The Nobel Prizener

By Herman Franck Esq.

Karl, its not what you think, he raped me.

Would these words destroy the amazing career of a genius Hispanic economist known as John Carver, formerly named Julio Heinrich Romero? Would Gloria, who would never imagine that she would have to go through with an entire rape trial, ever come clean and admit she lied? Would a prosecutor, who learns half way into the case that there are some major discrepancies between what Gloria says and what actually happened, choose to go to the side of truth, or the side of winning at all costs? And would an American jury ever believe in a million years that a woman would lie about a charge of rape, and that a prosecutor would knowingly put on a fraudulent case?

The Nobel Prizener is a story of American courtroom injustice, and of an unstoppable genius that continued in his path the save the world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Mar 6, 2002
• ISBN: 9781475910469

Herman Franck Esq.

Herman Franck, Esq. is a Sacramento based trial attorney with his own law office, Franck & Associates. See www.entrepreneure-center.net for more information about his law practice. He is the author of 23 books, more coming...

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The Nobel Prizener

All Rights Reserved © 2002 by Herman Franck, Esq.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the publisher.

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ISBN: 0-595-21638-2

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Contents

Foreword

Acknowledgements

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

APPENDIX

About the Author

END NOTES

This book is dedicated to The Nobel Prizener.

Exculpatory Page

Though inspired by true events, The Nobel Prizener is a fictional work. No likeness of any person, living or dead, is intended, and any likeness in purely coincidental. The use of the names of learned institutions such as The Swedish Academy of Sciences and Stanford University does not imply that these institutions have aligned themselves in any manner with this book. Indeed, they don’t even know about it. The use of the names of other institutions, including the Stanford Police Department, the Santa Clara County Jail, The Santa Clara County Superior Court, The Santa Clara District Attorneys Office, and others, similarly does not imply any sort of alignment, recognition, or association with this story.

Foreword

Most Citizens of the world would like to believe that fraudulent prosecutions never happen. After all, don’t prosecutors have enough real cases to deal with? Some people in countries with, shall we say, less than perfect records of civil justice, have no problem believing that there are times when prosecutors become blind to the truth, and want to win for reasons that are far aside from the pursuit of justice. In the United States, we like to believe that our governmental institutions, and certainly our legal system, would somehow ferret out wrongful prosecutions.

Several of the women who have read the story of The Nobel Prizener were offended. They thought that such a fraudulent prosecution could never really occur. They offered opinions that it was already tough enough for women to get justice in court, and that the last thing the world needed was a book that suggests that women can be liars, and as liars can be believed, and as believed liars, can exact huge injustices against their victims.

To these reasonable reactions I offer the following justification of my book: As a trial attorney, I have seen this sort of thing happen right before my very eyes. Indeed, The Nobel Prizener is a fictional work inspired by an actual rape case I handled. It has happened not just in a few cases, but in too many to let it be swept under the carpet.

One does not need to be a radical to suggest that the pendulum of justice for women may have swung too far. This book will be but a tiny grain of sand to help bring the pendulum back to a more properly balanced position, premised on the concept that in the eyes of the law, women and men should be 100% equal.

Acknowledgements

I thank and acknowledge the several readers of my manuscript for their insights and suggestions (their names will be spared publication, to protect the innocent!). I thank my literary agent, Mr. Frederick Murphy, for his guidance and assistance on this project. I thank the excellent and painstaking work of my editing and proofreading team, Dorothy Dunn and Sue Coyle, but remain responsible myself for any remaining errors.

I thank the anonymous donor of the cover art.

I thank and acknowledge the many different defendants in court cases that shared with me the many different forms of injustice that can befall a citizen, and encourage them to do like The Nobel Prizener, and press on with whatever other gifts they may have.

Other Books by Herman Franck, Esq

Other books by Herman Franck, Esq. The Post Debutante (iUniverse 2001) The Family Business (Emerson-Adams Press 2000) Just Add Water (Kiwe Publishing 2001) The Politician (Kiwe Publishing 2002) Franck Tails (Kiwe Publishing 2002)

CHAPTER 1

THE DELIBERATIONS OF THE SWEDISH ACADEMY OF SCIENCES

"No! Absolutely not! We will never award a Nobel Prize to a convicted rapist! Olav Swenson’s response echoed through the repeating hall of the Board of Trustees to the Swedish Academy of Sciences. It was the sixth consecutive year that a strongly supported recommendation had been made by eight of the twelve member board. That recommendation was to award a Nobel Prize in Economics to John Carver, for his treatise entitled Floating the Recession."

Olav had a ready-prepared speech, as he had on each prior occasion:

"The Swedish Academy of Sciences is the most important scientific, social and scholarly institution in the world. We are relied on by the world’s public to designate the great thinkers of the world and to award them with the most prestigious award possible, the Nobel Prize. Obviously the Nobel is awarded only to those who have the correct posture, in both a scholarly sense and a moral sense. We are designating these people as absolutely wonderful examples of the greatest height achieved by mankind. The winner matches this particular success: Brilliancy and morality. Absent a perfect continuum of both scholarship and integrity, we risk degrading the prestige of the award. We will have failed to perform our obligation to the world, and will have slighted one of the world’s most prized awards, the Nobel Prize. Forever on, it must only be awarded to those brilliant individuals who are well beyond top scholarship, and who also have a particular goodness about them, a level of integrity and morality that will befit an individual whom we shall describe as the rare example of the upper bounds of mankind’s innate abilities."

Gunnar Purloff, the Chairman of the Board of Trustees, cringed with apprehension as Olav spoke.

Another debate between two polar extremes was well under way. The question was whether to award the Nobel Prize in Economics to John Carver, a convicted rapist. Olav insisted against the award, but faced a strong opposition led by Erik Jarlsborg. Erik and Olav had disagreed on this award for six consecutive years, and even though Gunnar realized it was time to bring this debate to an end, he also knew he would have to let Olav and Erik be heard on these points once again.

The recommendation to award the Nobel Prize in Economics to John Carver was a particularly difficult one because of the strength of the recommendation and because of the undeniable quality of his scholarship. Having the backing of the faculty from Stanford University was extremely prestigious, and was on the plus side for Mr. Carver. Carver had developed a series of ingenious economic theories at Stanford that became quite interesting to the banking community—so much so that the American Bankers Association developed a rather sizeable budget, in the neighborhood of fifty million dollars, to fund further studies at Stanford. This budget, unparalleled in any department of economics, brought Stanford’s department into the permanent limelight and forefront of economics. This was all due to Carver’s work, under his mentor, Professor Erickson. As a result, Professor Erickson and the Stanford faculty nominated Carver for the Nobel.

The sincerity of Carver’s scholarship was in the fact that Carver’s theories had been integrated into actual policy, resulting in a very positive, real world impact. To be sure, Carver could not be credited with single-handedly bringing about the prosperity of the early twenty-first century. There were a host of technological developments in energy, health care, transportation, and information sciences that brought great advances to the world. Carver’s contribution came with these other advances and coalesced into a win-win situation. Technological advances brought about all sorts of increased efficiencies which permitted greater abundance, and, with that, less poverty. Carver’s advances were in the field of banking economics, known as monetary economics, assured that these great efficiencies and new-found abundances were not accompanied by wrenching inflation credit impasses, and other unfortunate experiences.

These were the points on the positive side. Carver had a strong recommendation due to his undeniable scholarship in economics. His work was excellent, and brought about real world changes that had actually made the world a better place. This interface of scholarship and the real world was a definite focus for the Academy, which made the recommendation of Carver all the more firm.

On the negative side was one obvious bit of history that a majority of the Board of Trustees, for the last six years, simply could not look past. Ten years earlier, Carver had been convicted of rape and sentenced to a prison term of sixty-four years, making this his tenth year of incarceration. The very theories that were the subject of his recommendation began at Stanford, and were honed and completed at Folsom Prison, California.

It is not as though the Academy couldn’t stomach the notion of awarding the Prize to a prisoner. They had, in fact, granted few awards to prisoners incarcerated for acts that were euphemistically refereed to as political crimes, or thought crimes. But Carver, however, was hardly a political criminal. He was a convicted rapist. Carver was a patriot through and through, having been brought up in an immigrant Hispanic family that preached the goodness of America from the vantage point of having been the subject of evil in other lands. Despite his conviction and incarceration, he was not a criminal, not a miscreant, and was generally a studious, quiet type. It just so happened that this good-hearted, gentle scholar had managed to find himself the subject of a rape accusation. And as the saying goes, the charge of rape is a hard one to make, but once made, is even more difficult to disprove.

It could have been an easy matter to deal with Carver’s rape conviction. If it were a regular conviction, where his guilt was understood as a foregone conclusion, the Trustees would have unanimously rejected the recommendation. After all, there are plenty of excellent economists worthy of the Prize, with a list that continues to grow each year. But Carver’s conviction was anything but clear. There were many questions surrounding Carver’s rape conviction, including the basic question of whether he was, in fact, guilty. The evidence was anything but clear, and included a host of lies, second and third changes in the alleged victim’s story, and a prosecutor who regularly obtains drug-addicted jailhouse witnesses to testify about false confessions and discourages any witnesses from testifying on behalf of the defense. Indeed, the prosecutor even tried to get Carver’s lawyer fired from the case.

Carver’s trial became somewhat of an international event because of its strangeness. The trial was short, only four days, but was filled with contradictions and foul play. The alleged victim’s own story was really quite unbelievable, and left most observers astonished over the fact that an American jury would have convicted Carver. But they did. Most people believed that dishonest evidence was procured in the form of a drugs-for-testimony transaction with one of Carver’s cellmates, who had been planted by the prosecution to elicit a full confession. He didn’t get one, but still agreed to testify to a full confession supposedly given by Carver. Carver denied the confession, but the jury apparently believed the drug addict over the scholar.

Then there was the matter of Professor Erickson who was nearly fired for agreeing to testify on Carver’s behalf. The alleged victim testified that she had never seen Carver before the rape incident, and that he came up on her out of nowhere while she was getting into her car. Carver was supposedly a perfect stranger. According to her, Carver ordered her to drive to a secluded area nearby in the woods, and she obeyed, fearing for her life. He raped her, and then ordered her to return. They were seen by her boyfriend upon their return to Stanford, as they pulled up into a parking lot near a student center called Tressedor Student Union.

The truth of the matter was that Carver and the woman had been involved in an affair that included two consensual and highly-erotic sexual interludes. These sexual interludes were described in detail during the trial, becoming a matter of public record. The jury simply rejected Carver’s testimony to this point. Further, they rejected Professor Erickson’s testimony concerning an incident during which he actually met the woman with Carver, and had a short conversation with her. This testimony obviously contradicted the woman’s testimony, and the jury rejected the truth and voted a conviction.

Carver argued that the woman was lying in an attempt to save her relationship with her boyfriend, who caught them together. This theory, for all it had going for it, was wholly rejected by the jury.

Erik Jarlsborg then responded to the objections of Olav by sounding off in support of the award to Carver, with his equally worn speech:

"My fellow Brothers, again we must wade through the thicket of our philosophical contours to determine the appropriateness of awarding a Nobel Prize to an unquestioned thinker and savior of mankind. I completely accept Olav’s view that we have an important obligation to the people of the many beautiful nations of this great world. Each of us must understand the great honor and power that has been granted us in putting us on this prestigious Board of Trustees. We are holders of a great power, a power beyond recognition, a power higher than the will of democracy, the will of goodness and the will of integrity. Our power to award the Nobel Prize is unchecked and cannot be diluted. We are free to perform our function without concerns of reversal, and with only the comment of future generations as our judges. We sit without judge and jury, without a check, like a majestic set of Kings. We must not judge in line with what we believe a majority of voters would judge, or in line with what a jury of commoners might determine. We must judge on our own, in line with what we alone believe to be the correct decision. This is the power and authority that has been vested in us as a group of Trustees to The Swedish Academy of Sciences. We must be our own saviors, our own judges, our own check."

Erik continued with solid momentum, as Gunnar sighed to himself. He stood as he spoke, and spoke directly, without the need to review notes of any sort. His speech was from directly within, and required zero by way of preparation. He used his hands only slightly as he spoke, and walked slightly to the left and right, forward and back, in a circular motion:

As a group, we can only establish respect by examining carefully the truth of all opinions held by the general population. We must determine those truths which are acceptable, and those which are not. Ultimately, as in societies past, we find the simple fact that the general population cannot always have its way; the will and desire of the majority will all too often permit unqualified lynchings, undiluted prejudices, outrageous segregations and the general spoiling of good from selfishness. Mankind, we all know, has its weaknesses, and we are all prone toward ill deeds. Recognizing its weaknesses, mankind has sought out the protection of its goodness through the appointment of authorities to hold the will of the people in check. Like it or not, we do have an evil aspect among us.

It would be simple enough to agree that the public would not wish a Nobel be granted to a convicted rapist. The public wants a good role model, which is hardly furthered by a prisoner of such a crime. The question presented for our decision is whether we should adopt the public’s views in this regard.

The prize is won by those geniuses who are clearly apart from their fellow man. Their native abilities have set them upon a pedestal which makes them different from all. We must not be surprised when they share other traits which further set them apart. The great mathematician will have his quirks and his perversions, and these oddities, not unlike all of mankind, must be seen in terms of good and bad. We are all bundles of both, and must be accepted as a blend. We can only do what we can to dilute the bad while expanding the good.

Gentlemen—do not lose sight of the simple logic that in stamping out part of the darker side of men you can detract from their better side. Force us all to conform to a particular standard and you will void ingenuity beyond recapture.

This brings us to Mr. John Carver. His good side is unquestioned. His treatise is a masterpiece of monetary theory which has saved countless families from the torture of economic failure. He has saved small struggling nations, businesses and families. His theory is now policy in many nations. His accomplishments are obvious: The world has come out of the terrible recession of the early nineties and very well may never suffer another.

His bad side is not as obvious. If we accept the verdict, we accept him as a rapist with a sixty-four year prison sentence. Can we still see his good side through this? I say we can, and we should. The impact of his work is worldwide and permanent. The travesty of his evil is cornered to one person, an unfortunate victim, and her family and friends that suffer with her. The breath of his masterpiece, and the narrowness of his evil, weigh much toward the prize.

And that’s assuming we accept the jury’s verdict. We have all discussed our thoughts on this very questionable case. His alleged victim was proven a liar. She denied having met Carver before the incident, and yet 3 witnesses testified that they saw them together before the night of the alleged rape. I do not accept the jury’s verdict and find his imprisoned innocence all the more reason to award him the Nobel Prize.

The sudden change of Erik’s animated speech to that of total silence produced a rather awkward moment in the board room. It was all the more awkward given the difficult subject of his impassioned plea.

Erik’s style was different than his chief opponent, Olav. Olav was reserved in his speech. The difference in style is no doubt the product of the difference in men. Olav was a gifted Professor of Chemistry. It is not suggested that scientists are uniformly anything, including uniformly emotionless, unanimated, or summary in nature. Olav, however, is this way, and though usually correct, is still regrettably coarse and colorless in his mannerisms.

Erik, on the other hand, is a lawyer with political aspirations, and with an appropriately sized ego. He speaks for the purpose of speech, and is the sort who will champion any position, and can always find some argument to support the most wretched of opinions.

As Olav continued, Purloff braced himself for the second phase of this argument.

Erik has overstated the benefits and quality of Carver’s work. I will not again argue my disagreement, but I think we can all doubt that the recession-free world which we have recently experienced is the sole development of the prisoner. Countless other circumstances, no doubt, contribute to our fortunate economic climate. Even the prisoner acknowledges this fact.

Erik went quickly to his feet to respond.

He is simply modest. And who wouldn’t be? Is it not a humbling feat to literally turn the world economy around? Who could pull off such a success and not be completely humbled by the awesome outcome? Let’s look at the facts. During the final decade of the twentieth century, when Carver’s work was just coming out, the world suffered from a persistent recession that simply would not go away. The policy was to eradicate inflation at all costs, including the costs of high unemployment and other disasters. The problem was further developed and exaggerated through the first world industrial nations as a result of their incredible debt. As the third world and other developing nations serially defaulted on their own debt, the debt of the first world increased. In an attempt to make more debt to pay off old debt, inflation sprouted. The Federal Reserve Board sought to slow the economy to take the heat off inflation. It backfired and brought about a near-standstill in investment and other commercial enterprises. Business failures shot up, and the economy was in a worldwide mess. Governments of all locations and levels were bankrupt, as were the former tax-paying entities which had previously supported the public activities.

In 2003, after one year in prison, John Carver received his Ph.D. from Stanford, with his thesis entitled, Floating the Recession. The theory set forth in his dissertation quickly became the official monetary policy of the United States, and completely changed the operations and institutional makeup of the Federal Reserve Board, including its interrelationship with the banking system. Carver did away with the Federal Reserve’s control over the money supply, and introduced a system of interest rate subsidies and multi hundred-billion-dollar loan infusions lent to the industrial and public sectors.

These subsidies had only a slightly upward impact on inflation rates and inflation. Interest rates were lowered, at long last permitting the beginning of the upward cycle of increased production, increased supply of goods, and sustained growth without inflation. Public infrastructure projects abounded, and people were put back to work. By 2005, the European Economic Community, the Eastern Block, and virtually all of the industrial world had expressly adopted Carver’s policy of diluting the control of central banks, and imposing a system of direct interest rate subsidies and loan infusions. Real interest rates fell dramatically by the year 2005, and the economies were back in shape to a point where the industries could begin the process of paying back the interest rate subsidies and loan infusions. Interest rates continued to lessen, industrial growth and commercial enterprises abounded, and unemployment was reduced to a sustained four percent. And since then, for some eight years, it has pretty much been the same. Never has there been such a period of stability in the economy. It is unquestionably the result of Carver’s work.

Gunnar proceeded to conclude what had been an unending dialogue between Olav and Erik. The dialogue was all the more interesting for this institution. Its founder, Alfred Nobel, had his own issues with his wife running off with a mathematician, and thus even today there is no Nobel Prize in Mathematics.

The board required nine votes to award the Prize, and Erik had eight. The remaining four included Olav, who would never change his vote, two other similarly-situated scientists, and Gunnar. Gunnar came from the museums of Sweden, and was the consummate diplomat. He was a conciliator, and had a way of solving disputes that catapulted him into the public activity of official Swedish life. He was a curator of six museums, including the museum of the Academy, spoke five languages, and held doctorates in Law and Theology. His speech was wonderful, pointed and reserved. He rarely lost his cool, which proved both the rarity and awkwardness of the present moment.

Alright, alright. Now gentlemen, I have to say that the amount of time which the Academy has spent in the last six years deliberating over the recommendation to award a Nobel Prize in economics to Dr. John Carver is simply unprecedented. It is also ridiculous. On one hand, the Academy has no doubt prospered from the ethereal dialogue between Olav and Erik. We have never required such an inspection of what we stand for, what our purpose and goals are, and what sort of philosophy we must adopt to achieve these goals. For imposing this self analysis on this important institution, I thank the two of you. But I have heard enough of it. I have heard the same arguments for six years now. Their repetition tends to demean their importance and impact.

I will not hear this out again. Mainly, I am convinced that Carver is in fact innocent. I’m amazed a jury convicted him, but then we all know the shortcomings of the American jury system. Gentlemen, I am prepared to vote in favor of the award to Dr. Carver, and now move the recommendation to the Board for a vote.

Erik, though stunned, was always the practical thinker, and was not about to lose the moment in all the excitement. Motion seconded, was his immediate announcement, following within a half second of Gunnar’s pronouncement. And the vote which became a first for the Academy was taken, with the results of nine for and three against. Dr. John Carver, a Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University, residing in Folsom State Prison in California, serving out his sixty-four-year sentence for the highly questionable rape of a woman, just became the first prisoner to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics.

CHAPTER 2

CHICAGO

Chicago was not as inviting as Stanford, where Carver had attended as an undergraduate. The buildings were a New Jersey Grey with a stolid Gothic strangeness. The campus was eerie and unfriendly. The sky was a brisk hue. Unlike Stanford’s, it was unkind.

Carver arrived without his books, which were enroute through the mail. He discovered, to his dismay, the incredibly inexpensive book rate charged by the post office, and sent all but two suitcases book rate. All of sixty-four boxes (in eight shipments) arrived on eight consecutive days after his arrival in Chicago. He eagerly unpacked them, holding each book as though it were a child, a part of his extended family.

The first year of a Ph.D. in economics is the most difficult, as it is for so many graduate programs. First year is filled with core theory courses, which are extremely pointed, fast paced renditions of mathematical economics. Carver signed up for the mandatory curriculum: micro theory, mathematical theory, econometrics, and an elective in public finance.

He was young for the class, but was not alone in his youth. Out of a starting class of thirty-five, four were under twenty-two, Carver was only twenty. Two of these were combining bachelor’s and master’s degrees in four years at Chicago, and two others, including Carver, had received their bachelors degrees from other institutions in three years.

His dorm room was somewhat typical, a sort of bureaucratic beige apartment complex with a huge main dining hall. Meals were purchased a semester at a time for a package rate. Carver signed up for twenty-one meals a week, and prepared for his first year of graduate work.

He regretted having arrived late for his first class, since the Professor had already managed to put fifteen equations of some sort on the board, and was in the midst of discussing them on Carver’s arrival. Professor Bower proceeded uninterrupted for a thick hour, and then began to introduce the class:

"Students, welcome to the Ph.D. in economics at Chicago. Excuse my abrupt beginning, but I wanted to immediately give you a feel for what you are in for. Your next three years will be spent trying to get through a mind maze of trickery and confusion. As you attempt to get through the course work, you will be charged with a constant fright of doom and failure, perhaps for the first time. Most of you aren’t used to failing; most of you aren’t used to B’s. But you will be very happy here when you receive a B, because it means you have passed. We find that people who earn B’s manage fairly well on their Ph.D. qualifying exams.

This brings me to that subject. Chicago has a tremendously difficult program in economics, and it isn’t just due to the course work. After your first year you have to take a five-hour qualifying written examination to proceed to the doctorate. The exam has four parts: a micro economics essay, a macro economics essay, a problem in econometrics, and a question in your elective field. Pass it, and you proceed to a second year. At the end of your second year, you take a second comprehensive final, also five hours, to qualify for candidacy. If you pass that, you proceed to the oral presentation of your dissertation, which if approved, becomes your next year’s work. When you think you’re done, you will come back with your dissertation and defend it again. If you are successful, you will then have earned yourself a Ph.D. in Economics at Chicago. Questions?"

The silence which remained in the classroom was typical of Professor Bowen’s first day, first year class. The Professor was almost sadistic with his amazement of the agony which he could put these suffering geniuses through.

Carver spoke up: Professor, John Carver from Tass, Texas. Pleased to meet you, and may I start by just saying that it’s great to be at such a world-Honored institution. Thanks for having me here. I have this question: When do we start studying the Federal Reserve System?

Soon enough, was the Professor’s reply. But what’s your hurry?

No hurry, Professor, but it’s just that that’s why I’ve come here, to study the Federal Reserve.

Whatever for?

I want to figure it out.

Do you want to work there some day?

No, I want to dismantle it. A nervous laughter from the class erupted.

And replace it with what?

An entity run by elected officials.

By politicians?

Yes.

You’re going to replace the Federal Reserve with a group of politicians?

Yes.

When?

As soon as I get out of here.

The first semester at Chicago did not go well for Carver. And this was even somewhat of an understatement. Carver fell into the lower rank of students. To his credit, he was first among the twenty and under group.

During the second semester, Carver was called for a meeting with the academic dean, Dean Fitchins. Good morning, Carver, please sit down.

Good to meet you, sir.

Fitchins was an academic dean who did not teach. He was gruff and without a specialty, except for being difficult and to the point.

Mr. Carver, we have a meeting each year with the new members of the class to discuss their status and prospects. This is now your turn to learn how we think you’re doing, and what we think of your prospects.

Statistically, we have found a pattern of low standing in the class leading to failure on the comprehensive exams. We regret that your present course experience gives you a probability of roughly ten percent in passing the final comprehensive. Remember, you can take it twice, but that’s it. Sometimes, if a student is close on the second attempt, or his work in some area was of convincing force, we will permit a third attempt. We’ve even been willing to be more lenient, so to speak, in our grading of the third attempt.

But still a lot of people fail. We fear you are high on our list of candidates for failure. Can you speak to this?"

Dean, I have this figured out. I just got lost in math on the exams. I know what to do, I just couldn’t get the formula to solve for itself. What can I say, I choked.

But you ‘choked,’ to use your term, in all four classes. And you choked in all four of your midterms this spring. Now you’re headed for finals on a disaster path. The comprehensive exams are in the middle of summer. Can you do this?

"What do you mean, can I do this? I am doing it. Besides, I’m more of a writer than a mathematician, and I have no apology for that. I have more ideas than equations, more plans than functions."

Well, this little grade problem of yours, of which you apparently believe in your grandeur you have risen well above, will set your plans back. So think about what you can do to spruce up a bit.

I have an idea, sir. I need a math tutor, and I’ll be fine.

Well good, so get one, but we aren’t paying for it. That’s your problem. Go do it.

Yes, sir, thank you.

Unfortunately, the tutor was not quite enough. Carver flunked macro economics when he was simply outfoxed by a strangely posed question. He received a B in econometrics, and a C in monetary theory, which was supposedly his strongest area.

The school operated on a more or less twelve-month, full-time schedule. Full-time courses during the regular school year, and exams and dissertation matters during the summer. It was May 10. The comprehensive was to be taken on July 30. The summer was an intense one, and the library was filled with students attempting for the first, second and for some a third time on the first year comprehensive exam.

Carver passed the micro economics portion of the first year qualifying exams, qualified in econometrics, but failed in monetary theory and macro theory, half pass, half fail.

Carver had a strange nonchalance about his failure at Chicago. This numbness was out of character, but then so was failing. Carver had few downfalls during his years, and had managed to ace undergraduate economics at Stanford in just 3 years.

His present failure at Chicago was much more on point to his career path. Here he was failing at his preordained path, at his expertise in monetary theory. This was like the surgeon flunking surgery, the lawyer flunking lawyering. This was it, his career, his specialty, and he wasn’t making it.

He still didn’t care. Maybe it was the inner confidence in him, the perfect comfort he had with his abilities. He just knew he was there, that he had it, and that he had abilities beyond so many others. He saw Chicago as just trickery, as an economics program designed with an eye on flunking people. Those who passed were not really the great economists of the future, they were just those who had the math in control, not the concepts, just the math. Carver understood the concepts much better than his fellow students, and could express them quite well in a narrative form. But economics, at least in graduate school, is not a spoken science. It is a mathematical social science, and will remain away from those who are without whatever those strange abilities are that lead one into higher mathematics. The math is beyond calculus, and leads into the strangeness of set theory (mathematical logic in an all-too-pure form), matrix algebra (a real mind bender), vector calculus (which measures strangely configured spaces) and extremely advanced statistical and probability theory.

Carver didn’t buy into this often-stated theory that an economist had to understand mathematics. His was a world of solutions to problems. He was about to undo the federal reserve, and had developed the beginnings of his theory to revamp the nation’s economy. He didn’t see equations, he saw people out of work. He saw business failures, massive bankruptcy filings, and a helpless federal reserve. He saw politicians that had no idea of how to solve the problem. Really, no one even had the slightest clue. Here was the nation, going into the middle of the 21st century, in a depression, layoffs, with untold debt levels, unemployment rampant, bankruptcy filings everywhere. America was losing ground, and fast. The Japanese competition was beating us, but that wasn’t the crux of the true problem. We were our own problem. We had become ungovernable, at least in economics. We had no solution, no abilities to solve, only the helpless yelp, much like the young puppy yearning for food.

Carver knew he had the solution, and was all to confident in his thinking to be taken back by a couple of egghead professors whose emphasis in mathematics made little sense. Wake me up the next time a mathematician comes up with something useful. Carver thought to himself.

Most of his fellow students didn’t share Carver’s willingness to shrug off this failure. They took their critics all too seriously. Carver just refused to accept this shortened view of himself. His fellow students, sadly, weren’t quite as deflective, and took the criticism of the faculty to heart. Too many of them dropped out, their careers finished, and began anew elsewhere. Others spoke of some alternatives to Chicago, including the prospect of transferring to another school.

Suresh Patel, from India, also a young student, made a suggestion to Carver.

John, it may be that if you are ever going to pass these exams, that the time would be now, when you are best prepared for them. The trick is to take them now, twice in one summer. If you flunk, then move on to another school.

Carver had learned something after his discussions with other students about this predicament. The trick is not to wait around too long to blow your takes on the exams. A lot of people wait until the following summer to retake the exam. The point was, if you ever could pass it, it would be right then, so you might as well go for it and do your best at the first attempt. That way you could still go to another school without losing too much time.

Carver thought that to be an excellent suggestion, and began to consider another school. He wrote to his friend and mentor, Professor Erickson of Stanford University, and discussed the prospects of coming back. Well, possibly, but you’d have to apply. I’ll send you an application. Fill it out and don’t worry about your transcripts; we have them.

Carver completed the Stanford Graduate School application the day he received it, and began his study for the second shot at his qualifying exams.

He scheduled his next attempt at the qualifying exam for August 15th, two weeks before Stanford’s program began. On August 15th, he again flunked macro economics and monetary theory, and left Chicago on a one-way trip to Stanford.

Though one would expect the flight back from Chicago to be somewhat solemn, Carver was actually in good spirits. After all, Stanford was a beautiful school, the program was excellent, and he knew his way around the place.

CHAPTER 3

STANFORD

Carver’s inability to succeed at Chicago was not repeated at Stanford. It was as though coming back to this familiar environment somehow engendered success. And Carver’s success was as dramatic as during his undergraduate years, and as quick. He was not number one in his class, but did make the top third, which was really quite an accomplishment considering his age. He was the only hispanic student, though, hardly the only minority. The others were mostly from India, Iran, and the Pacific Rim Countries. He excelled in all classes, and managed to avoid the constant problem of mathematics. Stanford’s curriculum placed the same emphasis on mathematics as did Chicago, but was somewhat less insistent on one’s pure mathematical abilities. The economic concepts were so important, and truly could be understood in a narrative form. Surely mathematics could assist in any description, and Carver wasn’t completely without abilities in this area.

His theory developed, a theory of saving the economy from the seemingly inescapable grips of ruining recession turned depression. The circumstances were perfectly ripe for Carver’s theory, since it was directed at a new bureaucratic order of affairs, a replacement of the Federal Reserve. Carver knew the shortcomings of total reliance on the Federal Reserve, and had a basic approach of disbanding with this broken arm of the economy, and replacing it with a newer more powerful arm.

This new powerful arm would be part of the Executive Branch of Government, from the Office of the President of the United States, but would be tempered by decisions from the legislative branch. The new arm would create a decentralized program of localized micro loans, to create a forceful economic engine to come forward, the engine of small-to medium-sized family-owned businesses. The large corporate dinosaurs had seen their own demise, causing thousands of people to be placed into permanent layoffs. What was needed was a different sort of employer, self-made jobs, jobs that people would have much more control over. To do this, a financing mechanism was required, since banks, venture capital firms, and other financing avenues were typically not available to these smaller firms.

Carver’s plan was to develop a program to create millions of small to medium family-owned businesses, to restore America’s initial underpinnings, the concept of the family-owned farm, run and operated locally, without interference from Washington or abroad. This new system would be helped by Washington.

Congress would specify loan amounts and industries which were targeted to receive these loans. Loans would be given not pursuant to the dictates of ordinary prudent banking, but instead with a bigger picture in mind, a picture to create new business firms that would employ hundreds of people all over.

These business firms would not be so small, either. Some of them would employ 500 people and have annual revenues of $500 million or more. They would start out small and grow large. They would receive soft loans, soft in the sense that the ordinary credit markets simply wouldn’t agree to lend to these groups at all. It wasn’t a case of below-market lending rates, it was a case of giving a loan where the private sector wouldn’t give one at all.

This was Carver’s theory: a program of decentralized micro loans to the small-and medium-sized business sector, to bring America back to where it started in the first place—the family business.

Printing money to simply finance projects was too dangerous for Carver, and could cause a fraud on the public. It could be pointless, since it could devalue the currency to the point where whatever funds were printed became just that much more worthless. More and more funds would be printed to catch up with the new worthless funds, to the point where people could be wheeling around cash in a wheelbarrow. This was ridiculous to Carver.

Carver’s theory to save the economy developed and fermented. He finished the remaining core theory courses of Stanford’s Ph.D. program, sharing his ideas with his fellow students and Professor Erickson.

The following year took him through his remaining courses in the Ph.D. program, and the comprehensive examinations, all of which were passed on the first take.

His theory continued to develop and began to take on a more intermediate phase, a more mature fermentation of his thoughts. He was now ready to present his dissertation topic, and approached Professor Erickson to schedule a dissertation defense. Professor Erickson readily agreed to schedule one right away, and scheduled it for the following month.