Political Economist

The Fed in action

The time when the Carter administration decided to nominate Paul Volcker as a new chairman of the Fed, the U.S economy in the late 1970s was facing up exactly the same threats as this case. The Fed led by Paul Volcker started to tight money supply in order to fight against persistent inflationary pressures.

Traditionally, the Fed had rights to regulate various financial resources including overall money supply, credit markets derived from the original money and bond market. In the early 1970s, however, the US congress already passed the law targeting the deregulation of the banking system. This bill included the abolition of market barriers which had traditionally prohibited potential financial asset holders from starting banking businesses, and the deregulation of credit markets.

Thus, when Volcker was nominated as a new chairman, he found that the only option for the regulation of the financial market was the control of the supply of money by trading government bonds. This is the determinant of the “federal fund rate.” Once the federal fund rate is determined by the Fed’s “open market operation,” this will also determine other commercial bank’s interest rates accordingly. Combined with the Fed’s right to urge bank to maintain certain range of reserve rate, this monetary policy will affect overall economy indirectly.

Paul Volcker and his committee started to fight against inflation by reducing overall supply of money. If the Fed started to sell Treasury bonds at higher interest rates, this would absorb huge amounts of money previously abundant in the real market. Furthermore, if the Fed started to raise its federal fund rates, financial asset holders would start to buy government bonds. In this way, the Fed under Volcker’s leadership tried to tighten the valve through which the blood flew into every part of a living body. The Fed and Volcker expected unprecedented economic frenzy would subside through its contractionary monetary policy.

As interest rates rose in financial markets, many potential customers would be discouraged from buying at the higher prices. Customers who still wanted to buy despite the higher interest rates would find it harder to obtain loans. Many farmers who borrowed at the higher interest rates in order to buy land and expand production facilities started to learn the hard way in the face of high pressure of repayment. Many families who borrowed at the higher interest rates in order to buy homes and cars started to realize that they were burdened with higher interest payment. They went into deeper debt to compensate for their shrinking incomes and interest payment.

However, the impact of higher credit did not fall on evenly all American people and enterprises. Some were forced to go without. The millions of American who depended on borrowing started to suffer additional distress – consumer, farmer, home builders, auto dealers, business of every type in small scale started to suffer from high interest rates without understanding the behind economic logic.

Contrast to situations of ordinary citizens, those who lend money would naturally gain from higher interest rates. At that time, “among individuals, the top 10 percent of American families owned 72 percent of corporate and federal bonds held by individuals plus 86 percent of state and local bonds. Among institutions, commercial banks owned about 20 percent of the outstanding Treasury debt and another 10 percent was owned by insurance companies and other corporations. The same people likely to hold the bonds in their personal portfolios also owned the stock of the corporations and banks that owned bonds.”(372)

At any rate, the Fed under Volcker’s leadership started to control overall quantity of money instead of regulating interest rates directly. In economics, there are only two ways to achieve certain range of interest rates. One is to control overall quantity of money, and the other is the regulation of real interest rates indirectly through the Fed’s bonds trading. Volcker and other Board members adopted officially new monetarist rule when they tried to fight against inflation.

Pendulum swung – from liberal Keynesian to conservative monetarism

We should pay a little attention here to the theoretical and ideological terrain of the time in order to understand the behind logics underlying the Fed’s monetarist rules. Since the Great Depression in the 1930s the U.S federal government and most other western industrialized countries had adopted the same in nature expansionary government’s fiscal and monetary policy under the guide of Keynesian economics.

The US federal government had invested its federal budget on public work projects such as infrastructure constructions and buildings on behalf of private corporations through its expansionary fiscal policy in order to stimulate the “aggregate demand” in the private economy. Through its monetary policy, the US Federal Reserve pumped out more money thereby leading to and maintaining lower interest rates favoring private entrepreneurs to invest on more productive capital. All of this policy mix naturally produced temporal fiscal deficits in the federal budget.

However, liberal administrations from Franklyn D. Roosvelt to John F. Kennedy argued that once the economy gained its momentum engineered by therapeutic federal government’s deficits, the increased economic activity would compensate for the budget deficit shortfall in the medium or long run. The increased demand for goods from “demand side” would lead wealth owners and corporations to invest in new factories and plants, and this in turn would result in offering much more employment opportunities. In this way, the devastated economy in the era of the Great Depression and war would recover its normal process of capital formation and secure capitalist economic growth.

This liberal Keynesian economics had really worked until it faced new economic phenomena called “stagflation” in the mid-1970s. From then on, the US economy had to deal with stagnant economic growth combined with growing threat of inflation at the same time. It was Milton Friedman who already anticipated similar economic results almost 10 years ago. In 1963, Friedman published with coauthor Anna J. Schwartz, A Monetary History of the United States, 1860-1960. In this book, Friedman argued that Keynesian economics was totally wrong. Unlike Keynesian’s wishful thinking, he argued, interventionist government’s monetary policy has devastated real economy.

With respect to the role of monetary policy, he observed that both the original collapse of 1929 and the long lasting economic contraction of the real economy in 1930s were partly caused by and surely exacerbated by the Federal Reserve’s failure to provide adequate money supply. Instead of trying to manage the overall quantity of money in accordance with the pace of economic growth, the Fed pumped out too much money and eased the credit when the actual economic situation is on the process out of recession thereby leading to fervent economic bubble and burst. On the other hand, the Fed had tightened money too much when the money for various investments was really needed the most.

In this way, Friedman argued that the Fed played a role in exacerbating the devastating effects of business cycles than otherwise might not be necessary. Thus, the Fed should revise its unique roles from trying to manage real interest rates to offering adequate quantity of money to secure ‘the overall stability’ of economic system - stable backgrounds for the overall economy.

Friedman also warned that if the Fed did not change its traditional roles, its reckless monetary policy would result in continuous inflation combined with the effects of “crowding” private investment out of the market. In the face of federal deficits combined with high inflationary pressures, his monetarist argument had gained wide recognition and acceptance from both academia and politicians.

If you remember the term “economic policy entrepreneurs” used by Paul Krugman in his book, Peddling Prosperity – Economic Sense and Nonsense in the Age of Diminished Expectations(1995) to designate those who sold profound economic ideas to politicians in the simplistic way, Friedman’s monetarism was the best selling ideas adopted by a group of conservative economic policy entrepreneurs called “supply siders” in real politics from the mid-1970s. In the end, faced with intense criticism from both monetarism of academics and supply siders of Republican Party, the Fed had to change its target of monetary policy from the management of interest rates to the management of aggregate money supply.

In the face of massive tax cuts

There was another reason why the Fed chairman tried to tighten money supply extremely. Since 1980 newly elected president Ronald Reagan adopted massive tax cuts policy, guided by supply siders who argued that US citizens had been suffered from heavy burdens of federal taxes. They maintained that reduced tax burdens would induce much more investments (saving) and this would in turn bring about economic prosperity. Aided by his economic advisors, Reagan asked the congress to approve a three-year reduction in individual income taxes rates, totaling 30 percent.

To foster business expansion, he proposed additional tax relief for corporations as well as relief from federal regulations. All together, this supply side economics would reduce the federal government’s revenue by a total of $540 billion over five years. Reagan promised that the federal government would produce a balanced budget by 1984 once the economy gained momentum through his federal tax cuts and its effects. But, considering his another agenda, federal budget increases for military defense industries, Reagan’s proposed tax reductions would lose $100 billion a year in government revenue.

Nonetheless, the US congress passed this tax legislation in 1981. Volcker and other Fed committee members considered this federal government’s fiscal deficits as another ominous source for higher inflationary pressures in the near future. Even though the components of the federal budget expenditures became different from previous fifteen years of liberal administration’s deficits (from public work projects and social security spending to military subsidies combined with massive federal tax cuts), the Fed chairman and other precautious financial investors had learned that huge federal deficits were usually predicates for continuing price inflation.

That was why Volcker warned continuously against Reagan administration’s massive budget deficits, and had adopted aggressive tight money policy throughout his tenure. “The direct cause of the higher rates was the bond market and the Fed, reacting together. Both feared the same thing – the inflationary potential of the deficits – and both moved protectively, ahead of the fact. The Fed moved short-term rates higher, expressing the same anxiety as the bond market.” (402)

Book Review on Secrets of the Temple – How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country, (William Greider, 1989, New York: Simon & Schuster)

The History and the Role of the US Federal Reserve in 1980s

      Introduction

This book is about the contemporary history of U.S central bank, the Federal Reserve Board system. The U.S Fed has influenced not only U.S domestic market but also the shapes of world economy through its unique monetary policy. However, its organization is totally different from those of other U.S federal government agencies. Unlike other democratic government agencies, it does not follow the basic principle of representative democracy. It is organized and operated by bureaucratic technocrats who have been trained in the fields of financial corporations. It is exempted from regular monitoring by the U.S congress not to mention by the White House.

Even though the U.S President has a right to appoint one or two members of the Board of Governors in the Federal Reserve Board for every 4 years, the president cannot influence the Fed policy once he or she nominates the chairman of the Fed. In other words, during these 4 years of tenure, the members of the Board of Governors can adopt certain monetary policies based on their own judgment on the state of the economy without any institutional interruptions. This book introduces the brief history of the U.S Fed, and explains how this federal bank has gained its unique institutional independence and the relative autonomy throughout about 1 hundred years of its history.

Economic scene in the late 1970s

However, this book is not merely about the modern history of the US Federal Reserve system. It is more about its economic policies and their significant effects on the U.S economy on macro level as well as their global consequences in the 1980s. The 1970s in the US economic history was the age of turbulent economic malfunction imposed by oil shock and persistent inflationary pressures. The rapid increase in the price of crude oil initiated by Middle Eastern oil producing countries affected badly on the U.S economy. Furthermore, long lasting economic growth, traditionally sustained by liberal Keynesian government’s massive fiscal deficits, was turning into persistent inflationary expectation.

To use economic jargon, at that time every economic agent from household to big firm started to gain “rational expectation,” based on its past experiences of continuous inflation, that overall price level would continue to rise in the future: ordinary wage earners tried to raise their nominal wages in order to prevent their wages’ real purchasing power from falling; Every corporation tried to raise the price of its products in order to retrieve its probable losses from nominal wage increase and increasing capital cost.

Admittedly, most economic agents do not know exactly to what extent the future inflation rate will be. However, this uncertainty for the future does not play a role as an antidote for inflationary pressures but intensifies these inflationary pressures at an unprecedented level. Nobody knows whether my previous wage bargaining was appropriate or not. Nobody knows whether your firm’s previous price markup was at a relevant level. However, one thing is certain: Even though you have bid up your nominal wage too much, or your executive managers have increased the price markup too much, it will not matter unless the whole economic system turns its direction abruptly.

Inflation – who gain and who lose

In this sense, the inflation itself does not do any harm to both the owners of the firms and those who sell their labor force in the market as long as they can receive higher nominal wages and profits in accordance with the inflation. But continuous overall price increase does harm to those who finance the operation of corporations. In modern eras, those who accumulate huge amount of money (either from their previous investment on productive capital or from robbery, either from their previous industry or from their parents’ huge heir does not matter) usually invest their money in financial markets in order to make more money.

Traditionally, most capitalist firms and corporations borrow their “capital cost” for new plants, factories, new machines, etc., as well as “labor cost” from commercial banks. Banks usually lend them from their own financial assets and savings deposited by ordinary citizens. However, modern capitalist market has also developed different kinds of financial markets including “bonds market,” “money market,” “stock market,” etc., as well as highly sophisticated financial techniques to facilitate various financial transactions.

These financial markets are no longer composed solely of private entrepreneurs and individual investors; the government has been one of the most significant players in the market. Both private firms and government borrow their budgetary or fiscal expenditures by selling their meticulously decorated papers called “stocks” and “bonds,” all of which are certifying their financial assets and liabilities of future payment. The “premium” financial investors are supposed to gain from their investment risk is usually determined by nominal “interest rates” printed on the fore front of the financial certificates issued by borrowers.

However, once the general price level started to rise and remain at an extraordinarily high level, the real “arbitrage” which had induced the owners of financial assets to invest in the market would be reduced substantially. Let us suppose that you will be paid back 10% of annual interest 3 years after now when you buy a newly issued government bond at $1000 cost. You will receive $300 interest from your bond after three years or $100 interest per year during three consecutive years in the future.

In spite of this interest gain, if the inflation will be continued at an annual rate of 8%, your $100 interest per year will turn out to be 2% losses. Even though you will earn10% “nominal interest” from your first financial investment, the “real purchasing power” which your interest earning has will be minus from your original investment. In this way, If inflationary pressures are allowed to continue, most financial asset holders will not have any other choices but to tolerate their substantial losses from investment or decide to withdraw their financial assets from the market.

Paul Krugman, Peddling Prosperity – Economic Sense and Nonsense in the Age of Diminished Expectations, New York: WW. Norton & Company, 1994

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0393312925/qid=1123532989/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/002-4015594-3319237

Paul Krugman, an economics professor at Princeton University, is one of the most well-known scholars in the U.S. Unlike common sense, however, his fame is not from his journalist activities as an opinion editor of the New York Times, but from his ability to offer the most succinct and clearest explanations of current U.S economic affairs. Krugman succeeds in revealing his brilliant talent as an economist in another book, Peddling Prosperity – Economic sense and nonsense in the age of Diminished Expecations (New York: WW. Norton & Company, 1994).

This book deals with the interaction between economic ideas and politics in the U.S from 1973 to early 1990s. More specifically, the author focuses on “the interplay between economists and politicians, about how politicians try to find economists with ideas that they can package, and how economists both develop ideas and try to translate ideas into political influence.”(p.5)

In order to show this interplay, Krugman distinguishes “professional economists” doing research at universities from “economic entrepreneurs” who are ready to translate profound economic ideas into the simplistic version of policy prescriptions for politicians.

According to Krugman, the chosen period for research can be characterized by “the age of diminished economic expectations” in which economic growth and overall standard of livings of the U.S has decreased due to the continuous slowdown of labor productivity, rapid inflation and huge “twin (both trade and budget) deficits.”

In this sense, Paul Krugman’s previous book, The Age of Diminished Expectation – U.S Economic Policy in the 1990s (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1990, 1994, 1997, 1999) is a good source to understand what problems the U.S economy has faced and how the government tries to treat those issues. However, while his previous book deals mainly with economic problems and the government’s policy responses, this book focuses more on the underlying economic ideas from which certain economic policy packages have been developed.

From that year, according to Krugman, U.S academia has been influenced by conservative economic ideas such as “monetarism” and “rational expectation school” represented by Milton Friedman and Robert Lucas respectively. Krugman argues that under these conservative influences, a group of policy entrepreneurs, whom he calls “supply-siders” came to the forefront between the realm of academia and political parties as economic advisers to the President and other Republican politicians under both Reagan and Bush administrations.

But, according to Krugman, the ideas of supply-siders not only caused detrimental effects to the U.S trade deficits but also aggravated income inequality among social classes. The underlying policy prescription to the U.S slowdown of productivity and inflation was radical tax cuts and reduction of the government spending. They argue that the U.S Americans have been suffering from heavy burden of taxes, and this in turn reduced the potential source of investment. With its surplus budget, supply-siders argued, the unmonitored government wasted huge amounts of money for bureaucrats and the undeserving poor.

These policy packages were actually adopted by both Reagan and Bush administration. However, the result was a huge and widening income gap between the rich and the poor, as well as budget and trade deficits partly due to excessive military spending.

Due to these disappointing results, there emerged new liberal ideas emphasizing “imperfect market competition” and “the asymmetry of information” in the market. These liberal economists argued that the market was not exempt from turbulent business cycles even when we assumed the “rationality of economic agents.” Furthermore, every economic development has been influenced by its own institutional arrangement and past history. This “path-dependent” property of the market opens the door for the government’s active interventionist policy.

In this way, Krugman points out that the ideological pendulum swung from the prevalent attacks on Keynesian interventionist state to liberal Keynesianism. The theoretical hegemony, escaped from the hands of right-wing conservatives, once again became dominated by liberal economists.

However, there has been also another type of policy entrepreneur, one ready to offer a simplistic version of neo-Keynesianism for Democratic Party politicians. But at this time their focus is not on domestic policy but on international trade area.

Krugman names them “strategic traders” because their main argument is that the U.S government should subsidize certain corporations in value-added industry in order for them to compete with other firms abroad in the global market. In other words, they claim that it is necessary for the government to support strategic corporations in order to reduce trade deficits and raise domestic productivity.

Apart from some simple questions such as who can decide what the strategic firms are, and whether this kind of thinking is simply based on old-fashioned strategic decision making model for business corporations which boomed in the 1960-70s, in other words, whether this idea is based on simple analogy between the business firms in domestic market and national economy as a whole in global context, Krugman argues that strategic traders have the following serious problems.

Firstly, strategic traders overestimate the magnitude and the effects of international trade on the U.S economy. Even though the U.S has involved in global economy, the real percentage rate of the amount of international trade only amounts to 10% of GDP. Furthermore, even though the percentage rate of traditional manufacturing sectors measured in the GDP only accounts for 20%, strategic traders are misleading the reality and may distort the rational allocation of resources by paying exclusive attention to the significance of manufacturing sectors. Their common slogan is that the government should subsidize strategic manufacturing sector to let them win global competition.

Secondly, strategic traders unjustifiably link two unrelated points: the productivity growth and global competitiveness. Productivity growth is necessary for the overall increase in GDP and the improvement of the standard of living. But it has nothing to do with competition in global market. They argue government’s strategic support for selected corporations will bring about much more chance to win more market share in global market, and this in turn will be accompanied by domestic productivity growth. But according to Krugman it is not the case.

Finally, they also argue that strategic subsidies are necessary to develop high-value industry and secure job stability. But under what criteria can we decide which industry is better than others? Moreover, the increasing job instability stems not from aggravated global competitions but from the development of technology itself. Thus, “deindustrialization” or “industrial hollow” has nothing to do with globalization, and does not support strategic traders’ ideas.

In this way, Krugman criticizes various sheer economic non-senses advocated by policy entrepreneurs during two conservative administrations and the Clinton government. In so doing, he draws clear pictures of the history of the development of the U.S economic thinking.

On the whole, he seems to succeed in offering us how hegemonic shifts from the U.K to the U.S occur in the realm of economics. The most interesting point was that this process was not purely theoretical occurring in the ivory tower, but was also accompanied by the rise of the U.S economic hegemony after World War Ⅱ.

Considering the devastating repercussions of the Great Depression in the 1930s and the war, it was not surprising to see that both the theoretical pavement and barrier was Keynesian economics at that time. Krugman leads us to see how after-war-economists in the U.S have tried to overcome the Keynesian notion of active government policy in the name of monetarism and the rational expectation revolution since the 1970s.

He also shows us how the ideological pendulum swings from the myth of self-governing market to path-dependence approach to economic development. However, he introduces how so-called economic policy entrepreneurs have taken the place to access political power and mislead the reality in the name of self-righteous policy recommendations.

Written in plain English, Krugman’s book has strong merits with respect to its style and structure. Even ordinary readers will not find any serious difficulties in understanding the author’s main arguments. This book will be a useful guide for those who are interested in the history of U.S economic policy and real economic development process. Furthermore, readers interested in what kinds of economic policies the U.S government would likely adopt in the near future to deal with various global economic affairs will find this book a good guide.

* For those who want more information on current issues of the U.S economy, Joseph Stiglitz’s book, The Roaring Nineties – A new history of the World’s most prosperous decade will be a good supplementary material. You can compare these two famous economists’ arguments on current U.S economic affairs.

* If you are interested in the U.S financial and banking system, the book Secrets of the Temple – How the Federal Reserve runs the country will provide you with clear image of the operation and the function of the FED in the global context.

The Case of Andre Stein

Andre Stein is a professor of Human Communications at the University of Toronto. He is also practicing psychotherapy for Holocaust survivors. According to his own explanation, he survived the Holocaust when he was a young child. (255) Due to this personal experience, he might be invited to respond to Simon’s Dilemma.

Stein begins his essay with quotation of some sentences from The Sunflower. According to him, Simon’s silence as a response to Karl’s request for forgiveness was inevitable, choice-less choice considering the situations of the concentration camp Simon had to face.

With this introduction, he starts to deal with various important moral, religious and sociological issues raised by Simon’s story. They are all about Karl’s role in this story, the necessary condition for true repentance, the meaning of Simon’s two silences (one to Karl and the other to Karl’s mother) and the possibility of collective guilt or German’s collective responsibility of massacre of the Jew.

Firstly, there is an issue of Karl’s attitude. With respect to this question, Stein argues that Karl does not have any right to ask for forgiveness from a Jew in the first place. Karl, the dying SS man, could have followed his own religious faith and moral values of his family. However, it was the young SS murderer himself who volunteered the military personnel, and joined in collective massacre of the Jews. In this respect, Karl’s “moral pains” are not so greater than those of Simon and other Jewish prisoners, or are not pains at all. (251)

Furthermore, Stein argues that Karl does not show any truly repentant attitude toward Jewish people. Rather, the dying SS man had the nurse to bring him a Jew – “any Jew” – so that he could confess and receive the Jew’s forgiveness in order to die in peace in his own way. According to Stein, this kind of request is not only absurdity itself but also shows the fact that the dying SS man still think of the Jew as an object, or instrument of his own salvation, not as an individual subject or fellow human being. (252) In other words, Karl did not change his prejudice against the Jew even before his death, and this attitude cannot be understood as true repentance.

For this reason, those who blame Simon for his not forgiving Karl can only be understood that they have a greater affinity with the dying murderer than with his victims. Furthermore, those who grant forgiveness to the SS man show that they do not know about Nazism at all. In other words, only those who do not have the same experience as Simon and his colleagues did, namely only those who do not understand fully their situations can either blame Simon or argue that Karl deserves to be forgiven. (251)

Second question is about Simon’s silence. How can we understand and judge Simon’s silence in front of Karl’s death? As we already know, Simon kept silent while listening to the dying SS man’s confession and request for forgiveness. To Stein, Simon’s attitude was charitable enough to the dying SS man because he had listened to the young murderer’s confession not by “his own ears but also by ears belonged to the dead and other dying Jewish people such as Eli and his mother and his comrades” at the situation; Simon could have told Karl, “I heard what you did, how you feel about it. I can see how scared you are of dying with a burdened conscience. And this is all that I can do. I am not telling you how much I hate you, for the flames of my hatred would burn me before they would reach you. I cannot forgive you not only because I have no right to speak for your victims but also because you have forced me to listen to your story. For me this is another curse.” According to Stein, not saying these words, keeping silence was sufficient charity that Simon could show toward Karl. (253)

In addition, Simon did not treat the dying SS murderer as a monster. Instead, he respected the last humanity of a human who had lost his humanity; He listened to Karl’s confession quietly. He even flied away the fly from Karl’s head. Even though listening to Karl’s murderous misdeeds was another mental torture to Simon, he did neither condemn Karl nor get away from the chamber. To stein, this attitude was the most honorable deed that Simon, a Jewish concentration camp prisoner, could show toward the murderer. Thus, Stein argues that Simon should not be troubled anymore by those who blame him for not granting forgiveness to Karl. (253)

The final argument that Stein addresses is about Simon’s another silence in front of Karl’s mother and German’s collective responsibility of the crimes. Stein argues that Simon should have told the truth to Karl’s mother. To Stein, “Simon had a responsibility toward past and future victims to tell her the truth. And Karl’s mother had the responsibility of rising above her personal pain and telling the world what her son had done.” “Karl’s mother should have taken some of the burden of a guilty collective conscience. We must not forget that millions were murdered by a nation of good sons. Thus everyone who holds on to a pristine moral image of his or her children is a collaborator in their crime.” In this respect, Stein argues that “Karl’s parents are not guilt-free in his joining the SS. And by keeping the truth under cover, Simon enabled Karl’s mother to live a nasty lie.”(255)

* The Dalai Lama

The Dalai Lama is one of the most prestigious spiritual leaders of Buddhism not only in his own country, Tibet, but also around the world. After the Chinese government’s invasion and occupation of Tibet, he escaped to India in 1959. Since then he has continued to preach to Tibet people nonviolent and peaceful independence movement.

As a Buddhist spiritual leader, he asserts that we “should forgive persons who have committed crimes against oneself and humankind.”(129) According to him, however, this forgiveness has nothing to do with forgetting those atrocities. Instead, it is necessary not to forget in order to prevent such atrocities from reoccurring. Thus, his opinion to Simon’s dilemma is to forgive, but never forget.

However, Simon has no right to forgive the dying SS man on behalf of other victims in the first place. As a respected Buddhist leader, the Dalai Lama has to say that we should forgive criminals. But it is very hard for ordinary man and woman to follow his maxim.

* Mary Gordon + Cynthia Ozick

Mary Gordon is a novelist and a professor of English at Barnard College. I do not have any clues for understanding why she has been invited to respond to Simon’s dilemma, but her opinion is one of the clearest ones. Instead of asking how Simon should have behaved in such a circumstance, she asks what the dying Nazi expected from a desperate Jew. According to Gordon, Karl’s request to forgiveness from Simon was a mere “narcissistic act,” not a moral one.

From this perspective, she argues that the dying SS man’s request for forgiveness was wrong in following two reasons: firstly, by asking forgiveness, the dying SS man was asking Simon to “serve as a public symbol for all Jews.” However, Simon was not able to be such a public symbol in that circumstance. In other words, he was not in the position granting forgiveness on behalf of others. Thus, the dying SS man was asking something impossible from Simon; secondly, the dying Nazi misunderstood the meaning of confession. Even in Catholic Church, according to Gordon, sinners must acknowledge their guilt publicly before asking for absolution if their crimes had affected the public. Thus, Simon, neither as a Catholic priest nor as somebody who has moral authority, cannot grant forgiveness to Karl.

Like Mary Gordon, Cynthia Ozick is also a famous novelist. Her essay is composed of 4 parts, each of them dealing with the characteristics of Hitler’s Third Reich, differences between vengeance and forgiveness as a response to crimes, and the significance of moral responsibility of intellectuals. Even though her essay is filled with so many metaphoric expressions, it is evident from the beginning that her position to the question of forgiveness is explicit and stubborn; she asserts that it is impossible to forgive the Nazi soldier.

Ozick starts her essay by mentioning the fact that the dying SS Nazi has Catholic education. However, whether or not the dying SS man had Catholic education before does not have any significant meaning in this story. So this fact has nothing to do with the question of forgiveness.

Secondly, Ozick reveals that the Third Reich was a sort of Moloch state demanding human’s live flesh and blood to live on by citing the Second Commandment of the bible. If that is the case, how can we deal with these collective crimes? Ozick asserts the necessity of vengeance, not forgiveness. She argues that forgiveness is possible only when there is a possibility of repentance on the condition that there will not be the same mistake. However, if a murderer kills somebody, this murder cannot be “revocable” and “reversible.” In these extreme cases, she argues that there is no room for forgiveness to the dying Nazi soldier.

Of course, Ozick admits, even if we revenge somebody, this act will not also be able to bring the dead back. Yes, it is true. But this vengeance can bring public justice to evil. Contrary to public justice, forgiveness sometimes became merciless to victims, not to murderers. “Vengeance, only vengeance, knows pity for the victims,” she says.

In the last part of the essay, Ozick deals with the problem of moral responsibility. As we already know, the dying SS personnel was not the same as other brutal SS soldiers; he had a moral temperament. He was educated in Catholic Church. He was also intelligent enough to think what his crimes would bring about.

However, Ozick argues that this difference cannot be a tool for immunity privilege of the SS man’s crimes. Rather, the Nazi soldier should be punished more severely than other brainless brutes because he committed the same crimes even though he had conscience and sensibility. “The intelligent man of conscience also shovels in the babies, and it does not matter that he does it without exaltation. Conscience, education, insight – nothing stops him. He goes on shoveling. --- He is a morally sensitive man, and he shovels babies to glut the iron stomach of the idol. --- The morally sensitive SS man goes on shoveling, and shoveling, and shoveling.”(219) Here Ozick seems to insinuate the heavy moral responsibility of the intellectuals.

*  Dith Pran

Dith Pran is a New York Times journalist and a survivor of Cambodian Khmer Rouge regime’s labor camp. As a survivor of the brutal military regime’s concentration camp, he says that “he can never forgive or forget what the top leadership of the Khmer Rouge has done to him.”(230)

However, he asserts that we should differentiate ordinary soldiers from the leadership of the regime because what they did was to follow the orders from the above under the threat of death. Even though these ordinary soldiers are not without guilt, “there is a chasm between someone who intentionally plots to destroy the very souls of people and someone who is not only stupid and brainwashed, but fears death enough to be forced to do wrong.”(232) In this perspective, Pran says he would have forgiven the dying SS man if he were Simon.

His argument on (the necessity of the) distinction between the top leadership of Khmer Rouge and ordinary soldiers is very interesting point and seems to be very useful especially when we judge the degree of crimes. However, the problem is that this kind of distinction is not evident from the beginning. Sometimes it may be very difficult to differentiate those who are mainly responsible for the crimes from those who involuntarily follow the orders. How about those who voluntarily followed the orders or voluntarily involved in such crimes without any physical or mental threats? Should we forgive them? How and why?

Furthermore, it may be also argued that the distinction between two groups of criminals has nothing to do with forgiveness. Even though someone admits the necessity of the distinction between two or three (or more) groups of people according to their relative degrees of crimes, he or she can also argue that they do not deserve to be forgiven. In other words, the differentiation of the degree of crime has nothing to do with forgiveness because it is not about moral judgment but about the issue of legal punishment.

Thus, once again the question of forgiveness still remains untouched. Should we forgive the dying SS man. His relative degree of guilt is, of course, slighter than Hitler or Himmler. He was not an architect of the notorious gas chamber. However, he is not like “ordinary soldier” Pran mentioned. He was engaged himself in the massacre of the Jews even though he was repenting his crimes. Should we forgive him?

* Mattheiu Ricard

Mattheiu Ricard is a Buddhist monk and serving as a French language interpreter for the Dalai Lama. As a sincere Buddhist, he says that “forgiveness is always possible and one should always forgive” in any cases. According to him, “forgiveness does not mean absolution, but an opportunity for “the inner transformation” of both victim and perpetrator.” Forgiveness is a way of transforming the victim’s own grief, resentment or hatred into good.

Furthermore, the author argues that Simon should have said to the dying SS man that he should pray that he would be able to atone for his crimes by doing as much good as he had done evil in his future.” As a Buddhist, the author also argues that Simon should have felt compassion not just for the soldier and his victims, but for all sentient beings in the world until endless cycles of suffering end.

Even though the feeling of mercy and pity is one of the most significant virtues in Buddhist teachings, however, I think the author’s argument does not have any relevance to Simon’s case. Firstly, the argument that “an action cannot not be considered negative or sinful in and of itself” has nothing to do with true Buddhism. As far as I know, Buddhism is not a religion without any moral, ethical judgments regarding human behaviors. Rather, Buddhism is based on the most ethical and highly moral sentiments on human being. In other words, every human is always deemed to be judged by their action.

Secondly, if human beings are surely supposed to suffer continuously in later world due to their misdeeds in this world, there is no room for forgiveness in this world. Nobody can forgive someone who commits crimes because he or she will surely be suffering someday in the later world due to his or her own deeds. Thus if we once accept the principle of chain rule of suffering, we don’t have to decide to forgive or not to forgive the criminals. In other words, this basic circular viewpoint of the world contradicts to another Buddhist principles; so-called unconditional possibility of forgiveness.

Thirdly, I cannot accept this Buddhist’s indiscriminative attitudes toward victims and perpetrators. It may be true that “inner transformation” is the most important moment for both victims and perpetrator. However, most innocent victims are already dead without having chances for what is called inner transformation or giving forgiveness to perpetrators. The problem was that Simon was expected to forgive the dying perpetrator on behalf of other Jews who are already dead. Thus, the argument on the significance of the moment of inner transformation can only be uttered at the expense of the ignorance of sacrificed victims.

Finally, it is surprising to see this Buddhist’s ignorance of the situations. Ricard does not want to see the situations where Simon was forced into. Simon was under the continuous threats of death in concentration camp. If he really knew what was going on in the camp, can he still argue that Simon should deliver these kinds of abstract Buddhist cannon – Buddhist would have felt compassion not just for the soldier and his victims but for all sentiment beings until endless cycles of suffering ends - in such a horrible situation?

In sum, Mattheiu Richard’s opinion seems to be based on either so highly unrealistic principles or total ignorance of the situations that Simon would not be able to find proper answer to his dilemma.

* Desmond Tutu

Desmond Tutu is a South African bishop and a member of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. He argues that Simon should have forgiven Karl on his death chamber. In order to justify his response, he cites various examples of forgiveness in his home country. Among them are those who “have been tortured, whose loved ones were abducted, killed and buried secretly,”(267) but in front of the commission’s testimony say that they are ready to forgive. Nelson Mandela’s sublime attitude toward former Apartheid regime was also cited as a good example of forgiveness.

However, there seems to be nontrivial difference between these examples Tutu cites and Simon’s case. Contrary to Simon’s case, former victims including Nelson Mandela in South Africa are all on the winner’s position both morally and politically when they say they can forgive the former perpetrators.

For them, forgiveness may be “practical politics.” But, for Simon, who had to face ceaseless threat of death and humiliation without any hope for surviving in concentration camp, forgiveness cannot be conceived as practical politics.

From this significantly different circumstance emerge Simon’s dilemma: he had to decide to forgive or not to forgive the dying SS man when he was a prisoner of concentration camp, not as a investigation commission member; he had to accept lots of innocent Jewish people’s death as their common fate in the camp; under this gruesome circumstance he also had to decide whether or not he could forgive the dying, repenting SS man on behalf of other Jewish victims.

Once this different situation is considered, then the question of forgiveness can be justifiably brought back to Tutu and other South African leaders in different form: Can you forgive them if you were still in the position of victims? Can you forgive white racist police officers, who are torturing you, intimidating you, killing your loving sons and daughters, if you are still forced into as a prisoner of Apartheid camp? Can you justifiably say that forgiveness is always practical politics in such a situation?

* Harry Wu

Harry Wu is a Chinese writer and a human rights activist. He had experienced Chinese prisoner’s labor camp for 19 years. Instead of dealing with Simon’s moral question of forgiveness directly, he introduces his own experiences as a political conscience prisoner of communist labor camps; he was detained and imprisoned due to his refusal to join in self criticism and “struggle session.” He experienced harsh treatments and humiliations by the prisoner guards.

Upon released from the camp, he had a chance to meet Comrade Ma who played major role in his indictment and imprisonment. However, she did not apologized to him or asked for his forgiveness. Instead, she advised him to forget the past.

Harry Wu thought that Comrade Ma was a typical character the Chinese communist regime had produced. Compared to the dying SS soldier, Harry Wu exclaimed that there had been no such a person like Karl who had asked for forgiveness in China. Rather, at least for him, communist China was filled with so many “Comrade Ma” who did not care about an individual’s well-being.

In the end, Wu says that he would not have forgiven the Nazi soldier on his deathbed, but “I would have been able to say to him: I understand why you were a part of a horrible and vicious society. You are responsible for your own actions but everyone else in this society shares that same responsibility with you.”(274)

This book is about the U.S economy in 1990s, what the author calls “the age of diminished expectation.” Paul Krugman, a professor of economics at Princeton University and New York Times columnist, aims to deal with main economic problems and successes of the current U.S. economy.

In order to present the reasons for economic success and follies, he traces back to the early 1930. Unlike the age of welfare, current U.S economy is characterized by the slowdown of labor productivity since 1980s, increasing income gap among social classes and the fear of rapid inflation. Thus, according to Krugman, without the turnaround of productivity growth, the contemporary pressing issues in the U.S economy such as trade and budget deficit, financial market volatility cannot be solved.

This book is composed of 5 chapters, dealing with the roots of economic welfare after the 2nd world war, current economic problems such as twin deficit and inflation. While analyzing these issues, he also introduces how the U.S government and the Fed have adopted economic and public policies to deal with the problems not only arising from domestic market but also from international financial market.

(3) R.M. Brown

R.M Brown is a Professor of Theology and Ethics at the Pacific School of Religion. As a lifetime theologian and ethical philosopher, he may resolve the questions Simon had to face.

He starts his essay from the memory of a commemoration ceremony he attended in Warsaw in 1979. Even though he admits that the slogan, “never forget, never forgive” should be maintained as a maxim in most human atrocities, he also offers Nelson Mandela’s and Tomas Borge’s sublime attitudes toward their perpetrators as good examples for the possibility of opposite reasoning; in their cases, even though they are not so common, forgiveness sometimes does much more than the simple punishment can.

Based on this preliminary sketch, Professor Brown says that if he were Simon, he “would have urged the dying SS man to address his plea directly to God, and throw himself on the possibility of Divine Mercy.”(123)

This main argument on Simon’s dilemma is based on his own reflections on Elie Wiesel’s theological and ethical questions. According to Professor Brown, Elie Wiesel raised two serious questions in his novel: “Where is God in all these atrocities?” and “what is there left for us to do?”(123-24)

Brown confesses that he could not find any proper answers to these questions. Thus, the only thing he can do is to urge to follow and respect God’s rules without doubting the omnipresence of God. “And if we do so, perhaps, just perhaps, a world will begin to emerge in which we do not have to ask unanswerable questions any longer.”(124)

With respect to Professor Brown’s responses, I wonder whether it was possible for Simon to urge Karl to pray for forgiveness to his God, not to Simon, in that situation. Maybe Karl, the dying SS man, already prayed for absolution to his God. But it might not be sufficient for him to feel that he could die in peace. That was perhaps the reason why he made up his mind to confess his crimes in the face of a Jew, Simon. If that is the case, Professor Brown’s ‘humble opinion’ may not be useful answers or even advice for Simon.

(4) Robert Coles

Robert Coles is a professor of both Psychiatry and Medical Humanities and Social Ethics at Harvard University. As a scholar who has studied ordinary men’s and women’s vulnerable and fragile mentalities, he does not hesitate to recognize Simon’s consistent moral attitude toward the dying SS man.

But if he were in Simon’s shoes, he says, he “would pray for the Lord’s forgiveness” of the dying SS man, even though “he would have turned his eyes away in a tearful rage.”

The reason for this forgiveness is not because he believes that everyone is alike as a “sinner” under God, but because he knows the absolute finiteness of human beings.

This seems to me that we, as ordinary human beings with limitations, don’t have any absolute rights or authority to decide to forgive or not to forgive somebody instead of God.

At any rate, even after he uttered he would have forgiven Karl, he added that he had no “conviction of righteousness.” Robert Coles’ stumbling attitude reminds me of Simon’s silence. In the end, Robert Coles himself may not know how to deal with the dilemma.

(5) The Dalai Lama

The Dalai Lama is one of the most prestigious spiritual leaders of Buddhism not only in his own country, Tibet, but also around the world. After the Chinese government’s invasion and occupation of Tibet, he escaped to India in 1959. Since then he has continued to preach to Tibet people nonviolent and peaceful independence movement.

As a Buddhist spiritual leader, he asserts that we “should forgive persons who have committed crimes against oneself and humankind.”(129) According to him, however, this forgiveness has nothing to do with forgetting those atrocities. Instead, it is necessary not to forget in order to prevent such atrocities from reoccurring. Thus, his opinion to Simon’s dilemma is to forgive, but never forget.

The followings are the summary of various responses to Simon's dilemma. As I already posted, this essay is based on the review of the book, The Sunflower.

(1) Jean Amery

Jean Amery was born in Vienna. He is a European critic and essayist. After German’s invasion and the proclamation of the Nuremberg Laws, he fled from his native country and joined the Resistance movement in Belgium. Due to this activity, he was captured by the Gestapo and sent to concentration camps. After the liberation, he wrote a book based on his personal experiences as a Holocaust victim and survivor.

He starts his essay by expressing his best regards to Simon for his continuous investigative activities as a commission member for investigation of NAZI crimes. At the same time, Amery explains his distinctive position, as one who does not have any moral authority to judge Simon’s behaviors, as a survivor from the concentration camp. He also wants his opinion to be understood as a private one with no significant influence on others. With these preliminary introductions, Amery argues that the question of forgiveness has two different aspects in this case: a psychological one and a political aspect.

Firstly, for him, whether to forgive Karl or not was dependent on various accidental factors which might influence Simon at such particular situations. If Simon, for example, had chances to meet one of decent SS mans who treated him relatively more gently than those of other typical SS soldiers, his decision might have been different. In this way, psychologically speaking, whether Simon should forgive Karl or not does not pose any serious moral question.

Secondly, Amery also argues that forgiving or not-forgiving is quite an irrelevant question, because this question belongs to the realm of theology or morality. Thus, the question as such does not pose any serious dilemma once we reject any metaphysics of morality and religious principles.

Amery himself want to see the whole question only in this political perspective. Thus, for him, the question simply does not exist. There is no metaphysical norm or morality upon which Simon’s attitudes can be evaluated.

However, does not this argument avoid moral questions Simon wants to discuss by shifting it to another terrain? With respect to this probable doubt, Amery said “no.” As a previous Restistance activist and as a firm advocate of political justice, he recommends that we should leave Simon’s dilemma (“the moral-theological, moral-philosophical” question of forgiveness) in the hands of professional philosophers and university professors.

In this way, Amery assures Simon not to bother himself with this metaphysical question. Even if Simon forgave the dying SS man at that time, according to Amery, nobody can blame Simon.

In my opinion, however, Jean Amery’s simple solution to the problem is not sufficient for Simon’s dilemma, because Amery’s political perspective is simply to transpose the question into another terrain. It is not the solution to Simon’s moral questions but only recommendations for self-assurance.

(2) Mark Goulden

Mark Goulden was a British journalist and publisher. After introducing his moral judgement on atrocities and inhumanity, Goulden asserts that nobody has “the privilege of granting forgiveness.”

This does not mean that we should ascribe the question of forgiveness to the realm of divinity. Rather, he criticizes any attempt to close down the dialogues about forgiveness by saying that only God can forgive. Instead, he expresses his own opinion saying that “if the dead cannot forgive, neither can the living.” He goes on “How can you forgive monsters who burned people alive in public?”

With respect to Simon’s dilemma, he does not hesitate to say that, if he were Simon, “I would have silently left the deathbed having made quite certain there was now one Nazi less in the world!” even though he admits the possibility that the answer may be different from person to person.

Will Simon accept or agree with Goulden’s attitude? From a personal aspect, as Goulden agrees, there is no single answer to the question. Thus, nobody can blame Simon’s decision. From a political perspective, Simon will surely agree with Goulden’s opinions that every citizen should fight against inhumanity and brutal crimes.

Simon Wiesenthal, The Sunflower - On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness, New York: Schocken Books, 1998.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0805210601/qid=1121705319/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/002-4647197-6902411

This book is based on the real experiences of the author. It is a story of a Jew (Simon) who has been forced into a concentration camp in Nazi’s era. Under the cruel surveillance, Simon and other Jewish prisoners had no other options but to comply with Nazi soldiers’ brutal maltreatments and humiliations as their common fate.

The story proceeds along with time sequences. But the plot is not chronological, because the author sometimes overlaps his past memories and episodes with the present. The title, “Sunflower” originated from Simon’s observations on a military cemetery in which each grave was surrounded by planted sunflowers. On his gaze, the flower “seemed to absorb the sunshine and draw it down into the darkness of the grounds.”(14) With the help of the flower, even the dead were receiving sun lights and messages from the living world. Even dead soldiers were blessing with living things’ commemoration! In this sense, the sunflower is not a simple flower; it represents the connections between the dead and living world; it may be used to symbolize desperate hope to survive in the camp.

However, the main theme of the book is not limited by the author’s pathetic personal experiences; the book raises significant questions related with human existence. One day, Simon was brought to a wounded SS soldier, Karl, who had murdered Jewish people in one village. Karl wants to die in peace by confessing his previous crimes to Simon. He requests Simon to forgive him.

But how can Simon forgive this SS soldier? Even though he himself is wounded seriously and dying, his colleagues are still slaughtering a lot of innocent Jewish people. Furthermore, Simon is not free from the concentration camp; he is under the persistent threats of death by the same German soldier as this wounded SS personnel. If you were in that situation, could it be possible for you to forgive him and his crimes? How and in what way? If not, how would you behave? This book poses these difficult questions.

In front of the dying SS soldier’s deathbed, the author, Simon, kept silent because he did not know how to respond to Karl’s confession and his request for forgiveness. He walked out of the hospital without answering the request. However, Simon could not easily put down the burdens Karl left on him. Thus, he asked to his closest colleague prisoners in the concentration camp.

One of his friends, Josek, who had strong religious faith, told Simon that he had no rights to forgive the dying SS soldier’s crimes on behalf of other Jews. On the other hand, Authur, a man of cynicism, did not mind the Simon’s dilemma seriously because he took it for granted that Simon did not forgive the dying SS man. Even though their responses were based on somewhat different reasons and personalities, they showed the same responses. Unfortunately, Simon could not be content with their conclusion.

However, Simon and his companions could not have enough times to discuss about and reach to any conclusion on the problem, because they are all under continuous threats of death in the camp; “it was luxury,”(75) as Authur said, for them to discuss the question of forgiveness. Someday, if they survive the camp, there will be plenty of times to discuss the question, and there may be different viewpoints on the questions, even though nobody except them can understand fully the situations where they have been forced into.

Two years later, only Simon survived the camp. Even after his closest friends were dead, he never ceased to be thinking about the question of forgiveness. One day in another Nazi concentration camp, Simon had a chance to talk about his dilemma with Bolek who had been once a priest in Poland. According to him, every religion has the same attitudes toward the question of forgiveness in principles: even though there might be some controversies whether or not someone can forgive wrongs that have been done to others, not to him or her directly, on behalf of others, if the sinner is truly repentant he or she deserves to be forgiven. “Repentance is the most important element in seeking forgiveness,” said Bolek (83).

However, his response was not enough for Simon to resolve his dilemma, even though he realized that he felt some pity for the dying SS man. Simon realized that the feeling of pity might be different from forgiveness, even though pity could be a significant step toward forgiveness. And he also cast doubt on the religious principles Bolek said. Even though true repentance may be a necessary condition for forgiveness, it is surely not sufficient because nobody can forgive crimes done to others without delegated authorities from the victims. In this respect, the dead Josek was right; Simon had no rights to forgive Karl on behalf of other victimized Jews by Karl’s bullets.

Soon after the liberation from the camp, Simon joined a commission for the investigation of Nazi crimes, “not only because it was impossible for him simply to restart his ordinary life, but also because he thought the work of commission might help him regain his faith in humanity.”(84) After years, by chances on a journey, he could remember the whole memories of sunflower which had been ingrained in his deep unconsciousness. “I remembered the soldier’s cemetery at Lemberg, the hospital and the dead SS man on whose grave a sunflower would now be growing…”(84)

One day in the summer of 1946 Simon took a chance to visit to Stuttgart where the dead SS man was born and raised. He decides to visit to Karl’s family. “I wanted to see the SS man’s mother. If I talked with her, perhaps it would give me a clear picture of his personality. It was not curiosity that inspired me but a vague feeling of duty...and perhaps the hope of exorcizing forever one of the most unpleasant experiences of my life.” (84-85)

However, once he met Karl’s mother he realized that her husband was dead as his son was during the war. Even though Simon wanted to talk with Karl’s mother to confirm whether what Karl told him about his childhood and family was true or not, and by doing so, Simon secretly hoped that he might be able to be free from the moral dilemma Karl had left on him, he was not able to find proper ways of talking about the dead Karl’s story with Karl’s mother. Instead, Simon found that he had no other options but to be listening to this grief-stricken widow’s memories of good son. She was living on and “only for the memories of her husband and her son.”(89)

Contrary to his original secret hope – “But was I not secretly hoping that I might hear something that contradicted it [what Karl told me]?,” Karl, the dying SS man was sincere in his death chamber. What Karl told him was true: Karl was such a good boy in his family; he was influenced by religion and faithful to God when he was a child; but one day he joined the Hitler Youth. After the war begins, he volunteered as the SS military personnel. From then on, he became a beast-like murderer. Finally, on his death chamber, Karl wanted to confess his crimes that he committed against innocent Jewish people and to die in peace through repentance.

Thus, unlike his expectation, Simon found that “the solution to his problem was not a single step nearer…” (94) Rather, while listening to Karl’s mother, her innocent memories of good son and family, Simon had to contemplate another uneasy question which was related to the conditions and the possibilities of collective guilt. As Simon repeatedly reminds us, Hitler and the Nazis seized the political power not by the threats of gun and knife but by ordinary German’s political approval through representative election. If ordinary German citizens protested against their government, or at least if they did not approve the legitimacy of the regime, was it possible for a handful of Nazi military soldiers to commit genocides? “Accumulation of mistrust” and “fears” cannot be an excuse at all. Then who are responsible for war crimes against the Jews? Are only military soldiers to be blamed for?

Instead of relieving his heavy burden from his shoulders, he was reflecting that “there were millions of such families anxious only for peace and quiet in their own little nests. These were the mounting blocks by which the criminals climbed to power and kept it.”(91) More precisely, he says, “even if he [or she] has no personal guilt, he [or she] must share the shame of it. As a member of a guilty nation [community or country,] he cannot simply walk away like a passenger leaving a tramcar, whenever he chooses. It is the duty of [nations or countries] to find out who was guilty. And the non-guilty must dissociate themselves publicly from the guilty.”(93)

Simon did not tell Karl’s mother about her son’s crimes. He, once again, kept silent. He left “without diminishing in any way the poor woman’s last surviving consolations – faith in the goodness of her son.”(94) Perhaps, it might be better for him to tell Karl’s mother the truth of her son, because “perhaps her tears might help to wash away some of the misery of the world.” (94) But, perhaps not.

In the end, Simon confesses to us that he still does not know how to behave under such circumstances. He still does not know whether his silence was right or not, whether his passive response can be justifiable or not. However, instead of carrying this profound moral question alone, he seems to decide to challenge the conscience of broader audiences by way of writing. That may be the reason why this book ends with the same question, but shared with readers, “What would I have done?” if I were Simon.

R. Heilbroner & L. Throw, Economics Explained - Everything You need to know about how the economy works and where it's going, New York: Simon & Schuster(Touchstone)