70 million favors

[boxofdelights]

I stayed up till 12:30 a.m. helping Nixie study for her History test. This means she reads me her textbook, and I ask, "Now what do you know about Irish monasteries in the sixth century?" and all too often she says, "I wasn't paying attention." I'm sorry, cordelia_v, she has always found history v. v. boring.

Then she said we had to wash her hair. She has a beautiful ($$$) black/purple/green/blue dye job, so we have to wash her hair with special ($$) shampoo and distilled water, in the sink. "No," I said. "I won't. I can't. It's too late. I don't want to. It's not that dirty. I'll help you tomorrow. Nixie," I said, going to the kitchen to help her wash her hair, "you owe me 70 million favors."

Comments

[wcg.livejournal.com]

At least 70 million, I'd say.

As for Irish monasteries in the 6th century CE, they were very much the center of community life. That's the most important thing to know about them. If she can remember that one thing, it'll help.

[amaebi.livejournal.com]

True, but in addition-- and I didn't realize this before seminary-- monasteries have always been in tension with the Roman church hierarchy, often acting as correctives for the Church. And of course Irish monasteries weren't just centres of their communities and exponents of Another Order, but the hub of remembrance for Western Europe.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Oh, certainly. I was just trying to focus on the one salient fact that I would want her to know about Irish Monasteries at that time, even if she forgot everything else.

[amaebi.livejournal.com]

If the universe worked this way, I'd say that the universe owes you 70 million favours. In any case, I want you to be lavished with favours and love.

[beaq.livejournal.com]

Here's hoping you get a few of them before the year is out. :-) I still owe my mom about seven hundred billion in back favors.

[pyrzqxgl.livejournal.com]

I wash mine out in the yard with cold water from the hose.

[rozasharn.livejournal.com]

My mind boggles at the thought of reading aloud without paying attention to what one is reading. How is that even possible?

But I do remember, from high school, studying for a history exam, reaching the end of the chapter, and realizing that I didn't remember anything from the chapter despite having paid attention. When I gritted my teeth and went over it a second time in excruciating detail, I realized it wasn't my fault: the textbook mentioned various historical events, but didn't give any clue as to why they happened or how they related.

The example I remember is that it described the stock market crash of 1929. Then in the next paragraph, it said the first thing the president did in response was to re-establish the banks on a firm footing. Well, how was that a response to the stock crash?

My parents, when I asked, explained that the bankers had spent all their reserves attempting to block the stock crash, so now the banks had crashed along with the stock market. But the book hadn't explained that; it just presented a jumble of apparently random facts.

I suspect this sort of incoherence is a result of publishers trying to avoid controversy, but it certainly isn't effective teaching. Best wishes to Nixie.

My economist hat is on

[amaebi.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid that your parents' explanation wasn't quite right. :(

There were no regulations on stock market contracts beyond the basic "do what you said you would"s and "don't sell humans for stock" sort. And financial innovators created Buying on Margin: pay a small percent of the price of a share, borrow the rest from your broker, and when the price of the stock goes up you can sell it, pay back your broker, and get a whopping percentage profit. (Suppose, for example, you pay $1 for a share that costs $1 and it goes up to $1.10. If you then sell (with no brokerage fees) you get a 10% profit. If, on the other hand, you paid 10 cents yourself and borrowed 90 cents from your broker. when you sell for $1.10 you get a 100% profit.)

All that, obviously, is predicated on The Stock Market Never Going Down for Long. When the stock prices did go down, brokers issued margin calls: that is, demanded repayment. Their stock-gambling debtors paid up out of their pockets, by selling off their ramen noodles and land, and by withdrawing funds from banks. Next chapter.

Banks that accept deposits don't just stick the funds in a safe. The only way they could make money if they did would be charging not-insubstantial fees to depositors to hold their funds. Instead, banks hold some of a deposit in the form of cash in their vaults, to meet requests for withdrawals, and lend out the rest to profit from the interest. When a lot of people want to withdraw their deposits at once, the bank can run out of cash. Then people panic and more rush in to withdraw, which makes matters worse. When the bank calls in the loans it's made, that makes matters worse as its debtors try to withdraw their deposited funds. When banks fail-- and in 1929 there was no central bank (thanks, Andrew Jackson!) to maintian liquidity in the system-- wealth vanishes and people spend less. That decreased demand for goods and services means lower demand for the labour that makes them. So incomes go down, so demand for goods and services goes down, so....

The money supply also declines, which (again) makes things worse-- but that goes through another channel I won't explain now.