I have this conversation recently, like if you look at the the collapse of these big exchanges, these crypto exchanges and the collapse of the value of some of these coins, you think like this looks like with hindsight, this looks so, it looks like just have taken out of Kendall Berger's book. It's such a predictable end and you know, but if you'd argued that two years ago when non-fungible tokens and whatever were the latest hottest thing in town, people would have had, you know, all these arguments why this is not a tulip mania, why this is different and with hindsight, it just looks like, you know, a good old financial bubble. This is Rob Johnson, president of the Institute for New Economic Thinking. I'm here today with Moritz Schuler, who's been a grantee at INET, a senior fellow. He's a professor both at University of Bonn and Science Po in France and he has guided a very, very interesting project which is now in the aftermath of a very exciting conference among a new generation of young financial and financial macroeconomists. It's brought together in a University of Chicago press book that we released in November called Leveraged. Moritz, thanks for joining me here today. Thanks for having me, Rob. And so at the outset, I guess I'm curious, going back to the pre-conference, as you and Richard Vague, who's on the INET board and has written a brief history of doom and about debt jubilees and everything else, what were you envisioning? What was the problem that you wanted to address that inspired this entire line of work resulting in this book? Well, we thought there, since the 2008-2009 global financial crisis, there had been a new generation of macroeconomists who thought differently about the sources of endemic financial stability in our economies, in our society. And we wanted to give voice to that new generation, bring them together in a conference that INET and organized. And it coincided with roughly the 10th anniversary of the global financial crisis and we wanted to take stock. And the problem that we set at the outset and our participants and speakers and contributors were sort of given is how do we explain that this drive towards financial liberalization, deeper and more integrated financial markets that had started in the 1970s, 1980s. How do we explain that, you know, it's undeniably, finance is much bigger, markets are more integrated, markets are in a way more complete than they've ever been before. How do we explain that this idea and this process of financial integration had produced the opposite of what it's cheerleaders in this liberalization drive and visit, namely more stability, more completeness of markets, more opportunity and ultimately more growth. And the starting point for this conference was that it seems that market deepening in the area of finance has not produced what I would agree would call sort of more complete markets that are self-stabilizing but an endemic financial stability problem. So at the level of what you might call seeing what might be called false projections of optimism in light of experience, do you then explore, in essence, the nature of the public policy regulating finance or are you exploring things like the spillovers between the financial sector and other sectors or kind of all of the above? What are the deep dives that you find in this book that which you might call unmask some of the false consciousness of that orthodox era and also what kind of things to do to understand it better and to manage it better in the future? That's an excellent question, Rob. So I think we started out with the idea of a diagnosis and the diagnosis was financial liberalization, the deepening and expansion of financial markets has not made the world a safer place. It has not led to more stability and it has not led necessarily led to more growth instead of a lot of what that financial sector that we have right now does is quite far away from what we traditionally would call the savings investment intermediation that is at the heart of finance. So that was the diagnosis and then we said when we invited a number of really excellent outstanding scholars and gave them questions, gave them relatively precise curated questions that we asked them to address and reply. I'll give you a question, one example would be do the benefits of or do the risk and costs of credit booms outweigh the costs? Is the price of risk in periods leading up to financial crisis is a misprice? Do we understand why these over-optimistic periods have another question we gave? Do these periods of excessive risk-taking that ended in financial crisis happen because people have wrong incentives or people have wrong beliefs? So we curated a set of questions that we thought were central to understanding that phenomenon of instability that is with us as a feature financial system that we've created and asked our contributors, our authors to address them in a very concentrated way. One starting point for this project is one that has proven true repeatedly also in recent like in the past two or three years in the pandemic and and after namely the feeling that whenever something bad hits our economies and unfortunately we have had quite a few bad hits recently, the financial system only survives that with an awful lot of government support. Government support I mean also central bank liquidity support. So remember when COVID struck central banks reacted very quickly and flooded markets with liquidity, created facilities for corporate debt markets, for high yield junk bond markets. All of a sudden we discovered that we had to protect hedge funds, private equity funds and and other very risky players in the market because they had become systemically relevant. So the question how we ended up in a world where essentially we've built this very large and enormously big financial sector that seems to be you know only able to survive with a government central bank backstop that's very you know at the invisible hand doesn't do it. It needs a really visible hand of central banks to keep that market together. So something seems to be very fragile, indemnically fragile and that's a central theme that we talk about. Yeah and I gather from my reading through the chapters that there is a great deal of concern at one level just within the market dynamics about which am I called side effects and unintended consequences. There's some concern that if you create which am I called amplifying feedback boom it only leads to a bust and slower long-term growth. But on the other side I sensed the dilemma that sometimes if you don't allow which are called enthusiasm and vitality to bootstrap and jumpstart technological innovation you're almost confining the economy to be in a less which am I called dynamic and evolving way. And so I sense these dilemmas going back and forth in the different chapters but I also sensed and you've said it very nicely implicitly in your in your last comment here. It's not so much about the interactions between different things in the private sector it's about that creature which I might call the mother of all moral hazards. If you see these things these as you said hedge funds big financial institutions etc as being too big to fail and then they understand that they will be bailed out without any kind of system of prior restraint we are which you might call fomenting excess and then the taxpayer who supports the bailout with the funding is subsidizing aggressive risk-taking in the financial sector. And that did obviously after the Don Frank and TARP legislation and so forth appeared to demoralize a lot of people because as Joe Stiglitz said the polluters got bailed out and the polluters got paid and the rest of us probably say bore the burden of the downturn. So I see what I really like about this book is that a lot of these dilemmas are consciously addressed. There's no kind of hiding from powerful sectors in the economy that this young group of people seeing how profound that crisis was in terms of not only economic activity but the credibility of expertise and the belief in governance this becomes a very very important environment to explore vigorously. But there is also a thread running through that book and I think that connects very nice to what you just said which is it's not there is just one side when thinking about financial stability that has to do with the incentives of financial agents and financial actors and as you mentioned the repeated policy of you know going back to badgers and even longer that central banks are the lender of last resort to financial institutions in trouble. That is something that we probably all just as deposit insurance we subscribe to the safety. We think they're tested and proven and we need those but we've also ended up in a world where it seems like central banks assuming that role have to run ever faster just to stand still in the sense that there is this interaction that you talked about between what the financial sector does how it thinks about how prices risk and how it anticipates risk and how central banks then when things go wrong if you will come in as the reinsurer of last resort for finance in the name of protecting the economy and protecting society from the fallout of that and I think central banks you know they have a very good argument they say like why would I hold the economy hostage for the speculations or the deeds of some people on wall street on the other hand with that you know very justified sort of protective instinct of central banks you will not go into a situation where these players on wall street ever take the responsibility for what they're doing is in a way it's only when they fail and when they're in trouble that you actually have the power to regulate them because the moment you've stabilized everything they they're quite healthy again and they influence the political process in their interest so that again the political economy of finance where it looks like the players that often cause like caused the crisis or did the most risky things beforehand get rewarded by getting even bigger after the fact that is another very fundamental question about the financial sector and the economy that we haven't solved and pointing to this I mean the first one I mentioned was how is it possible that more complete markets that we you know growing up as economists you think that more complete markets are great that means people can ensure more there is more there's more choice there's all kinds of mechanisms that make sure that if if you know there's there's a there's a larger and deeper choice of options to choose from then things should be more stable and better how did they fail so spectacularly in the case of finance where more complete markets have presumably brought us more instability and not more stability any other questions how do we ever leave these cycles of these political economy cycles of risk-taking bailouts and and lobby power that prevents you know fundamental change and financial regulation you know you know I thought one of the more innovative chapters was created by Rudiger Fallenbrock where because of what you might call the ex post demonization of financial executives I never met a financial executive that was at the top of one of these institutions at the time of the great financial crisis that was happy about it and so understanding they how would I say we're in charge is different than saying they could feel deeply heads I win tails you lose and while that may seep in Fallenbrock really went through the compensation structures and the incentive schemes and so forth and essentially said what it looks like is a lot of these people had a lot of skin in the game and lost a lot of money personally so perhaps the the question of once again is more about how the taxpayer pays for which you might call it securing the creditors keeping the cost of funding down and all kinds of things so when the crisis occurs the executives are not uh how would I say on the sideline having protected themselves while the ship goes down they are seemingly from this paper people who didn't see it coming perhaps were caught up in the enthusiasm of the boom and didn't see the turning point and of themselves also paid a price which is I think an interesting contribution to the debate to the yin and yang and good and evil that you're exploring here I'm very glad you bring us up Rob because I wanted to also give an example where this new court of economists that we brought together for this project is I think in a in a in a very good way um undigmatic um willing to entertain new hypotheses willing to step outside of the orthodoxy even if that is something that you know we might all consider something that's a truism the truism being that all these CEOs on Wall Street they you know they didn't have enough skin in the game and things would have gone otherwise if I don't know they'd fold with Lehman brothers had um had had more skin in the game and the brutal farm protest in this chapter is to expose very nicely that many of these people had a lot of skin in the game so um and lost a lot of their own money which doesn't mean they you know didn't potentially still you know did things that that were irresponsible um um presumably some of them really did but it tells us that we need to look deeper than like the easy explanations for why financial crises happen and in this case if you sort of boil it down to the question do crises happen because people have bad incentives or people have bad beliefs um Rudi Gafamberhoff makes the point that likely you know Samuel Hansen his wonderful discussion that's in the book um makes the point that it's probably a combination of both there is like just assuming that all these CEOs on Wall Street knew it was a big housing bubble and everything would go to hell in a hand basket also doesn't do justice to the complexity of of of crises and we we've learned in the past you know if you go past 15 20 years the most almost the most interesting research that has come out of of financial economics has been behavioral finance and we've learned so much now about the deviations from national expectations the the the the hurt in the biases that can lead to mispricing and risk-taking and it's set up almost and it's almost I would almost say this is a this would be a great book for a graduate course in financial instability to use as a to use as a textbook because you go through these individual chapters week by week and you address really each week one of the fundamentally fundamentally important and much debated issues is it you know what's the role of incentives versus the role of beliefs or bad expectations what's the role of um of for example spinning the game and preventing risk-taking there's a chapter on that making the point that you know we have very high capital ratios in the 1920s and it didn't prevent the depression and it didn't prevent all the risk-taking that took place um because you know the the potential for for um it's sort of for disciplining risk-taking at the banks through skin in the game might actually be quite limited and and there is no way around the tighter regulation um also on the sort of looking closely at what banks do on the asset side and not just regulating the library side yeah but uh you how would I say when I look at the the good and evil this paper that is about the bankers suffering is distinct from the question of what banks and their lobbyists do to create a which you call a system that's perhaps unduly supportive of their desires so the question of who gets appointed to the fed regulators how often do you have examination super how tight is the supervision these are things that in a world that depends on money and politics that can very clearly be influenced by deep pocketed lobbyists so there isn't what you might call a declaration of innocence vis-a-vis the structural form of finance but that one dimension which is somehow these people are cynical and have abandoned ship and preserve themselves while we all suffer is it's in itself wrong and what like you're saying when you when you think about like the young scholars or whatever making a course out of this book you can see how you might say you as a team you did not blink at exploring any of these avenues but you didn't because of the wave of emotion which was particularly on anti-finance you didn't neglect exploring whether certain aspects of the accusation are without basis and so I can see in the themes of the book these questions of what creates a vital medium-term economy I can see concerns about the incentives of executives concerns about political economy and it would be interesting I think to hear from the collection of writers in which Mark Hall of follow-up what if you said the next course was how do we design what to have in light of what we learned I think it would be fascinating because many of the authors were quite refreshing in saying I don't really know what to do here particularly the earliest the first section of the book which was talking about the trade-offs between what you might call restraining credit allocation and the capacity for innovation and dynamism versus what you might call not getting reckless and having boons and busts is a boom bust economy in the medium term actually more dynamic than one that is tightly constrained and never really develops the momentum that may spur great innovation I think that dilemma is fascinating exactly and that's a that's a fascinating chapter that Emil Werner who is an assistant professor at MIT wrote and then there is an equally I think intellectually forceful discussion of that paper by Holger Miller from NYU makes exactly that that's right how do we know how do we know that a financial system that avoids this boom and bust cycle is ultimately more ultimately in the interest of society or the economy we might think it is and I think I would you know we all have our priors here what would be a financial stability also if you think about the political consequences that it has is is extremely desirable but as you say it's far from clear that restraining making sure that no boons and no no busts ever happen is is in our long-term interest and increases welfare of citizens because you and you you cut down on some dynamism and that's an old question I think that the book addresses just as if I can highlight this another very I think fascinating chapter by ative me and from Princeton who looks at the link between inequality and financial instability and what finance does and the argument there is that you know you can't in a way you can't separate it to because if you have changes in the distribution of income all of these financial flows and income flows are ultimately handled by the financial system so that translates into savings behavior you know more rich people at the top of the income distribution get more income the biggest share of the pie if you will then more savings will pile up at the top because savings propensities are higher that means that there's a lot of savings in the economy that are looking for a home and financial engineers come and find instruments to you know place these savings and turn them into turn them into investments into borrowing of other people and companies so in there I would say that we learned something very deeply about the interconnectedness of of societal trends such as inequality and the risks that poses for financial stability and it all brings us back to this point that I think is for me very fascinating intellectual starting point is we started 30 40 years ago in sort of unfettering finance and in letting it letting it go and grow in the today with saying the naive assumption that this would make up for more stable more complete better functioning pro-growth financial system and then we now stand in front of this you know if you look at the quantitative indicators that as you mentioned Alan Taylor, Oscar Giorgio and I have also sort of developed in the long run as part of our INET grants and INET projects you look at these charts and they all look like sort of hockey sticks where something the last 40 years all these financial indicators credit volumes leverage house prices whatever you look at have have really have have accelerated and have exploded in some cases and we realize today in in in 2022 that we have very very bad idea about sort of how this will actually like what are the deep parameters of this financial sectors you say what's the role of incentives what's the role of expectations of beliefs what's the role of regulators in pushing these booms what's the role of CEO so feels like we've created this enormous enormous financial sector we what we know is that our premises our priors that we had 30 40 years ago were wrong but there's a big void and saying like so what is it actually what how do we think about this leveraged world that we've created maybe it was good maybe better than it comes to actual but to be honest we don't know and I think that's the strength of the book to really clearly point to these dilemma that are out there and I do think there are some which you might call very long term echoes that if you will re-enter the stage and what I'm thinking about is Cain's treatise on probability and ontological uncertainty Frank Knight Kindleberger Minsky others saying this what I'll call engineering like and I was trained as an engineer as an undergraduate engineering like mechanical financial economics is not the right vision when there are unknown and unknowable unknowns in the future we're not doing backward induction this isn't just what you might call smart guys with software and arbitrage who adhere to an equilibrium and maximize everything that fundamental radical uncertainty which George Soros wrote about in alchemy of finance is the context in which all of this is embedded and acknowledging what you might call that humility that even like for instance I'm speaking on the horizon though when you look at climate change the statistical distributions you'd have whether asset prices or actuarial tables or really don't mean very much what a profound new structural challenge emerges you just don't have stability of the distributions that you can count on and work in that kind of algorithmic or mathematical way and I see lots of people in the ESG world and in the insurance business and so forth quite daunted by the challenge of not knowing what the structure which implies survival of the human race will have to look like it's not like we know when we're corrupt it's really that we there may be resistance that might be called damaging to the future of humankind people vested interest I'm not denying that but there is a daunting uncertainty and a financial system that doesn't acknowledge that as the context I think is a mis-specification I think that's an excellent point and I think the point that we make in the book that's related is the idea that people typically households and businesses typically take on debt and leverage up in situation where I think the future is a place they kind of can envisage in a way you have some stable parameter about how the world works that's the situation when people are feel comfortable to go deep into debt doesn't necessarily mean that they expect that the future will be you know puppies and rainbows but situations in which they think there's little downside are situations when people and this is all this is all the Minsk and Kimberberger in a way when when things are stable this is when people become willing to take bets on that stability and by taking these bets on future stability they actually sort of dig their own hole because the increasing leverage means that any shock in the future will have much more much bigger consequences than what they thought it would have and they also miss that everyone else is kind of doing the same so and I think your climate change example speaks to that the idea that coming back to what I said earlier that we live in this now leveraged world hence leverage the title of the books have we kind of woken up to the fact we live in this highly leveraged world and you know and the future doesn't look quite as safe anymore as it as it maybe looked in the 1990s when there was the end of history now now is the end of the end of history the work is not that safe not such a safe place anymore and when we still settled with these large amounts of of debt and then you know I can understand why probably if we were running the Fed Rob you and me would do the same we would probably like whenever there is a shock we would do whatever we can whatever it takes as Mario Draghi said to stabilize the situation but people this is you know this is the irony and then the forward-looking nature of things people understand that we will always do that and they will take this into account and take take on even bigger risks so we are we are in a really in a really difficult position and especially which I subscribe to we are in this world where we actually we can't put probability on the future of history so we might end up in a situation where a lot of this debt that was taken out in the expectation of stability of income stability of interest rates I think that's a good question right now you know how far can the Fed even go with interest rates before reaching some financial stability upper bound if you will you know these are these are certainly there are a lot of people who've made plans in the last 10 years and not assuming that mortgage rates would go up to 7 percent again yep you know well I always remembered when I was an undergraduate flirting with the idea of becoming an economist I took a course with Charles Kinneburger where he was working on his book mania's panics and crashes and one day one of the students very dynamic young guy later worked with long-term capital he said to Kinneburger when are things most dangerous as he said and Kinneburger said when people get optimistic and they think past his prologue is when they're putting their neck in a noose and it's it's that notion that you don't know but you get how would I say calmed and less on guard and then you start with the optimism extending yourself putting yourself at risk for when things deteriorate and the other the other thing that I remember not from Charlie but from others like William Grider who wrote a famous book kind of secrets of the temple on the Federal Reserve was people talk about the importance of the independence of central banks in your book there are a number of passages which talk about which might call electoral cycle boom busts we're extending credit to help people incumbents get re-elected and what have you but the idea once we got to these large-scale bailouts like the great financial crisis was when they said the Fed has to be independent it was like they had to be independent from the electoral cycle manipulation but now the question is who do they have to be independent from and when they'll do the bailouts I never blame a central banker once we're going over the cliff if you've got a choice between crashing over the cliff or having a safety net and getting everybody back from falling off the side you go for the safety because the unnecessary losses are enormous but the question is ex ante can you create a system that's resilient enough that you don't have to exercise that bailout emergency very often and that's where the lobbying and other things come back in I'm curious there's a number of people that have worked with iNet Michael Greenberger in particular who at this juncture is quite concerned about the number or scale I should say of derivatives that are not reported so that there can be what you might call whether it's offshore or whatever it's involved it's woven into the bank holding companies and investment bank holding companies in ways where we don't know how risky things are at the institutions that we have to protect for systemic stability and some some people who have suggested to me Greenberger did allow this research after he left the CFTC for iNet some have suggested to me that this relates to the competition around the world between financial centers less disclosure less scrutiny means that the financial firms will migrate to the equivalent of exchanges in the locations whether it be London or Frankfurt or Shanghai or Hong Kong or what have you they'll go to the places where the regulatory requirements are minimal and then we get into a competition among financial centers to attract market share by making the system actually more dangerous vis-a-vis bailouts and taxpayers I mean I think there was a strong element of this in what we've seen in the crypto space in Wilson years and I mean speaking of it and it's there is a chapter in the book that Juliana Begina wrote she's an assistant president Stanford and Nina Borja Tchenka from the New York Fed also has a wonderful discussion of this which exactly talks about the question of how do we actually understand the risk exposure of banks and how can we how can we think about this in a way that does justice to the complexity of the balance sheets to the arbitrage opportunities that are exploited across you know across jurisdictions across platforms how do you integrate that and yes interesting very interesting ideas in in how you can essentially use techniques from valuing financial instruments you apply those to apply those to to banking portfolios as well but it and I think it prepares us and that's the interesting the interesting a backdoor there and I see that as a policy discussion coming up in various places to think about banking regulation and financial regulation not just as regulating their liability the liabilities of the banking system which as you know is about deposits and how liquid can they be and do we need to ensure them is the deposit insurance it's about capital how much capital it should be but to also look as you say on the asset side on the derivative exposure we need to really better understand um what banks do uh with their on their asset side and maybe get up to speed there with regulation um as well in in ways that we haven't been particularly successful in the past which it in a kind of meta sense you know we we deploy in the private sector people to go into energy and they have solar or they have wind or they have fossil fuels or whatever and what we call externalities of carbon burning upper atmosphere deterioration becomes which might call the public good meaning embedded in all these activities are side effects some can be positive some can reduce carbon but in the financial sector we've treated these entities like they are private entities and in a market-based society more freedom more discretion to use their expertise where they do but these systems the credibility of the systems the fear of collapse the need to invoke the public treasury are all testament that there is an element of systemic design and maintenance that is about the public good it's not just a private entity and the scale and the power the penetrating power of finance has turned it into what i'll call a public system that whose integrity affects us all even if we don't play day-to-day inside of the financial sector i think it's an amazing the powerful dilemma over for we might call architects of future social design and uh and how we like when you'd mention crypto i watched a number of videos at a conference in miami a few months ago and people were acting as though freedom of crypto even on very large scale was about personal freedom as though there were no systemic side effects from which might call massive default propagation that would affect the banking system and other things i found it fascinating how which might say with the history of currencies medium of exchange unit of account store of value too big to fail all of these other things how these people could even be having that discussion without considering the systemic side effects right and i think i mean leveraged as a book title um implies already i mean what you're talking about are the big the the the externalities that might debt your debt our debt imposes on everyone and somehow that leverage isn't that's the externality there the risks that we um that we individually um take that ultimately um both the banks or the other side the the borrowers that ultimately um are too big for us to um they're no price correctly i guess that's that's the that's the um the easy way to think about it so having this enormous amount of debt out there and all this leverage that's been created over the last 30 years is a massive um has created massive externalities um for for the economy and we will so i mean it's a different way of telling the same story um thinking about what i do my decision to buy a house with a long to value ratio of 9010 um effects um disability of the system as a whole and um i might not see the externalities that i create when things go badly but um they're clearly that and and and these um um collective decisions um might might might have brought us to a place and i guess that's in between the lines of the book there is a that is the thesis there that uh had we known how finance operates and what the sort of deeper parameters and the instabilities behavioral issues the regulatory issues the incentive issues are we wouldn't have grown a financial sector as big as we have it now one of the things that i found uh fascinating just about this whole endeavor and i'm i'm taking it back even before this conference is codified in richard veig's book on the brief history of doom because he shows that let let me just contrast it the chapter on the bankers with their incentives also taking a hit it is fascinating with in contrast to richard's work which says you can see these things coming central banks can look at certain ratios and debt and maybe first and second derivatives and so forth and identify ex ante the what might i call zones in which things become dangerous his brief history of doom is about 40 some financial crisis that have common measures that can be seen ahead of time so it's it's a bit fascinating that he can find that and perhaps central banks or particularly people with so much at stake like CEOs of big banks and investment banks haven't assimilated that framework to protect themselves or to manage their portfolio or to manage their society and uh richard who was on the inet board who was the primary supporter of the project that led to this conference in his book i think it's i think his work perhaps in the next chapter might be fascinating to integrate in how would i say if this you i'm a doctor's son so when i heard you early on talking about diagnosis i say okay when the diagnosis is as interesting as this now what are the remedies and it might be interesting to have a follow-on event with the diagnosis and what do we diagnose that's not there that should be there like richard's insights and then what kind of remedies and preventive medicine can we envision absolutely i think the um the historical evidence um that richard in his book um and and the academic studies that have shown this that richard uses in his book to show that crises are not like sworn events there is some there's some indicators there's some things we can look at in a regular way in a systematic way that shows that the risk of a financial instability event is rising uh credit growth comes to mind the combination of credit growth and asset price growth clearly eccentric the single best indicator is probably just the amount of credit and it's change in relationship to gbc so there's much more credit created than the real economy um growth or produces in in in additional goods and services something is some people are taking bets on a future that might not come true um and the fascinating thought then is so why if that is true um to what extent can central banks act on this information um i think they've taken this lesson on board with certain things such as macro prudential policies where they say like okay credit is growing very fast we can increase loan to value decrease loan to value ratios or um or modify debt to income requirements etc but it also raises the question if this is to some extent predictable why does it still happen right and then we bring it we're back to then we're back to square one where we're saying like okay if there must be or likely there is either an incentive that brings people or bankers and maybe even households because you know always takes two to tango so someone also has to borrow um to um ignore the risks and do it maybe knowing that this is kind of a risky little bit too risky actually but i'll do it anyways because guess what if things go wrong um you know there's going to be interest rates are going to fall the central banks are going to do something about it or um i guess also what we've seen a little bit in crypto i mean people tell themselves stories about this time is different and um why the logic of boom and bust and previous evidence on credit growth is gained can be dangerous can lead to crisis why doesn't it apply in this case and i had this conversation recently like if you look at the the collapse of these big exchanges these crypto exchanges and the collapse of the value of some of these coins you think like this looks like with hindsight this looks so it looks like just have taken out of kindleburg's book it's such a predictable um end and you know but if you'd argue that two years ago when um you know a year ago when non fungible tokens and whatever were the latest um the latest um uh hottest thing in town uh people would have had you know all these arguments why why this is not a tulip mania why this is different and with hindsight it just looks like you know a good old a good old financial bubble what so what what i like i've said a couple of times there's a humility and a dynamism and a curiosity and energy that embodied in this book that i find very very magnetic when you talk with your colleagues and when you talk with your the other authors in the aftermath of that conference what do you all see as next steps what's the what's the next thing you'd like to explore so that that's um very interesting so one question that followed directly is one that we have already implemented and you were you were there at the beginning of the year when we had a conference on debt restructuring and on debt forgiveness and on ways to deal with um on strategies to deal with excessively high leverage in in our economies um some of these you know with the student debt relief some of the ideas and discussions from that conference where one way or the other reflected or became reflected in policy and spoke to that recent debate um i think another big open question where um a lot of us are are thinking thinking about right now is what Atif Mian describes as this link between inequality and and savings gluts in a way that um you know some where what are the distribution what's the distribution of them who are the debtors and who are the creditors yes the ultimate debtors and the ultimate creditors and um so in the end it's all about households and it's some it's households lending to other households and so trying to map um if we think about what would happen if we think about debt forgiveness how does this tie into questions not only financial stability but also wealth inequality you know broader political stability um we need to understand how sort of these financial entanglements within societies actually look like and that's a big gap in our understanding we haven't I mean there's great people who started looking at this Gavir Zutman and their mental size Tuma Piketty and others Atif Mian Amir Sufi there's wealth on this question but ultimately we don't understand very well um you know think of the bank as a little bit as an just as an intermediary and on the other side of that bank there are people households having deposits in this bank that you know have the that provide the the funds that then land out so you have these financial relations within societies that we actually need to understand if we want to think about um if you want to think about the effects of policies so that's one and I think the other probably even more sort of directly policy related questions is what does this mean for the business of central banking how do we I think we're right now it's certainly in Europe but also to some extent in the US realizing that that 10-year period of ultra-low interest rates has led to some steps taken by central banks thinking about the balance sheet expansion the large quantitative easing programs that all of a sudden look much more complicated to unwind and much more much much it was easier to do it than to imagine a world where short-term interest rates would go up to 5% and you created all these new reserves in the banks now you have to pay them 5% interest on them and what does that mean for the stability or the financial situation of central banks but also what does it mean more broadly for um fiscal monetary interactions so I think financial stability policy through the back door has brought us back to very big questions about thinking about the coordination of monetary and fiscal policy and might well be I mean it's not my prediction but we could end up saying like we've we've saved the financial system but in the process central bank independence got so compromised that um the um we we will reconsider whether how would the relations between the fiscal the taxpayer the fiscal authority and central banks are simply because um the the amounts of um of fiscal support needed or have become so big and then central banks and fiscal authorities are now so intertwined that it becomes really difficult for example to raise interest rates beyond a certain level without endangering the economy fiscal stability or financial stability so there's a lot of there's a lot of potential for a for a third follow-up conference maybe with a focus on so how do we how do we think about policy central bank interaction going forward um what role does central bank does monetary policy play in creating um you know how does low interest rates and risk taking how they linked we with some ideas but um we have structurally we've we've we've um kept these two parts of central what central banks do monetary policy on the one hand and financial stability are quite separate and um if you're bringing the third which is monetary financial interactions um you know I mean I had this discussion with adam twos a while ago and then we kind of both agreed in the end that the business of central banking in 10 years will look very different from what it is now um anyone's guess how it's going to look like but a lot of the preconditions on what we came to think of as normal in the past two decades including the self-regulating role of finance by the way um are just not true and and we're waking we're waking up to the new reality now


The story I'm going to tell today is about Gondoi. That's our language name for what the non-indigenous people call cassowary. Well my name is Leonard Andy and I'm a Juru traditional owner of the Mission Beach area. We have a story of him being a man. And as a man he wasn't very nice or good. He was always stealing other people's food and not listening to all the elders and what they were doing. And because he used to wander around a lot in the bush he had a lot of lice in his hair.  So they went and had a meeting with the men.  And when he was laying down they were going through these hair and a couple of men came with stone axes from behind him while he laid down and cut off his arms. And they said that when he jumped up and ran into the forest he started to change and turn into what the Europeans called cassowary. But for us, he's gondoi. All these tall trees are kwandongs. This is a real vegetation area which we planted to rainforest trees after cyclone Yasi in 2011 destroyed the passion fruit orchard. So now we've decided to turn it back into rainforest and it's a mix of pioneer species like the Macaranga, bleeding hearts and also things like cassowary plum which is a rainforest species and cassowaries eat the fruits which are about this big, far too big for any other bird to eat but cassowaries can pick them up and down they go and you can see them go down their throat, the swells as it goes down. It's quite comical watching them eating a cassowary plum. The Queenstown wet tropics area is a strip along the eastern edge of Queenstown and it's more or less parallel to the Great Barrier Reef. I believe it's the only place in the world where there are two world heritage areas sitting side by side. This is agathis rubbuster or kauri pine and the ancestors of this which look almost exactly the same as this tree go back to 175 million years ago. This is really a very special place because over millions of years throughout the ice ages and the changing landscape many species have treated this as a refuge. They've expanded out over the continent and then when conditions have changed and become unfavorable they've contracted and taken refuge in the valleys and the wetter areas of this wet tropics area where we have so many different species enormous biodiversity. There are 1,200 rainforest trees in Australia. In the wet tropics of Queensland you can have a one hectare area with 200 different species of trees which is quite incredible diversity. Although the wet tropics world heritage area is only about 9,000 square kilometres we have 40% of Australia's bird species represented here. A third of all the mammals, mysopials, orchids, conifers we have 50% of Australia's bats and butterflies are represented here and there are 162 reptiles in the wet tropics. They range from a skink that's 4 centimetres long right up to crocodiles that are up to 6 metres long. So there's a great range of both sizes and diversity and they're still discovering insects and reptiles, fish plants that have never been described in science before. One of the species that was part of that is now confined pretty much to the wet tropics area is the cassowary. They're a very colourful and spectacular bird. From records it appears cassowaries have been around for about 30 million years and their lineage you can see when you look at a cassowary if you look closely at the feet and they look so much like the feet of a dinosaur. It's got quite a lot of appeal, it's very photogenic but it's also a keystone species and fundamental to the survival of the rainforest. It disperses at least 60 or 70 species of rainforest trees which are too big for any other birds to disperse and so we call the cassowary a keystone species. It's vital for the survival of the diversity of the forest and to have cassowaries moving around in it. This is bandicoot berry which is a popular cassowary food when they can reach it but the berries fall down when they're ripe eventually like these dark ones fall off and they're quite nutritious for the cassowaries there's quite a lot of flesh in them and a lovely purple colour. So that's typical of the sort of fruits that the cassowaries eat and these produce fruit for at least two or three months of the year. It represents such a fundamental thing about the rainforest if the cassowaries are surviving then the rainforest is surviving and all the other animals and plants and organisms that make up this incredible celebration of life on earth are able to survive. We only have about a fifth of the habitat that was here originally suitable for cassowaries. The remainder has been cleared for farming and housing and that sort of roads and railways and so on. So the population of cassowaries is obviously a lot less than it was in pre-European times. Whether the land has got its carrying capacity of cassowaries now is an open question because you can't fly over the top and see mobs of cassowaries and say, oh, there's 200 there or 300 there. They're solitary and cryptic so they can be in the forest and you can't see them. So it's very, very difficult to count them but some work has been done in recent times using DNA analysis of scats and putting that together with modelling and they've come up with, one of the numbers was 4,200 surviving in all of Australia. The fatalities are mainly on the roads, being hit by cars and killed by dogs. In the vulnerable time when cassowaries are being weaned, that is sent away by their parent, that's the most critical time. The male tends to incubate the eggs and rear the chicks, look after them until they're about a year old and then it's time for them to find their own territory and they're on their own. There's roads with traffic travelling. A lot of places there's an 80 kilometre for our limit, 20 below the normal open road limit, where cassowaries tend to cross the road but even at that speed there are a lot of fatalities from cassowaries crossing the road, mining their own business and all being pursued by other cassowaries and so they burst out in the cross the road without any regard for the noise the vehicle's making. The other issue is that cassowaries that have been fed by people tend to become less shy and also associate people with food and so they'll wander onto the road and expect that where there's a car there's going to be somebody that'll give them food and the local vet says a fed bird is a dead bird. My name is Peter Trott, I'm Secretary of Community for Coastal and Cassowary Conservation, C4. My wife and I have worked in various parts of Australia but we chose to come here to live 14 years ago and since then we became involved with C4. C4 stands for Community for Coastal and Cassowary Conservation. My name is Peter Rolls and I am currently the President of C4. I've been the President since 2015. I've been in C4 on and off since the early 1990s. C4 is a community group that means it's entirely run by volunteers. It was a response to a perceived need to do something about the rapidly declining population of cassowaries. There had been a lot of clearing of lowland rainforest and the cassowary population had sort of been hanging on but was declining. We thought or a number of people thought that possibly the best way to stop the rainforest clearing which is what we really were about was to pick an iconic species like the cassowary and say if we can save enough habitat for cassowaries we can save a lot of forest and a lot of other wildlife for benefit as well. Very early in the piece it was realised that a good way of trying to look after those animals was to put their food back. Putting food for cassowaries back was really pretty easy. People collected cassowary scats because cassowaries are major dispersers of rainforest trees. Collect the cassowary scats, bring them into C4. We'd grow the seeds, make rainforest food plants for the cassowaries and then put them back. First it was back into our own yards, our own properties and then it was a matter of hunting around for other people who would do it and that's continued to grow so that we now are all about looking for land which is not being used any other way productively and can be made back into cassowary habitat. With the fairly extensive clearing of lowland rainforest the cassowaries have been trapped in remnants of forest along the coast in particular. The highest density population of cassowaries is in the lowland rainforest. And so if you look at the extent of the wet tropics lowland rainforest here there's a big patch up the daintry which is still really important but south of that you find that they're stuck on the coastal ranges. There are nine distinct populations along the coastal ranges. Studies have been done into each of those populations and the numbers of cassowaries in each and basically given them all a timeline for when inbreeding or whatever else will cause the local extinction of each of those groups. The Mission Beach area is probably one of the more extensive and certainly the highest density populations of cassowaries and it's really important that it not be allowed to die out if we can link it up to other populations and especially with that main area to the west that really increases its chances of survival. It's long been recognised that the Mission Beach area is isolated from the main world heritage areas to the west by the highway, by the main rail line by various other cleared agricultural country. An important area where there's been less clearing is in the so-called Smiths Gap area where you've got National Park to the east and to the west because there's at least forest on both sides we could see there was a chance of some sort of linking that could be done there. We're working with National Parks people to get all of the National Parks areas fully planted for a start and then a property next door to the National Park became available for sale and so at that point we said let's work again with Queensland Trust for Nature and buy that block of land. Okay well this is the starting point of this project as you can see it says Gurbam which is the name the local Aboriginal name for the Emerald Dove that's the Jiru and Gilnai tribal group name and it happens to be the same word with both language groups so we decided to call it that. It forms a critical corridor this bit of land it's 17 hectares and it's between World Heritage Area and National Park on either side of the Bruce Highway and this forms the missing link that will make a continuous forest all the way through. The strategic location is too important for it to be purchased by somebody who wants to turn it back into bananas or cattle or some other agricultural pursuit which reduces the capacity of cassaries to walk through. Wherever cassaries are able to move to and fro also all the other wildlife the wallabies and the bandicoots and the other birds are all able to enjoy and forage and find nesting sites and food. It was originally cattle it may have been cane at some stage but it was immediately before we bought it it was bananas and of course the banana farmer did not want cassaries on his block because they eat the bananas but worse than that the workers used to turn up with their dogs and the dogs would roam around on the block through the day so it was a really effective block to cassary movement in that area. Having purchased it one of the main things about Queensland Trust for Nature is that they want to turn it into a nature refuge and so we are currently working with them to revegetate almost all of the cleared country turn it back into forest make it so that the cassaries can use it and we know the cassaries do use it because we see them occasionally as we're working out there. It began here in May last year and so far we've planted probably about one hectare and we're incrementally going further up the hill and over against the existing National Park over the other side there. These existing trees here were planted about 25 years ago as a revegetation project the forest up there, that's all National Park part of the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area and so we'll be going right up to the existing forest. Across to the south west we'll be planting up against the National Park there so this will form a complete solid forest area. An ecologist called Norman Myers once described Tropical Rainforest as the greatest celebration of life on earth and you can see why. If you look through here and you can see this creek it's 10 metres below and the vines and ferns and everything climbing over each other to get up to the light and then going up the mountainside through the gap you can see the forest just clambering up over the mountain all the plants fighting to get their share of the light. That's the Wait awhile it sends up shoots that have backward pointing barbs on them and they hook onto the foliage of other trees and keep growing and growing and growing until they get up to the light and some of those canes that they produce can be 60 metres long as they find their way up through the forest to get into the light and if you walk through underneath them where they're hanging down they're very painful they just grab hold of you like fish hooks which is why they call it Wait awhile because you're walking through the forest you get caught up on them you have to wait awhile while you unpick them so you can get out. This is the northern section of the block we'll be replanting this in the next year by re-vegetating it from the road down there up to the railway and then we'll move further up the hill here because we've got seven hectares to cover all together. The important part of our casserie management plan is to reduce losses of casseries. One of the things that C4 currently is doing is that we are involved with the day-to-day management of the Garnes Beach Casserie Recovery Facility. I'm Mandy and I'm a volunteer with C4 so I volunteered in the nursery originally and then I had the opportunity to come here at the Casserie Rehab Centre each morning we come down and pick the chicks and give them medication if they need it and if they need to be fed again in the afternoon we do that here as well so we're just basically at the place where they hopefully get looked after and rehabilitated back into the wild. It's not a zoo, it's a really important part that we try to minimise the personal contact with the birds just to give them the medications that they need and more importantly the food that they need so they can grow well enough so they can actually get back out into the wild. So this morning's breakfast and I'm surprised we're not being stalked by the birds because they know when breakfast is coming.  No citrus but they love their bananas. So we've got Bobby and Golly in at the moment they're two quite young cassaries Bobby I believe is from Wongaling Beach and he or she, I'm not sure what sex it is I don't think they can figure out which sex it is yet but yeah he was hit by a car or the poor lady who hit it obviously felt terrible, she gathered it up took it to the vets, it ended up here it was done, couldn't be reunited with its father so it's coming to care here Golly is from up in the Daintree area and he was just lagging behind the parent bird so obviously I think he had some kind of injury to his foot they've been put together in one of the pens here and they're getting along fabulously it's so good to see they're very happy birds. One of our major activities here and a really good opportunity for people to be involved is the nursery you see the nursery, we've got over 10,000 native plants we believe that people should live with wildlife and that an important part of living with wildlife is that you have native plants in your garden if you've got native plants in your garden then that means that's the food for the things which should live here it's the flowers that feeds the butterflies, the beetles all the other insects it's the fruit that feeds the birds including the cassavares it's living with your wildlife rather than having the wildlife as something separate that lives outside your fence so we have our nursery for local people to come and buy native species also by having so many plants here that's our stock that we use in our revegetation my name and we're here at Gerbom Reserve in tropical north Queensland, Australia highly important in this area this particular spot here is enhancing the habitat as you can see in the background here we've got World Heritage National Park and where we're planting today with C4 is extending the habitat for southern cassowary and as well as many other native Australian fauna species great today C4's had some great volunteers turn up a good crowd actually we're doing this to engage the community create awareness it's all about getting people together so great day overall looks like we'll have about at least 300 native trees planted so great outcome what would you like to say to people who are interested in getting involved? just come and we'll show you how to do it it's easy we've had a couple of really important purchases the first major one was what's called Lot 66 well Lot 66 or as we call it now a cassowary connection it started off more than 15 years ago when a developer put an application into the then Shire Council for a development of this 25 hectares with 55 housing lots when the application was made we opposed it but it was granted by the council we realised that it was in a critical spot because it was going to sever a connection between continuous areas of forest even though it was rejected we teamed up with others and Terrain Natural Resource Management commissioned an ecologist to do a mapping of the wildlife corridors through this area which was done and we had that document and presented that to the then Minister for Environment Peter Garrett he reviewed the application and said that with that information there was no way he could allow that development to go ahead so it was back to the developer who then had the option of coming up with a plan of less intrusive development and so they were talking about doing 20 lots or 10 lots or something which made it of doubtful economic value but in the meantime we raised money over a period of years we raised a quarter of a million dollars and we were able to put that together with money from the Queensland Trust for Nature and as a partnership we bought the block since then we've improved it and we've been able to secure wildlife refuge status for that area which is on the title and so it can never be changed and so now it's available for sale to somebody who wants to have a property where there's lots of birds lots of wildlife, lots of trees nice habitat and enjoy that patch of secure habitat Since I was a kid I've always been interested in nature we lived in a bit of countryside that was near a river and there was always some native animals around sure it was the birds, we knew about native birds but it was also echidnas, snakes, bandicoots all sorts of things that you just took for granted as being part of your environment but as the suburbs encroached more and more around us those things that we took for granted just disappeared and you didn't realise at first that they were gone until you say haven't seen one for a long time chances of seeing one now, not high so you actually have to consciously recognise what wildlife that you have and what you need to do to keep it otherwise it will just slip away it's just so easy for things to disappear before you realise C4 is an organisation that is dedicated to try and maintain the very attractions that bring us all to live here a lot of people come here and want to develop, develop, develop and destroy the very things that make people want to come here but we find that people come to our environment centre at Mission Beach and one of the first questions that they have is where can I see a casserole in the wild that's the number one thing they want to do that's our heritage, that's our wildlife I mean Australia is very different from other parts of the world because it's been isolated for so long and we have a fairly small area of rainforest in Australia and it's so easy for people to just again take it for granted, little bit by little bit the forest is being pushed back in the early days the pine issues say turn your back and the forest will grow up behind you well it's not quite as simple as that now something might grow up behind you but it's more like it'll be weeds than it is to be forest we are the stewards of this land we do need to take responsibility for looking after it well humanity is not the be all and end all on this planet and it is our responsibility as custodians whilst we're on this planet to look after nature we cannot function without it there is no separation between us and the natural world and the more we separate the less there is for us as human beings look at what it does, it's amazing it nurtures us, it gives us everything this is a wonderful area for exploring the wildlife and the natural habitat because there is so much happening the enormous diversity of plant and animal species I think people around the world are more aware now than years past of the value of natural habitat we're seeing quite a lot of support for what we do and I think we are effective in steering the juggernaut of human development into safer ways we try to share the things we value with others who may not be even aware of what is here and by doing so we believe that people will discover and thereby respect and want to protect and preserve I think more and more people are getting on board with it I think there are a lot of people who don't know how to connect and do something but they don't know how to get involved valuing wildlife is actually part of your everyday life everything in the way you live has to take into account that wildlife needs to live here too you have water in your yard so that the birds have got somewhere to live you have the native trees because they provide the flowers and fruit for all the different types of wildlife that when you wake up in the morning you go out in the verandah you expect that you'll see native animals around it doesn't have to be I mean they don't have to come in your castoraries every morning or anything like that it's just those incremental small things that people can do and collectively that adds up to quite a big difference one of the other statements that has inspired me is no one makes a greater mistake than he who does nothing because he thought he could only do a little the reality is that every one of those little bits combined makes a big difference if I wasn't hopeful for the future of wildlife in the world why would I spend almost every day of my life continuing to do this sort of thing I'm doing it because I think that mankind is actually better than what they give themselves credit for it's all the other people at C4 who all come in because they all can see that there's a role that they can play in looking after wildlife in making the whole place better come out or go to a nursery near you or get involved in any other kind of conservation effort it doesn't have to be one out here in the bush where you're planting there's all sorts of things that you can do to help the effort we'd love to have your help we need a lot of help because there is always more jobs than we can do in the time available we welcome volunteers with open arms and the other side of that is that we, like everybody else who joins learn a lot of things because we have an enormous range of talented informed people who are very willing to share their knowledge and so by working together and sharing all that knowledge it's just such an enriching experience


r the application packet second by second and if I could speak to it this is I think we all know what this is and this has been underway for a while and both our library director and our planning director have been involved now in this process there is on the tables there's a draft of the application it's almost complete Mr. Fields has done a lot of work on helping to gather the map coordinates the list of cultural attractions businesses etc etc so once that's pulled together to incorporate some of the public input that does have to be sent to the state that this board does need to also just include a cover letter which would just generally state the benefits which I'm more than willing to help draft if that's amenable and that's really just what I wanted to say I think you know that the three leads on the managing partnership for this are the libraries, the chamber of commerce and the Arlington Center for the arts but there are a number of other organizations that have been at the table as well both public and private for profit and non-profit it's been a great community effort and I think it's consistent with a lot of the other things that we've been efforts we've been doing here it's very exciting Mr. Grayley it's from one end of town to the next is there what's the specifics it's from I think it's from Jason Street down to Marathon I think the rough boundaries it basically runs from Mill Street and the rail trail down to Trowbridge Street down to where that more or less hits the rail trail so it encompasses Capital Square and the center up to Mill Street in spy pond park right and so a portion of the bikeway and the civic block as well yeah so you get our friends of the drama right but let me again ask why can't we include the heights well the the main criteria for designating a district is to locate or have within the district as many cultural attractions as possible in Arlington right now most of the cultural attractions are located either in the center or around Capital Square so this proposed district captures most of the town's cultural assets that doesn't mean in later years we can't designate a second district around the heights that's focused on the cultural attractions there but the mass cultural council that adjudicates these districts they generally don't like very very large districts that would encompass an entire town they want districts that are subsets of a town so in this case we went for Arlington center and Capital Square at this time and with the thought of going for a smaller heights district in later years I was there during the initial discussions this was discussed only actually as an Arlington center district because it's not just the number of cultural institutions it's also the walkability and that transition is there and that you have enough things within that space this is much larger than what mass cultural council typically approves but some of the conversations with them said that knowing our community and discussions I know that one of the people who comes out assesses because they're going to do a walking tour for this as well at some point felt that we could probably get this in so it's almost we're almost pushing the limits right now that's one thing but the other thing to note is when a cultural district application is made you can take into account activities and institutions that are outside of the district if they're contributing to what's going on within it so for example we have partnered with old Schwann Mill they have come in that actually hosted some of the initial meetings on this so it does incorporate the rest of the community and the actual bounds of the map are within a distinct area so Conker just got their second one just sorry Mr. Gurley my only question would be when it talks about appointing a town official or officials to work with the what is it managing partnership with the cultural district do you envision that individual or individuals to be current staff or is this something that we would need additional staff and if so have we already kind of considered that in the budget or I'd consider to be current staff existing staff okay any further questions if not an emotion by Mr. Curel made by Mr. Dunn and then I heard Mr. Burns sorry all those in favor say aye all those opposed unanimous vote thank you thanks for being so patient with us agenda item 17 I said I'm twice there endorsement of the scenic byway grant Mr. Chapter Lang thank you Madam Chair this is simply asking the board to endorse the scenic byway committee which is the partnership between Lexington Concord Lincoln and the Minuteman National Park accepting this $5,000 grant and signing on to the MOU that was attached to the agenda item in the heritage area discussed it with actually Ted and Clarissa Rowe who's the town's representative on the scenic byway committee and just thought it would be appropriate to both bring it to the board's attention and ask for endorsement of accepting the grant and signing on to the MOU so moved moved by Mr. Burns second by Mr. Dunn any further discussion or questions if not all those in favor say aye all those unanimous vote our colleague Mr. Curell request use of Jefferson Cutter House Lawn oh okay this is pretty straight forward as you know the tourism economic development committee has the visitor center however because of the Arlington Safe travel project that area Uncle Sam Plaza is fenced off for the summer until September so you'll call that before the visitor center building was there that a Ted had actually on some weekends had a tent set up in the Jefferson Cutter Lawn and run a smaller operation they're requesting permission during the summer to do the same they typically operate Sundays and Sundays from 10 to 4 when there's not a conflict with another event that we have approved so moved moved by Mr. Burns seconded by Mr. Greely discussion if not all those in favor say aye those opposed unanimous vote thank you Mr. Curell agenda item 19 discussing regarding block party applications Mr. Dunn I've got an interested constituent who was persistent in getting this one onto my radar to get it onto the agenda they run an annual block party and they can simply never get 100% of the people to sign because of summer travel that so I actually there's a proposal in there that says 90% I'm actually going to make the motion right now I'm going to actually move 80% approval and so I would note that I did see that officer was concerned about it I guess I'm not sure that he noted some of the details of it because he said he was concerned that not everyone would be notified the intent of this is that it's 100% notification and the way we're going to affect that is we're going to change the application the application used to be just a list of all applicants and now what it's going to be a list of all butters must sign it now what I'm saying is we're going to have one person who is like the designated leader of the block party who's seeking the approval and they have to promise that they have tried to reach everybody and they have to get signatures from 80% I just want to explore what that means a little bit and so that means if you're trying to do a dead end street where there's five houses you'll be able to sign it if it's seven so six out of seven seven out of eight eight out of ten and that means nine out of eleven so on and so forth all the way through 12 out of 14 and so I think about my dead end street which has 15 houses we don't do a block party but if we were one of my neighbors literally leaves a memorial day and doesn't come back to a labor day they don't care whether or not there's one this manages the fairness aspects of the neighbors but I'm so moved by Mr. Dunn, seconded by Mr. Curell, Mr. Byrne so I think I do understand the intent here of this change one thing that did stick out in Officer Ratau's letter to me where say someone is moving or there is they already have like a family graduation party plan that's going to take up however much it's like, you know, something like that I've been trying to find I don't know if I had the exact thing but adding some sort of line about extenuating circumstances that would be you know, potentially that's one neighbor who doesn't sign off and that's because they have they have something else going on in their property that day would that be covered in this new policy it definitely the intent certainly was just to say that the person who's organizing it has to certify that there were no objections and so hypothetically that person in my mind the way it would work is that person says look you can't do it that day and as soon as one of the neighbors says you can't do it that day that does still serve as an effective veto because I'm asking the leader to say I have no objections and I talk to everybody and if we want to beef that language up to make that a little bit stronger so that's a little bit clearer I'm totally fine with that because it's putting it another way that thing that you're saying about if there is a neighbor who doesn't want it to be that day because they're moving because they're doing family party whatever that person has the right to stop the party under both the old policy and the proposed and we would still under this new we the board like our office would still be notifying and getting in touch with the neighbors like after because we don't sign off on these right so in my mind the way this works is that the leader someone walks in and they say hey I want to do a block party and then Marie and Marianne and Fran say okay here's your application you have to talk to absolutely every single person and you have to get signatures you have to try to get signatures from all of them and they're going to come back with 80% or 90% of the signatures and Marie and Marianne are going to say so no one said no right and you talked to every single person right they're going to say yes and then they're going to say okay make sure you sign and say that you said that and then it's going to go forward and in my mind that process is going to work just fine we're very trustworthy here yeah well yeah Mr. Greeley then Attorney Hyatt I was just going to so let's say it was on your dead end street for permission to block the street or you can you get permission to do the party the way we've been running block party so far is that it doesn't actually come to the board it gets improved in the office no I know I'm wondering whether you're I wasn't planning on trying to change that now okay thank you Attorney Hyatt and then did you want to go first? I just wanted to note that your experience negotiating the minute man agreement comes through here Attorney Hyatt I just want to note that Mr. Dunn's proposal creates two separate conditions first is the 100% of budding residents in the street area have been notified and none objected and then the second is 90% of the budding residents in the street area affirm positively their support 80 so I do think as it's written I do agree with Mr. Dunn it's a matter of making sure that it's communicated that these are two separate requirements that one is everybody's been notified none of those folks objected and then secondly as an additional condition that 80% have also said not only do we not object we support it so with those two separate conditions needed to be met I think that you've satisfied the concern of that one person saying I really don't we can't do it this weekend I am comfortable with that but reading through that I just wanted to make sure here okay an emotion by Mr. Dunn seconded by Mr. Carroll and changing and number 4 90 to 80% all those in favor say aye aye all those opposed unanimously vote thank you all correspondence received notice of MEPA common extension period is there a motion to receive by Mr. Burns seconded by Mr. Curell any questions comments if not all those in favor say aye aye all those opposed we now will go to new business Mrs. Cropelka Attorney Hyme no new business just two brief pieces of new business Madam Chair first Chief Ryan who was with us tonight has actually been asked to testify at Homeland Security and Government Affairs on a hearing the topic of which is called America's insatiable demand for drugs examining potential solutions so with his work and the department's work on Arlington acts and all of the various anti-opiate initiatives that they've undertaken it's actually risen to the level of the Chief Testifying before U.S. Senate so I was blown away and impressed and I thought it was worth sharing with the Board of Selectments to go to Washington to do that so I thought that was again noteworthy also wanted to mention some of you have probably been tuned in and I think some of you may have attended the first meeting Mass Ave Phase 2 conceptual design moves forward we had the visioning session in town hall we then did the walk shop along Mass Ave several weeks ago and the initial report out will be on June 16th so just not much longer at all here in town hall we'll do a report out on everything that the consultants have heard put that into a conceptual plan they'll tend to take more feedback from those attendance and come back in the fall with a final conceptual plan so it's been well participated, well attended so far and I think it's pretty exciting of what we can do in Arlington Center so if you're able to make it on the 16th I think that would be a nice event and that's all I have for new business Mr. Barre? Nothing too crazy I do just want to congratulate all of the high school seniors at both AC and Arlington High and wish them well in all their future endeavors in particular two of my little cousins who graduated from Arlington High and we're very proud of them so thank you I was going to say can you still call them No I can't particularly because one of them was about six inches tall Mr. Carroll? I was also going to congratulate the high school graduates and just make another one last plea that for the sake of future classes at Arlington High and Minuteman that voters come out a week from tomorrow June 14th and give affirmative votes on the three dead exclusion questions that will be before them Mr. Dunn I'm going to say the same thing as Joe and say that we are aggressively looking for volunteers for the get out the vote campaign as Madam Chair knows full well so buildarlingtonfuture.org and please sign up we need a lot of volunteers to get out the vote to get these questions approved That's right and that will be June 14th polls open at 7am 8pm our next meeting will be June 20th I believe 2016 with that it will take a motion to adjourn by Mr. Carroll seconded by Mr. Burn all those in favor say aye those opposed unanimously vote good night Arlington


Welcome to basic science series, I am your host Lokinder Kumar and today we are going to discuss how to write the introduction part of your research article. I am going to show you some of the examples from my research articles, some of the points that I consider before writing my research article. So please stay tuned till the end of the video so that you can understand all the points how to write the introduction of your research article. One quick request before we move on to the discussion part, if you are new to the channel please do subscribe to the channel and if you like the video press the like button. If you want to support my work you can support my work on patreon.com I'll put the link in the description box. Alright, let's start the discussion. I want to mention a very simple example. The example is if someone is asking you to introduce yourself. In this case say someone is asking me to introduce myself. I will say my name is Lokinder Kumar. I have done my education in this area. I'm from this part of the world. For example I will introduce specific things about myself. I'm not going to say that I'm a human being. I have one pair of ears. I have one nose. I have one pair of eyes. Why? Because you are considering the knowledge of the audience. You know who is your audience. You know what are the things that your audience already knows, right? So it is really important that you understand your audience. That is why I always mention this point that whenever you start writing or whenever you start doing anything for example even making video you need to consider the audience. So we will start the introduction by considering this particular point that the introduction should be written in the light of the knowledge of the audience, right? So this is the most important point before we start writing the introduction. All right. So I hope you understand the importance of the knowledge of the audience. So the next point in this case is I'm going to divide the introduction in four major parts. Now before I start explaining those parts I want to mention that whatever I'm explaining you is based on my knowledge, my experience. There are various books. There is a lot of literature on all these particular topics that how to write the title, how to write a research article, how to write a book. You should read those topics. You should read all those books because they are really going to help you in writing your research article, whether you are even writing theses, whether you are writing books, review articles. They refine your writing skill and they are really important. Now let's discuss what are those four major points. Point number one is define your scientific problem. Point number two is explain your hypothesis. Point number three is review of literature. And point number four is mention the highlight of your research article. So let's work on all those four points one by one. Let's discuss the point number one which is define your research problem. Defining your research problem is really the important point. It's the first step towards the writing the research article. So defining the problem is really important. How you can define the problem. In the particular example that I want to mention here is for example if you are working in an infectious disease. So what you can mention is what are the infections associated with that particular infectious pathogen. For example if I'm working in the area of pseudomonas, aeruginosa or if I'm working in stephalobocus aureus. These are the pathogens that are responsible for various infections. So if I'm working on these areas I will mention that this particular bacteria causes these infections in humans. And then the next point that I will mention is these are the number of infections associated with this bacteria. So you can you can start the introduction by giving the background of the problem. Here I'm going to give you an example of a research article that I published. The research article was on anti-bifilm efficacy of a phytochemical. And we have proved that the anti-bifilm efficacy of that phytochemical is because of its anti-corumnsensing activity. So that's a particular scientific problem and how I will write the introduction part of this particular research article. I will start from the infectious agent. So in this case the infectious agent is pseudomonas aeruginosa. So I will write what are the infections associated with pseudomonas aeruginosa. Then I will mention what are the number of infections associated with pseudomonas aeruginosa. After that I have to link the the bifilm and quorum sensing with pseudomonas. I have mentioned the example of anti-bifilm activity of a phytochemical via quorum sensing activity. So in that case what I'm going to mention is the hypothesis. I'm going to mention that this particular phytochemical may be linked to the anti-quorum sensing activity by inhibiting the interaction between the receptors. So I know it's it's more detailed scientific explanation but this is how you have to write your scientific research article. So you have to mention all those proteins, all those molecules that are associated with the quorum sensing signaling and how your molecule in this case the phytochemical, how that phytochemical is blocking or could block the interaction. So you have to mention your hypothesis very clearly that this is the hypothesis that I want to present in this research article. So it is very important that you clearly mention or define your scientific hypothesis in this particular section. Now the third important point is review of the literature. That is the most important point. You have to mention all the articles that were published in that particular research area. Now the fourth point that I want to mention is the highlight of your research article. What are the key highlights of your research article? What are the result or method section that you have done? I know it depends upon person to person or their preferences that how you're gonna write that but I think it is a good point that you mention all those points because it will again you know stimulate the audience to read your research study carefully. So you can mention in that particular section that we have in the present study we have done this, this and we have found that this particular phytochemical has anti-bifilm activity and it was by blocking the quorum sensing interactions. So you can mention all those points in the end of your introduction. These are the major points that I wanted to discuss with you guys. I hope these points are going to help you while writing the introduction of your research article. Before I'll conclude the video I want to mention that you should read all the literature that mentioned how you should write a research article, what are the different parts of research article. There are a lot of books online that are available that you can read and they are going to help you while you're writing your first research article. Thank you for watching the video. If you like the video then please press the like button and if you like the content of the channel then please do subscribe to the channel. This helps me to understand how many people are watching the video and how many are there who are interested in my content and also that motivates me to make more videos. So I'll see you in the next video. Thank you. Take care.


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So let's go back to this idea of division having two distinct interpretations, and both of them are going to be useful. So again, the idea is that a division like a divided by b, I can view this as a partative question. I'm going to take a, and I'm going to divide it, break it into b equal parts, and my goal is to find out how big each part is. Or I could do it as a quantitative division. I'm going to take a, and break it into parts of size b, and I want to find out how many parts there are. And the tape diagram can be used to model both divisions. So for example, let's take 24 divided by 4. We'll show them partatively and quotatively using a tape diagram. So we'll start with our partative division. It's the more natural way to read the division, if not to actually perform it. So with partative division, I'm going to take a tape that represents 24, and I'm going to break it into four equal pieces. So there's my tape representing 24. I'll break it into four equal parts, and my question is how big each part is going to be. Well, if this is 24, I want all of these parts to have the same size, and maybe I don't know how big those parts are, so maybe I'll take a guess. Suppose each part is 5, well, that's all of them are going to be 5, and well, that's not quite enough. That's 10, 20, so I am still not quite at 24 yet, so I've got to increase the size of those parts a little bit. So I'll increase the size by one more, so that's 20, 21, 22, 23, 24. This is everything, and so each of these parts is a 5 and a 1, so each of those parts represents a 6. And so there's my partative division. On the other hand, if I want to form the quotitive division, I'm going to divide 24 into parts of size 4, which is the quota. So I'll have my figure representing 24, and I'll mark off parts of size 4. So there's a part, there's another, there's another, there's another. Let's see what I have to do for it. 4, 8, 12, 16, I have a couple more parts I can make. That's 20, and that last one is going to be 4, and the quotient is going to be the number of parts. So here my parts are of size 4, and there's 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 of them, and there's my quotient.