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Sept. 5, 2008

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: What does 'doing the right thing' entail?

Caroline B. Glick: The master strategist

Sept. 4, 2008

Ron Kampeas: Biden, Palin take lead in clash on Mideast issues

Bruce Dancis: With humor as their weapon, the Three Stooges took on Hitler

Sept. 3, 2008

Rabbi S. Binyomin Ginsberg: Productive school years don't just happen

The Kosher Gourmet by Linda Gassenheimer: Quick lamb stew serves up flavors of India

Sept. 2, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Costly Advice

Caroline B. Glick: Calling Israel's bluff

JWisdom: Wandering in Wonder by Rabbi Mordechai Becher

August 29, 2008

Rabbi Berel Wein: 20/20 sightlessness

Caroline B. Glick: When history is not repeated

JWisdom: Blessed or Cursed: It's Really Up to You by Rabbi Sroy Levitansky

August 28, 2008

Steve Lipman: A Comeback for the 'Jewish Jordan'

Jeffrey Weiss: Researcher reports 'intriguing' diabetes breakthrough

August 27, 2008

Rabbi Zecharya Greenwald: Removing the perfectionist's mask

The Kosher Gourmet by Emily Nunn: Summer harvest linguine

JWisdom:: The Missing Link in Spiritual Life by Rabbi David Aaron

August 26, 2008

Yaffa Ganz: Grandma gets lessons in staying cool

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: The Dems' 'soft' jihadist

JWisdom:: Today: Holocaust in the Perspective of Faith by Rabbi Nosson Scherman: Plague of indifference

August 25, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Q: A friend is bearing a silly grudge from a supposed wrong. What recourse do I have?

Daniel Pipes: Barack Obama through Muslim Eyes

JWisdom:: The knowledge you need to overcome your insecurities by Malka Schulman

August 22, 2008

Rabbi Berel Wein: Life's essential ingredient

Caroline B. Glick: Dominos anyone?

JWisdom:: Actually, Do Sweat the Small Stuff! by Rabbi Sroy Levitansky

August 21, 2008

Today in Biblical History by Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Popularization of Kabbalah: 20 Menachem-Av 1558 CE

Jonathan Rosenblum: Lessons from the Beyond

JWisdom: : The Olympian within is rooting for you -- yes, you! –- to go for the gold

August 20, 2008

Jonathan Tobin: Misleading Platform Platitudes

The Kosher Gourmet by Linda Gassenheimer: Chicken Salad with Asian Dressing

JWisdom: The Holocaust in the Perspective of Faith: America's Defense of the Jews --- Until WWII by Rabbi Nosson Scherman

August 19, 2008

Dennis Prager: If the Almighty doesn't exist

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Obama's Islamist problem has nothing to do with his upbringing

JWisdom: Think your life is messed up? by Rabbi David Aaron

August 18, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Business with Friends

Diana West: Roars About Russia, Bare Whispers About Islam

JWisdom: Relationship agony: The real cause by Malka Schulman

August 15, 2008

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: To love the Divine

Caroline B. Glick: Georgia, Israel, and the nature of man

JWisdom: The Truly Righteous Don't Demand Entitlements by Rabbi Sroy Levitansky

August 14, 2008

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Confessions of broken spirit

Libby Lazewnik: The Numbers Game

JWisdom: Six Questions You'll Be Asked in Heaven? - Uh - Let's Just Take One for Now! by Gavriel Aryeh Sanders

August 13, 2008

Jonathan Tobin: Georgia should be on their minds

The Kosher Gourmet by Linda Gassenheimer: Go Greek: Pair flavorful lamb kebabs with a hearty salad

JWisdom: Human hybrids aren't science fiction by Rabbi David Aaron

August 12, 2008

Rabbi Avi Shafran: Bless us

Daniel Pipes: The West's Islamist Infiltrators

JWisdom: From Sadness to Gladness: The Route from Tisha b'Av to Rosh Hashana by Rabbi Mordechai Becher

August 11, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: A Jewish view on fair pricing

Caroline B. Glick: Ignoring failure in Gaza

JWisdom: 'Communication' Is Not The Answer! by Malka Schulman

August 7, 2008

Rabbi David Gutterman: A Continuing Story With a Sustaining Goal

Rabbi Berel Wein: Mourning and morning

JWisdom: Yes, we are still in exile by Rabbi Sroy Levitansky

August 6, 2008

David Ashenfelter: Government made military engineer's life a living hell because of his faith, Defense Department report documents

Jonathan Tobin: Speak the Truth; Defeat the Lies

JWisdom: Jewish Spirituality: Fusion or Confusion? by Rabbi David Aaron

August 5, 2008

Chris Leppek: Church/state wall beginning to crumble?

Paul Greenberg: Exit Olmert (no encore, please)

JWisdom: Serenity: Make the commitment by Rabbi Zelig Pliskin (Read by Gavriel Sanders)

August 4, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Am I taking advantage of another's psychological quirk?

Andrew Silow-Carroll: A black and a Jew walk into the White House…

JWisdom: The Holocaust in the Perspective of Faith: Edward R. Morrow visits the ‘living dead’ by Rabbi Nosson Scherman

March 22, 2007

J-Rhythms with Avraham Rosenblum: JWR's cutting-edge music program showcasing performers -- singers, song writers, musicians, and bands -- who learn and live the Torah lifestyle (OUR NEWEST IGODCAST !)

Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review April 8, 2008 / 3 Nissan 5768

When markets come crashing down, send for the man with the big red nose

By Paul Johnson


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Too early yet to say whether the present financial turmoils will end in a catastrophic maelstrom or simply slip away like an angry tide, leaving puddles. One has no great confidence in the authorities on either side of the Atlantic. Would that J.P. Morgan were still around to take charge of things and recreate order out of chaos! He solved three financial crises single-handedly. In 1877 his personal intervention enabled the army's payroll to be met. In 1893, called in by President Cleveland, he stemmed the gold outflow from the United States. And in 1907 he calmed the universal panic by simply sitting in his library and summoning people to come to him.


I know a little about this library because I once gave a series of lectures on American history there. Housed in Morgan's own splendid mansion in Manhattan, it is one of the most agreeable places in the world in which to learn and reflect. It contains a choice selection of Old Master drawings but its chief treasure is its immense collection of rare books and manuscripts, which puts it fourth in the world after the Library of Congress, the British Library and the Bibliothèque Nationale. It was not entirely Morgan's own creation because, in 1905, he appointed the ravishing Virginian, Belle da Costa Greene, then 21, his librarian, and sent her on buying sprees all over the world. He encouraged her to stay at the Ritz in Paris and Claridge's in London, and to get her clothes at the leading couturiers. It says a lot for Morgan's impeccable reputation that no one ever questioned the propriety of their relationship, and his judgment in picking her so young was fully vindicated by the shrewdness and taste of her purchases.


The basis of Morgan's power and influence was complex. He was not a self-made man, having inherited much of his money. Nor was he in the very top rank of the rich. When he died his liquid assets scarcely topped $100 million, provoking John D. Rockefeller's famous comment, 'Well, well. And to think that Mr Morgan was not even a wealthy man.' Morgan's authority lay in his reputation for absolutely straight dealing and scrupulous truth-telling. He was never detected, in a long and intricately complex career of mergers, takeovers and trust-creations, in a lie or a piece of sharp practice. But he was not only respected, he was feared. There is a riveting photograph of him, having just stepped out of his limo, raising his silver-topped ebony cane to strike, or more likely just to threaten, a crowd of intrusive paparazzi. The expression of his face is formidable. His eyes, like Gladstone's, had the fierceness and penetration of an eagle owl's. The photographer Edward Steichen said: 'Meeting his eye is like facing the headlight of an express train bearing down upon you.' He was an exponent of righteous anger. So the unrighteous trembled in his presence. But so did many other people. At his dinner parties he liked to give ladies fine gold trinkets. But they were scared of him too.


Morgan's presence was dominated, one might almost say lit up, by his large, red and swollen nose. This was the result of a chronic skin complaint, rhinophyma, of which he was painfully conscious. You had to keep your eyes off it — not easy. When Mrs Dwight Morrow, the young wife of one of his partners, had to entertain him to tea, she told her four-year-old daughter, Euphemia, not to stare at his nose and on no account to mention it. The little girl dutifully complied, and after she had sat on the great man's knee for a suitable period, her mother thankfully dismissed her to her nursery. Then she started pouring, and found herself saying: 'Mr Morgan, do you take nose in your tea?'


Conscious of visual authority, Morgan ran an open-plan office, and worked in full view of his staff, and they in his. He moved in an orderly and impressive routine. He had a succession of yachts, always called Corsair. When he arrived by liner from his biannual trips to Europe, his current Corsair picked him up in New York harbour and took him straight to his home, Cragston, on the Hudson. When the panic began in October 1907, Morgan was just coming up to 70 and had recently moved into his new mansion in New York, where his library was already looming down from the giant shelving. It was an impressive setting in which to confront the majestic tycoon. On Sunday 20 October he met first his partners, then leaders of the New York financial and business community, in a series of confidential groups, in which all were ordered to be frank. Having thus briefed himself on the size of the danger, he put together a team of clever young men to go through the accounts overnight, and see which of the big houses were too weak to survive and must go to the wall, and which could be saved. That done, he summoned the bankers and the US Treasury (there was then no central bank) and set about raising liquidity by authoritative gouging, lending the proceeds to those to be saved at 10 per cent. Once the US stock exchange knew the money was available, albeit at high rates, the panic began to subside, though it is interesting to note that the man who made this key announcement had his frock-coat and even his waistcoat torn in the tumult. One who watched Morgan throughout the crisis said: 'He was the embodiment of power and purpose.' Just by walking around the financial district, and raising his hat occasionally, Morgan had a reassuring effect. Seven years later the US Federal Reserve Bank was created to replace a single man by an institution.


A man like Morgan, who combines shrewdness and celerity in action with a lifetime's reputation for honesty, is of inestimable value, capable of saving society countless billions which an uncontrolled financial panic may cost. This set me thinking about worth and rewards. In Sesame and Lilies (1865) John Ruskin wrote: 'Which of us is to do the hard and dirty work for the rest — and for what pay? Who is to do the pleasant and clean work, and for what pay?' He did not answer his question — it was ironic and rhetorical. But in 1932 Bertrand Russell came up with a sort of answer: 'Work is of two kinds. First, altering the position of matter at or near the earth's surface relatively to other such matter. Second, telling other people to do so. The first kind is unpleasant and ill paid. The second is pleasant and highly paid.' Neither seer knew much about finance, though Russell wrote down everything he ever earned by writing or lecturing, in minute handwriting, in a small thick notebook (how one would like to see it!). But the complaints both men registered are generally shared, and are felt particularly strongly today. For the present turmoil comes after a long period when bankers have earned colossal sums in salaries and bonuses, and it is essentially the bankers, thanks to their misjudgment and greed, who have got us all into the mess, by lending large sums of money to improvident masses of people who could not afford to borrow it.


But here lies the paradox. There is no one alive today like J.P. Morgan, who can put the financial world to rights simply by his judgment, personality and reputation. But if there were such a person, how lucky we would be! And what we would be prepared to pay him to come to our rescue!

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Previously:

04/01/08: Quality for dinner. Pass the Fairy Liquid, Old Boy
03/25/08: In search of an American President with brains and guts
03/18/08: Technological warfare against mice won't work. Try cats
03/11/08: What is a genius? We use the word frequently but surely, to guard its meaning, we should bestow it seldom
03/03/08: Fiction as a crutch to get one through life
02/26/08: Impatience + Greed = Trouble
02/13/08: Shakespeare, Neo-Platonism and Princess Diana
02/07/08: Where Industry Has Failed Us
12/19/07: People who put their trust in human power delude themselves
12/12/07: What is aggression?
12/04/07: Pursuing success is not enough
11/07/07: Are famous writers accident-prone?
10/31/07: Courage needed to disarm Iran
09/20/07: Who Will Say ‘I Promise to Lay Off’?
07/24/07: Greed is safer than power-seeking
04/02/07: Benefactors must be hardheaded
03/07/07: American idealism and realpolitik
11/28/06: Space: Our ticket to survival
10/24/06: Envy is bad economics
10/11/06: Better to Borrow or Lend? Rethinking conventional wisdom
08/22/06: Don't practice legal terrorism
08/08/06: A summer rhapsody for a pedal-bike
08/03/06: Why is there no workable philosophy of music?
07/11/06: Historically speaking, energy crisis is America's opportunity
07/06/06: The misleading dimensions of persons and lives
06/06/06: First editions are not gold
05/23/06: A downright ugly man need never despair of attracting women, even pretty ones
04/25/06: Was Washington right about political parties?
04/12/06: Let's Have More Babies!
04/05/06: For the love of trains
03/29/06: Lincoln and the Compensation Culture
03/22/06: Bottle-beauties and the globalised blond beast
03/15/06: Europe's utopian hangover
03/08/06: Kindly write on only one side of the paper
02/28/06: Creators versus critics
02/21/06: The Rhino Principle

© 2006, Paul Johnson

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