The
Commodity Futures Trading Commission Act of 1974 created the CFTC as the new
regulator of commodity exchanges. It also expanded the scope of the Commodity
Exchange Act to cover the previously listed agricultural products and "all
other goods and articles, except
onions, and all services,
rights, and interests in which contracts for future delivery are presently or
in the future dealt in." - Wikipedia Commodity Futures Modernization
Act of 2000 [1]
I am researching a bit of stuff to find
out just why Brooksley Born has not been canonized yet. She really seems to
deserve it but you would not believe the number of hits that one of my really elementary
articles on Brooksley Born gets. She seems to be such a key figure in the lead
up to the biggest worldwide economic downturn since the great depression. So
how much is out there if I am some kind of authority based on number of hits?
Not much. When I try to find meetings or transcripts of her, it is as if she is
as unimportant as .... say, onions in commodity futures.
I grew up in a time when history was
made up of personalities. Perhaps that was before modern public relations
really created an overabundance of personalities. People like Thomas Edison,
but not Nikola Tesla, were held up as key elements that formed the molecules of
history. It was all the history I was ever going to know unless I studied on my
own or watched some educational program. Even knowing that Edison
"invented" things really did not adequately state the incredible
impact of his most important invention, the first industrial research
laboratory. Think of the importance of turning science into practical use on an
industrial scale. That is impressive but then flash forward to today’s
Pharmaceutical Laboratories. Bill Gates said this about today's pharmaceutical industry
"research laboratories."
“The
malaria vaccine in humanist terms is the biggest need, but it gets virtually no
funding. If you are working on male baldness or other things you get an order
of magnitude more research funding because of the voice in the marketplace than
something like malaria.” - Bill Gates [2]
Bill Gates himself is probably one of
those personalities that are regarded as (what did I say?) key elements of the
molecules of history. His comment is
about capitalism rather than just science.
Steve Jobs, a Bill Gate's rival, once
said "Bill is basically unimaginative and has never invented anything,
which is why I think he’s more comfortable now in philanthropy than
technology." Steve Jobs is partly right, but, as I often find, the quote
is probably truer about Steve Jobs than about the person he is criticizing. (Well, except for the philanthropy part. Jobs was one capitalist nightmare with no happy ending. He was insufferable before the end.) One
learns critiquing best by being the object of criticism, I have found.
The really important figures in the
history of computing were before either one of them. Did either invent the
mouse? No. Who did? If that person doesn’t come immediately to mind, I rest my
case. By Gates’ and Jobs’ time, both were putting together past discoveries to
make things profitable, similar to Thomas Edison. There is definitely creativity
in that.
Thomas Edison is the one of the key
figures in that trend towards profitability as the measure of what is good or
bad in science. However, I learned that he invented the light bulb, which he
did not really. He looked at filaments with a great tenacity to create a light
bulb that was marketable, but he did not really invent them. That is not to say
that his significance in history isn’t astounding. It is.
Brooksley Born, though, I believe, may
be buried intentionally at this point in time. I am interested because she
seems heroic, like Thomas Edison seemed to me as a young boy, deserving of a
place in history. Possibly she is heroic, possibly not. Oh she is important
alright, vastly important. I just want to know if she is a hero. Can I meme
her? Can I find that key moment when she stated the obvious and was ignored.
But, I must say, it does not help any
when I am looking up the Commodity Futures Trading Commission Act of 1974 that
gave her legitimacy and find the phrase "except onions." I mean, that
is just plain weird. I did not expect my research to be like peeling back
layers of an onion but… wow, a pun for Tomato Sandwich of Truth blog. Thus… my entry.
No comments:
Post a Comment