My Amazon Review of Andrea Wulf's "The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World"

 Ecological Explorer

 

Although I have been to Humboldt County in California and heard of Saul Bellow’s Humboldt’s Gift, I had never heard of Alexander von Humboldt until I read Andrea Wulf’s book. Shame on me! As Wulf recounts our entire concept of nature in the 21^st Century is derived from the works of this very extraordinary 19^th Century polymath. Well before science became siloed up, Humboldt was involved at the cutting edge of botany, biology, evolution, geography, and meteorology. His works inspired Darwin, Thoreau and Muir and coined the term “cosmos” to describe the universe.

 

There must have been something in the water in the nearby cities of Jena and Weimar, Germany in the 1790’s where Humboldt attended the University of Jena. He frequently conversed with great author Goethe and the playwright Friedrich Schiller. A few years later Hegel would witness the “end of history” with Napoleon’s victory over the Prussian army at the Battle of Jena. It was at Jena that Humboldt solidified his interest in the natural world.

 

He then embarks on his first great adventure to South America. Braving swamps, crocodiles, snakes, disease, tropical heat, and the extreme cold of the heights of Mount Chimborazo in Ecuador bringing back samples of flora and fauna.  If you thought the Lewis and Clark expedition up the Missouri River at around the same time was one of “undaunted courage,” Humboldt’s expedition takes that to the power of ten. The writeup of his journey along the Orinoco River in Venezuela makes him famous. He would soon meet Thomas Jefferson James Madison, many of the crowned heads of Europe, and the revolutionary Simon Bolivar, who would ultimately disappoint him.

 

Humboldt was and “1848er” fifty years ahead of his time. He was a republican through and through despising Spanish colonialism, slavery, and the treatment of Indigenous people in the Americas.  Despite his strong republican beliefs his status as scientist was so high that the monarchies of Europe accepted him, including the Czar who financed his trip to Siberia when he was in his late fifties.

 

By viewing nature as an integrated whole, Humboldt could be characterized as the world’s first ecologist. He understood how small changes in the environment could have very serious long-term consequences and saw before most the problems caused by deforestation. I owe a debt of gratitude to Andrea Wulf for bringing the life of this very important man to me. It is a shame that we lost the heritage of this great German scientist as a consequence of anti-German feelings brought about by World War I.

For the full Amazon URL see: Ecological Explorer (amazon.com)

Higher Inflation and Higher Interest Rates: Get Used to it

Last May I wrote that our economy is entering a new thirteen year cycle that would be characterized by higher inflation and higher interest rates. (See:Shulmaven: The U.S. Economy is Entering a New Thirteen Year Cycle ) In that post we noted that the forces of deglobalization and decarbonization were inherently inflationary which would increase the demand for capital, and hence real interest rates. Whether or not there was a global savings glut, the demand for capital would mop up whatever excess savings there is.

In this post we add a third factor. Real wages have collapsed as inflation of 8% has swamped wage gains of 5%. Trust me, there is going to be a catch up which will put pressure and corporate margins and pricing. This will hardly make for a good environment for both interest rates and stock prices. 

Further although money growth has slowed dramatically over the past year, the 25% annual rate of increase in M2 over 2020 and 2021 will provide more than enough fuel to ratify the price increases that are coming.  As a result instead of having the wind at its back, the Fed will find it increasingly difficult to bring inflation down to its 2% target.

My Amazon Review of Greg Steinmetz's "American Rascal: How Jay Gould............"

Robber Baron

 

Greg Steinmetz has written a biography of one of Matthew Josephson’s robber barons. I must confess I read Josephson’s “The Robber Barons” in junior high and to me they were heroes in the sense that these mostly self-made men built America in the latter half of the 1800’s. We cannot look at the life of Jay Gould through 21^st Century eyes, but rather we have to look at his life in the context of America being an emerging market with all of the corruption that entails.

 

To be sure much of what Gould did in markets would be illegal today, but was not in the 1860’s. Nevertheless, his collusion with New York City Boss Tweed was illegal then and Gould got away with it.

 

We see Gould rising from humble beginning to running a tannery operation to becoming a major factor on the New York Stock and Gold exchanges. We see him puling off a corner in the gold market in 1869 that unfairly implicated President Grant. To me the most interesting factoid in that development was that the young Thomas Edison was the telegraph operator who telegraphed the changing price of gold throughout the Nation.

 

We next see Gould becoming a railroad baron where he ended up controlling 16% of the nation’s track mileage through strategic stock purchases. Far from being only a stock jobber, Gould was responsible for laying 4,000 miles of new track throughout the country. Too many of his contemporaries, Gould was the smartest person in the room.

 

Steinmetz highlights the role of reformer and Adams family scion Charles Francis Adams in pushing for railroad regulation, yet we see him later running the Union Pacific Railroad for a decade. He too wanted to make a buck. We also learn contrary to the populist myth American railroads suffered from too much competition, rather than too little.

 

Through it all Gould was a family man who loved his wife and six children who died to young in his mid-fifties. In this brief biography Steinmetz tells a riveting story about Jay Gould and his times.

For the full amazon URL see: Robber Baron (amazon.com)

My Review* of Jerome Charyn's "Big Red: A Novel Starring Rita Hayworth and Orson Welles"

A Hollywood Tale

 

Jerome Charyn has given us a novelized biography of Rita Hayworth and her tempestuous marriage to Orson Welles. The novel is narrated by Rusty Redburn a sexually fluid tomboy from the Midwest newly arrived in Hollywood in 1943. Redburn gets a job in the bowels of Columbia Pictures and soon she hired by Harry Cohn, the big boss himself, to spy on Rita Hayworth his prize property. Hayworth is, of course, a sex goddess of 1940’s Hollywood who heats up the screen with her starring role in Gilda. Her “Put the Blame on Mame” number is a Hollywood classic. (See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NY2IpSCV-Nk)

 

We learn that Hayworth was sexually abused by her father and her first husband made her available to more than a few producers. She meets Welles and falls in love with the “boy wonder” who co-wrote and directed the classic, “Citizen Kane.” There marriage is a stormy one of opposites, Welles “the genius” and Hayworth being minimally educated. As a result, when both were invited to the Roosevelt White House, Hayworth begs off out fear of being intellectually intimidated by Eleanor Roosevelt. Further Welles is on the way down, while Hayworth is on the way up. This being Hollywood, Welles cheats on Hayworth and Hayworth, as a consequence drinks to excess thereby cratering the marriage.

 

Nevertheless, the two do the surrealistic “The Lady from Shanghai” movie together and Welles goes on to play Harry Lime in “The Third Man.” The novel has lots of vignettes on the Hollywood of the 1940’s and shows the power of the studio bosses and the gossip columnists. As the 1940’s fade into the 1950’s the once proud Hollywood Boulevard scene turns seedy under the pressure from television and as the glitterati move further west out of Hollywood.

 

Charyn has authored an enjoyable book that puts you into the mindset of 1940’s Hollywood. My one small quibble is that he used the term “women of color, a phrase that would never have been used in the 1940’s.

* Amazon has yet again been late in posting my review.  Amazon just posted at URL:

A Hollywood Tale (amazon.com)