Looking Back on the Fed's Policy Results

Was the Fed's monetary policy effective or not under Bernanke?  It's time to assess "Quantitative Easing" (QE1 and QE2) and its effect on the U.S. economy. The original purpose of QE was ostensibly to re-capitalize the banks, stimulate the money supply and get banks to loan more money. What did it actually do?


1. Did the banks' balance sheet improve? Yes. Check.

2. Did we avert a worse financial crisis? Possibly, at least temporarily. The problem, of course, is we can't really know what would have happened without QE, or to what extent some alternative approach would have been better.

3. Did banks make more loans? No. If anything, fewer loans were made, especally to consumers. A dismal failure in this respect.

4. Did the banks invest the $1.6 trillion (that constituted QE1 and QE2) in a way that benefited their own interests? Yes. Much of the money went toward improving their balance sheet. The rest was invested U.S. treasuries, and perhaps some in speculative and overseas investments. The interest on the treasuries are both "risk free" and pay a non-zero interest rate, which means the banks are getting a free stream of money from Uncle Sam--at our expense.

5. Was there also a benefit to the American people? Hardly. A boost to the stock market was only temporary, as expected. The public mood is still negative. Our national debt has mushroomed even further. There was no increase in lending for homes or businesses.

6. Was QE a fair proposition? No. Not only do the banks now have a stream of free, reliable income from the Treasuries they bought, QE1 and QE2 also brought interest rates down so low that responsible savers are being penalized at the expense of those who created the crisis in the first place. Not to mention, we essentially paid the big banks cash for their near-worthless loan portfolios. In effect, instead of shutting them down or splitting them up, we rewarded the biggest bank offenders for their irresponsible behavior. A bad precedent.

7. Was the goal of creating modest inflation achieved? No. Instead, we have stagflation, which is the worst of both worlds; i.e., rising prices for things we have to buy, lowering values for things we have loans against or could use as collateral to borrow against, and wage deflation, and low interest rates on our savings. We've pumped money into the pockets of wealthy bankers, who are, by definition, the most likely people to hoard their money and the least likely to stimulate the economy and promote inflation by spending money on useful products.

8. In conjunction with QE1 and QE2, did we punish the biggest offenders who caused the financial crisis? Nope. Did we at least restrain banks from rewarding their failed managers and executives with obscene bonuses when we recapitalized them? Nope. While laying off thousands of employees (due to little real, legitimate banking activity), banks set aside 8% more for bonuses in 2011, and bonuses are expected to go up another 5-15% in 2012.

9. Did QE save any jobs? Perhaps a few. But I would limit this to the money given to companies like GE, that had productive, non-financial arms that actually produced useful product rather than just "clever" investment strategies that sucked money out of some people's pockets and deposited into other people's pockets.  (Also, the government bailed out GM, effectively preventing a meltdown of the entire U.S. auto industry, but that action was not part of QE.)

10. Is QE still seen as legitimate, and not a disguised form of money printing?

One might ask, why did the Fed administer QE1 and QE2 instead of just "printing" money and giving it to the banks--or better yet, using it to reduce the debt? The reason is that "printing money" is what poorer developing countries do to make up their revenue shortfall each year. It's transparent devaluation of the currency, and it typically alarms the countries who are buying such debt, and greatly reduces its desirability, thus forcing such countries to greatly increase their interest payments.  This kind of drastic inflationary spiral could be disastrous for the U.S. economy.

But secretly, our government may believe that "printing money" with the stroke of a computer key is the easiest way to avoid increasing our debt without raising taxes or cutting spending; i.e., to inflate our way out of debt by diluting our currency.  However, if our creditors (both domestic and international) saw this happening and stopped buying our debt, we would suddenly have to cover more of our $1.1 trillion budget shortfall (for 2012) ourselves via the "printed" money. This, in turn, would spook investors even more, who would drive down the value of U.S. debt treasuries and require the U.S. government to pay more interest on new issues. Millions of holders of government bonds would be wiped out, possibly overnight, as nearly $16 trillion in U.S. public debt instruments would lose substantial value. (This debt represents $139,000 for each U.S. taxpayer, or about 20% of the current value of the total assets of the American people and government.) Even a 20% drop in the value of U.S. treasuries would wreak havoc on the world's financial systems. The Fed probably sees this as a kind of rapid downward spiral or "armageddon" that they want to avoid, much like what has been happening in Greece--except in this case, it would have a truly profound negative effect on the entire planet.

So, to reiterate, the Fed is NOT EXACTLY printing money--this would upset the applecart with respect to how our credit is perceived in the world, and could cause rampant inflation, collapse in the value of U.S. debt, and subsequent currency collapse, with worldwide ramifications.

However, the definition of "printing money" presents a very fine line, and QE1 and QE2 are about as close as you can get to it while still saying that you are not actually "printing money". The only reason we don't call it "printing money" is that (1) It is ostensibly used for monetary policy, implying that the Fed will sell the bonds they purchased at a later time; (2) QE is only used as a temporary, not ongoing, measure. This sounds an awful lot like a desperate and guilty counterfeiter telling himself "I will only just print $1000 more in my basement, and I won't print any more money after this.  Later when I'm back on my feet, I'll assuage my guilt by burning $1000 (in $100 bills) of my accumulated savings at that time.  So I'm not really printing money, I'm just giving myself a temporary, zero-interest loan." 

Fat chance.  If, in reality, QE is ongoing and/or if the Fed does not sell its purchased bonds later, then skeptics are completely correct is characterizing QE as "printing money". The one salient difference is that, instead of using the proceeds to pay down our U.S. debt, the Fed is giving the proceeds to the biggest banks.

Bottom line: QE benefited the big banks and no one else, while diluting the value of our currency in the same way as directly "printing money" would have.

So why don't we already have rampant currency devaluation? It's all perception. Greece was going along fine for years...until suddenly it wasn't. Enron was going like gangbusters...until suddenly it wasn't. Madoff's giant ponzi scheme was doing quite nicely for many years...until suddenly it wasn't. All it takes is one major investor or country to ring the alarm bell by stating that it no longer intends to invest in U.S. debt--protesting that the U.S. is simply "printing money" in the guise of monetary policy--and suddenly there's a chain reaction where everyone panics and U.S. credit implodes. Positive perception can prop up a rotten edifice for a long time before it suddenly goes negative and the edifice likewise suddenly implodes. Psychology and emotions seem to rule over logic and mathematics, even in--or especially in--matters of financial credit.

Okay, this is probably as close to alarmist talk as I want to get. I still strongly believe in America's future and I still think we may be able to avoid or work through such a crisis, if only because so many other voices are preaching financial armageddon. Many U.S. companies are doing quite well. Also, our own problems are shared by many other countries, and so are not unique.

Interesting Debt Facts

HOW MANY OF THESE QUESTIONS CAN YOU ANSWER CORRECTLY?

(Some of the answers may surprise you.)

1.  Can you name the largest foreign holder of U.S. debt?

2.  Which country has the best (most positive) net international investment position (NIIP); i.e., domestically held assets minus foreign held assets?

3.  Which country has the worst (most negative) NIIP and is correspondingly the world's largest debtor nation? 

4.  Which large country has the highest debt-to-GDP ratio (even higher than debt-ridden Portugal)?

5.  Which country has the strongest, most trusted currency?

6.  What percentage of  U.S. debt is held by foreigners? (Can you get within 10%?)


7.  What percentage of Americans end up owing no federal income tax? (Can you get within 10%?)

8.  During the administration of which president was a "deficit reduction" bill proposed that would reduce spending by $255 billion and would also raise taxes on the wealthiest 1.2% of Americans?

Scroll down for answers...

ANSWERS

1.  China, followed by Japan and Germany.  China uses its trade surplus--as well as massive amounts of newly "printed" Chinese money converted to dollars--to buy up hard assets around the world, since, like many people, they believe the dollar will eventually implode.
   Recently, the U.S. gave China special privileges to bypass Wall Street when buying U.S. government debt, allowing them to conceal their bidding habits and thus get a better price.  China is the only buyer that the U.S. is willing to protect from Wall Street's speculative bidding practices.  This says something about our dependence on China to keep supporting our debt habit!

2.  Japan, followed by China and Germany.

3.  U.S.    Only a few decades ago, the U.S. was the world's largest creditor nation.

4.  China.  (!!)  China is "printing" massive amounts of money themselves, purposely devaluing their currency to maintain their wage and export advantages.  Local governments are also borrowing lots of money to fund massive (and sometimes questionable) infrastructure and housing developments.  The "official" Chinese figure for the amount of Chinese debt is, of course, far lower than the U.S. estimate that this answer is based on.

5.  U.S. (But perhaps its "reserve currency" status may not last for too much longer).  The reasoning probably goes like this:  Nearly everybody else seems to feel comfortable holding U.S. dollars, and so it's also easy to conduct international business using U.S. dollars.  So I won't panic unless I see someone else pulling out of dollars...after all, Europe is no better off.

6.  About 50%.  Some people suspect the Fed wants to "inflate our way out of debt".  However, this is not possible as long as we keep taking more of our money and giving it away to foreigners via a trade imbalance.

7.  46%.  If the Bush tax cuts are allowed to expire next year, this could drop to 36%.

8.  Bill Clinton.  This bill passed  by only two votes, with every Republican in both houses voting against it.  The result?  By the end of Clinton's presidency, the economy would boast the longest economic expansion in history; the lowest unemployment rate since the early 1970s; and the lowest poverty rates for single mothers, black Americans, and the aged.  Not to mention a 14% decline in the national debt/GDP ratio.

Shocking!!! Can you believe it??!!

Warning:  If you are gullible, please refrain from reading this post.


Ain't it just amazing what you can learn from the internet?  For instance, I learned that the earth doesn't revolve around the sun, it's hollow and has a hole at its South Pole, and it's not rotating, spinning or even moving!

Incidentally, did you know there's an alien civilization on the moon?  NASA had a secret shuttle mission to bomb the South Pole on the moon because there was a big trap door there.  In fact, the reason NASA has never returned to the moon is because of the alien spaceships that were documented on video footage.

Did you know that Bush orchestrated 911?  And now Obama and the Israelis are planning to start a thermonuclear war in which we will all die.  But the immediate problem is those RFID microchips that they're going to implant into everybody (according to the new healthcare law) by March 23, 2013--unless we can prevent Obama from getting re-elected.  Food stamp recipients will be required to get this implant.  The RFID implant is clearly the mark of the beast.

Somebody now has a car that runs on water only.  This will solve all our energy problems.




Most of us are intelligent and informed enough to reject the above assumptions.  But what about stuff like the following?  Can you sort the truth from fiction?

1.  Does oil (petroleum) actually come from abiotic processes rather than organic residues from tiny sea based organisms?

2.  Did Dick Cheney secretly sell biological, chemical and conventional weapons to Saddam in the early 80's, contrary to his denial in this interview?  Also, did he, Bush and Cheney honestly believe there were WMD as he asserted?

3.  Were these scientific experiments actually performed and the results described accurately or not?

4.  What is Donald Trump's true net worth?  $7 billion, as he claims?  $2.9 billion, as Forbes estimates? Or Less than $1 billion, as Lawrence O'Donnell estimates?

5.  Are derivatives "a nightmare", "a ticking time bomb" or "weapons of mass financial destruction" as Warren Buffet has suggested, or is the idea that derivatives are dangerous and unnecessary based on myth, as asserted by the Cato Institute?

6.  Is global warming as the result of man's activities a made up myth, as claimed by this analysis?


Okay, before you scroll down, you've already figured out what above is true and what is false, right?

HEY!!  Did you come to your own conclusions before you read this?  Chances are, you don't even know who I am, so are you really willing to consider me an "expert" and just accept my answers?  See, that's the problem with the internet!......and with all of us!!!

1.  The conventional explanation is true, based on the expert opinion of a vast majority of U.S. scientists, who cite proof for an organic origin.  The Russian oil industry has historically followed the abiotic explanation, though--partly because it is their science, and for political reasons.  The abiotic explanation continues to be politically charged, perhaps more so than ever before.

2.   Yes he did sell the stuff, and no, he didn't honestly believe WMD existed, according to this and this account, as well as this account regarding the WMD, not to mention other instances of his lying, such as this and this and this.  But if you want to be sure, you can find a wealth of additional information on these subjects.  Of course, you may end up just believing whoever you want to believe.

3.  Probably not true--or the explanation is grossly distorted, based mainly on the fact that the original source cannot even be found, much less any corroborating evidence.  Junk science.  Something does not necessarily become true just because you can't prove it's false, or because it sounds nice; however, some people will still believe it because it fits nicely into a sort of "new age" explanation of things. Note how these experimental "results" have propagated all over the web, yet almost nobody has even attempted to verify them.  Surprisingly, even Snopes.com is silent on this one...so far.

4.  You make the call, but I'm guessing it's the lowest estimate of the three.

5.  Here's an opposite opinion.  One would have had to objectively review a vast amount of research to be qualified to hold a credible opinion on this.  However, the vast majority of scientific experts from around the world do agree that global warming is largely attributable to the actions of humans who triggered it.  This does not mean they're right, it just means they are statistically likely to be right.  But that won't even begin to convince many people.

6.  Here are some facts about derivatives that might help you make up your own mind:
    a)  The top five dealer banks hold 93% of total derivative notional value, of which 86% of holdings are interest rate contracts.  Such derivatives have performed unpredictably in the past, such as during the market disruption that followed LTCM's collapse or Russia's debt default--with corresponding losses that invalidated the hedging strategies of its holders.
    b)  A properly capitalized bank making responsible loans within its own country theoretically has very little use for them, and the majority of banks do not use derivatives.  Today, only four large U.S. banks hold 96% of all U.S. derivative contracts, meaning those banks' overall risk levels are extremely difficult to measure.
    c)  A typical, mean estimate of derivative leverage is 20:1.  $600 trillion in derivatives sits atop a few trillion in bona fide mortgage debt.  For a point of reference, world GDP is "only" $65 trillion.  Derivatives represent the largest asset bubble in history.
    d)  Recently, JPM (the biggest derivative holder in the world) lost $2 billion (a week later it was estimated at between $6 and $7 billion) in some derivatives.  JPM admits they did not fully understand these derivatives nor could they explain how the loss occurred--and these represent only a tiny fraction of their total derivative holdings.  This article asserts that this is an example that proves JPM is using derivatives for speculation rather than hedging--running the world's largest gambling operation in financial derivatives.  JPM's Jamie Diamond and some of his cronies have so far been successful at preventing any meaningful derivatives regulation as part of Frank-Dodd.


When confronted with a subject about which we personally don't have enough facts, information, or understanding, our opinions and beliefs tend to become merely a reflection of our own worldview or our own financial interest.

All About Mitt Romney

Mitt Romney is one of the smarter Republican candidates, You may have already seen his own campaign speeches, but what do other people say about him?  Lets find out.  For the sake of objectivity, half of my sources are Republican and half are Democrat.

Does Mitt Romney stand for what you believe in?  You decide.

MITT’S EXPERIENCE AT BAIN CAPITAL:

Newt Gingrich political super pac’s view of Mitt Romney’s experience at Bain capital  here (and one particular experience here)

A simple explanation (by Robert Reich, author of  Aftershock) on how private equity firms like Bain Capital work:  here

MITT’S INTEGRITY (OR LACK THEREOF):

Ron Paul political super pac’s View of Mitt Romney’s changing positions here

Obama's political super pac Ads on Mitt:  here and here and here and here

MITT’S RELIGION:

Christians ostensibly believe a person should be judged by their actions; i.e., “by their fruit you shall know them.”  A person’s claimed religion should normally be off-limits, except for the fact that for many Republicans, religion (not character, ethics, honesty, qualifications or experience) has become the litmus test of a presidential candidate.  Therefore, I believe they should know about the claimed religion of the person they will be voting for, especially if this is their sole criteria.

Joseph Smith and the religion he created was clearly shown to be a fraud, and this is hardly a secret—it was once pointed out to me that even before the internet, this information could be found in any good library.  This is relevant to Mitt’s Romney’s credibility and how he would be viewed by the rest of the world—who all have access to information on the internet such as that regarding the the book of Morman, the Kinderhook Plates, the Egyptian hieroglyphs “interpreted” by Joseph Smith, the circumstances of his death, the striking similarity of the Morman endowment ceremony to the pagan Freemasonry rituals, concept of Mormons one day inheriting planets and spirit children, etc., etc.  And we haven't even mentioned Brigham Young and his ordering of the Mountain Meadows Massacre--that's another story.

L Ron Hubbard is probably the closest 20th century comparison to Joseph Smith -- he was also a charismatic speaker, a fraud, a pathological liar, and a bigamist who spouted gibberish and engaged in criminal mischief and whose "religion" is still being followed to this day (with help from Tom Cruise) despite the wealth of unflattering information about him that contradicts the official "Scientology" version of his biography.

Meditate

Looking for a new way to understand consciousness? Meditate on it.

Anonymous 5/2012

Scientist. Biologist. Buddhist. Philosopher. Neuroscientist. Francisco Varela embodied the seemingly opposing elements that he wove together for his final work. Even as he lay dying in a French Hospital, his groundbreaking work on consciousness was being presented in a meeting between some of the world’s leading neuroscientists and the Dalai Lama. His ideas of combining first person data with more empirical data from traditional Neurology, self-titled neurophenomenology, helped begin a revolution in the way consciousness was approached.  This fusion of traditional western and eastern ideas of investigation sparked a lasting relationship between religion and science.

Traditionally, researchers approach consciousness studies with advanced scientific techniques and instrumentation, but a central difficulty in understanding remains. Scientists cannot “get inside your head” either literally or physically to see how introspective consciousness occurs. Introspective consciousness is simply thinking without external stimuli, although it may be triggered by stimuli.

For example, if right now you’re thinking that this article is nonsense, you’re introspectively conscious because you aren’t hearing or seeing those words but producing them in your mind. But only you know what you’re thinking, and often communicating or even understanding our own thought processes leads to us becoming lost in our thoughts. This deficit in reliable data creates the need for a better tool to collect first person information, a tool that can be found through meditation. This ancient practice can be used to complement the techniques that have been used to study consciousness for years.

History of the Study of Consciousness

In the western world, the field of consciousness studies is very young. Even though psychologists have long tried to understand aspects of consciousness, the paradox of understanding our own understanding was dismissed as unknowable. This is due in part to the limitations in data. First person accounts, popular in the early days of psychology, were dismissed as inaccurate.  Scientists turned to behavior to explain how the mind worked but this provided a limited understanding.

By the 1970s, the cognitive revolution had supplanted behaviorism. New techniques and technologies grew as scientists began to use physical data from the brain to examine thought. Even then, understanding of consciousness stalled. The data collected could tell to some extent what was happening in the brain, but that didn’t answer the question of what was happening inside the mind. To help answer that question, some scientist have begun to turn to Buddhists, who have been studying the mind for thousands of years.

Buddhism is a non-theistic religion- meaning that there is no deity. Rather than the Western scientific perspective that knowledge should be observer independent, Buddhism seeks to understand the self. Perhaps the most significant aspect of Buddhism for consciousness studies is the metal discipline practiced through meditation. Meditation is not simply breathing and sitting cross-legged; it is a type of mental training that changes thinking. Dr. Alfred Kasniak, a psychologist at the University of Arizona and Zen master, says that meditation is about “day to day discipline”. It is this very discipline that makes it a viable tool for consciousness research.

Research into Meditation and Consciousness

Conscious processes are complex and variable when analyzed through the lenses of imaging and other scientific techniques. The idea behind neurophenomenology is that first person data can be used so that for different processes there will be both a physical signature and a description of the thought process that can be used to synthesize a more complete picture of how the brain works. It’s like a picture book, where the first person data is the words that tell the researcher what is going on in the mind. Scientific imaging technique provides the pictures to go along with the description. This allows the pictures to be interpreted through the words and together a story emerges.

In order to collect first-person data that is reliable and repeatable, subjects have to be used who are trained in examining and focusing their own thoughts. Buddhists who are experts in meditation have refined their awareness of their own attention and thought processes. The goal of many Buddhist techniques is to develop attentional and vividness. Think of a telescope. If the mind is the instrument that is being used to examine itself, the development of attention stability plants the telescope on a firm base while vividness polishes the lenses. This creates an image that is both clear and focused. 

Researchers studying consciousness use two main kinds of meditation. Focused attention meditation is where complete focus is given to an object, thought, or emotion. Eventually, a practitioner can both maintain focus for a much longer time than a non-practitioner and realize when and how distractions are affecting her focus. This can take many years to master. Try to focus on an object, let’s say a drinking glass or pencil, for as long as you can. Two or three seconds later, you’re probably thinking about something else no matter how hard you try to focus. This is because the typical person can only maintain complete focus for a few seconds.

In the second type of meditation — opening monitoring — you focus on nothing and just take in what is going on around you. Like focused-attention, this is considerably more difficult than it sounds. It is the difficulty of these tasks that separates them from normal everyday thought process. Buddhists have spent thousands of years seeking to understand the self, and their techniques can take years to master.

The idea of neurophenomenology and the use of Buddhism as a tool within this new methodology is not simply theory. Even though it is a recent idea, studies have already come out supporting different aspects of the idea. In a study by Heleen Slaughter and colleagues at the University of Washington, those who had been through the meditation training showed reduced variability and increased attention stability as indicated both through their performance of a task and through a measurement of their brain waves with EEGs. It can be inferred that Buddhists who have spent years meditating would have similar or better results. 

A study done by Francisco Varela and his colleagues at Institut Pasteur indicated that clustering subjects by first-person reports created clearer patterns of neural behavior and reduced the need to average results. Typically in studies with human subjects, there is a high level of variability in the data received through techniques such as MRIs and EEGs. This need for averaging reduces the precision of the data. Due to the reduced variability that comes with clustering by described experiences, using first-person data actually made the experiment more accurate. This experiment shows the promise of neurophenomenology as a practical way to study consciousness.

Buddhism and Emotion

            One of the more studied relationships between Buddhism and consciousness is that of emotions and qualia. Well beyond being a great word for Scrabble, qualia is used to describe the indescribable. It refers to the uniqueness of experience. Just look at something familiar; let’s say the back of your hand.  Without knowing it, you’ve already experienced qualia. The experience is unique, not because someone else can’t also see your hand but because you have unconsciously or consciously connected your hand with a quality or feeling. Maybe seeing your hand makes you feel good because it is strong or attractive. Maybe you feel ashamed because you still bite your nails. The quality doesn’t matter. It just matters that the quality is unique and thus is qualia.

Buddhists can better observe and record qualia because of their emphasis on being self-aware of all their emotions and their lack of “I” in understanding the world. Expert practitioners have been shown to respond to emotions differently than non-practitioners, with a greater degree of control and understanding. The research done has brought up more questions than answers, but the answers to these questions could change our understanding of how the mind works and what it is capable of.

For Francisco Varela, these ideas were primarily theoretical, based off a few small studies and an extensive personal knowledge of the connection between Eastern and Western philosophy. He was a pioneer, one of the first to see a potential for fusion, or as he described it “a gentle bridge”. When explaining his vision for neurophenomenology, he said, “Science and experience constrain and modify each other as in a dance. This is where the potential for transformation lies.”  This potential continues to be explored in the years after his death as others take up his vision.

Controversy and Limitations

The incorporation of Eastern techniques for understanding consciousness with Western scientific techniques has met with controversy.  For many scientists, first person data is still too subjective to qualify as science. Varela said, “It requires us to leave behind a certain image of how science is done, and to question a style of training in science which is part of the very fabric of our cultural identity.” In order to effectively study consciousness, scientist must open their own minds to ideas that they may not fully understand from their Western philosophical standpoint. When studying a phenomenon that does not give clear physical data, a strictly western standpoint has long since proven ineffective.

There are also questions raised about the religious beliefs associated with the practice of meditation and how they are affecting research. It seems to go against the orthodoxy of science. Any research that has a basis in religion immediately sparks questions of bias and scientific validity. In general, there’s a perceived schism between religion and science. One is based in facts, and one is based on faith. However, because Buddhism does not qualify in many ways as a religion, most of these objections are superfluous.

One solution would seem to be to separate the practice of mediation from the practice of Buddhism. However, the enormous dedication and possible trait changes that comes about as part of meditating seriously for a long period of time are difficult to replicate without the dedication that comes with religion. Even those who began mediation for reasons other than religious reasons often stay because of the religious aspect. To some extent, the philosophy of Buddhism may provide its own insights into consciousness. When questioned about the Buddhist idea that there is no self, Varela said, “…there is no gap at all between the insights reached through meditation and the research results of cognitive science. Both arrive at the identical conclusion that an independent self cannot be detected and that the search for it inevitably leads us astray.”

Eleven years have passed since Francisco Varela’s death. The bridge that he built between science and Buddhism is rapidly becoming a path, leading in new directions for consciousness studies and branching off to create new paths. By fusing seemingly disconnected elements, he revolutionized the study of consciousness. And from his beginning, other scientists influenced by his ideas are discovering new information about the brain that can potentially change the way we think about how we think.

Sources: Varela, F. J., Thompson, E., & Rosch, E. (1991). The embodied mind: Cognitive science and human experience. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.

Blackmore, S. J. (2006). Conversations on consciousness: What the best minds think about the brain, free will, and what it means to be human. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Slagter, H. A., Lutz, A., Greischar, L. L., Davidson, R. J., & Nieuwenhuis, S. (August 01, 2009). Theta phase synchrony and conscious target perception: Impact of intensive mental training. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 21, 8, 1536-1549.

Lutz, A., Lachaux, J.-P., Martinerie, J., & Varela, F. J. (February 05, 2002). Guiding the Study of Brain Dynamics by Using First-Person Data: Synchrony Patterns Correlate with Ongoing Conscious States during a Simple Visual Task. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 99, 3, 1586-1591.