Rabbit Holes ad Infinitum: Musings and Research

Fool’s Greed: The Wall Street Collapse of 2008 and the Impact of Global Market Bubbles. J.M. Rogers . . .              In reading Fool’s Gold , Gillian Tett provides the reader with all the requisite information they would need to discern factors that drove the 2008 recession, as well as some insight into why the recession could have happened. During this recession, approximately eight million people lost employment. Another six million had their homes seized due to defaulting on their mortgages, a process known in modern economic times as “foreclosure.”   This economic collapse, according to Tett, was largely due to the secretive banking practices (most notably in the creation of credit derivative deals), which ultimately led to confusion in the financial sector over exactly how these banks were generating revenues. The lack of open communication was due to the private interests of large corporations such as AIG becau...

A Mother's Influence: Flannery O'Connor's Exposure of Southern Prejudice in "Everything That Rises Must Converge" J.M. Rogers . . .            How can a person ever know the origins of their own bias? Indeed, it seems impossible for someone to establish the depths of their personal beliefs without a strong consideration of the past and the people that contributed to their present. Taking place during a time of great social unrest in the American South, "Everything That Rises Must Converge", is an eye-opening glimpse into the nuances of those influences, painting a vivid portrait of white prejudice during the 1960's. With a psychological lens, the details of this personal cohesion can be gleaned from various elements within the story, including: irony, word usage, and adjective placement. But perhaps most important are the elements of mental symmetry in the character arcs of the protagonist and antagonist.  By focusing on Flannery O'Con...

Exclusive Progression: The Struggles of U.S. Immigrants During the Progressive Era J.M. Rogers . . .         In the first two decades of the twentieth century, the people of the United States saw an unprecedented expansion of their economy and a swelling of their population.[1] As manufacturing centers like Boston, New York, Cleveland, and Chicago, sought to meet the production demands of an expanding middle class, the newly minted Americans streaming through Ellis Island provided a cost-effective solution. Between 1901 and 1913, 13 million of these “new immigrants” entered the country from Southern and Eastern Europe, ballooning the worker base in the aforementioned manufacturing centers to numbers that exceeded 70% of their city populations. [2]  Most of these workers, including men, women, and children, were relegated to unskilled, contract labor that provided wages well below the newly burgeoning American standard of living. [3] The money that i...