THE LITTLE PRINCE | Still inspiring

The Little Prince, 1943.

December 27, 2019 – 75 years ago, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the French novelist-pilot, came to New York after his country was crushed by the Nazi occupation. He wanted to fly a military airplane to fight Hitler but was rejected because of his age.

Instead, he moved to New York City at the end of December 1940. He also stayed at Asharoken, on the North Shore of Long Island.

He lobbied for the United States to join the war, and in 1942 wrote Le Petit Prince, The Little Prince, one of the most popular books ever written, selling 140 million copies in 300 languages.

In The Little Prince, the pilot-author describes himself as downed with his plane in a remote desert, when suddenly the Little Prince appears and asks: "Dessine-moi un mouton,” “Draw me a sheep.”

The pilot tries, but the Little Prince is dissatisfied with all of the drawings. Exasperated, the pilot just draws a box and tells the Little Prince that the sheep is inside.

Now the Little Prince is ecstatic.

Moral: Reality is not as powerful as Imagination, something fashion designers have always known.

Another moral of the book, a distrust of abstraction, is limned in Adam Gopnick's review of Saint-Exupéry's book in The New Yorker during the time of the 2014 exhibit of the book's original manuscript at the Morgan Library and Museum.

FELIX ROHATYN | Rescued NYC from Bankruptcy in 1975

L to R: Felix Rohatyn (1928-2019) and
NYS Governor Hugh Carey (1919-2011)

December 24, 2019 – Felix George Rohatyn died ten days ago in New York City. He is credited with the financial innovation that engineered the rescue in 1975 of the City of New York from bankruptcy. Creditors had refused to roll over NYC’s expiring bonds. As it was, many bondholders who couldn’t afford to wait through the process sold their bonds at a significant loss. 

Rohatyn was chairman of the Municipal Assistance Corporation from 1975 to 1993, appointed by Governor Hugh Carey. Known as "Big MAC", it had authority over the City budget and served as chief negotiator between the city, its labor unions and its creditors. Its authority was exercised in part through the Financial Control Board, which lost its budget powers in 1986. MAC itself sold $10 billion in bonds before it was voted out of existence when the debt was repaid in full in 2008. However, the Control Board still exists as of 2019 and continues to monitor NYC’s finances.

Rohatyn was concerned about the risks created by derivatives, and in the 1990s described them as "financial hydrogen bombs, built on personal computers by 26-year-olds with M.B.A.s".

Born May 29, 1928 in Vienna, Rohatyn’s family left in 1935 for safety in France, moving again in 1940 when the Nazis occupied France, traveling first on a Brazilian visa from Marseilles to Casablanca and ending up in the United States. He said later that all they could take out of France was a few hidden gold coins and he added: “Ever since, I’ve had the feeling that the only permanent wealth is what you carry around in your head.”

He attended Middlebury College and landed at Lazard, where he prospered in the mergers and acquisitions business, arranging many transactions in the four decades from the 1960s through the 1990s. Rohatyn later became co-chair of the Commission on Public Infrastructure to raise funds for public works, including the effort to create a national infrastructure bank. After Hurricane Sandy he was appointed co-chair of the New York State 2100 Commission to rebuild New York City in the context of climate change. From 1997 to 2000, President Bill Clinton (after having considered Rohatyn as a possible Treasury Secretary) appointed him U.S. Ambassador to France.

PAUL VOLCKER | Former Federal Reserve Chairman

Paul A. Volcker

The following obituary of Paul Volcker was written by 2020 Vision, an economic policy monitoring and advocacy group in Washington, D.C. headed by Dana Chasin. I am posting it by permission: 

Volcker, Inflation Conqueror 

Paul Volcker served as the 12th Chairman of the Federal Reserve from August 1979 to August 1987. He is widely credited with bringing down skyrocketing inflation levels and putting the U.S. economy on more stable ground early in his tenure. When President Nixon ended the gold standard in 1973, the dollar tanked in value, import prices rose, and along with it, inflation. 

Enter President Carter and his new Fed Chairman, Paul Volcker, who undertook then-extreme measures to meet the national emergency. Through gumption and steadfast commitment to his monetary theories, Volcker cemented himself in history as the Fed Chair who fought inflation and won. Annual inflation peaked at 14.8 percent in March 1980; by 1986, it plateaued at a healthy two percent. 

Today, politicians and economists from across the political spectrum celebrate Volcker’s tenure at the Fed, but progress at the time was painful. When Volcker took over at the Fed, unemployment stood at six percent. After his monetary tightening, joblessness peaked at 10.8 percent in 1982. Interest rates surpassed 20 percent, hindering growth. 

Volcker was responding to a national crisis as a nonpartisan and public servant. His views on the Fed were steadfast, original, and unpopular — he took that resoluteness into the rest of his life in public service.

Volcker, Public Advocate

Volcker dedicated his post-Fed life to improving the quality of governance. In 2013, he founded the Volcker Alliance, a New York City-based nonpartisan organization dedicated to promoting more effective government management — from the local to federal level. The Alliance partners with educational institutions and business groups to sponsor research of government performance and recommend policy. 

Volcker also took a particular interest in financial regulation and systemic risk. In 1987, once inflation was tamped down and the country entered a prolonged period of economic expansion, President Reagan viewed Volcker as an impediment to financial deregulation. Reagan instead chose Alan Greenspan to succeed him as Fed Chair. Throughout the 1990s, Volcker levied harsh criticism of the modern financial industry and the opaque world of derivatives. 

In this, Volcker was prescient and re-emerged into the public spotlight after the 2007 financial crisis. President Obama appointed Volcker to be chairman of the Economic Recovery Advisory Board from February 2009 to January 2011. Volcker helped draft the "Volcker Rule," which limited the types of trading that banks could do with their own proprietary accounts. The Volcker Rule became law as part of the Dodd Frank and Wall Street Reform Act. 

A Distinguished Life

Outside of good governance and monetary policy, Volcker’s altruistic approach to public service was evident. He chaired the commission to look into dormant Swiss bank accounts of Jewish victims of the Holocaust, recovering $1.25 billion. He also chaired the independent commission that inquired into the notorious oil-for-food scandal during the second Gulf war. 

More than anything, Volcker’s life should be remembered as a life dedicated to public service, with a legacy of independence and intellectual and moral integrity. In an age of demagoguery and cults of personality, he will be remembered as a decent and gifted man who materially advanced the causes of good government and self-government.  

BREXIT | Sir Ivor Crewe

Sir Ivor Crewe (L) with Univ Old Member
The Rt Hon Sir Alan Moses Law.

WASHINGTON, D.C., December 14, 2019–Last month, Sir Ivor Crewe visited Washington and spoke to the Oxford University Society branch about Brexit. 

He is the Master since 2008 of University College, Oxford – one of the three oldest colleges at Oxford. It was the residence of Bill Clinton when he was a Rhodes Scholar. 

Sir Ivor is also the President of the Academy of Social Sciences. 

He pioneered in polling in Britain since the 1970s and predicted that the Labour Party was losing its base. 

He was certainly proven right this week, as the (well-deserved) rejection of Jeremy Corbyn means a continuation of Brexit. This outcome is not favorable for academic institutions in Britain because it inhibits exchanges of students and faculty. Some worry that the Scots will in due course secede from the United Kingdom.

None of this is so surprising when one appreciates the depth of the historical divisions within the United Kingdom. Some of that is covered in my book, Oxford College Arms, because the history of Britain is intertwined with the history of the coats of arms of the Oxford colleges.

After Sir Ivor's talk, I gave him a copy of my book, which includes illustrations by an excellent heraldic artist, Lee Lumbley. Sir Ivor wrote back (I include his comment here by permission):

Thank you for your gift of Oxford College Arms, which I enjoyed reading on my return flight today from San Francisco. I can confirm that there isn’t even the tiniest of errors in your account of Univ, which gives me complete confidence that your entries for all the other colleges are reliably informative. I imagine it was a labour of love to produce this fine book.

Since I have been in Washington working for the Joint Economic Committee of the Congress in 2019, I haven't had much opportunity to travel to Oxford branches to talk about the book, but I did give one slide show presentation in 2019 to the Oxford University Society of Washington, D.C., following the talks I gave in London, Oxford and New York City the previous year.

 

How to Order the Book. I have recently been asked how to order a copy of the book. I just type "Oxford College Arms" in my browser and it takes me straight to the Amazon landing pages for my book. Or click on the short web site address here: https://amzn.to/34h6ksd.

If you want to keep bookstores thriving by giving them your business, they can order the book for you through Ingram. All you need is the ISBN Number, which is 978-0-9845232-3-8 (the ISBN number is also on the Amazon site). As of today, Amazon says they will deliver books by Christmas, but that window is closing.

More about the book here: https://boissevainbooksllc.blogspot.com/2018/11/boissevain-books-gift-ideas.html

MOUNT INEZ | Name Change Is Official

The new official map of Lewis, showing Mount Inez. Photo by
Duffy Campbell, used here by permission.

Mount Discovery, it used to be. 

In 1916, after the death of Inez Milholland Boissevain, the Town of Lewis, N.Y., decided to honor their prominent citizen, Inez.

They renamed Mt. Discovery after Inez, i.e., Mt. Inez. However, the maps themselves never were changed.

Now Nancy Duff ("Duffy") Campbell, an attorney in Lewis, has done something about it. She noted that for official maps to change, action needs to be taken in Washington, DC. 

She pursued the matter. She got the Town Board to vote on it, since the last vote was in 1916. The authorities in Washington care about these things. I posted about this earlier when the Board was considering the matter:
https://nyctimetraveler.blogspot.com/2019/10/mount-inez-100-years-later-lewis-makes.html

Now, Duffy has been successful. Here is the news story:
https://www.suncommunitynews.com/articles/the-sun/mount-inez-official/

Inez has her due! Thank you Duffy and Town of Lewis!

ECO-HERO | William Ruckelshaus, 1932-2019

Obama awards Ruckelshaus (1932-2019) the Medal
of Freedom, the highest U.S. civilian honor.

William D. Ruckelshaus died yesterday. He is someone I have looked up to all my life. In 1955 I entered Portsmouth Abbey (then Priory) School, in Rhode Island, four years after he graduated.

He was at Princeton, class of 1957, when I was at Portsmouth. He was enrolled at Harvard's Law School for two of the four years I was a Harvard undergraduate.

As a young lawyer in the 1960s, Ruckelshaus became a savior of Portsmouth Abbey School. With a Federal law suit, he fended off the siting of an oil refinery on Prudence Island in Narragansett Bay, opposite the school. He eventually slayed, or at least kept at bay, that oil company dragon.

It was not surprising that President Richard Nixon would appoint him, as a 38-year-old  lawyer, to lead the new Environmental Protection Agency in 1970-73 – or that he would return under President Ronald Reagan to run the EPA again in 1983-85. Ruckelshaus was a Republican and a conservationist by family tradition.  His grandfather was Chairman of the Indiana Republican Party in 1900.

What was surprising was Ruckelshaus's becoming one of the two heroes of the 1973 "Saturday Night Massacre". He had been recruited from his perch at the EPA by Attorney General Elliot L. Richardson to become the AG's top deputy. The Watergate prosecutor, Archibald Cox, had subpoenaed nine White House tapes. On October 23, Nixon ordered Richardson to fire Cox. Richardson refused and resigned. The order then went to Ruckelshaus, as next in command. Ruckelshaus also refused and resigned.

The third in command, Robert H. Bork, then followed orders, firing Cox and abolished the office of Watergate prosecutor.

The next day, 300,000 telegrams of outrage descended on the White House. Nixon decided to release the nine tapes after all. Three GOP members of the House Judiciary Committee who had voted against Nixon's impeachment–Reps. Charles Sandman (N.J.), Charles Wiggins (Calif.) and David Dennis (Ind.)–reversed themselves after hearing the tapes. They said they would vote for impeachment on the floor of the House. Nixon resigned before that could happen.

Not long after the Massacre, when Ruckelshaus was back in private practice of law, he kindly took me to lunch at the Hay-Adams Hotel to share with me his front-row experience of the events. In describing the President, he used the term "Unindicted Co-conspirator." I was deeply impressed with his courage and serenity in the face of all he had been through.

In the years that followed, it became clear in news reports that Ruckelshaus was increasingly distressed at the steady decline of the progressive wing of the Republican party. He ended up supporting Barack Obama for President and supported Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump.

Ronald Reagan once said that the didn't leave the Democratic Party; it left him. Ruckelshaus expressed similar sentiments about the Republican Party.

President Obama awarded Ruckelshaus the Medal of Freedom in 2015 for his environmental achievements. The race to succeed Obama was already under way and Donald Trump and Senator Marco Rubio were sparring for the GOP nomination. A few days before the Medal of Freedom ceremony, the Guardian interviewed Ruckelshaus and quoted him as follows:

"The Republicans aren’t helping, they are just responding to the convictions of the base that climate change isn’t a real problem and feeding that back to them – it’s a vicious cycle. Instead of treating it as a serious problem they are going through all the stages of denial. They are now at the stage of saying that it’s too expensive to do anything about climate change, which is no solution at all, they may as well just deny it’s a problem.

“I don’t know what Trump actually knows about climate change, I don’t think Trump thinks much about many of the issues. Rubio shifts around a lot because he hears a lot of different messages from his constituents but what he’s essentially saying is that climate change isn’t a big enough problem to address. That comes down to not dealing with it. It’s concerning and I don’t understand why they don’t see this as an opportunity rather than something to be denied.

“There was huge resistance from the auto industry, they pushed back very hard. The difference from then until now is that the public demanded something be done about pollution and the government listened. The four major auto companies sent their CEOs to lobby against the Clean Air Act and they got about three votes in the Senate and not many more in the House. They thought they’d get it reversed in the Senate.

“In those days you could smell and touch the pollution, it was a bit like how China’s cities are today. That had a galvanizing effect. The greenhouse gases of today, you can’t see or taste or feel them. And it’s got way too partisan. The atmosphere today is completely different to the 1970s; Republicans’ arguments are all partisan driven, they aren’t based on any legitimate analysis of science.”

Some Presidents' Records on the Environment, Since Nixon

President Nixon. In 1970, green issues then had bipartisan support. Clean Air Act amendments to the original 1963 Act created the EPA, William Ruckelshaus became its first head, and new water-pollution laws were passed after two years. But  OPEC's decision to create an oil shortage meant that inflation cascaded through private and public prices and economic concerns overtook environmental ones. The GOP took on the mantle of environmental deregulation in the name of promoting economic growth, although significant instances of environmental progress have occurred under Republican leaders since Nixon.

President Reagan. He cut social and environmental budgets, including one-third of EPA spending, but in his second term he noted the high cost of ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) gases and he promoted a worldwide reduction via the 1987 Montreal Protocol. This Protocol has been described as the most successful international convention ever, signed by 197 countries and the European Union, and it has stopped the growth of the ozone hole although some aerosol substitutes, such as hydrofluorocarbons, continue to contribute to global warming even though they don't damage the ozone layer.

President George W. Bush. During most of his administration, Bush 43 was, like Reagan, antagonistic to environmental regulation. He did support greater energy efficiency. Also, toward the end of his presidency he championed significant conservation initiatives that became law.

President Barack Obama. Obama made solid appointments–Steven Chu as Secretary of Energy and Lisa Jackson as Environmental Protection Agency Administrator. He supported climate-change proposals at Copenhagen. He put energy efficiency and renewable energy on state agendas, with a $90 billion investment in green jobs in the stimulus bill, encouraging states and localities to focus on needed environmental initiatives. His EPA twice raised auto fuel-efficiency standards, using Nixon's Clean Air Act as the basis for the EPA's higher Corporate Average Fuel Economy ("CAFE") standards, first requiring 35.5 mpg fuel efficiency by 2016 and then 54 mpg by 2025. He regulated carbon emissions under the Clean Air Act. His EPA won a major victory in June 2012 when the U.S. Court of Appeals unanimously affirmed EPA's ruling in 2009 in favor of  measures to regulate carbon emissions. He saved the U.S. auto industry and its technology-generating capacity, keeping the United States as a strong player in electric-car technology and in the campaign to generate more efficient batteries. He used federal purchasing power to reduce carbon emissions.  He supported four rounds of the ARPA-E program for energy technology research. The Advanced Research Projects Agency made awards for research on electrofuels, carbon capture, batteries, electric grid, thermal energy storage, and rare earth substitutes. Obama faced the BP oil spill early in his first term, which discouraged offshore oil drilling. The Fukushima nuclear meltdown discouraged further nuclear power development, constraining his options. Most important, the Republican House of Representatives adopted a totally negative stance, especially after the 2010 Midterm elections,  toward the President's climate-change goals.

IN LIEU OF FLOWERS | In Nov. 23 NY Times, p. B12

Death Notice, November 23, 2019.

Saturday, November 23, 2019 – This morning I circled this obit for Perry Janoff, who died earlier in the week at the age of 100. (The NY Times calls this an  "Announcement of Death.")   

Alice sent it around to a few friends. 

One recipient has already requested that his death notice include the same message, if still relevant.