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Daily Thought

There are none so poor as those who only have student loan debt.

Daily Thought

Guilt and shame are very different. We feel guilt when we violate principles. We feel shame when we violate social norms.

Fed Up by Danielle DiMartino Booth

When the economy crashed in 2008, few people were in a better position than Danielle DiMartino Booth to witness the crisis as it unfolded. At the Dallas Fed, she’d been sidelined for years for warning that housing was in a bubble. That changed very quickly when Lehman Brothers collapsed, and from 2009 to 2015, she became the eyes and ears for Richard Fisher, on of the most important dissenting voices within the Fed.

As Bernanke and Yellen flooded the market with helicopter money, massacred savers and pension funds with a decade of zero percent interest rates, exploded the Fed’s balance sheet to the tune of trillions, and dragged the US economy through one of the worst “recovery” periods in history, Danielle was there, right in the thick of it. And now, she’s written a book to explain what the hell happened—and what happens next.

This was the first in-depth financial book I’ve read. It did not disappoint. Danielle’s writing has a sarcastic and witty edge that is both insightful and incisive. She has the enviable ability to take dry technical analysis and make it entertaining.

At the same time, this is not a lightweight book. To someone who is unfamiliar with the financial world and is still confused by things like the subprime mortgage crisis or the housing collapse, this is not a good entry point (for that, I’d suggest The Big Short).

However, for someone with some passing familiarity on the subject, who understands the basics of finance and the Federal Reserve, and has a growing sense that something, somewhere, is very very wrong in our economy, this book is fantastic.

I’m not in total agreement with Mrs. Booth. The most pertinent point of disagreement was probably this:

Though [Ron] Paul made some good points [with his book End the Fed], America is not a banana republic. It needs a strong and independent central bank.

A country that grants a quasi-government entity a monopoly on the right to counterfeit money is much closer to a banana republic than the likes of the Roman Empire, which endured for one and a half millennia because their monetary system was anchored to gold. But if I only read books or listened to sources that I always agreed with, I would be locking myself in an intellectual prison of my own making.

Towards that end, Danielle DiMartino Booth offers a fascinating and unique perspective that I’ve found to be invaluable. If, like me, you feel that something is deeply wrong in our economy and want to know what it is, or if you believe that we’re on the verge of another economic collapse and want to educate yourself on the things that are driving it, I highly recommend this book.

Also, she posts a regular column on her site! Check it out!

So I took a DNA test…

…and the results were really surprising!

Okay, the 99% European part was not surprising. As far as I can tell, all of my ancestors came to the United States from either the Czech lands, the British Isles, or Scandanavia. But the proportions are WAY different from what I was expecting!

My sister took the same test, and she came up with 25% Czech and only 33% Scandinavian. To be honest, this test made me question if we even have the same father! But our dad also took the test, and according to Ancestry.com, the probability that we are both descended from him is nearly 100%. But wow—I had no idea siblings could be so genetically different!

Another big surprise was the complete lack of any Irish genetics at all! Seriously, it’s like I got everything in Europe except Irish and Jewish (my father, by the way, has European Jewish in his results). I always thought my bright red beard was from my Irish ancestors, but I guess I’ve got more in common with this guy:

I’m still trying to work my mind around it.

From what I can tell, my Scandinavian ancestors—from whom I may derive more than half of my genetics—came in multiple waves. The earliest were probably among the Viking invaders who colonized Britain and set up the Danelaw. This would explain how I got only an 8% estimate from Great Britain when nearly a third of my first generation immigrant ancestors (give or take) came from there. A bunch of others probably came over in the Norman invasion with William the Conqueror.

That’s all just speculation, though. What I do know for certain is that at least 25% of my direct line ancestors came from Denmark and Sweden after converting to Mormonism. Maybe most of my genetic ancestry comes through them? I don’t know.

The other interesting part of the test results is the Genetic Communities tab. The Mormon Pioneers community is a no-brainer, but according to Ancestry.com, the genetic link to the Early Settlers of the Lower Midwest & Virginia is actually stronger (40% confidence versus 20%). My sister didn’t even have that community in her results! I don’t think she had the Settlers of Middle Tennessee either.

From what I can tell, both of those communities come through my paternal grandmother, whose lines go waaaaaay back to before the Revolutionary War. Looks like my sister got the Czech genes from my Dad, while I got the early American ones.

There’s a lot of really really fascinating stuff to unpack here. Also, Ancestry.com has linked me to more than 900 other people who have taken their DNA test, all of whom are cousins!

The next step is to build a family tree on Ancestry.com to compare with the ones compiled by my cousins. This DNA-based collaboration could be really interesting, and potentially lead to some breakthroughs. Until now, I’ve primarily used Family Search for my research, which is basically a single cloud-based family tree that connects with everyone in the world, theoretically. However, my paternal grandmother’s lines on Family Search tend to become unreliable at around 1820 and before. It’s going to be a real project to clean all those lines up. Maybe Ancestry.com can help with that.

Cool stuff!