Genetic Maker of Men is Diminished

The headline read a little like Kodak’s bankruptcy (which resulted in the famous Kodak Theatre where the Academy Awards were held having to change its name), like the fall of Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns or MF Global. “Genetic Maker of Men is Diminished but Holding Its Ground Researchers, Say,” ran the Times headline (NYT, 2/22/12) Of course the article was not about a company, but about the Y chromosome which apparently had been shedding genes for the sake apparently of womankind—Adam’s Rib playing itself out on the genome, as it were. “The Y chromosome began its self-sacrificing downsizing in the gallant cause of protecting women,” Times writer Nicholas Wade reported. “As is well-known, the purpose of sex is to exchange DNA between the mother’s and father’s version of each gene…But the male-determining gene on the Y cannot be allowed to sneak across onto the X because it would insert maleness where it should not be.”  Evolution created a “no-swapping zone” resulting in the Y retaining only l9 of the original 790 genes in this area. Wade’s piece was based on work done at the Whitehead Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts where researchers “have reconstructed the Y chromosome’s" history. But all is not lost. The Y chromosome is not another Titanic according to the same researchers who have concluded that all of the Y’s “genetic self-sacrificing occurred in the distant past.” Saab may have had to stop production of its cars, but the male of the species will continue to be produced. Mark Twain’s famous post mortem can be applied to men, “the reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.”

Panglossing it Over

Steven Pinker, the Harvard psychologist, and Joshua S. Goldstein,  a professor emeritus of international relations at the American University, wrote an Op-Ed piece in last Sunday’s Times entitled “War Really Is Going out of Style,” NYT, 12/17/11). For Pinker, the Op-Ed  piece seems to be an extension of the argument that he makes in his recently published The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. The three reasons that Pinker and Goldstein give for the decline of war are 1) political 2) economic and 3)social. In terms of political boundaries, no one is really the winner. “Since shortly after World War II, virtually no borders have changed by force,” Pinker and Goldstein argue.  Further, economic hegemony has been more effective than geographic invasion. “Today, wealth comes from trade, and war only hurts,” they continue. Lastly on the social front mankind has evolved. “Brutal customs that were commonplace for millennia have been largely abolished: cannibalism, human sacrifice, heretic-burning chattel slavery, punitive mutilation, sadistic executions.”  The natural extension of Pinker and Goldstein’s argument is that benevolence has become naturally selective and that mankind has found a better way of dealing with its aggressive impulses, by making love not war to re-invoke the 60’s. The explosion of pornography might evidence the latter, if the majority of sites weren’t so involved with conquest and submission on an ontogenic basis. Not to be judgmental about playful sex, but the sex on Kink.com makes water boarding seem like a sport. The question is, are Pinker and Goldstein talking about the two new planets discovered orbiting the star Kepler 20 reported by Dennis Overbye in the Times (“Two Earth-Sized Planets Are Discovered, “ NYT, 12/20/11)?  Do we occupy the same planet as these two eggheads ? They sound like  Voltaire's Pangloss, whose reaction to a succession of brutalities, “all’s for the best in the best of all possible worlds," takes aim at another egghead named Leibnitz.  What about the brutalities perpetrated by the Janjaweed militia in thee Sudan, the brutal dictatorship of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, whose fortunes are again on the rise due to a windfall from the country's diamond industry? OK Qaddafi was toppled in Libya and Mubarak in Egypt, but even the reports of Qaddafi’s brutal capture create suspicion about the prospects for peace in that troubled land and the recent accounts of the Egyptian military’s sexual humiliations of women protestors seem to show throw doubt on the old  adage that “every cloud has a silver lining.” Make no mistake the lining of Mubarak regime was a military that controlled the economy of the country. We need turn no further than troubled Afghanistan if we want evidence of the fact that age old customs die slowly. Let the women with severed noses and burned faces testify to the progress of the human race. As for our so-called more advanced Western societies, who walked off with the shekels at MF Global and what made such a sterling institution as Goldman Sachs bet against the collateralized debt obligations it was offering its customers? And what about hazing at FAMU where the drum majors now must bang the drum slowly in mourning for a hard working 26 year old who was beaten to death? Go up to the South Bronx and watch the promoters of cock fights placing razors in the beaks of their contenders and then tell us about mankind tempering its aggressive instincts as two hapless birds run around with heads cut off. Happy Holidays!

John Corzine aka Icarus

Everyone wants to know why John Corzine, former senator and governor of New Jersey, former senior partner at Goldman Sachs made the colossally bad decisions that brought down the fall of MF Global a company that traded derivatives. The buck should have stopped at Corzine, but his ratio of borrowing to equity was approximately 40-1 and he was betting on the spectacularly volatile Euro debt as if there were no tomorrow. In one sense he wasn’t totally bonkers. As Times columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin wrote in his DealBook column, “In truth Mr. Corzine’s bet may still prove to be correct. Many of the Italian and Spanish bonds that Mr. Corzine bought…are still trading at 98 and 99 cents on the dollar…But Mr. Corzine’s bets also relied on short-term funding and given the skepticism in the market, counterparties quickly ran for cover.” (“It's Lonely Without the Goldman Net” NYT, 10/31/11) Okay there was solid thinking mixed with some gambling and the carpet got pulled from under the former Democratic golden boy who’d only recently received another rude awakening in the upset he endured at the hands of Chris Christie. Maybe the answer goes back to his accident in 2007. Here was another instance in which the man felt himself insulated by power from the vicissitudes of fate. The then governor had failed to wear a seat belt and was severely injured. Hubris is the Greek word for this kind of narcissistic megalomania and Icarus, who flew too close to the sun with wings made of wax, was the mythological embodiment of such financial over extension. Though Corzine suffered greatly, he wasn’t chastened by his accident. He didn’t get the message. Icarus had a father named Daedalus and Daedalus had the cunning to create the labyrinth in which the minotaur was trapped. So is there hope the proteges of Corzine from MF Global and elsewhere will look back further to storied predecessors who relied on simpler value based theories of investing?