Earth-Like Planet Orbits Nearby Star

The recent discovery of an Earth-like planet orbiting Proxima Centauri confirms the speculation, in my free online novel 2052 - The Hawking Plan, that the three-star Alpha Centauri system is a likely target for preserving human life and civilization in the event a natural or man-made disaster wipes out life on Earth.

From CNN (24 August 2016):

... researchers have confirmed the existence of a rocky planet named Proxima b orbiting Proxima Centauri, the closest star to our sun, according to a new study. It is the closest exoplanet to us in the universe.

Given the fact that Proxima b is within the habitable zone of its star, meaning liquid water could exist on the surface, it may also be the closest possible home for life outside of our solar system, the researchers said.

Because of its location, the researchers hope it provides an opportunity for possible "robotic exploration in the coming centuries."

"The good news is that it is so close," study author Ansgar Reiners said. "It is not only nice for having it in our neighborhood, but it's a dream come true for astronomers if we think about follow-up observation.

My novel, 2052 - The Hawking Plan, as the title indicates, is set in the year 2052. I wrote it primarily as a vehicle to convey my predictions of "life, liberty, and technology in future decades." It was published in 2008. Here are the applicable excerpts:

“Stephen Hawking,” said Stephanie Goldenrod in a reverent tone, "The famous theoretical physicist and cosmologist who happens to be my great-grandfather, said, some fifty years ago, the human race will not survive on Earth for a thousand years. He wanted us to spread out, very fast, to Earth-like planets beyond our Solar System! He embraced human space travel!” As she said “Human space travel,” a video of Stephen Hawking floating in zero gravity appeared on the display wall.

She gazed at the video and smiled broadly. “Despite his physical limitations, my great-grandfather accepted an opportunity, in 2007, to fly in a special airplane that went to high altitudes and plunged to Earth to allow him to experience zero gravity in person! Unfortunately, by the time he passed away, human space travel had all but ceased, in favor of space probes ‘manned’ by intelligent robotic agents.

“He warned a natural disaster or human-made accident could wipe life out on a single planet."

I don't think the human race will survive the next thousand years.

Unless we spread into space.

There are too many accidents that can befall life on a single planet.

But I'm an optimist.

We will reach out to the stars.

[Stephen Hawking, Physicist and Cosmologist, 2001]

Animated charts appeared on the display wall behind her. “My Hawking Plan calls for nothing less than a massive effort to spread human civilization and genes far and wide throughout space. We’re talking about thousands of spaceships launched over a period of hundreds of years, starting by 2062, no more than ten to twenty years from today.”

As she spoke, a high-resolution satellite image of our TABB building in Orlando appeared on the display wall. Slowly the view zoomed out and all of the greater Orlando area filled the display screen. The view expanded to Florida and eastern North America, and then the entire Earth. A label appeared:

Mother Earth – Our Big Blue-Green Marble.

The image zoomed out further and faster to contain Venus and Mars, and then our Sun and Solar System. A label appeared:

Our Solar System – Our Planet Neighborhood.

The zoom-out ceased when our galaxy filled the screen. A label appeared: Our Galaxy – The Milky Way. The view shifted a few degrees and slowly started to zoom in on what, at first, seemed to be a single star. A label appeared:

Alpha Centauri – Our Nearest Neighbor Solar System. (Only Four and a Third Light Years Away).

As it zoomed in further Alpha Centauri morphed into two stars, one quite bright and the other a duller, reddish neighbor. Further zooming split the bright star in two, one whitish-yellow, and the other yellowish orange. Those two large stars, together with the tiny reddish one, made for a dramatic triple star-system.

The zoom-in slowed a bit and more detailed labels appeared. According to the text, the largest star was:

Centauri A – A Bit Larger and Brighter than Earth’s Sun.

It was in a binary partnership with:

Centauri B – A Bit Smaller and Duller than Earth’s Sun.

The smallest star was:

Proxima Centauri – A Red Dwarf.

The view panned between the three stars and then slowly zoomed in on Centauri A, showing a number of planets.

The zoom descended towards the fourth planet out from Centauri A – a “big blue-brown marble.” A label proclaimed:

Planet Hawking – Fourth Planet Out from Centauri A. (First Target for Extra-Solar Colonization).

A peninsula, similar to Florida, jutted out into the ocean. The zooming concluded with a satellite-like view of an area near the coastline. Inland were the foothills and a chain of lakes. A river flowed from the largest lake towards the ocean. The land was bare – no grass or trees – mostly brown, with some large areas of gray and black. The view morphed into a “live” video image.

As it panned towards the ground, a large hangar-like structure came into view. It was parked on a promontory between the river bank and the ocean beach. The hangar was surrounded by a park-like area of grass, bushes, and trees. Further zoom-in revealed the words:

TABB, Hawking 0001 (First Extra Solar System Human Colony, circa 2100).

The Hawking Plan logo, a stylized DNA molecule, was visible on the side of the hangar. Behind it could be seen a bright-yellow Sun, labeled: Centauri A. In the distance, lower in the sky and to the left, a second and duller-yellow-orange Sun, quite a bit smaller, was labeled: Centauri B. Far to the right and low in the sky a sharp-eyed observer could see a dull red Sun labeled: Proxima Centauri.

“The first step,” Stephanie continued, “Will be to use our authorized funding for internal studies augmented by ongoing TABB-funded university research. We need to define the parameters of human travel over awesome distances and extended times to reach well outside our Solar System. We must use our imaginations to their utmost limits to figure the best alternatives for spreading human genetics and civilization. Do we send living people, perhaps in suspended animation? Or, will it be frozen embryos to be thawed, gestated in artificial wombs, and raised and properly socialized by robot nannies? What about plants and animals? Not since Noah’s Ark has there been a task as far-reaching as our Hawking Plan.”

The novel outlines and considers three general concepts for exporting human life and civilization to an Earth-like planet. They are:

Noah’s Ark – live humans and a selection of other animals and plants in suspended animation.

Embryonic – frozen human embryos and a selection of other animals and plants. The embryos to be thawed and brought to term in artificial wombs and socialized by “nanny robots”.

Panspermia* – frozen or salted prokaryotic (bacteria) and eukaryotic (plants, animals) cells to be thawed and evolved to advanced complexity over several thousand years in robot run genetic engineering laboratories, using modern plant, animal, and human genome data as a starting point.

In the novel, the first two options are discarded due to ethical overtones of sending humans on one-way journeys to space knowing that many would likely perish.

The third, Panspermia (or, more properly, Directed Panspermia**), has no such ethical overtones. In addition, the target planet, while "Earth-like", would most likely be somewhat different from Earth. If it was larger or smaller than Earth, the attraction of gravity would be greater or lesser. The solar radiation spectrum at the surface of the planet would vary, depending upon the size and age of their Sun and other factors. There could be more ultraviolet, or less, and more infrared, or less. The atmosphere would likely differ somewhat in percentages of nitrogen, oxygen, and other gases, etc. Thus, the "Panspermia" plan starts with basic cells and intends to tailor the plant, animal, and human genomes during a 6,000 to 10,000 year period of "rapid assisted evolution", to better match actual conditions.

On the other hand, in the novel, some fiscally conservative opponents of the Hawking Plan note that the idea of planting bacteria, plant, and animal cells and using rapid assisted evolution to adapt them to a new home planet, contains echoes of the supposedly discredited theory of "Intelligent Design" to account for the origin of  life on Earth. Uh oh! Read all about it here: 2052 - The Hawking Plan

Ira Glickstein

[From Wikipedia]

*Panspermia (from Greek πᾶν (pan), meaning "all", and σπέρμα (sperma), meaning "seed") is the hypothesis that life exists throughout the Universe, distributed by meteoroids, asteroids, comets,^[1] planetoids,^[2] and, also, by spacecraft in the form of unintended contamination by microorganisms.^[3][4]

Panspermia is a hypothesis proposing that microscopic life forms that can survive the effects of space, such as extremophiles, become trapped in debris that is ejected into space after collisions between planets and small Solar System bodies that harbor life. Some organisms may travel dormant for an extended amount of time before colliding randomly with other planets or intermingling with protoplanetary disks. If met with ideal conditions on a new planet's surfaces, the organisms become active and the process of evolution begins. Panspermia is not meant to address how life began, just the method that may cause its distribution in the Universe.^[5][6][7]

The first known mention of the term was in the writings of the 5th century BC Greek philosopher Anaxagoras.^[12] Panspermia began to assume a more scientific form through the proposals of Jöns Jacob Berzelius (1834),^[13] Hermann E. Richter (1865),^[14] Kelvin (1871),^[15] Hermann von Helmholtz (1879)^[16][17] and finally reaching the level of a detailed hypothesis through the efforts of the Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius (1903).^[18]

Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) and Chandra Wickramasinghe (born 1939) were influential proponents of panspermia.^[19][20] In 1974 they proposed the hypothesis that some dust in interstellar space was largely organic (containing carbon), which Wickramasinghe later proved to be correct.^[21][22][23] Hoyle and Wickramasinghe further contended that life forms continue to enter the Earth's atmosphere, and may be responsible for epidemic outbreaks, new diseases, and the genetic novelty necessary for macroevolution.^[24]

In an Origins Symposium presentation on April 7, 2009, physicist Stephen Hawking stated his opinion about what humans may find when venturing into space, such as the possibility of alien life through the theory of panspermia: "Life could spread from planet to planet or from stellar system to stellar system, carried on meteors."^[25]

** Directed panspermia concerns the deliberate transport of microorganisms in space to be used as introduced species on lifeless planets. Directed panspermia may have been sent to Earth to start life here, or may be sent from Earth to seed exoplanets with life.
Historically, Shklovskii and Sagan (1966) and Crick and Orgel (1973) hypothesized that life on Earth may have been seeded deliberately by other civilizations. Conversely, Mautner and Matloff (1979) and Mautner (1995, 1997) proposed that we ourselves should seed new planetary systems, protoplanetary discs or star-forming clouds with microorganisms, to secure and expand our organic gene/protein life-form. To avoid interference with local life, the targets may be young planetary systems where local life is unlikely. Directed panspermia can be motivated by biotic ethics that value the basic patterns of organic gene/protein life with its unique complexity and unity, and its drive for self-propagation.
Belonging to life then implies panbiotic ethics with a purpose to propagate and expand life in space. Directed panspermia for this purpose is becoming possible due to developments in solar sails, precise astrometry, the discovery of extrasolar planets, extremophiles and microbial genetic engineering. Cosmological projections suggests that life in space can then have an immense future.^[1][2]

Sunspots - Prediction of New "Dalton Minimum"

Global COOLING Anyone?

Nearly TWO YEARS ago (January 2009 and December 2009 [nearly FIVE years ago now]) I predicted that the now current Sunspot Cycle #24 would peak at 80. I am now revising that down to a peak of only 60, based on a great posting by David Archibald at Watts Up With That, the most widely read and respected climate website in the world.

We may be in for a new Dalton Minimum similar to the period from 1790 to 1830 when temperatures were unusually low. Indeed, we may come to welcome the cushion of warmth, perhaps 0.1 to 0.2ºC, that may be due to recent human activities. (The IPCC Climate "Team" claims 0.6 to 0.8ºC rise mostly due to human-caused Global Warming, but that is most likely an over-estimate.)

As the graphic shows, at the time I made the 80 prediction, NASA was predicting a peak of 104, having revised it downwards a couple of times from their original, wildly high estimate of a 156 peak. The most recent NASA projection is 90.

Description of the Graphic

[Click graphic for larger version] The base for the graphic is from Archibald's posting (Figure 9). The BROWN curve plots actual data from Solar Cycles #3, #4, #5, and #6 (late 1700's through early 1800's). The GREEN curve plots the corresponding actual data for Solar Cycles #22, #23, and the first part of #24, (1990 through December 2010)

I have added the annotations in RED and GRAY, indicating NASA's incredible string of highly incorrect predictions from 2006 to most recent (red hoops) and my original January 2009 prediction and my revised prediction (gray hoops).

Historical Correlation of the Dalton and Maunder Minima with Sunspot Activity

The very cold temperatures from 1790 through 1830 are usually explained as being due to increased volcanic activity, including the Mount Tambora eruption of 1815 that caused the Year Without a Summer, 1816. However, low solar activity, with peak Sunspot counts of only 45 for Sunspot Cycles #5 and #6, is most likely the major cause. Even lower Sunspot counts (below 10) occurred during the earlier Maunder Minimum (1650 to 1700). These periods of Global Cooling were marked by crop failures that are inimicable to human life.

Explanation of the Effect of Sunspot Counts on Climate

The NY Times interviewed Henrik Svensmark last year about his theory of Sunspots and Climate:

One possibility proposed a decade ago by Henrik Svensmark and other scientists at the Danish National Space Center in Copenhagen looks to high-energy interstellar particles known as cosmic rays. When cosmic rays slam into the atmosphere, they break apart air molecules into ions and electrons, which causes water and sulfuric acid in the air to stick together in tiny droplets. These droplets are seeds that can grow into clouds, and clouds reflect sunlight, potentially lowering temperatures.

The Sun, the Danish scientists say, influences how many cosmic rays impinge on the atmosphere and thus the number of clouds. When the Sun is frenetic, the solar wind of charged particles it spews out increases. That expands the cocoon of magnetic fields around the solar system, deflecting some of the cosmic rays.

But, according to the hypothesis, when the sunspots and solar winds die down, the magnetic cocoon contracts, more cosmic rays reach Earth, more clouds form, less sunlight reaches the ground, and temperatures cool.

“I think it’s an important effect,” Dr. Svensmark said, although he agrees that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that has certainly contributed to recent warming.

Dr. Svensmark and his colleagues found a correlation between the rate of incoming cosmic rays and the coverage of low-level clouds between 1984 and 2002. They have also found that cosmic ray levels, reflected in concentrations of various isotopes, correlate well with climate extending back thousands of years.

Conclusion

Before we destroy industrial economies with extreme measures to reduce carbon emissions, it will be a good idea to consider how that might not only not be effective in reducing human-caused Global Warming, but how a bit of carbon-warming could be welcome during the coming period of Global Cooling. By the way, I am still in favor of an across-the-board Carbon Tax because the steady rise in CO2 levels is unprecedented and that is the most intelligent way to utilize our market-based economic system to speed the development of renewable energy sources. However, that effort has a multi-decade time horizon and is no emergency.

Ira Glickstein

My Prediction Came True - Big Market Recovery in 2009

[Double-click graphic for larger view]

Back in March 2009, I did a posting titled Prediction: Big Market Recovery This Year! That included the above graphic.

At the time of my prediction, the Dow was down at around 7,000. In the graphic, I showed what I thought the "true" value was (the green dots). and I wrote:

"The good news is that the market will probably recover nearly as fast as it dropped. I predict we will see it around 9,000 or more by year end and over 10,000 in a few years."

Well, the Market overachieved. It ended 2009 at 10,428.

Sunspots Coming 'Round the Mountain When They Come?

The best experts at NASA have been predicting the imminent ramp-up of Sunspot cycle #24 since 2006. Well, here it is almost 2010, over three years later, and there has been a bit of an upsurge in Sunspot activity. At long last, it appears a Sunspot ramp-up may be coming 'round the mountain* pretty soon - but they won't be drivin' six white horses when they come!

The base figure above is from NASA/NOAA and shows their latest prediction (May 2009) which is the lowest and latest of the four red hoops. You can see that the actual Sunspot observations (black jig-jags with blue smoothing) do not quite match up with NASA's latest prediction. They also fall far short of the previous predictions which I have annotated into the figure as the three higher red hoops. [Click on image for larger version.]

Bayesian AI Advisor - Drill Here? Drill Now?

Today, April 7, is the deathday of Rev. Thomas Bayes who was born c. 1702 and passed away April 7, 1761.

His great contribution to mathematics was Bayes Theorem, seen on the t-shirt to the left. Bayes came up with what is called inverse probability at at time when only forward probability was generally known.

In short, if you know the probability of some event B given some other event A, and if you also know the probabilities of A and B, you can figure out the inverse probability of A given B.

Many people think -incorrectly- that forward and inverse probabilities are the same. That is, if a given test detects, say, 99.9% of people who have used illegal drugs recently, they think anyone who fails that test is 99.9% certain to have used illegal drugs. NOT SO! In some cases, "false positives" can outnumber "true positives" by a factor of two or more.

Here is a great example of how much forward and inverse probabilities may differ. The probability a person is female given that they are pregnant is: P(F;P) = 100%. But probability a person in pregnant given that they are female is: P(P;F) ~ 3%

QUANTIFYING THE RISK OF OIL EXPLORATION

Bayesian probability means, using oil exploration as a practical example, you can figure out the probability you will strike commercially-viable oil if you drill a well at a particular location given that a seismic test was positive. With the value of petroleum going up and down so rapidly in the past few years, this illustrates the fine line between making a big profit and going broke in the oil patch.

MY BAYESIAN AI ADVISOR

Some years ago I created a Bayesian AI ("Artificial Intelligence") Advisor spreadsheet that runs on Excel. I've recently improved the Bayesian AI Advisor and today I published a new Google Knol that explains its use. You are invited to download the Bayesian AI Advisor to your PC.

Of course, Bayesian probability applies to many areas in addition to oil exploration. My Knol looks at targeted marketing (what is the chance a given person will buy my product given that he or she has bought some other product in the past?) and medical testing (what is the chance a person has a particular disease given that he or she tests positive?)

QUICK LOOK AT THE RESULTS FOR "DRILL HERE? DRILL NOW?"

The figure shows three cases for oil exploration with three different recomendations. I think this illustrates the risk of oil exploration and that it could be applied to the financial implications of investment in alternative forms of energy.

The user has to input the data in the clear cells, based on known probabilities and financial factors. The leftmost panel shows a case where the Bayesian AI Advisor recommends Test first, If Test is Positive, do the Procedure - in other words, do a seismic test and, if the results are positive, drill.

The middle panel shows the case where all factors are the same except the value of petroleum has gone down by 15% and now the recommendation is Hopeless venture. (Can you reduce expected ROI?) - in other words, do not waste money doing the seismic testing because, even if you get a positive result, it will not pay to do the drilling given the financial assumptions you have entered, unless you are willing to increase the risk to your investors by reducing the expected Return on Investment.

The rightmost panel shows the case where, in a different location in the oil patch, the probabilities of success are much better. Now the recommendation is No Need to Test. Go ahead with the Procedure. - in other words, this area is so good you don't have to waste money doing seismic testing, just go right ahead and drill and you are likely to strike commercially-viable oil and get rich.

Ira Glickstein

Prediction: Big Market Recovery This Year!

[Double-click graphic for larger view]

My neighbor is not a racist. He is a Democrat who would vote for the proverbial "yellow dog" if it was a candidate of his party. Yet, back in May when Sen. Barack Obama appeared to be headed for the Democratic Party nomination, he told me "the country is not ready for a Black president." Of course, the country proved him wrong - we have a Black President, elected by a substantial majority of the population, including a near-majority of whites.

As I looked at the highlights of last year's presidential campaign and the precipitous fall of the Dow Jones Industrials (DJI) amid the current economic collapse led by the popping of the housing bubble, I began to wonder what contribution racism -and in particular the unjustified fear of racism- might have had.

My conclusion is that racism and what turned out to be unjustified fear of racism had a substantial effect on the market decline, along with what turned out to be an unjustifiably bloated valuation of the market and of real estate.


The good news is that the market will probably recover nearly as fast as it dropped. I predict we will see it around 9,000 or more by year end and over 10,000 in a few years. The bad news is that the high levels of the last decades, and in particular the peak of 14,000 in 2007, were unjustifiably optimistic and will not be seen again for many years.

LET'S LOOK AT THE GRAPHICAL RECORD



The base graph above shows the actual DJI from 1930 to the present (jagged blue line). It also shows my estimate of the "true" value of the corporations represented in the DJI (green dotted line), based upon the idea that the stock market, an imperfect instrument, seeks to find the "true value"as it oscillates above and below, overshooting and undershooting on its merry way. It is nearly impossible to project the future course of the "true" value, but, given the actuals from 1930 to the present it is possible to draw a smooth curve, called a "regression line", that approximates the "true" value.



As you can see, the period from about 1995 to last year saw the market 2000 to 4000 points above the "true" value. I believe it is now around 2000 to 3000 points below the "true" value. My projections for the future (the fan of red dashed lines) indicates the market will soon go up sharply, most probably matching the "true" value by 2012. Optimistically, it could overshoot the "true" value by 2012 or 2013 (upper dashed red line). Pessimistically, it could undershoot the "true" value for decades (lower red dashed line). But, even my most pessimistic prediction shows the DJI on a steep incline for the coming few years.





WHY WAS THE MARKET OVERVALUED?



Government policies, starting in the 1990's, overstimulated the housing market. Fannie and Freddie, quasi-government organizations, assumed increasing responsibility for mortgages. This created the government-backed "moral hazard" that allowed -even encouraged- local banks to hand out mortgages to marginal borrowers, knowing they could offload these mortgages to Fannie and Freddie. As these mortgages were sliced and diced and "securitized", the SEC failed to properly regulate the securities and companies like AIG that insured them.


Everybody believed (or pretended to believe) that real estate could not go down. Well, maybe it could go down in some local geographic area, but it could never go down all over the country at the same time. Thus, "securitizing", by creating "diversity", was a way to insure stability and growth of "affordable housing".


The constituents of both political parties loved these policies. Republican developers and housing material corporations saw their businesses boom. Democratic workers got good paying jobs in the factories and building trades and the lower middle-class got affordable housing. Home ownership was preferable to renting because it gave people a stake in the community and a path to the middle-class. OK so far, but then the banks started giving loans to people who could never pay them off -even in good times- and some lenders even helped borrowers phony up their applications to get them approved. ("Countrywide is on your side!")


WHAT ROLE DID FEAR OF RACISM HAVE IN THE MARKET CRASH?


Investors hate uncertainty. The inset graph above shows the actual DJI track from April 2008 through March 2009. (It is to the same vertical scale as the base chart for ease of comparison.) The DJI was around 13,000 when McCain became the presumptive nominee for the Republicans and a bit lower when Obama appeared to have a clear lead over Clinton in the Democratic race.


After McCain and Obama were nominated by their parties (end of August, beginning of September) the DJI was down to around 11,500. As it became clear that Obama was likely to win, the market dropped precipitously (777 points on September 29th), and by a month before the elections, with Obama 6 points ahead of McCain, it was in free fall, crossing below the 9,000 level.


From election day, with Obama's big win, to his taking office on Jan 20, 2009, the market tumbled down to around 8,000. Two months into his term it hit a low around 6,500.


I believe only a relatively small number of people (genuine racists) pulled their money out of the market or cut back on their workforce because they did not think a Black president could do a good job. On the other hand, I believe a much larger number pulled their money out because of their unjustified fear that the actions of the racists would cause the market to go down. That accellerated the fall.

OTHER REASONS FOR THE MARKET CRASH

As I mentioned above, the market was ripe for a "correction" down to 10,000 or so. There were fundamental problems in the housing market caused by government-backed "moral hazard" policies and lack of proper regulation.

There may have been some organized effort by some leftish-oriented members of the moneyed class to take advantage of these weaknesses and push the market down temporarily to guarantee an Obama victory. I have no proof of this allegation and only mention it in case further investigation shows that some hedge funds were manipulating the market in the September-October time frame last year.

Also, some rightish-oriented members of the moneyed class might have been worried that an Obama victory would bring about more "socialistic" policies that would hurt the economy and pulled their money out for that reason.

Finally, the major media, nearly all of which supported Obama, always like a crisis story. They jumped on the highlighted phrase when McCain said: "... Our economy is in crisis ... there's been tremendous turmoil in our financial markets and Wall Street ... people are frightened by these events. ... still the fundamentals of our economy are strong. But these are very, very difficult times. And I promise you, we will never put America in this position again. We will clean up Wall Street. We will reform government."

I believe the fundamentals -American workers and industry- are strong and will recover almost as fast as we went down. Markets tend to over-react in crisis -both on the way up and the way down- so, hold on to your hats for the ride up!




BOTTOM LINE


I believe President Obama is very smart and intellectually flexible and basically honest.

I hope he can overcome his work experience in an activist law firm, as a community organizer, and on the left in the Illinois legislature and the US Senate. His entire career has been based on pushing policies that take money from those who earned it and give it to those who (for whatever reason) did not. On the other hand, he has demonstrated that he, personally, is a very hard worker. At Harvard, the law firm, in Chicago communities, and the legislatures, he has demonstrated tremendous intellect and industry and work ethic.


I want President Obama to succeed because I want to see our country emerge from this economic crisis stronger and more "mean and lean" to compete better in the globalized marketplace. This "correction" in our economy was overdue but perhaps it has been overdone.


I see hope in the availability of more affordable housing (due to the foreclosures), the reduction in energy prices (due to the economic slowdown), the elimination of some unproductive factories and wasteful union work rules (due to bankruptcies and threats thereof) and people willing and anxious to work harder and smarter (due to the reduction in job availablity).


I do not want all of President Obama's stated policies to succeed. For example, I am worried that the printing of a few trillion (thousand-billion) "stimulus" dollars will inevitably lead to roaring inflation a couple years from now. Much of this money will go to politically-connected states and cities and companies and unions and will probably be wasted (think of Boston's "big dig" on steroids and spread over our entire Nation).

But, I remain optimistic.


My wife and I "hung on" during the stock market downturn and saw losses of about 50% in our stocks and 401K accounts, as well as a substantial drop in the value of our home. But, even counting these substantial declines, we are still above our cost basis in both stocks and our house, so all we have lost is some "paper profits". Let us all hope for a substantial recovery in the market this year and next.

Ira Glickstein