There, In the Shadows: The Grace of Art in a "River Runs Through It"

"Any man-any artist, as Nietzsche or Cezanne would say- climbs the stairway in the tower of his perfection at the cost of a struggle with a deunde-not with an angel, as some have maintained, or with his muse. This fundamental distinction must be kept in mind if the root of a work of art is to be grasped." -Frederico Garcia Lorc

"The Road to Debt Deflation, Debt Peonage, and Neofeudalism"

What is called "capitalism" is best understood as a series of stages. Industrial capitalism has given way to finance capitalism, which has passed through pension fund capitalism since the 1950s and a US-centered monetary imperialism since 1971, when the fiat dollar (created mainly to finance US global military spending) became the world's monetary base. Fiat dollar credit made possible the bubble economy after 1980, and its substage of casino capitalism. These economically radioactive decay stages resolved into debt deflation after 2008, and are now settling into a leaden debt peonage and the austerity of neo-serfdom. The end product of today's Western capitalism is a neo-rentier economy—precisely what industrial capitalism and classical economists set out to replace during the Progressive Era from the late 19th to early 20th century. A financial class has usurped the role that landlords used to play—a class living off special privilege. Most economic rent is now paid out as interest. This rake-off interrupts the circular flow between production and consumption, causing economic shrinkage—a dynamic that is the opposite of industrial capitalism’s original impulse. The "miracle of compound interest," reinforced now by fiat credit creation, is cannibalizing industrial capital as well as the returns to labor. The political thrust of industrial capitalism was toward democratic parliamentary reform to break the stranglehold of landlords on national tax systems. But today's finance capital is inherently oligarchic. It seeks to capture the government—first and foremost the treasury, central bank, and courts—to enrich (indeed, to bail out) and untax the banking and financial sector and its major clients: real estate and monopolies. This is why financial "technocrats" (proxies and factotums for high finance) were imposed in Greece, and why Germany opposed a public referendum on the European Central Bank’s austerity program.Debt Deflation; Neofeudalism; Economic Rent; Finance Capitalism; Classical Political Economy; Pension Fund Capitalism; Bubble Economy

The Glory of His Discontent: The Inconsolable Suffering of God

"He who is satisfied has never truly craved. And he who craves for the light of God neglects his ease for ardor." -Rabbi Abraham J. Hesche

"US 'Quantitative Easing' Is Fracturing the Global Economy"

The Federal Reserve's quantitative easing is presented as injecting $600 billion into "the economy." But instead of getting banks lending to Americans again—households and firms—the money is going abroad, through arbitrage interest-rate speculation, currency speculation, and capital flight. No wonder foreign economies are protesting, as their currencies are being pushed up.Exchange Rates; Asset-price Inflation; Monetary Policy

"How Brazil Can Defend Against Financialization and Keep Its Economic Surplus for Itself"

The post-1945 mode of global integration has outlived its early promise. It has become exploitative rather than supportive of capital investment, public infrastructure, and living standards. In the sphere of trade, countries need to rebuild their self-sufficiency in food grains and other basic needs. In the financial sphere, the ability of banks to create credit (loans) at almost no cost, with only a few strokes on their computer keyboards, has led North America and Europe to become debt ridden—a contagion that now threatens to move into Brazil and other BRIC countries as banks seek to finance buyouts and lend against these countries' natural resources, real estate, basic infrastructure, and industry. Speculators, arbitrageurs, and financial institutions using "free money" see these economies as easy pickings. But by obliging countries to defend themselves financially, they and their predatory credit creation are helping to bring the era of free capital movements to an end. Does Brazil really need inflows of foreign credit for domestic spending when it can create this at home? Foreign lending ends up in its central bank, which invests its reserves in US Treasury and euro bonds that yield low returns, and whose international value is likely to decline against the BRIC currencies. Accepting credit and buyout "capital inflows" from the North thus provides a "free lunch" for key-currency issuers of dollars and euros, but it does not significantly help local economies.Financialization; Economic Statistics; International Economics; International Finance; Economic Rent

The Dance of Truth

We want God to make sense, to be reasonable, to act according to how we think God should act. This kind of thinking, though, is not far from where we live today. If I give money to the church, then God will bless me financially. If I have my “quiet time” in scripture, then God will bless my day. If I raise my children right, then surely they will turn out right. In themselves these actions are good and right; however, we have to ask ourselves, “Do our motives emerge from the desire to give a place to the mystery of faith, or, rather, to conquer mystery?

The Mass-To-Light Function of Virialized Systems and the Relationship Between Their Optical and X-ray Properties

We compare the B-band luminosity function of virialized halos with the mass function predicted by the Press-Schechter theory in cold dark matter cosmogonies. We find that all cosmological models fail to match our results if a constant mass-to-light ratio is assumed. In order for these models to match the faint end of the luminosity function, a mass-to-light ratio decreasing with luminosity as $L^{-0.5\pm 0.06}$ is required. For a $\Lambda$CDM model, the mass-to-light function has a minimum of $\sim 100 h^{-1}_{75}$ in solar units in the $B$-band, corresponding to $\sim 25$ of the baryons in the form of stars, and this minimum occurs close to the luminosity of an $L^*$ galaxy. At the high-mass end, the $\Lambda$CDM model requires a mass-to-light ratio increasing with luminosity as $L^{+0.5 \pm 0.26}$. We also derive the halo occupation number, i.e. the number of galaxies brighter than \lgal^* hosted in a virialized system. We find that the halo occupation number scales non-linearly with the total mass of the system, N\sbr{gal}(>\lgal^*) \propto m^{0.55\pm0.026} or the $\Lambda$CDM model. We find a break in the power-law slope of the X-ray-to-optical luminosity relation, independent of the cosmological model. This break occurs at a scale corresponding to poor groups. In the $\Lambda$CDM model, the poor-group mass is also the scale at which the mass-to-light ratio of virialized systems begins to increase. This correspondence suggests a physical link between star formation and the X-ray properties of halos, possibly due to preheating by supernovae or to efficient cooling of low-entropy gas into galaxies.Comment: Latex, 13 pages, 9 embedded figures (1 bitmapped), ApJ Submitted. Full resolution figures available at http://astro.berkeley.edu/~marinon

The Peculiar Velocities of Local Type Ia Supernovae and their Impact on Cosmology

We quantify the effect of supernova Type Ia peculiar velocities on the derivation of cosmological parameters. The published distant and local Ia SNe used for the Supernova Legacy Survey first-year cosmology report form the sample for this study. While previous work has assumed that the local SNe are at rest in the CMB frame (the No Flow assumption), we test this assumption by applying peculiar velocity corrections to the local SNe using three different flow models. The models are based on the IRAS PSCz galaxy redshift survey, have varying beta = Omega_m^0.6/b, and reproduce the Local Group motion in the CMB frame. These datasets are then fit for w, Omega_m, and Omega_Lambda using flatness or LambdaCDM and a BAO prior. The chi^2 statistic is used to examine the effect of the velocity corrections on the quality of the fits. The most favored model is the beta=0.5 model, which produces a fit significantly better than the No Flow assumption, consistent with previous peculiar velocity studies. By comparing the No Flow assumption with the favored models we derive the largest potential systematic error in w caused by ignoring peculiar velocities to be Delta w = +0.04. For Omega_Lambda, the potential error is Delta Omega_Lambda = -0.04 and for Omega_m, the potential error is Delta Omega_m < +0.01. The favored flow model (beta=0.5) produces the following cosmological parameters: w = -1.08 (+0.09,-0.08), Omega_m = 0.27 (+0.02,-0.02) assuming a flat cosmology, and Omega_Lambda = 0.80 (+0.08,-0.07) and Omega_m = 0.27 (+0.02,-0.02) for a w = -1 (LambdaCDM) cosmology.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, 1 table, accepted for publication in ApJ Letter

NECROMASS PRODUCTION: STUDIES IN UNDISTURBED AND LOGGED AMAZON FORESTS

Necromass stocks account for up to 20% of carbon stored in tropical forests and have been estimated to be 14–19% of the annual aboveground carbon flux. Both stocks and fluxes of necromass are infrequently measured. In this study, we directly measured the production of fallen coarse necromass (≥2 cm diameter) during 4.5 years using repeated surveys in undisturbed forest areas and in forests subjected to reduced‐impact logging at the Tapajos National Forest, Belterra, Brazil (3.08° S, 54.94° W). We also measured fallen coarse necromass and standing dead stocks at two times during our study. The mean (SE) annual flux into the fallen coarse necromass pool in undisturbed forest of 6.7 (0.8) Mg·ha−1·yr−1 was not significantly different from the flux under a reduced‐impact logging of 8.5 (1.3) Mg·ha−1·yr−1. With the assumption of steady state, the instantaneous decomposition constants for fallen necromass in undisturbed forests were 0.12 yr−1 for large, 0.33 yr−1 for medium, and 0.47 yr−1 for small size classes. The mass weighted decomposition constant was 0.15 yr−1 for all fallen coarse necromass. Standing dead wood had a residence time of 4.2 years, and ∼0.9 Mg·ha−1·yr−1 of this pool was respired annually to the atmosphere through decomposition. Coarse necromass decomposition at our study site accounted for 12% of total carbon re‐mineralization, and total aboveground coarse necromass was 14% of the aboveground biomass. Use of mortality rates to calculate production of coarse necromass leads to an underestimation of coarse necromass production by 45%, suggesting that nonlethal disturbance such as branch fall contributes significantly to this flux. Coarse necromass production is an important component of the tropical forest carbon cycle that has been neglected in most previous studies or erroneously estimated