Madoff calls the U.S. government a ponzi scheme

Madoff to NY magazine: Government a Ponzi scheme
Sun Feb 27, 11:49 pm ET
NEW YORK (AP)– Wall Street swindler Bernard Madoff said in a magazine interview published Sunday that new regulatory reform enacted after the recent national financial crisis is laughable and that the federal government is a Ponzi scheme.

"The whole new regulatory reform is a joke," Madoff said during a telephone interview with New York magazine in which he discussed his disdain for the financial industry and for its regulators.

The interview was published on the magazine's website Sunday night.

Madoff did an earlier New York Times interview in which he accused banks and hedge funds of being "complicit" in his Ponzi scheme to fleece people out of billions of dollars. He said they failed to scrutinize the discrepancies between his regulatory filings and other information.

He said in the New York magazine interview the Securities and Exchange Commission "looks terrible in this thing," and he said the "whole government is a Ponzi scheme."

A Ponzi, or pyramid, scheme is a scam in which people are persuaded to invest through promises of unusually high returns, with early investors paid their returns out of money put in by later investors.

A court-appointed trustee seeking to recover money on behalf of the victims of Madoff's massive Ponzi scheme has filed a lawsuit against his primary banker, JPMorgan Chase, alleging the bank had suspected something wrong in his operation for years. The bank has denied any wrongdoing.

Madoff is serving a 150-year prison sentence in Butner, N.C., after pleading guilty in 2009 to fraud charges.

In the New York magazine interview, Madoff, 72, also said he was devastated by his son Mark Madoff's death and laments the pain he wrought on his family, especially his wife.

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"She's angry at me," Madoff said. "I mean, you know, I destroyed our family."

Mark Madoff, 46, hanged himself with a dog leash in his Manhattan apartment on the second anniversary of his father's arrest. He left behind a wife and four children, ages 2 to 18.

At the time of his suicide, federal investigators had been trying to determine if he, his brother and an uncle participated in or knew about the fraud. The relatives, who held management positions at the family investment firm, denied any wrongdoing.

Bernard Madoff has maintained that his family didn't know about his Ponzi scheme.

A U.S. Recovery Built on Low-Paying Jobs

The economy is not creating opportunities at the high end
Source: Bloomberg Business Week
By Joshua Zumbrun and Shobhana Chandra
Before she lost her job last November as a full-time health department caseworker in Aurora, Ill., Amy Valle was making $23 an hour. Now she's paid $10 an hour as a part-time assistant coordinator in an after-school program. "From here on out, it will be a struggle," says Valle, 32, whose husband lost his $50,000 government job and still is out of work after a year. "I don't feel like there's any place we can go to get what we were getting paid."

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While the unemployment rate dropped to 9 percent in January, from a two-decade peak of 10.1 percent in October 2009, many of the jobs people are now taking don't match the pay, the hours, or the benefits of the 8.75 million positions that vanished in the recession, according to Paul Ashworth, chief U.S. economist at Capital Economics in Toronto.

This may restrain wage and salary growth, limiting gains in consumer spending, which accounts for 70 percent of the U.S. economy. The good jobs that would trigger a solid boost in spending just don't seem to be there. "In the last recovery we were adding management jobs at this point, and this time it's disappointing," says Ashworth, who published a report on Jan. 27 about pre- and post-slump employment based on U.S. Labor Dept. data. "The very best jobs, we're still losing those."

Projections from the Bureau of Labor Statistics reinforce his pessimism. While the number of openings for food preparation and serving workers will grow by 394,000 in the decade ending in 2018, the average wage is only $16,430 including tips, based on 2008 data. Meanwhile, the number of posts for financial examiners, who work at financial-services firms to ensure regulatory compliance, will expand by just 11,100. The average pay for examiners is $70,930.

Lowe's (LOW), the second-largest U.S. home improvement retailer, typifies the reshuffling of the U.S. workforce. The chain, based in Mooresville, N.C., said on Jan. 25 it is eliminating 1,700 managers responsible for store operations, sales, and administration as profit growth trails that of the larger Home Depot (HD) chain. Meanwhile, Lowe's said it will add 8,000 to 10,000 weekend sales positions and is creating a new assistant store manager position.

The trend is troubling for the country's long-term prospects, says Edmund Phelps, who won the Nobel Prize for economics in 2006 and directs the Center on Capitalism and Society at Columbia University in New York. Businesses aren't innovating as much, so companies "just don't seem to require all those relatively high-paid workers they once did," he says.

The health-care industry is one example, the BLS said in a December report on the occupational outlook. As costs continue to rise, "tasks that were previously performed by doctors, nurses, dentists, or other health-care professionals increasingly are being performed by physician assistants, medical assistants, dental hygienists, and physical therapist aides."

Michael Greenstone, a former staff member for the White House Council of Economic Advisers, says it's "premature to make too much of where the particular job creation is occurring," because the "immediate issue is that there are too many people" out of work. "I'm not in favor of ditch-digging, but the first thing is to get more people employed," says Greenstone, an economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "Unemployment is a scourge of society right now, and it has to be the front-and-center issue."

Job hunters are adapting, with 60 percent prepared to settle for a full-time position they don't really want or one they're not qualified for, says Dennis Jacobe, chief economist for Washington-based Gallup, based on a survey he conducted last month.

Ken Niswonger, 51, a machine builder by training, spent five months looking for work after losing his job in October 2009. Unable to find anything in his field, he enrolled in a college computer security program to learn new skills. "I'm hoping I can find something entry-level," he says, adding that he'll have to begin his search for an information technology job before he finishes his program. "I'm well aware I might not get what I used to make," he says. "Who knows? Might get a job at $12 to $14 an hour. That's not even $30,000 a year."

The bottom line: Newly created jobs tend to be lower-paying than those they replaced. That will constrain consumer spending and economic growth.

Zumbrun is a reporter for Bloomberg News. Chandra is a reporter for Bloomberg News.

Definition of currency

Source: Wikipedia
In economics, the term currency can refer to a particular currency, for example, the Euro, or to the coins and banknotes of a particular currency, which comprise the physical aspects of a nation's money supply. The other part of a nation's money supply consists of bank deposits (sometimes called deposit money), ownership of which can be transferred by means of cheques, debit cards, or other forms of money transfer. Kareoke money and currency are money in the sense that both are acceptable as a means of payment.^[1]
Money in the form of currency has predominated throughout most of history. Usually (gold or silver) coins of intrinsic value (commodity money) have been the norm. However, nearly all contemporary money systems are based on fiat money – modern currency has value only by government order (fiat). Usually, the government declares the fiat currency (typically notes and coins issued by the central bank) to be legal tender, making it unlawful to not accept the fiat currency as a means of repayment for all debts, public and private.^[2][3]

History

Early currency

Currency evolved from two basic innovations, both of which had occurred by 2000 BC. Originally money was a form of receipting grain stored in temple granaries in Sumer in ancient Mesopotamia, then Ancient Egypt.
This first stage of currency, where metals were used to represent stored value, and symbols to represent commodities, formed the basis of trade in the Fertile Crescent for over 1500 years. However, the collapse of the Near Eastern trading system pointed to a flaw: in an era where there was no place that was safe to store value, the value of a circulating medium could only be as sound as the forces that defended that store. Trade could only reach as far as the credibility of that military. By the late Bronze Age, however, a series of international treaties had established safe passage for merchants around the Eastern Mediterranean, spreading from Minoan Crete and Mycenae in the northwest to Elam and Bahrain in the southeast. Although it is not known what functioned as a currency to facilitate these exchanges, it is thought that ox-hide shaped ingots of copper, produced in Cyprus may have functioned as a currency. It is thought that the increase in piracy and raiding associated with the Bronze Age collapse, possibly produced by the Peoples of the Sea, brought this trading system to an end. It was only with the recovery of Phoenician trade in the ninth and tenth centuries BC that saw a return to prosperity, and the appearance of real coinage, possibly first in Anatolia with Croesus of Lydia and subsequently with the Greeks and Persians. In Africa many forms of value store have been used including beads, ingots, ivory, various forms of weapons, livestock, the manilla currency, ochre and other earth oxides, and so on. The manilla rings of West Africa were one of the currencies used from the 15th century onwards to buy and sell slaves. African currency is still notable for its variety, and in many places various forms of barter still apply.

Coinage

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These factors led to the shift of the store of value being the metal itself: at first silver, then both silver and gold. Metals were mined, weighed, and stamped into coins. This was to assure the individual taking the coin that he was getting a certain known weight of precious metal. Coins could be counterfeited, but they also created a new unit of account, which helped lead to banking. Archimedes' principle provided the next link: coins could now be easily tested for their fine weight of metal, and thus the value of a coin could be determined, even if it had been shaved, debased or otherwise tampered with (see Numismatics).
In most major economies using coinage, copper, silver and gold formed three tiers of coins. Gold coins were used for large purchases, payment of the military and backing of state activities. Silver coins were used for midsized transactions, and as a unit of account for taxes, dues, contracts and fealty, while copper coins represented the coinage of common transaction. This system had been used in ancient India since the time of the Mahajanapadas. In Europe, this system worked through the medieval period because there was virtually no new gold, silver or copper introduced through mining or conquest.^{[citation needed]} Thus the overall ratios of the three coinages remained roughly equivalent.

Paper money

Main article: Banknote

In premodern China, the need for credit and for circulating a medium that was less of a burden than exchanging thousands of copper coins led to the introduction of paper money, commonly known today as banknotes. This economic phenomenon was a slow and gradual process that took place from the late Tang Dynasty (618–907) into the Song Dynasty (960–1279). It began as a means for merchants to exchange heavy coinage for receipts of deposit issued as promissory notes from shops of wholesalers, notes that were valid for temporary use in a small regional territory. In the 10th century, the Song Dynasty government began circulating these notes amongst the traders in their monopolized salt industry. The Song government granted several shops the sole right to issue banknotes, and in the early 12th century the government finally took over these shops to produce state-issued currency. Yet the banknotes issued were still regionally valid and temporary; it was not until the mid 13th century that a standard and uniform government issue of paper money was made into an acceptable nationwide currency. The already widespread methods of woodblock printing and then Bi Sheng's movable type printing by the 11th century was the impetus for the massive production of paper money in premodern China.
At around the same time in the medieval Islamic world, a vigorous monetary economy was created during the 7th–12th centuries on the basis of the expanding levels of circulation of a stable high-value currency (the dinar). Innovations introduced by Muslim economists, traders and merchants include the earliest uses of credit,^[4] cheques, promissory notes,^[5] savings accounts, transactional accounts, loaning, trusts, exchange rates, the transfer of credit and debt,^[6] and banking institutions for loans and deposits.^[6]
In Europe, paper money was first introduced in Sweden in 1661. Sweden was rich in copper, thus, because of copper's low value, extraordinarily big coins (often weighing several kilograms) had to be made.
The advantages of paper currency were numerous: it reduced transport of gold and silver, and thus lowered the risks; it made loaning gold or silver at interest easier, since the specie (gold or silver) never left the possession of the lender until someone else redeemed the note; and it allowed for a division of currency into credit and specie backed forms. It enabled the sale of stock in joint stock companies, and the redemption of those shares in paper.
However, these advantages held within them disadvantages. First, since a note has no intrinsic value, there was nothing to stop issuing authorities from printing more of it than they had specie to back it with. Second, because it increased the money supply, it increased inflationary pressures, a fact observed by David Hume in the 18th century. The result is that paper money would often lead to an inflationary bubble, which could collapse if people began demanding hard money, causing the demand for paper notes to fall to zero. The printing of paper money was also associated with wars, and financing of wars, and therefore regarded as part of maintaining a standing army. For these reasons, paper currency was held in suspicion and hostility in Europe and America. It was also addictive, since the speculative profits of trade and capital creation were quite large. Major nations established mints to print money and mint coins, and branches of their treasury to collect taxes and hold gold and silver stock.
At this time both silver and gold were considered legal tender, and accepted by governments for taxes. However, the instability in the ratio between the two grew over the course of the 19th century, with the increase both in supply of these metals, particularly silver, and of trade. This is called bimetallism and the attempt to create a bimetallic standard where both gold and silver backed currency remained in circulation occupied the efforts of inflationists. Governments at this point could use currency as an instrument of policy, printing paper currency such as the United States Greenback, to pay for military expenditures. They could also set the terms at which they would redeem notes for specie, by limiting the amount of purchase, or the minimum amount that could be redeemed.
By 1900, most of the industrializing nations were on some form of gold standard, with paper notes and silver coins constituting the circulating medium. Private banks and governments across the world followed Gresham's Law: keeping gold and silver paid, but paying out in notes. This did not happen all around the world at the same time, but occurred sporadically, generally in times of war or financial crisis, beginning in the early part of the 20th century and continuing across the world until the late 20th century, when the regime of floating fiat currencies came into force. One of the last countries to break away from the gold standard was the United States in 1971.
No country anywhere in the world today has an enforceable gold standard or silver standard currency system.

Banknote era

Main articles: Banknote and Fiat currency

A banknote (more commonly known as a bill in the United States and Canada) is a type of currency, and commonly used as legal tender in many jurisdictions. With coins, banknotes make up the cash form of all money. Mostly paper, Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation developed the world's first polymer currency in the 1980s that went into circulation on the nation's bicentenary in 1988. Now used in some 22 countries (over 40 if counting commemorative issues), polymer currency dramatically improves the life span of banknotes and prevents counterfeiting.

Modern currencies

Currencies exchange logo

To find out which currency is used in a particular country, check list of circulating currencies.
Currently, the International Organization for Standardization has introduced a three-letter system of codes (ISO 4217) to define currency (as opposed to simple names or currency signs), in order to remove the confusion that there are dozens of currencies called the dollar and many called the franc. Even the pound is used in nearly a dozen different countries, all, of course, with wildly differing values. In general, the three-letter code uses the ISO 3166-1 country code for the first two letters and the first letter of the name of the currency (D for dollar, for instance) as the third letter. United States currency, for instance is globally referred to as USD.
The International Monetary Fund uses a variant system when referring to national currencies.

For exchange rates, see exchange rate and Tables of historical exchange rates to the USD.

Control and production

In most cases, each private central bank has monopoly control over the supply and production of its own currency. To facilitate trade between these currency zones, there are different exchange rates, which are the prices at which currencies (and the goods and services of individual currency zones) can be exchanged against each other. Currencies can be classified as either floating currencies or fixed currencies based on their exchange rate regime.
In cases where a country does have control of its own currency, that control is exercised either by a central bank or by a Ministry of Finance. In either case, the institution that has control of monetary policy is referred to as the monetary authority. Monetary authorities have varying degrees of autonomy from the governments that create them. In the United States, the Federal Reserve System operates without direct oversight by the legislative or executive branches. A monetary authority is created and supported by its sponsoring government, so independence can be reduced by the legislative or executive authority that creates it. (Revocation of authority is unlikely in Western countries, where there has been a trend towards central bank independence.)
Several countries can use the same name for their own distinct currencies (e.g., dollar in Canada and the United States). By contrast, several countries can also use the same currency (e.g., the euro), or one country can declare the currency of another country to be legal tender. For example, Panama and El Salvador have declared U.S. currency to be legal tender, and from 1791–1857, Spanish silver coins were legal tender in the United States. At various times countries have either re-stamped foreign coins, or used currency board issuing one note of currency for each note of a foreign government held, as Ecuador currently does.
Each currency typically has a main currency unit (the U.S. dollar, for example, or the euro) and a fractional currency, often valued at ¹⁄₁₀₀ of the main currency: 100 cents = 1 dollar, 100 centimes = 1 franc, 100 pence = 1 pound, although units of ¹⁄₁₀ or ¹⁄₁₀₀₀ are also common. Some currencies do not have any smaller units at all, such as the Icelandic króna.
Mauritania and Madagascar are the only remaining countries that do not use the decimal system; instead, the Mauritanian ouguiya is divided into 5 khoums, while the Malagasy ariary is divided into 5 iraimbilanja. In these countries, words like dollar or pound "were simply names for given weights of gold."^[7] Due to inflation khoums and iraimbilanja have in practice fallen into disuse. (See non-decimal currencies for other historic currencies with non-decimal divisions).

Local currencies

Main article: Local currency

In economics, a local currency is a currency not backed by a national government, and intended to trade only in a small area. Advocates such as Jane Jacobs argue that this enables an economically depressed region to pull itself up, by giving the people living there a medium of exchange that they can use to exchange services and locally produced goods (In a broader sense, this is the original purpose of all money.) Opponents of this concept argue that local currency creates a barrier which can interfere with economies of scale and comparative advantage, and that in some cases they can serve as a means of tax evasion.
Local currencies can also come into being when there is economic turmoil involving the national currency. An example of this is the Argentinian economic crisis of 2002 in which IOUs issued by local governments quickly took on some of the characteristics of local currencies.

Proposed currencies

• Amero: American currency union (hypothetical)
• Asian Currency Unit: proposed for the ASEAN +3
• Bancor: an international currency proposed by John Maynard Keynes in the negotiations that established the Bretton Woods system (never implemented)
• Currency for Caribbean area^[8]—CARICOM states except the Bahamas.
• East African shilling: East African Community (Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda)
• Eco: West African Monetary Zone (Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, possibly Liberia)
• Khaleeji (currency): Gulf Cooperation Council (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates)
• Metica: Mozambique (never implemented)
• Perun: Montenegro (never implemented)
• Gaucho (currency): Currency for bilateral commerce (never implemented)
• Toman: The new currency that is proposed by the Central Bank of Iran which would replace the Iranian Rial by slashing four zeros off the country's national currency.
• Caribbean guilder, the new currency for Curaçao and Sint Maarten for 2012 replacing the Netherlands Antillean guilder.
• Bitcoin, a digital cyber currency without a central issuing authority utilizing a Peer to Peer network.

See also

Numismatics portal

Related concepts Counterfeit money Currency transaction tax Exchange rate Foreign exchange Foreign exchange reserves            History of money Mutilated currency Optimum currency area Slang terms for money World currency

Accounting units Currency pair Currency strength Currency sign European Currency Unit            Fictional currency Franc Poincaré Krugerrand Local currencies Petrocurrency Special Drawing Rights

Lists List of circulating currencies List of currencies List of fictional currencies List of historical currencies List of historical exchange rates List of international trade topics List of motifs on banknotes

References

1. ^ Bernstein, Peter (2008) [1965]. "Chapters 4-5". A Primer on Money, Banking and Gold (3rd ed.). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. ISBN 978-0-470-28758-3. OCLC 233484849. 
2. ^ Deardorff, Prof. Alan V. (2008). "Deardorff's Glossary of International Economics". Department of Economics, University of Michigan. http://www-personal.umich.edu/~alandear/glossary/f.html. Retrieved 2008-07-12. 
3. ^ Black, Henry Campbell (1910). "A Law Dictionary Containing Definitions Of The Terms And Phrases Of American And English Jurisprudence, Ancient And Modern", page 494. West Publishing Co. Black’s Law Dictionary defines the word "fiat" to mean "a short order or warrant of a Judge or magistrate directing some act to be done; an authority issuing from some competent source for the doing of some legal act"
4. ^ Banaji, Jairus (2007). "Islam, the Mediterranean and the Rise of Capitalism". Historical Materialism (Brill Publishers) 15 (1): 47–74. doi:10.1163/156920607X171591. ISSN 1465-4466. OCLC 440360743. http://www.scribd.com/doc/14246569/Banaji-Jairus-Islam-The-Mediterranean-and-the-Rise-of-Capitalism. Retrieved August 28, 2010. 
5. ^ Lopez, Robert Sabatino; Raymond, Irving Woodworth; Constable, Olivia Remie (2001) [1955]. Medieval trade in the Mediterranean world: Illustrative documents. Records of Western civilization.; Records of civilization, sources and studies, no. 52. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 0231123574. OCLC 466877309. http://cup.columbia.edu/bookpreview/978-0-231-12356-3/. 
6. ^ ^{a b} Labib, Subhi Y. (March 1969). "Capitalism in Medieval Islam". The Journal of Economic History (Wilmington, DE: Economic History Association) 29 (1): 79–86. JSTOR 2115499. ISSN 0022-0507. OCLC 478662641. 
7. ^ Turk, James; Rubino, John (2007) [2004]. The collapse of the dollar and how to profit from it: Make a fortune by investing in gold and other hard assets. (Paperback ed.). New York: Doubleday. pp. 43 of 252. ISBN 9780385512244. OCLC 192055959. 
8. ^ "CARICOM Single Market (CSM) ratified! - Caribbean leaders sign formal document". Jamaica Gleaner (Kingston, Jamaica: The Gleaner Company Limited). January 31, 2006. OCLC 50239830. http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20060131/lead/lead1.html. Retrieved August 30, 2010. 

External links

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Why The Midlife Crisis Is a Total Myth

By Robin Nixon, LiveScience Staff Writer,
LiveScience.com – Sunday Feb. 27, 2011
He — the person is usually depicted as a "he" — turns off the alarm, stares into a bowl of soggy cereal, puts on a tired-looking suit and goes to the office for more of the same drab routine. And so it continues until one day, usually the day he realizes he is mortal (or starting to lose his hair), he goes berserk: He bangs his secretary, quits his job and buys a red convertible.

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And we all nod, acknowledging the inevitable midlife crisis. One made Monica Lewinsky famous, another won an Academy Award for "American Beauty," and the concept is as embedded in our culture as the belief in the power of positive thinking.
But the idea that midlife crises are common is a myth, experts say.
"It makes for good novels or good movies, but it is not really accurate," said psychologist Margie Lachman of Brandeis University in Massachusetts.
"There is no specific time in life that predisposes you to crisis," said Alexandra Freund, a life-span researcher at the University of Zurich in Switzerland.
"There can be times when things crystallize as very problematic, a very deep disturbance in your life," Freund told LiveScience. "People experience these types of crises, but they are not at all related to age."
Instead, Lachman said, crises are usually spurred by some event that can happen at most any age, such as a career setback, the death of a friend or relative, or an illness.
Epidemiologists have found no spike in negative events – such as career disillusionment – in middle age, Freund explained.
So if the revitalized libido and sudden hankerings for sports cars are purely the stuff of Hollywood, then what does happen to a person during these years? [7 Ways the Mind and Body Change With Age]
Personality stabilizes
One of the popular misconceptions is that midlife crises are spurred by a sudden realization that the values and goals of youth have been abandoned for more comfortable, and achievable, aspirations; that the person has "sold out."
Freund finds such concerns puzzling. "Selling out to whom?" she asked.
In the process of figuring themselves out, young people will wrestle with establishing personal goals and values. After young adulthood, however, personality remains relatively stable for the rest of one's life, researchers have found.
As for goals, new ones are usually variations of the original goal and are aligned with the person's core values, Freund said. For example, a person may be focused on contributing to academia — first, as a graduate student, by publishing papers in her mid-20s, but then, in her 50s, through teaching undergraduates. It's not the values that usually change, it's the approach.
Some cultures don't even have a concept of midlife, let alone a midlife crisis, according to research presented in Richard Shweder's book "Welcome to Middle Age! And Other Cultural Fictions" (University of Chicago Press, 1998).
But in Western cultures, midlife is typically defined as anywhere from 30 to 75 years old, depending on the age of the person asked. When pressed, psychologists say midlife is between 40 and 65 years old, placing some Oscar nominees smack in the middle – that's right Colin Firth, Javier Bardem (of "Biutiful"), Annette Bening, and even Nicole Kidman has just stepped into the ring. But Lachman and Freund stress that chronological age is not the best marker.
Perhaps a better definition is being the middle age within one's social niche. In midlife, people typically have close relationships with people both older and younger than themselves. For example, many middle-age adults are caring for not only their kids but also their aging parents.
Midlife without the crisis
In middle age, people tend to focus on making positive contributions to society through the interactions with people of significantly different ages. Such interactions include formal and informal mentee/mentor relationships, stratified workplace relations and cross-generation family dynamics.
Middle-age adults are "no longer driven, but now the drivers," say researchers Bernice Neugarten and Nancy Datan in their paper "The Middle Years" ("The Foundations of Psychiatry," Basic Books, 1974).
Critically, middle adulthood comes with a greater sense of control then other life periods. Young adulthood, by contrast, is usually a time of striving, and late adulthood is typically a time of loss, including of one's job, health and friends.
The most common complaint in midlife is not boredom, as many young people fear, nor a feeling of crisis. "People are experts of themselves at this age," Freund said. "They know what is good for them and what isn't."
Rather, researchers conducting large surveys have found that the main problem for middle-age people is feeling unable to get everything done.
"In middle adulthood, you are living at your fullest. You've achieved a lot in your job, the kids are growing up, you are healthy and have more resources than when you were a student. There is not much mortality in your social circle. … You know where you are going and don't question yourself all the time anymore," Freund said.
Not that midlife is void of critical changes: Menopause, andropause (male menopause), the emptying of the nest, and the death of a parent all often happen during middle adulthood. But not everyone sees these changes as negative. Menopause and an empty nest, for example, can result in a newly flourishing sex life.
When people in their later life were asked what age they would most like to be, they usually said the mid-40s, Freund said.
The origins of a myth
If midlife is actually so great, where did this concept of a midlife crisis come from?
In the 1960s, a psychologist named Elliott Jaques coined the term "midlife crisis" based on his studies of clinical patients and artists, who were dealing with depression and angst about getting older.
The term "midlife crisis" caught on like wildfire, because everyone knows someone who fits the mold, Freund told LiveScience. But what about all the people we know who don't fit the mold?
Freund, Lachman and most modern psychologists dismiss Jaques' case studies as not representative of the average Joe. "Artists are known to dramatize their lives; it is their job almost," Freund points out, and the more neurotic among us are more prone to crises in any life stage.
Despite decades of research debunking it, the concept lingers in Western culture, particularly in its application to men. The original promoters of the midlife crisis theory painted a picture of men as "late bloomers," Freund said, who bumbled along without thinking until they heard a wake-up call in midlife. More recent research, Freund said, has shown that men are just as self-reflective as women, and that neither gender is prone to life-changing crises based on age.
As for the idea that midlife spurs worries about mortality, Freund says the timing is off. People tend to think about death in adolescence, when they realize it will really happen to them, and then again in late life, when they realize their time is coming. In middle adulthood, people are too busy to worry much about death, she said.
Single and looking. Email me.

Still, the concept of a midlife crisis may be useful even if it is a misnomer. In midlife, we get a glimpse into later life, and we can make appropriate adjustments "physically, financially and socially," Lachman said. For example, the first signs of chronic illness appear in middle adulthood — at a time when something can still be done about them.
Most people, however, make adjustments throughout life, not just in midlife. "Life is a process, life is everyday," Freund said. "It is all cheesy stuff, but it is true."

Crying toddler spends hours in locked bank vault in Atlanta suburb

By The Associated Press | The Canadian Press – Sat, 26 Feb, 2011 11:10 AM EST
CONYERS, Ga. - A 14-month-old girl who wandered away from her mother and grandmother spent several tense hours trapped inside a time-locked bank vault and authorities pumped fresh air through vents to the crying child until a locksmith freed her, police said.

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The locksmith pried the toddler unharmed from the vault Friday night about four hours later. She went missing while visiting a grandparent who worked at a Wells Fargo bank branch in the Atlanta suburb of Conyers, police said.

Authorities say police and firefighters couldn't free the toddler and feverishly summoned the locksmith after the child apparently strayed into the open vault as the bank was closing Friday — before an employee shut the vault door for the day.

Conyers Police Chief Gene Wilson told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution it was a "very tense scene" as authorities stood by along with the relatives, and rescue workers pumped fresh air into vents leading to the vault.

Conyers police, contacted by The Associated Press early Saturday, said they would have no immediate updates.

The child was spotted on security cameras inside the vault, which has a time-release lock, Wilson said. He added that the locksmith used a large drill to breach the vault about four hours after it had been closed.

"That was one of the better moments I've ever witnessed," Wilson said, adding the girl was fine except for needing a diaper change.

He said the girl delivered a note written by her grateful mother to the locksmith before heading home.

Authorities did not release the child's name.

Jeremy Bernard first man to be White House social secretary

Jeremy Bernard is not only the first male appointed to the position of White House social secretary, he is also the first openly gay person to hold the post.
By Garfield Miller | The Christian Science Monitor – Sat, 26 Feb, 2011 8:50 AM EST

For the first time in history a man will become the White House social secretary. Jeremy Bernard will join the White House staff from the U.S. Embassy in Paris, where he serves as Senior Advisor to the Ambassador.

Bernard was an early supporter of Obama in Southern California, and he raised a substantial sum of money for Obama's 2008 presidential campaign. The Texas native’s resume includes a background in finance and a stint on the President's Advisory Commission for the Kennedy Center under Bill Clinton. Bernard has also served on several advisory boards for gay and lesbian issues.

Bernard, who is openly gay, and his former partner Rufus Gifford were known for raising capital through their company, B&G Associates. Gifford then became finance director of the Democratic National Committee. After the election, Bernard accepted a position as White House liaison to the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The Bernard pick marks the third appointment to the position under the Obama administration. Desiree Rogers was the first African American to hold the position; however her tenure was cut short after a couple crashed a state dinner at the White House. Bernard will succeed Julianna Smoot, who stepped aside recently to join Obama’s re-election campaign in Illinois.

In a statement Friday, the President said: "Jeremy shares our vision for the White House as the People's House, one that celebrates our history and culture in dynamic and inclusive ways. We look forward to Jeremy continuing to showcase America's arts and culture to our nation and the world through the many events at the White House,"

The social secretary is head of the White House Social Office. The position is responsible for planning and carrying out official social events at the White House, both political and non-political.