York state to California to be tried for her alleged crimes.

Read the book to learn of what became of Davis, and much more about her activism, whose goal (at the time of the book’s writing) was to defend her “party, Cuba, the Socialist countries, the World Communist Movement, and the cause of oppressed people across the globe.”

Spite of the Liars – BONUS POST

As the presidential election winds down in the next six weeks, many people are getting agitated and frustrated because it appears to be largely 2016 all over again.

Not to worry. It won’t be. The way people release anger in this country (aside from football and violence), is politics. Just keep calm and turn off the “news!”

Here’s a little ditty on the situation.

SPITE OF THE LIARS

sung to the tune of “Eye of the Tiger” with apologies to Survivor and whomever else the rights may concern.

A ratings race.
They’re making history.
Hogging airtime,
doing their dances.
With Trump and Harris now
afraid of defeat,
using AI and social contagion to thrive.

In these times, money rules all–
healthcare, sports and elections.
It’s up to you to make the CORrect call.
You must fight just to fact-check their cries.

It’s the, spite of the liars,
mad people thrilled by the fight.
Audiences GET manipulated by their idols.
And noisemakers revel, in the-charade every night.
And they’re involving us all in the spite, of the liars.

A ratings race.
Eyes and ears on the news.
Inflammatory rhet’ric gets, gory.
By stacking the odds, they having nothing to lose.
But meritocracy will keep democracy alive.

A ratings race.
Both sides flip-flop.
Plenty of time for more surprises.
Scandalizing trivia, they’re not gonna stop.
It’s winner-take-all, someone’s not going to survive.

spite of the liars
spite of the liars
spite of the liars
spite of the liars

The Crash of Flight 3804

The Book of the Week is “The Crash of Flight 3804, A Lost Spy, A Daughter’s Quest, and the Deadly Politics of the Great Game for Oil” by Charlotte Dennett, published in 2020. In this fact-filled, chronologically disorganized volume, the author (a journalist, not a historian) elaborated on the actions that specific nations took, despite their announced motives, in trying to gain access to fossil fuels around several, but not all, energy-rich regions of the world.

The author described in great detail, certain historical events (perhaps those from sources to which she had easy access), and omitted or provided scant coverage on a huge number of others that were equally important. The book’s subhead should have specified, “…Deadly Politics of the Great Game for Oil and Gas around the Middle East, Mediterranean Sea, and Central Asia.”

The author could not possibly comprehensively cover the global history of fossil-fuels exploration in this one book. For, she also recounted her investigation into her father’s death, beginning in 1975. He was supposedly employed by an oil company, but was killed in a plane crash in 1947. He was actually working for the predecessor to the CIA.

Dennett wrote that in the 1800’s, budding empires sought to control the railroad industry, then in its infancy, in order to travel to faraway, uncharted or unclaimed territories sooner than otherwise. Most Americans have always been clueless as to the secret-goings-on of alleged religious movements that are part of America’s foreign-policy initiatives. Such operations aren’t covered in the media, except for kidnappings or murders. Through the decades, beginning in the twentieth century, spies acting on half of governments or international corporations, have masqueraded as missionaries around the world.

In the United States especially, think tanks produce reports that turn into propaganda campaigns that get leaked to the media. The “news” stories include calls to action, whose ulterior motive is helping America meet its energy needs. By the way, the Qatari publication, al-Jazeera is funded (possibly indirectly) by the United States, subject to the whims of the diplomatic community.

In the 1990’s, building oil pipelines in Central Asia became all the rage. Actually. After secretly supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan, in August 1998, the United States changed its tune because Osama Bin Laden masterminded the bomb-attacks on the United States embassies in Nairobi and Tanzania. Bin Laden was incensed that Saudi Arabia was friendly with the United States. But how else was America supposed to meet its energy needs?

According to the author,”neoliberals” believe in providing economic aid to developing nations in order to bribe them to stop acting in ways that empower them, such as making WMD’s, or drilling for oil and gas in their own territories to meet their own energy needs. So when the United States’ neoliberals send aid, they are actually giving recipients fish instead of teaching them to fish. They rely on loans from the IMF and the World Bank, so unsurprisingly, they can’t break their cycle of dictatorship.

According to the author, “neocons” believe in providing military-related aid, and imposing their culture on the peoples in developing nations. As is well known, in the 1990’s and again in the single-digit 2000’s, the United States sent its troops into Iraq to maintain its access to and grab additional oil, and produce economic devastation while claiming to bring democracy to Iraq.

Thanks to globalization and the Internet, the world now knows who the major neoliberal and neocon offenders are. It’s not just the United States.

The author made inflammatory but factual statements about Israel. The reader would think she would fear getting smeared as “unpatriotic” and / or be the victim of retaliation from numerous people who have a vested interest in defending Israel.

As is extremely well-known, the least criticism of Israel (even if there is ample evidence the statements are true) elicits a knee-jerk, emotionally charged accusation of antisemitism from the Israel-defenders. Sure, there is plenty of hatred against Jews, but not all of the accusations of antisemitism are true.

One other propaganda-related issue: from 2022 into 2024, in America, media stories smeared gas-powered stove / oven units, arguing they were hazardous to one’s health. Could it be they were actually hazardous to the health of the strategic interests of the United States, in connection with the access-to-natural-gas-related mess in Syria of recent decades?

Anyway, read the book to learn (and become more cynical by the minute) about: a few different oil and gas pipelines whose actual construction was stalled; the secondary motive of the drafters of the Balfour Declaration (the first of course, was to establish a Jewish homeland; hint: in 1918, the U.S. figured out what the British were really doing in Palestine); why America arms and finances Saudi Arabia and Israel more than all of its other allies; why Gaza is such a valuable piece of real property; numerous rounds of “Curious things will happen when there’s dishonor among thieves” and other violence-inducing shenanigans plaguing certain energy-rich regions of the world.

Blue Sky Kingdom

The Book of the Week is “Blue Sky Kingdom” by Bruce Kirkby, published in 2020.

The Canadian author recounted how he, his wife and two sons– seven and four– went on a radical sabbatical for half a year. The parents had always enjoyed adventurous nature trips on various continents– whitewater rafting, hiking, kayaking, canoeing, and bicycling; not to mention camping. In the mid-2010’s, they began their journey to the Himalayas– Ladakh in northern India, near the Tibet border.

The family got sponsorship from Travel Channel, but had to shop around for a tour manager whose liability insurance allowed children under twelve on the trip. They had to hire local people (who knew the territory and languages) to help them: carry their equipment, cook their food, and know what to do in case of emergency (given the life-threatening terrain and weather), etc. The trip required months and months of planning. Well, the impossible took longer.

The family took various forms of transportation to get from their home in rural British Columbia, to Asia; car, canoe, train, ship. They then backpacked through various parts of Asia. In India, they stayed at a guest house where the air conditioning was broken. As the temperature was over a hundred degrees Fahrenheit, they crowded into the cold-water shower stall, which had mildewed tiles. “A group of monkeys watched curiously from outside a window perched in a strangler fig [tree].” To try to cool off, they also ate mango ice cream.

Both parents wanted their family to experience the precepts of Tibetan Buddhism, including but far from limited to: minimalism, tranquility, non-attachment, non-materialism, and transcendental wisdom. So they lived in a monastery, partook of prayer sessions and ceremonies, and taught English to the monks-in-training. The older son, especially, who was on the autism spectrum, took to his surroundings. The author described, through a series of anecdotes, their unique adventures. The takeaway is that the author realized that he became stressed when he was able to check his email in the remotest corner of the world.

Read the book to learn about every last aspect of a simple lifestyle that is quickly disappearing– due to the globalization of capitalism (Hint: “But here [at a luxury hotel] in modern Delhi, such attributes [shorn skull, maroon robe indicating a Buddhist monk– a powerful figure in Tibet] were meaningless [for getting a visa to travel to Canada]. I, on the other hand, possessed light skin and a credit card, which could open almost any door.” The United States– whose economic model is emulated by the rest of the world– is becoming more and more a nation full of athletes, gamblers and public-relations mouthpieces.

ENDNOTE: In Tibetan Buddhism, wisdom and compassion go together– the antithesis of the current Republican presidential candidate in America. Like a dictator, he sneakily sows doubt about the effectiveness or validity of:

all manner of international conferences and summits (except for Davos);
citizenship of his enemies;
the American election process;
the American justice system;
the American tax system;
immigrants’ positive impacts on the U.S. economy; and
America’s international trading relationships; etc., etc., etc.

for the purpose of amassing power.

An intellectual sows doubt for the purpose of furthering the knowledge-base that will improve humanity (and winning a Nobel Prize). Of course, NO presidential candidate has ever been ideal. But the best one would have the:

influence of JFK;
charisma of Reagan;
life-experience of Eisenhower;
intellect of Bill Clinton; and
temperament of Obama.

Here’s a little ditty describing Trump’s modus operandi.

CYNICAL

sung to the tune of “Physical” with apologies to the estate of Olivia Newton John and whomever else the rights may concern.

TRUMP’S sowing doubt with all-things ON your mind,
clouding the conversation.
He’s gotta smear eveRYone Left.
He goes low and MEAN.
He questions your citizenship incessantly.
Then he’s SUDdenly moody.
All his cronies rally round him
about going tax free!

He wants you to get cynical, cynical.
He wants you to get cynical.
Because if you’re cynical,
the IRS and courts will let him walk,
let him walk.
The IRS and courts will let him walk.

He’ll incite more violence.
We’ve been too nice,
tried to keep the dialogue civil.
It’s getting hard to tolerate this hack.
He goes low and MEAN.
His victims understand his point of view.
He owns his base mentally.
They should know, he’s destroying us, institutionally.

He wants you to get cynical, cynical.
He wants you to get cynical.
Because if you’re cynical,
the IRS and courts will let him walk,
let him walk.
The IRS and courts will let him walk.

Let’s be American, American, by voting AGainst him.
Let’s be American.
Or the IRS and courts will let him walk.
Or the IRS and courts will let him walk.

My American Dream

The Book of the Week is “My American Dream, My True Story As An Undocumented Immigrant Who Became A Wall Street Executive” by Julissa Arce, published in 2016.

The author was born in 1983 in Taxco, Mexico. In 1994, she moved with her parents to San Antonio, Texas on a tourist visa. Because she was going to school (a private one) she was actually living in the U.S. illegally. Her parents (who were legal immigrants) didn’t understand the implications of such a situation. They simply wanted her to get a good education. Americans’ tax dollars weren’t even paying for it.

The upshot, though, was that Arce never got a Social Security Number, and couldn’t get any kinds of government or financial services: healthcare, a driver’s license, a bank account, or financial aid when she applied to go to college.

By living in the United States, Arce’s foreign status became her single biggest life-problem, especially when she was in her late teens. That problem led to others. If she moved back to Mexico, she most likely would be unable to return to the United States for at least ten years, unless laws changed.

Arce needed to earn “off the books” money to support her family, and pay her mother’s medical bills. On top of that, she had a drunk, abusive father. She was accepted to a college at the last minute, based on academic and student-participatory merit, and thanks to a new Texas state law. As is well known, many students are accepted to schools based on “legacy” or alumni-bribery practices, or on athletic rather than academic merits.

After many more hardships, the author got a job in the real world. She initially omitted the inconvenient fact that fake identity papers would allow her to work at the job only until she got caught for having a fraudulent Social Security Number. It appears that both her employer and the IRS turned a blind eye to her situation, as the former was able to pay her less than it would a non-foreign employee. BUT her employer was still withholding taxes from her paycheck. So why should her employer fire her? She was a model worker. She had to be– she was under the constant threat of deportation. She had to try harder than everyone else to please everyone.

Fortunately, several people in Arce’s life gave her good advice:

get the best education she could;
always strive do be the best at whatever she did– regardless of what it was;
be persistent;
associate with the appropriate people;
be professional at all times; and
continually socially network.

Arce was actually a shameless social climber, but she also showed she was a team player– unselfish with her time and talents. When the author achieved the pinnacle of what she perceived to be success, she wrote, “I felt normal– just another drunk Wall Street analyst on Stone Street on a Friday night.” And yet, she realized she still wasn’t truly happy.

Read the book to learn much, much more about Arce’s life experiences, and additional (true!!!) information (not emotionally-charged political propaganda) about immigrants in America.

Jailing – BONUS POST

As is well known, Donald Trump is forever spewing hatred against all kinds of people other than white Christian males. As the presidential election winds down in the next two months, many people are drooling at the prospect that he might actually be locked up, not just fined. This would still be a tiny amount of punishment if he’s truly guilty of all the crimes of which he’s been accused.

This is the next development in the political soap opera. In politics, turnabout is considered fair play. The ultimate fantasy some people have is that Trump will end up like Jeffrey Epstein. If not, they’ll settle for his ending up like Paul Manafort or Michael Cohen– both of whom were subjected to ugly conditions in jail as revenge.

Here’s a little ditty on the situation.

JAILING

sung to the tune of “Sailing” with apologies to Christopher Cross and Universal Music Mgb.

Well, it’s not rocket science to analyze
Trump’s fall from grace lately.
If adverse winds bite, he’ll lose his way, and know humility.
Oh, political-canvassing can do miracles, just you wait and see.

Study history.

He’s always in never never land,
no reason to pretend.
And if you just wait it out, you’ll see the joy of leaders, working for YOU again.
Oh, political-canvassing can do miracles, just you wait and see.

Study history.

JAIL-ing would take Trump away to where some think he’s always DEserved to be.
His former teams were nobodies. THEY weren’t all sprung free.

Candidacy. It brings out the haters, you see.
But Trump’s jailing…

THAT would show democracy.

His whole world is a cacophony, of all that is SLI-my.

JAIL-ing would take Trump away to where some think he’s always DEserved to be.
His former teams were nobodies. THEY weren’t all sprung free.

Well, this country’s coming back to sanity.
Trump’s fallen from grace lately.
If adverse winds bite, he’ll lose his way, and know humility.
Oh, political-canvassing can do miracles, just you wait and see.

Study history.

JAIL-ing would take Trump away to where some think he’s always DEserved to be.
His former teams were nobodies. THEY weren’t all sprung free.

Nerves of Steel

The Book of the Week is “Nerves of Steel, How I Followed My Dreams, Earned My Wings, and Faced My Greatest Challenge” by Tammie Jo Shults, published in 2019.

The author, born at the dawn of the 1960’s, grew up in New Mexico and Colorado. For two years, military men in the recruitment offices of the Air Force and Navy told her she wasn’t allowed to become a pilot in their services because she was female. That was a lie. In March 1985, she was (finally!) inducted into the Navy, due to her chance meetings with honest men. She graduated near the top of her training class. Of course.

Shults was passionate about and good at, piloting aircraft, but she had to endure numerous indignities and conditions perpetrated by her bosses that were even more life-threatening than they should have been, because she was female. She was cool under fire, and her Christian faith saw her through those stressful and traumatic times of her life. Strangely, a religious quote in her book indicated she believed her God is a male!

Anyway, after her Navy service, she transferred her super flying skills to a job fighting wildfires in California. In the mid-1990’s, she learned to fly a piston-engine plane (different from the military aircraft she had been flying). She engaged in surveillance missions to alert firefighters and others on the ground to situations that were more dangerous than usual; dispensed red mud to put out the fires; and spread fertilizer so as to facilitate the growth of new vegetation.

The third leg of the author’s piloting career involved getting a job at a commercial airline. The GI Bill paid for her training in a 737 jet. Compensation and benefits for women in the military and pilots’ union are equivalent to the mens’, but in some quarters, women are still treated as second-class citizens by men who don’t like “girls” to invade their fraternity.

Infuriatingly for American women, Congress is still one such place where there are a bunch of powerful men, so even if a female were to be elected president, those men would automatically smear her, and vote against everything she did.

As is well known, presidents have had to make serious compromises in civil-rights legislation in order to further their own mandates. Attitudes are very, very difficult to change, as almost every facet of American life began with a bunch of white alpha males:

the Founding Fathers;
Wall Street;
the military and law enforcement;
professional sports;
science and technology;
business and industry;
most of the licensed professions, etc.,

except for areas involving family, household chores and jobs in the arts and entertainment.

So it should not have been surprising that the author encountered yet more gender discrimination with her new employer– in the late 1990’s. Read the book to learn much, much more about Shults’ ordeals and triumphs that show that America is making slow, slow progress in workplace gender equality. Unfortunately, not fast enough for politics. Not yet.

As is well known, in the 1960’s, there were impatient civil-rights activists who believed that resorting to violence would facilitate the enactment of equality-legislation. After the American Civil War to date, white males have threatened and resorted to violence in order to hinder the enactment of equality-legislation.

Not to worry. There is still plenty of time for progressive historical events this election season. Currently, it’s like the start of the fourth quarter of football games, but fans, like voters, need only check the last five minutes of the games to see the winners. Turning off the idiot box for the next month will prevent a lot of emotional trouble. There’s no need to despair, as there might just be a quarterback such as Tom Brady who will step in late in the game. Thank goodness for the last minute. If it weren’t for the last minute, nothing would ever get done.

The Trading Game

The Book of the Week is “The Trading Game, A Confession” by Gary Stevenson, published in 2024. This blogger highly encourages the reader to peruse the entire “Wall Street” and Economics categories of this blog in order to gain a better understanding of financial matters and economics.

In March 2007, the 1987-born author began working on the Fixed Income Trading Floor at the Short Term Interest Rates Trading Desk in the Foreign Exchange section of Citibank in its London branch. He had grown up in a tough, poor neighborhood in East London. He beat the odds for someone of his demographic group, considering the fierce competition in both getting accepted to a prestigious university and getting a job in currency trading.

Stevenson nurtured an aspiration to make lots of money. Fortunately, his talent and hard work in mathematics allowed him to score high on standardized exams. He attended the London School of Economics where he rubbed shoulders with mostly male, wealthy elitists whose fathers gave them a leg up in life, and whose futures were almost guaranteed to be bright. At school, when he won a game involving hypothetical securities trading, Stevenson’s life turned around. For, he won an internship which turned into a career.

After a few lucky breaks and bold moves on his part, the author was just hitting his stride in work-experience when he happened to be at the right place at the right time to earn extremely large financial gains from a triple-whammy disaster. In March of 2011, about twenty thousand people died in Japan due to an earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown of three power plants. Amidst the resulting financial turmoil and previous turmoil of the 2008 worldwide financial crises, Stevenson made a percentage of the millions upon millions of dollars he earned in currency trading for Citibank.

Stevenson alone in his department had been correct in gaming the situation. Everyone else had been wrong and they lost money. Nevertheless, he was still emotionally troubled. He bore two major similarities with Alan Turing– another genius: social dysfunctionality, and indifference to how he looked and what he wore.

Stevenson was one of the proverbial three kinds of people (geniuses in the minority)– the kind who knew what was happening and made things happen. The vast majority account for the other two kinds of people– brainwashed, unwashed masses who watched what was happening, and then still wondered what happened.

In the early 2010’s, the author came to the realization that there would NEVER be economic recovery of any financially-struggling countries in the European Union while the Swiss National Bank kept interest rates at or below zero. The other traders in his department optimistically kept repeating that interest rates HAD to rise sooner or later, because they had bet wrong.

But, the tiny percentage of the super-wealthy, super-powerful people of the world sought to maintain the then-status quo, because it made THEM even richer, and the poor, poorer, as the cliche goes. The income inequality of the world would eventually result in a slave-based economy (as existed in ancient times) all over again.

Read the book to learn much more of Stevenson’s personal and professional life, and his times. As is well known, the United States is one of the major economic superpowers of the world, and its politics are part and parcel of that. Here’s a little ditty on its momentary political situation.

LET THE BEST TEAM WIN

sung to the tune of “Let the River Run” with apologies to Carly Simon, BMG Gold Songs C’est Music and Tcf Music Pub Inc.

[Spoken: We’re all on edge,
waiting for the savior,
gaping with alarm
at the immature behavior.]

Let the best team win.
Let’s all peaceFULly watch the changes.
Come the new, new Washington.

Brilliant ideas rise.
The media lies, about, and smears them.
And celebs get themselves in your face.

It’s asking for the taking,
blaming, deep-faking.
Oh, Americans are aching.
We’re all on edge,
waiting for the savior,
gaping with alarm
at the immature behavior.

Through the hate and all.
It’s who we are:
Place a trail of desire
on the White House lawn.

It’s asking for the taking.
Just hold on now.
Democratic convention will be a show
you’ve never even seen in political history.

Oh, Americans are aching.
We’re all on edge,
waiting for the savior,
gaping with alarm
at the immature behavior.

It’s asking for the taking,
blaming, deep-faking.
Oh, Americans are aching.
We’re all on edge,
waiting for the savior,
gaping with alarm
at the immature behavior.

Let the best team win.
Let’s all peaceFULly watch the changes [watch the changes]
Come the new, new Washington.