In the locker room each day after I swim, I place my wet swimsuit into a small spin-dryer. Centrifugal force squeezes the water out of my black nylon Speedo.

The sign on the spin-dryer says, “This unit is self-timed and will shut down automatically at the end of its cycle. It will not reset.” This message is an epiphany. An inert spin-dryer sign is communicating not only instructions about a device, but also a decree: After 80 years of being vertical, I Will Not Reset.

Friends I haven’t seen in a while greet me with, “You look great!” But youth and middle age have passed me by. So I conclude that “You look great!” must be the third phase of my life.

If I really do look great, it’s a peculiarly unfair and paradoxical compliment. Why do people expect me to have the memory ability, the physical agility, the quickness of mind, the word-fluency and vocabulary I had in my mid-50s or mid-60s, just because I may sometimes “look great”? At 80, I’m really what would have been considered old in my parents’ era. If my parents were my age now, they would have been dead for seven years. Why can’t I look my age?

People ask, “What’s your secret?” I’ve got well-rehearsed, tongue-in-cheek answers: “First, you have to choose the right grandparents. [I did!] Second, you have to be happily married. [I am!] Third, you have to love your work. [Yes!] Fourth, you have to take naps. [I do!] Fifth, modern medicine. And most important, you have to act immature.” (Check! And double check!)

I get weak smiles at these sophomoric clichés.

I’m kidding on the square, trying to deny the inevitable, making fun of old age and longevity because deep down it is a serious subtext to my every autobiographical thought. I’m dying (so to speak) to squeeze out (so to speak) and convey the defining stories of my life, my memories, before all the juicy life is extracted and wrung out of me. Like the swimsuit water extractor does to my Speedo.

Memoirs are in the air (like avian flu, pollen, and humidity), and I read them — and my own — with a grain of salt (Pliny’s purported antidote for poison).

There is a kernel of truth and tongue in cheek in every grain of salt. “A jug of wine, a loaf of bread, and thou beside me.” My version: “A grain of salt, a tongue in cheek, a kernel of truth, and grandchildren reading my memoir.” (Note the first two letters of memoir are “me.”)

How would I define me? With a grain of salt as a buffoon, smart aleck, wise guy? With a kernel of truth as a very sober still-vertical creature wanting to be taken seriously as a man of substance? With tongue in cheek as a jocular extrovert, a semi-hypochondriac?

A friend says, “To know Steve is to be his friend.” Another says, “Steve feels emotions more deeply than others.” A former colleague said, “Winston Churchill was an introvert compared to Steve Rosen.” But Winston said, “We are all worms, but I believe I am a glowworm.” He was. Am I? Or am I simply a voluble candidate for a support group of loquacious people in recovery, to be called On-and-On Anon?

La Rochefoucauld said, “Old people like to give good advice as a consolation for the fact that they can no longer set a bad example.” I can still set bad examples, but avoid advice because my life’s lessons learned refer to me alone.

I wrote my memoirs because I had a stroke and was eager that my children and grandchildren know more about me, but they were not amused by what I wrote in the book, “Youth, Middle-Age, and You-Look-Great: Dying to Come Back as a Memoir.” My memoir was written, not for my children and grandchildren, but for myself, as an exercise in self-interest, as an ironic reincarnation.

A Baroque musician has left us instructions on how to write a sonata: First, find a sonata that you like, so you can use it as a model. Second, replace its treble clef notes with a melody of your own, taking care to ensure it tracks properly and harmoniously with the original existing bass clef notes. Third, replace its existing bass clef notes with your own original notes to harmonize with your new treble clef notes. Then, write it down, and voila, a new sonata!

My life themes (physics, music, helping lawyers, doctors, and scientists) resemble the original old sonata with its old bass and treble notes. My new activities resemble those new bass and treble notes that replaced the old ones and created a new sonata (changing careers, doing welded sculptures, writing songs). Yet the original old sonata still defines, echoes, and reverberates.

But in a memoir, do I really have to define myself, dammit? If I’m to be reincarnated in (or as) a book, my experiences and circumstances, my adventures and misadventures, great happenstances and small occasions, my insights and outlooks, my foibles and legacies, my immodest achievements and embarrassing mistakes will have to speak for themselves. Thus . . .

After Beethoven had finished playing one of his newly composed sonatas, a fan asked him, “But sir. What does it mean?” Beethoven reportedly sat down and played the sonata through again, and when he had finished — refusing to be defined — said, “That’s what it means!”

I said to my naive young proctologist as he was about to insert a fiber-optic device into my lower colon to perform a colonoscopy (as Gloria Swanson says to Cecil B. DeMille in the movie “Sunset Boulevard”): “I’m ready for my close-up.”

Pass the salt. Note the tongue in cheek. And the kernel of truth.

Stephen Rosen lives in East Hampton and New York. “Youth, Middle-Age, and You-Look-Great” is available for the Kindle.

It was the fourth year we would be staying at Fleuchary House, a sprawling Edwardian bed-and-breakfast in St. Albans, 20 miles north of London, owned by a Scottish woman, Linda Matheson-Titt. The purpose of the trip was to visit my mother-in-law, Violet. We’ve been returning every year since her 90th, when she hired a jazz band to entertain family and friends. I hope my husband, Mick, has inherited her longevity genes. He certainly has his mother’s sense of humor and calm, patient attitude toward life.

Staying at Fleuchary House is like coming home, amazing when you think of the ocean that separates us. When we arrived, Millie, Linda’s Parson Jack Russell, greeted us, licking my face as I bent to say hello. I thought she remembered me, but Mick thought it was the dog treats I brought that she remembered. She had a fluffy, off-white, coarse coat, with one ear up and one down, and exuded charm and intelligence. We invited her into our room for a visit and then sent her on her way with a “Go on home now, Millie,” and off she went.

St. Albans is an old Roman town with remains of a Roman theater and a small museum filled with artifacts from the first century. First called Verulamium, the city was renamed St. Albans after a British Christian martyr. It has a majestic stone abbey where last year we enjoyed an Evensong service that featured a boys choir. The boys wore long red robes with white surplice overlays and starched lace Elizabethan collars that harked back to an earlier age. As we sat in the hard wooden pews, we could hear their voices carry to the top of the abbey, vibrating like starlings on a wire.

Arriving at Fleuchary House is like visiting the United Nations; one never knows what country will be in residence. Our first morning, breakfast was a full English production consisting of one or two fried eggs, bacon — like Canadian bacon — fried to crisp perfection, sausage, grilled tomato, mushrooms, hash brown potatoes, toast, and coffee or tea. Three French teachers from Lyon had brought a dozen French students to stay with local families for a fortnight to practice their English. They sat down and tucked into their eggs, holding their forks in their left hands, knives in the right, as Europeans do, guiding any resisting bits of egg or potatoes to their waiting mouths.

The women didn’t look at all like schoolteachers. They were well dressed, their faces lightly made up and their scarves arranged with Gallic precision and intricacy. Hermés has a book on 100 ways to tie a silk scarf; it seems they had studied it assiduously.

“What do you do while the students are with their host families?” I asked, using my rusty French.

 “We go into London to the British Museum, to the opera, to the London Philharmonic, and to the latest Shakespeare production at the National Theatre.”

“Wow! What have you seen?”

They reeled off a list that anyone would envy.

An Italian man came down to breakfast. He was from Milan, in London giving a paper on environmentally sound building. Our host appeared during my aria of Italian and said with some satisfaction, “I have someone coming down to breakfast that you won’t be able to speak to.” A few minutes later, Zoran, from Croatia, introduced himself and I laughed. Linda had the last word.

The next morning four Scottish groomsmen in a wedding party assembled on their way to the church ceremony, looking very handsome in their tartan kilts. They were speaking English but I couldn’t understand a word. A translator was needed. I just nodded and smiled.

Another of Linda’s guests, a well-traveled, well-upholstered woman, remarked, “Nothing is lacking.” The instant hot water kettle with tea, coffee, Cadbury’s hot chocolate, Scottish shortbread, heated towel racks, and fresh linens that Linda provides every day attest to her warm welcome. She prints out train schedules, recommends restaurants and local sights, and acts as a concierge.

She is constantly improving and decorating. This year we noticed the imposing suit of armor was gone from the front hall, but otherwise all was the same. Linda is stolidly middle class — nothing out of place on Linda or in her establishment. A financial analyst in London before opening her bed-and-breakfast, she uses her business acumen to run the establishment. She also has great taste and is a good cook, as evidenced by her breakfasts and the alluring smells that come from her kitchen at suppertime.

We have a shared love of good food, nice linens, and home furnishings such as alpaca throws. This year we exchanged cookbooks. I gave her a “Real Simple” cookbook, and she gave me one on classic Scottish cooking that includes recipes for pheasant, venison, and other game.

When we told Linda we were planning a drinks party and supper for Violet, now 94, she asked, “Would you like to go to Costco with me?”

“Yes, that would be lovely,” I replied.

We had a great excursion to the local Costco, a cookie-cutter replica of its American cousin, except that the cheeses, coming from Europe, were better. At the checkout Linda stood next to me as I put an industrial-size package of Yorkshire tea bags on the counter.

“That’s builder’s tea,” she said.

“You mean it’s strong enough for construction workers?” I replied.

“Yes,” Linda said, as if she didn’t approve of my tea selection. But I laughed and bought it anyway.

We had the drinks party and supper in the large common room at Mymms House in Welham Green, where my mother-in-law lives in a small flat. About 25 people joined our celebration. The gathering was a way for Violet to thank all the people who helped her with the computer, took her to doctor’s appointments, and picked up shopping for her. It’s a nice community, and they look after one another, which is comforting to us living across the Atlantic.

Those ladies, ranging in age from late 70s to late 90s, drank eight bottles of Santa Margherita pinot grigio and four bottles of very nice Costco Italian Chianti. The poached salmon, shrimp, salad, cheeses, and apple pies disappeared, leaving only a few lonely lettuce leaves. Violet says they had a great time and her friends are still talking about the party. If consumption of wine thins the blood and promotes circulation, these ladies will be very well preserved and live on into their 100s.

The last morning at Fleuchary House, bags stowed in the rental car, Mick takes some photos of Linda and her dog in front of the deer antlers in the front hall and also next to the six-burner range in her kitchen for possible use on her website. Millie stares patiently into the camera, waiting for the treats I keep in my pocket.

On the drive back to Heathrow along the English country roads, I watch the hedgerows extend their branches overhead, creating a green tunnel with golden, flickering light, beckoning us to return soon to Fleuc­hary House.

Joanne Pateman, a regular “Guestwords” contributor, lives in Southampton.

It’s funny to me when I think about it. Me in circulation. Fifteen years ago my circulation stopped and a man had my heart in his hands and had to put my circulation back together.

I am standing now at the checkout desk of one of the busiest libraries in one of the wealthiest counties in the state of Maryland. Most of the customers, though, like me, are not wealthy. I know this because they have fines on their library cards that a rich person would pay in a heartbeat, but these folks can’t. A problem only arises when the fine owed reaches $25. At that point the county blocks the card and no book, however inspiring, may be checked out to the person presenting book or card.

A woman steps up to the desk, I think it’s her daughter beside her, four books in her hands. They are what we call in libraryese “yellow tape” books for how they are shelved. They are books for those who are truly blessed, those just beginning to read.

I ask the woman for her library card to check the books out. She says that she does not have one. “I’ll make one for you,” I say. No problem. But things turn worse. I need a photo ID. There are rules. Anyone could take a book or CD or DVD from the library and never return it; if there were no customs, someone could use someone else’s card like a credit card without the first person’s knowledge. The book thief could have the library of Alexandria in his garage and an innocent would be responsible for the overdues. Think on that.

I put the customer’s name and address into my computer. She has a library card already. She owes the county $25.05 for returning items late. My supervisor is sharp. She glances at me from her office. She can smell from there that I’m in a jam, but turns back to her own task and waits for flames.

I say, “Can you pay 10 cents to bring your card back into use?”

“No,” the customer replies.

I have 10 cents in my pocket, but the supervisor is watching me now and I have been warned that such largesse is frowned upon. So a bead of sweat forms on the back of my neck. Great people worry about great things. I worry, greatly, at things small.

Then I think to say, “Does your daughter have a library card?”

“No.”

I check the computer. True is true. I create a card that I think is something more. The first book I check out to her is this: “El Gato en el Sombrero.”

That night I read that the summer book fair sponsored by the Montauk Library will no longer happen. Revenues have shrunk, the volunteers have grown older, books seem slightly heavier (perhaps due to the foil-stamping of the dust jackets).

Goodbye happiness. I have been at best an inconsistent spender at the fair, though I have pulled an oar and bought and continue to buy books from the good sellers in East Hampton, Montauk, and Springs. The president of the Friends of the Montauk Library — whose name is Krusch (one wonders if she pronounces it like “Khrushchev” or like “crush”) — allows that the $17,000 taken in by the Friends is not worth the efforts exerted by its crew.

I guess it’s just chump change.

And the folks of Montauk will stroll more easily without tourists or sojourners in the sunshine trolling the green there, their noses in books.

So: The next night I take a book from a shelf at home. It is a work by Paul Scott of which I am very fond. It comes apart in my hands: glue and dust falling and rising. I will name the publisher here, because shame is in order. William Morrow & Co., Inc. This was a hardcover book I expected to last. But no. There’s a lesson here. The cheaply made book will disappear from our shelves and be replaced by electronic books. But the typographer, the printer, the bookbinder, and the publisher dedicated to craft will continue to produce work that will last beyond our lifetimes.

On the following night in a dream I am 9 years old, an altar boy locking my bicycle in the play-yard of a Catholic school. Like Catholic schools most everywhere, the grass and dirt in the field have been paved over. Remember the scene in “Lawrence of Arabia”? Imagine a small boy in his cassock and surplice walking just after dawn through barrenness toward Mass, his robes aflutter. What is this small fellow thinking about? Is it Mrs. Cawley’s equations? Sister John Andrew’s punishments? No. He is thinking about the emerald city of Oz that appeared in the asphalt desert last week.

The bookmobile. A rolling treasure chest of incalculable riches. He knew what Chapman wrote of realms of gold. The last bookmobile in the county where I live rolled to a halt 30 years ago.

Imagine if America, instead of sending tanks to distant deserts, sent bookmobiles to schools, loaded with taxpayer-paid-for books, free to any child inquisitive.

Imagine if a man lit his fire ring in his field and invited the kids in the neighborhood to watch. Imagine if he tossed a shoddily made book in the flames. Imagine his face orange as Satan’s. Imagine him with a wheelbarrow of good books. He rolls them away from the blaze. “Take what you want,” he says. “Take any book you want.”

Dan Marsh, a longtime “Guestwords” contributor, writes from Garrett Park, Md.

The last Wednesday before the first day of school, my 14-year-old son, Paul, brandished his $49 two-piece shiny black fishing pole with shocking pink string, rather shocking pink line, while clutching a five-gallon white plastic bucket in his right hand, a small plastic tackle box surprisingly identical to my toolbox in his left, and proudly proclaimed, “I’m gonna catch me a big one today,” and skirted away on his neon yellow 20-inch Tony Hawk signature mountain bike like he was chasing the wobbling green overly friendly alien in “E.T.,” swiveling left to right, right to left, as he pedaled down Fort Pond Boulevard toward Maidstone Beach.

Undaunted, I hopped in my 2012 four-door gray Civic and roared down the same road as if Riverhead Raceway had relocated to Springs.

Watching Paul delicately pirouette over the huge gray boulders of the jetty toward the last one, reminiscent of Ralph Macchio balanced atop the wooden piling in “The Karate Kid,” I stared in amazement as he defiantly battled five-mile-per-hour northeast gusts and the occasional blast of sea mist, determined to bring home enough marine life to feed our family of six through 10 harsh winters.

Although Paul didn’t catch the big one, he manhandled 27 snappers, “baby bluefish,” he reminds me, about the same size and sparkling gray color as the guppies in our 20-gallon, algae-infested basement fish tank.

“What are you gonna do with all those tiny fish?” I shouted from a comfortable distance, lounging in my blue-and-white-striped sand chair.

“We’re gonna eat them for dinner . . . after you cut ’em up!” he shouted back.

My son forgot one thing. I don’t kill fish.

The 5-foot-by-3-foot-by-2-foot hunter green Rubbermaid storage bin sits inches behind our six-foot-high unpainted stockade front fence, alongside a three-foot-wide, warped pressure-treated walkway. Baseballs, basketballs, a worn leather football, an assortment of golf balls, softballs, and a lone lacrosse ball fight for space with five various-length Louisville Slugger wood bats that call this bin home. An old-time catcher’s mask, a Mike Piazza blemished black leather catcher’s mitt, an ice hockey-type red face mask, shin guards, and a red chest protector are stuffed beneath everything else, requiring an Act of Congress to retrieve my mitt when Paul demands he practice his splitter, a pitch I swear is laced with that green Flubber invented by Robin Williams’s Professor Philip Brainard, forcing it to drop as if Industrial Light and Magic had spent days designing its trajectory.

Sadly though, it’s not what’s inside the storage bin that’s troubling, but rather what’s underneath: A happy family of hundreds of yellow jackets dance around me when I open it. Luckily, they stare, smile, and continue on their merry wasp-like work schedule, only to return to their condo before sunset after a hard day of threatening the likes of my family and me. Only my wife received a three-bite welcome.

“When do you plan to spray those wasps?” my wife yelled from the front porch the other morning as she waved a 20-ounce value-size green aerosol can of wasp and hornet killer that shoots a 27-foot jet spray.

My wife forgot one thing. I don’t kill wasps.

The doe and her two fawns arrive in my backyard promptly at 6:15 every morning, peering over my three-foot-high, lame and useless green-lattice deer fence, anticipating their peanut butter-laden Dutch Country 100-percent whole-wheat sliced bread I’ve handed them since April, a ritual about which my wife always complains I’m giving them the last few pieces of bread reserved for my kids’ school lunches.

“That was our last piece of bread,” she hollers.

“I’m this close to making contact,” I answer, holding my index finger and thumb an inch apart.

The fawns are more daring than their mom and move microns from my hand. I lurch forward as if to chase, but they stare, don’t even flinch, and munch more on their morning breakfast, as if to say, “Are you kidding?”

One Sunday I worked alongside Joe, a master photographer, at a wedding in Great Neck. I related the story of the family of deer coming to my rear door every morning for their fix of peanut butter-laden whole-wheat sliced bread. Unbeknownst to me, Joe owns a hundred-acre farm in Roscoe, N.Y., where he religiously hunts wildlife, preferably deer, and boasts he makes his own jerky from the venison.

“Hey Frankie,” Joe said, as his eyes widened larger than a summer solstice sun. “I just bought a new bow. I would love to perch atop one of your trees and take me home some fresh East Hampton venison. I’ll even grind you up a few pounds of hamburger meat,” he blared.

Joe forgot one thing. I don’t kill friends.

Frank Vespe is a regular “Guestwords” contributor.

Beryle Huntting Stanley inscribed “With Nancy, 1947” on the small black-and-white photo. Her daughter, Carol, and a friend, Nancy Parsons, look back at her, their faces in the afternoon sun. Carol’s slightly pained expression, likely similar to that of many 31/2-year-olds, bears that “Mom, do you have to?” look.

Many years later, the picture represents a gem in Carol’s fondest memories of those summer trips to East Hampton, visiting Uncle Jud, as he was known to the family. At her tender age, she no doubt never knew the role he played securing public access and the bathing pavilion on what would one day become rated as the number-one beach in the country. Sitting in the gorgeous sand, working on a small sand castle with her good friend nearby, life could not have been better.

It took the village three attempts to purchase the Main Beach pavilion and access, and though the third time was the charm, it was only by the slimmest of margins. Jud Banister was barely into the second year of his first mayoral term in 1937 and well aware of the village’s two previous failed attempts to buy the property. The nation was still trying to pull out of the Depression, and any action that increased property taxes would have an uphill climb.

Jud and his wife, Harriet Conklin Banister, spent any free summer time he had at their camp on Three Mile Harbor, and Carol, who is now my wife, has no family history of their making much, if any, use of Main Beach. But the property had family history.

In “From Sea to Sea: 350 years of East Hampton History,” Averill Dayton Geus describes the early family bath houses brought to Main Beach each year until a group of summer residents built the Association Bath Houses in the late 1800s. They hired Aaron Conklin as manager. He was Harriet Conklin Banister’s father, as well as the father of Nancy Parsons’s grandmother, thus the ready association between Carol and Nancy. Jud remembered Aaron, who had died long before Jud came to East Hampton. In an East Hampton Star interview just months before he died, Jud recalled his memories of East Hampton life and his time as mayor, and was well aware of his wife’s connection to Main Beach.

“Village Leases Bathing Beach; Vote on Purchase Up in June” declared a front-page headline in The Star’s April 22, 1937, edition. The village was about to enter a lease for a second summer season with Austin Culver, who had purchased the property from the Association. Mayor Banister was quoted as saying the village came out even on the lease for 1936 and fully expected the same for the coming season. Raymond A. Smith, the village counsel, told The Star that an initiative to purchase the property would be submitted for the June ballot. Villagers knew that such an initiative had been defeated overwhelmingly twice before.

In 1932 the Sea Spray Corporation, which was prepared to buy the pavilion and beachfront as part of a larger offer to the village that would include rental cottages, sought $35,000 for the consolidated properties. Taxpayers voted it down 233 to 116. Three years later, the village looked for taxpayer support to the tune of $24,000, which included an estimated $3,000 in legal, insurance, and related fees, for the pavilion and beachfront. Again, the voters said no, by a 197-to-122 margin.

Less than two years after that, the board and the new mayor, Jud, were back again, this time hoping to get support for purchasing Culver’s 351 feet of ocean frontage, including 258 feet on Ocean Avenue and the pavilion. Would the third time be the charm? Not without effort.

Always influential, the Ladies Village Improvement Society was the first to hear the case for purchase. Jud and a village board member, Thomas Crane, met with the society at its regular June meeting and made their pitch. In giving the background of the ballot initiative, Jud said the property would be paid off over 10 years in annual installments of $2,000 raised by selling bonds. Jud felt the price for two acres on the ocean was an excellent buy. Crane, using his experience as a member of the summer colony for a number of years, related how, in his judgment, East Hampton’s main industry was the summer colony, and the village should view any taxes that supported the colony’s needs, such as beach access, as wise investments.

In light of taxpayer resistance to the previous ballot measures, Jud took the rare move of requesting public support through an open letter published in the issue of The Star preceding the vote. “Mayor Urges Purchase of Village Bathing Beach” was the headline on the front page. Jud assured voters he had personally inspected the property, and though the pavilion showed typical signs of exterior shorefront exposure to the elements, he said the inside was sound, with years of life left and little maintenance expense involved.

He was known to have acquired other properties around town and was recognized as knowledgeable regarding structural conditions. He hoped his experience and word would alleviate concerns of some who had been opposed to the purchase previously.

Perhaps more important, he reminded villagers that many were not members of the exclusive Maidstone Club, and that Main Beach and its pavilion amounted to the only other village beach available to the majority of taxpayers as well as staff employed by many in the summer colony. Adding supporting evidence that income from renting “two apartments over the pavilion along with a cottage on Ocean Avenue and a studio on the west end” would significantly help finance the bonds, he closed by connecting the beach to the essence of East Hampton. Making a point that beach aficionados would always recognize, he said, “The beach along the ocean at this particular spot is one of the finest beaches on the Atlantic Coast, and I think it would be most vital that the village own it.”

A week later, The Star could report that taxpayers had supported the proposition. Jud probably never knew how influential his letter had been, but surely he was relieved by the six-vote win. Whether out of a lack of desire, resignation, or something else, only 160 voters chose to weigh in, but 83 agreed with Jud and the board, and, as the saying goes, they “set the wheels in motion.”

Village minutes from April through the election describe the process. When the board voted to lease the property for the coming summer season, members included language giving them the first option to purchase it for $20,000. Records show the lease was signed by Austin Culver, owner, and Judson L. Banister, mayor. This led to the election language unanimously adopted at the same board meeting requesting that taxpayers authorize the board to buy the property. With the successful outcome, the board unanimously approved a resolution to proceed with the purchase and issuance of the bonds. Main Beach was about to become village property.

The village was so proud of this purchase that the board approved a full-page advertisement in the 1939 publication of the Ladies Village Improvement Society’s “Home, Sweet Home” cookbook. The ad in what was the seventh L.V.I.S. cookbook, the first since 1924, read, “The Village of East Hampton Offers Beach and Bathing Facilities in Its Municipally Owned and Operated Pavilion and Bath-Houses at the End of Ocean Avenue.”

In September 2007, the present bathing pavilion, reminiscent of the sketches appearing in The Star 70 years earlier, served as the backdrop for another photo of Carol and Nancy on Main Beach. Sitting in the sand admired by so many beachgoers, they reflected on the fun days of their youth. It may have taken a helping hand from me for each to get back up, but it was obvious that the hold they had on those 60-year-old memories was one that would never fail.

Steve Rideout, a regular “Guestwords” contributor, lives in Shutesbury, Mass. He comes to East Hampton every off-season to research family history.

“What a great country we have here when it decides to be.” — John Updike

“We know now that government by organized money is just as dangerous as government by organized mob.” — Franklin Delano Roosevelt

In September 1932, Franklin Roosevelt crossed the country to San Francisco to give a speech that contributed mightily to his landslide election to the presidency six weeks later. I yearn to hear the likes of it today from Hillary Clinton.

The United States, F.D.R. said, needed a new social contract. Throughout most of our history, anyone willing to work could earn a good living. If a depression came along, all you had to do was climb into a covered wagon and head west, where free land and jobs were plentiful.

But, F.D.R. continued, by the start of the 20th century the free land was gone and our corporate and financial leaders had become “malefactors of great wealth” and “princes of profit” — exerting “uncontrolled and irresponsible powers” akin to “the feudal barons of old.” We were becoming an “economic oligarchy.” Equality of opportunity no longer existed. The government had to expand its role in the economy to facilitate creation of jobs and otherwise ease the burden on the great numbers of people who were suffering.

Backed by Congress and prodded by his determined wife, Eleanor, F.D.R. moved swiftly. He created the Civilian Conservation Corps, which recruited millions of unemployed young men to work on public land development and conservation. The Works Progress Administration constructed public buildings and oversaw the Federal Art Project, which paid a monthly stipend to struggling writers and artists, among them East Hampton’s de Kooning, Krasner, and Pollock.

The Tennessee Valley Authority provided low-cost electricity to poor rural areas. The Agricultural Adjustment Act firmed farm prices that had so thoroughly collapsed, tens of thousands of farm families abandoned their land and, impoverished, set off to find work. The National Labor Relations Act, at present under attack in Congress, reduced obstacles to workers forming unions and in doing so paved the way for the amazing mid-20th-century growth of our middle class. The Social Security Act of 1935 thrives today as a source of economic stability for our elderly and disabled and for the country as a whole. And, until its repeal, led by Bill Clinton in 1999, the Glass-Steagall Banking Act stood as a bulwark against investment industry shenanigans that were to rock the country with the financial trauma of 2008.

Some of F.D.R.’s princes of profit called him a socialist and traitor to his class, the old wealth that then prevailed on Wall Street. “They are unanimous in their hate for me,” he said while campaigning for re-election in 1936, “and I welcome their hatred.” He carried 46 of the 48 states and all but 8 of the 531 electoral votes.

I believe that in order to be elected president in 2016, Mrs. Clinton must commit to a new, similarly focused social contract that signals her independence from the magnetism and influence of great wealth. The country needs this, as it did in the 1930s, to recover from its economic and spiritual funk. And she needs it, personally, as a mission for a prospective presidency and to reinforce the Clintons’ legacy.

The similarities between now and 1932 are startling — the decline of equal opportunity and the morale of working families, the narcissistically applied power of the very rich, the deification of money and those who make mountains of it by fair or foul, while our leaders seem unable to provide a safe financial system and enough jobs offering opportunity and livable income. Now as then, this demands a strong, compassionate leader directing strong, compassionate policies who can stare down the 21st century’s malefactors of great wealth.

Such a social contract could also mend cracks that have appeared in the Clintons’ credibility, notably from perceptions of excessive closeness with the “.1 percent” and a preoccupation with attaining personal wealth. The routing of speaking fees — upward of $200,000 per speech for Hillary (and $700,000 for Bill) — to the Clinton Foundation rather than the Clintons personally, though apparently legal, diminishes trust in her statesmanship and provides a potent weapon for her opponents, which can best be countered by a potent program of her own.

F.D.R.’s site choice to unveil his social contract was inspired — San Francisco, a youthful city, symbol of optimism and vigor, traits the country needed to survive and that F.D.R. feared the Depression was crushing. Mrs. Clinton needs a similarly telling site to introduce her 21st-century social contract. That site is East Hampton, nexus of Clinton campaign money-raising and symbol of the country’s gaping economic apar­theid.

To highlight her focus, the presentation should be delivered north of the highway, a part of our town James Brady, author of “Further Lane,” called “the other Hamptons.” East Hampton High School would be a good place. So might Studio 3 at LTV, our local television station. The audience should be predominantly north of the highway — our parks and highways workers, farmers, traditional and organic, fishermen, nurses, waiters, engineers, chefs, the seniors and working families in our town’s affordable-housing homes and apartments.

Mrs. Clinton needs to show that to restore fairness, a healthy economy, and balanced budget she will risk, as F.D.R. did, being labeled a socialist and traitor, that she is not knitted to a coterie of superrich financiers. Rather, she is a potential leader of our democracy who, if we elect her, will make certain that the people who profit hugely from our financial casino are no longer pampered by our tax and regulatory codes and a presidency that frets at the prospect of their displeasure.

Richard Rosenthal is author of “The Dandelion War,” a satire on class warfare in the Hamptons.

The East Hampton Town Board recently proposed a rental registration law that has become the topic of much debate. Ostensibly it is designed to address the problem the town has long had in enforcing the existing laws prohibiting group and transit rentals. Unfortunately, the proposed law does not really solve this problem in a meaningful way, although with a few tweaks it could be a lot more effective.

As a matter of full disclosure: My wife and I have owned a home in the Amagansett Dunes for 35 years. We’ve never rented it nor do we intend to. A number of the homes around us, however, have been rented to groups and transients over the years.

The proposed law requires that an owner submit an affidavit attesting to the number of persons to occupy the property, the proposed rental period, that there is a valid certificate of occupancy, and that refuse will be removed in a timely manner. This is insufficient. The owner should be required to attest under penalty of perjury that the home will be occupied by one family (as required by the town zoning code) and that no shares have been sold giving rights to individuals to occupy individual bedrooms (also prohibited by the zoning code).

At present, there is no legal obligation for landlords to ensure that their rentals comply with the existing laws prohibiting group or transient rentals. They (and their real estate agents) just take the money and run, often involving tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars. It is the neighbors who are left with the consequences of loud parties, scores of guests, tenants coming home drunk at 3 and 4 a.m., and illegally parked cars.

Indeed, I would propose that the law also require that in any lease the tenant also represent that only one family will occupy the premises and that no shares have been sold. There is already precedence for this in the section of the town code dealing with affordable accessory apartments; it specifies six provisions that must be included in the lease of such an apartment.

The proposed law is very unclear as to whether a landlord has to get a new permit every time he enters into a new lease. The way I read the current draft, all a landlord has to do is update the affidavit in terms of the number of persons occupying the premises and the term of the lease. I suggest that there will be wholesale violation of this provision, as all an owner has to do is publish his rental registration number in any ad. An owner should go through the certification process every time he or she enters into a new lease, as what could be a legal lease one year could be an illegal group rental the next.

People have to get beach parking permits every year; the same should be true of rental permits, which should only be valid for the term of the lease in question. In fact, the Southampton rental permit law has such a provision.

In addition to issuing a rental permit number, the town should also issue a rental permit decal (again, like the beach parking permit) that should be prominently displayed on the door of the premises and that sets forth the registration number and the period for which it is valid. Given East Hampton’s limited resources devoted to code enforcement, it is really the neighbors who are able to identify illegal group and transient rentals. Unlike Southampton, however, East Hampton does not (and probably in the near future will not) have a database of property permits readily accessible on the Internet. The display of a permit will enable neighbors to easily ascertain if the landlord of a rental property has complied with the law rather than having to do a manual search at the Building Department.

Over the years I’ve been told by various code enforcement officers that the problem with enforcing the group rental law is their inability under the law to obtain access to the premises. Once again, the existing town code governing affordable accessory apartments provides a solution. That law requires that the lease of any affordable accessory apartment contain the following clause:

“The tenant consents to an inspection upon reasonable notice by the building inspector, or his/her designee, for the purpose of determining whether the apartment and all other structures on the property are in compliance with the code of the Town of East Hampton, the New York State Uniform Fire Prevention and Building Code, and/or the rules and regulations of any other agency having jurisdiction. The failure to schedule an inspection after due notice from the town or resisting, obstructing, and/or impeding the agents, servants, officers, and/or employees of the Town of East Hampton during an inspection of the premises is a violation of the East Hampton Town Code and subject to the fines and penalties provided herein.”

The proposed rental registration law should have a similar clause. It should provide that by applying for a rental permit the landlord consents to an inspection by the building inspector to ensure compliance with the law, and it should require that the lease of the premises contain an identical consent by the tenant.

Absentee landlords have been thumb­ing their noses at the laws relating to group and transient rentals for years. This has become a real quality-of-life issue in numerous areas of the town. If the town is serious about getting this under control, it needs to do more than what is currently being proposed.

Jack Hassid is a lawyer who practices commercial litigation in New York City.

In 1961 I was 8 years old and Sandy Koufax was the most dominant pitcher in baseball. He was also my favorite player. It wasn’t common in those days for girls to collect baseball cards, but I did. The only card I did not have was Sandy Koufax.

One day walking home from religious instruction at Our Lady of Lourdes in Massapequa Park, I felt something hit me in the head. I quickly looked around, thinking someone had thrown something at me, but there was no one around and I was in an open area. The only thing visible, lying at my foot, was a Sandy Koufax baseball card. I was duly flabbergasted at this stroke of luck, but of course immediately began to consider that since no one was around this must be divine intervention, having after all just come from religious instruction. Or it was just baseball magic.

Going into this last week of the regular season in baseball, I find myself hoping for more of that baseball magic. I find it hard to imagine that Derek Jeter, my favorite player these last 20 years, will play his last game in Fenway Park on Sunday, unless somehow not only do the Yankees miraculously play flawless baseball down the stretch, but all the teams in front of them in the wild card race collapse. As Yogi Berra said, “It ain’t over,” etc.

Whatever happens, baseball will not be the same next year — that is, New York baseball, and in particular Yankee baseball. And as rocky as this season has been, I’m glad Jeter announced his retirement early and shared it with baseball fans throughout the country. I grew up in an era when many baseball players were not very cordial to each other, to say the least, but Derek Jeter has brought a civility to the game that proves that the only things necessary are talent and sportsmanship.

In an era of performance-enhancing drugs, Jeter is the epitome of what a baseball player did not have to do to be great. In 20 years Derek Jeter never embarrassed himself or baseball. He understood that as the captain of the Yankees he was a leader and he had to set an example. He was respectful and therefore respected. He never kicked the dirt or argued with an ump. He played the game the way it was supposed to be played. He worked hard and he played hard. If he hit a ball deep he never stood and watched it. He ran out every hit. He fielded every ball as if he could make the play, and many times that meant going deep in the hole behind shortstop, fielding it bare-handed, and releasing it midair, accurately, to Tino or Teixeira at first base.

We remember those plays and hits: the 2001 “flip” play along the first-base line to Jorge Posada to tag out Jeremy Giambi at the plate, the dive into the stands along the left-field line in 2004 when he made the catch but came up bruised and bloody, the home run for his 3,000th hit, and the many playoff and World Series clutch hits and home runs. He wasn’t called Mr. November for nothing. Jeter has been thrilling to watch. We came to expect near perfection.

Watching as Jeter went from stadium to stadium this season has been a delight. This was not an easy season for the Yankees or Jeter, as both struggled, the Yankees with pitching and Jeter with hitting, although Jeter’s bat has gotten hot again, and he still managed to make some spectacular fielding plays throughout this final season. But to see fans in the stands all over the country wearing their home team’s hat and a Jeter T-shirt was great. To see opposing teams stand on the top step of their dugout while Jeter was paid tribute to. And to hear active and retired players pay tribute to him has been heartwarming. My favorite was young Bryce Harper of the Washington Nationals, who said that Jeter was “not just the captain of the Yankees, but the captain of baseball.”

This is in no way to say that Derek Jeter is a hero or the greatest baseball player of all time. A hero is someone who cures cancer or saves someone’s life or sacrifices his or her own life. And I think Derek Jeter would be the first to agree with this statement. Jeter is someone who loves to play baseball and feels he owes it to the fans to play it the best he can.

So it would be selfish on my part to want more of that baseball magic after what he has given us for 20 years. What Derek Jeter deserves now is simply this: Thanks!

Diane Spina York, a retired social studies teacher, taught at East Hampton High School for 20 years. She lives in Springs.

With all of the iPhones, iPads, tablets, laptops, and other devices teens have access to these days, you would think textbooks would be a thing of the past . . . right? Guess again. Carrying around heavy backpacks all day can be very detrimental for growing students, causing stress fractures in the back, inflammation of growth cartilage, and nerve damage in the neck and shoulders. Even with the advancements in technology, the burden of the backpack has not been lifted, in fact it has only increased.

As a senior at East Hampton High School, I’ve had to put up with the discomfort of backpacks nearly my whole academic life. I decided someone needed to say something. So I asked a bunch of my friends and their younger siblings who attended schools within the district whether they, or anyone they knew, struggled with back problems related to backpacks.

An (un)surprising majority had experience with back problems ranging from regular chiropractor visits to severe cases of progressing scoliosis, some even resulting in spinal surgery. You don’t need to be a scientist or doctor to see the effect that lugging backpacks has on us. We slouch, shuffle our feet, are slow to class, and use our desks to crack our backs more than anything else (just ask any high school student to explain the technique). These characteristics shouldn’t be chalked up as typical sullen teenage behavior; instead they should be recognized as one of the side effects of years of dealing with overweight backpacks.

The standard high school course requires students to transport at least one textbook back and forth between home and class. This does not include all of the handouts, class work, binders, folders, calculators, books, homework, notes, tests, quizzes, portfolios, and so on. Keep in mind that most binders, once filled, can weigh as much as, if not more than, the books. Over time the “heavy workload” really piles up, figuratively and literally.

During my junior year I began researching reports of overweight backpacks and their prominence in school systems across the country. It was interesting to learn how in recent years backpacks seemed to be getting heavier, causing more and more complaints from the student body despite the influx of technology intended to alleviate such issues. There were articles by doctors and parents all over the Internet about the severe problems that accompany overweight backpacks, but I could hardly find any information on the average weight of a backpack nowadays.

I had so many questions: How early are children being forced to lug their backpacks each day? Exactly how heavy is the average backpack? What about in my school district? I was curious. So in February of this year, with the approval of my principal, Adam Fine, I held my first-ever “Backpack Weigh-In” at my high school.

I arrived at school early one morning with a few of my good friends and set up a table in the front lobby along with posters, fliers, doughnuts (to encourage participation), and, most important, scales. Then the buses pulled up, opened their doors, and immediately students were pouring into the foyer. My friends and I stood near the table calling over our peers to have their bags weighed and in return receive a doughnut. Needless to say, all of the doughnuts vanished within seconds.

Even after the treats were gone, students still came up to the table curious about my project and shocked at the weight they hadn’t realized they were carrying around with them all the time. In the end I had weighed 100 backpacks. The results were astonishing. Doctors say that you should never carry more than 10 percent of your body weight for long periods of time. On the low end of the spectrum, students’ backpacks weighed a minimum of 10 percent of their body weight. Fewer than 20 students were either under, or met, the recommended 10 percent. The average weight was 19 pounds — almost double the recommended percentage.

On the high end, some bags were clocking in at 24, 27, even 30 pounds. Let me say that none of these students weighed anywhere near enough to be within the 10-percent parameters. This meant that about one-quarter of the 100 students were hauling almost triple the recommended amount.

The heaviest bag I weighed was that of a senior girl. She was a petite thing, around 5-foot-2, and when I asked her if she was interested in seeing how much her bag weighed she shrugged and let it drop to the floor with a loud thud. Since the bag was too big to fit on one of my bathroom scales, I asked for the assistance of my health teacher, who hooked it onto one of my scales that works using suspension. My teacher’s eyes popped out of his head as he gave the tiny girl a once-over and then showed me the number.

I turned and asked if she would tell me how much she weighed. At this point she was a little nervous, seeing that something had really grabbed ahold of my attention, but she replied that when she weighed herself the week before she was roughly 113 pounds. Her bag was 34 pounds — just over 30 percent of her body weight. I asked if she suffered from any back problems, and she explained that at the age of 16, almost two years ago, she began seeing a chiropractor regularly.

Amazed at these results, I presented them to Mr. Fine, who was also blown away. After some discussion we both agreed it would be interesting to do the same experiment at the other schools within the district. So at the end of May I met with Charles Soriano, the principal of the East Hampton Middle School, and Dennis Sullivan, the assistant principal of the John M. Marshall Elementary School, and arranged another two weigh-in sessions. Although doughnuts weren’t allowed to aid us in attracting volunteers, we were still able to round up a good 50 bags at the middle school and another 100 at the elementary school.

Again the results left us all slack-jawed and wide-eyed. At the middle school the average backpack weighed 14 pounds, and at the elementary school the average was 7 pounds. Again, just by looking at the students, you could clearly tell that they were beyond the healthy 10 percent. This means by the time some kids graduate from elementary school they are at risk of suffering from back problems accumulated over vital growth periods throughout the years.

The principals were amazing. They immediately showed interest in my ideas, made the necessary accommodations for my experiments, and hopped on board with me to raise awareness within the district and around the town. Most of them admitted they hadn’t heard anything about overweight backpacks within at least the last five years, from either parents or students. They all agreed, however, that the number of children suffering from back pain, scoliosis, and growth problems must be correlated to the increase in backpack weight over the years. The resulting backpack averages from my experiments are enough on their own to show just how extensive the issue already is, and how as time goes by the matter only becomes worse.

Currently there are no backpack regulations for the student body, but starting with this article I plan to raise awareness through the student handbook, the East Hampton School District’s online page, parent emails, and health classes. In the meantime, I contacted Matt Vogel, a locally acclaimed physical therapist, for his advice on how to help ease and prevent back pain:

1. Always wear two backpack straps to evenly distribute the weight. 2. Use a back brace, Velcro, adjustable straps, and/or clips to secure the bag. 3. Stretch as often as you can to keep your muscles warm and flexible. 4. Good posture!

I believe the more that students, parents, faculty, and administrators are conscious of this issue, the less likely it will be for overweight backpacks to cause serious health problems later on in students’ lives. School can really weigh a kid down as it is, and this is one burden they can do without.

A year ago Hannah Vogel wrote a “Guestwords” about her mission trip to Cuba through the East Hampton Presbyterian Church.

I discovered the eminent economist William Vickrey, a 1996 Nobel laureate, in an odd way. Although I’ve written about Wall Street and money for many years, my academic background was not in economics, but in American literature. So when I was looking for a pungent epigraph for “Up From Gold,” my 2012 book on the development of our modern dollar-based economy, I thought of a quip by Gertrude Stein (the doyenne of American writers in 1920s Paris, famous for “a rose is a rose is a rose”). As I remembered it, she said, “Economics is simple. First there is money in someone’s pocket, and when you look again, the money is in someone else’s pocket. That’s economics.”

When I Googled the quote to test my memory, up popped William Vickrey’s 1992 presidential address to the American Economic Association, in which he offered a snappier version: “As Gertrude Stein remarked, ‘The money is always there, it’s the pockets that keep changing.’ ”

When he died in 1996 at the age of 82, Vickrey was promptly forgotten by most of the economics profession; a small following keeps his memory and his ideas alive. A maverick all his life — a Quaker and conscientious objector — he often disagreed vehemently with what he described in his 1992 address as “the great bulk [of economists] close to the seats of power.” His Gertrude Stein quote came as he was denouncing a “callous tolerance for unemployment” within both the government and the economics profession. He blasted the “monetary authorities” for their “remoteness from the grim realities of unemployment,” and he derided the theory of a “non-accelerating-inflation rate of unemployment,” or NAIRU, which assumes a trade-off between unemployment and inflation.

At the time, most economists believed that 5 to 6-percent unemployment was “necessary” to restrain inflation. Some of them even referred to a “natural rate of unemployment,” a phrase that Vickrey called “one of the most vicious euphemisms ever coined.” In words that still reverberate, he told his colleagues, “It is high time we gave human values a deserved priority instead of staying mesmerized by figures on balance sheets. . . . What is urgently needed is to bring the economy rapidly to a point of genuine full employment and keep it there.”

Most Americans instinctively agree with Vickrey and can’t understand why, seven years after the economy collapsed, despite Federal Reserve efforts (the “QE2” quantitative easing, etc.), and despite assurances from policy makers that their focus is on jobs and jobs, unemployment remains a drag on economic growth. Is there an explanation for this? There is, and Gertrude Stein’s imagery helps us find it.

The money that moves through the economy is, for all Americans, dollars, whether in paper or bank deposit form. This is true for all individuals, including economists, and for all corporations or other business entities. Buyers of, for example, Bitcoins measure their gains or losses in dollars. Owners of gold value their holdings in dollars. All players in the economy use their dollars to buy goods and services, and “the economy” is nothing more than the sum total of all the movements of dollars from one pocket to another in exchange for something else.

This process seems obvious today, but, as I related in “Up From Gold,” it took 500 years to create our modern banking system and complete the extraordinary conversion from a gold-based economy to a dollar-based economy. In fact, the conversion was not fully accomplished until the 1960s, yet understanding the implications of so fundamental a change is crucial to understanding our economy.

The difference between using dollars and using gold is that you can dig more gold from the earth, or ship it from overseas mines, but you can’t create dollars in the same way. The German Treasury in the 1920s literally printed marks and paid government employees with them, thereby destroying both the currency and the economy. The U.S. Treasury is prohibited by law from printing money or selling bonds directly to (that is, borrowing dollars directly from) the Federal Reserve. All paper dollars printed by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing are distributed to banks, at their request, to have on hand when existing depositors want to withdraw “cash.”

Nonetheless, there is clearly more wealth, and more dollars, in the nation today than there was 50 years ago. So how does the total number of dollars grow?

The answer is that dollars increase when an economic player, whether an individual, a business, or a corporation, borrows from a bank. This process is rarely explained in official publications, but think of it this way. You and all other economic players know how much money you have; you can envisage a pile of physical dollars that represents your total wealth today. If you borrow a dollar from my pile, yours is a dollar higher and mine a dollar lower, but the economy’s total number of dollars hasn’t changed. If you borrow a dollar from a bank, however, you have not diminished my pile or any other player’s, yet your pile is higher. The total number of dollars in the economy has increased.

It is also true that when you repay that dollar to a bank, the number of dollars in the economy shrinks. Again, this process becomes clear when we ask where you find the dollars to repay your loan. You can only get them by selling goods or services to other players in the economy, who transfer dollars from their pockets to yours. You then return those dollars to the bank that created them, the bank tears up the note you signed, and the created dollars disappear. The economy has grown, but the number of dollars has not.

Dollars do increase over time, but only through additional borrowing by a growing population, in a growing economy. The wealth of the nation, in the form of useable and productive assets, increases through the economic activities that borrowing makes possible, and with that increased wealth, and the larger economy, additional borrowing is possible. The absolute amount of borrowing can increase as long as the economy grows as well.

What I’ve described represents the whole economy, including the U.S. government (that is, the Treasury), which, like all players, borrows from other players, or taxes them, without increasing the total dollars in the economy. The difference lies in the relation of the Treasury to the Federal Reserve.

In the first place, the Fed is a bank — or more precisely a national system of banks. It is not, however, like the familiar banking corporations we all keep our money in. The Fed has just one main customer, the U.S. Treasury. The Fed receives taxes and borrowed money for the Treasury and maintains its accounts. All the checks the Treasury issues are written on its accounts at the Fed, just as your checks are written on your banking corporation.

I’ve said that the Treasury cannot borrow directly from the Federal Reserve, and when it borrows from you or me, the total amount of dollars in the economy does not change. However, the Fed can buy Treasury bonds from economic players who lent money to the Treasury and received the bonds. As a bank, the Fed creates the dollars it puts into the pockets of bond owners when it buys bonds from them. The dollars the Treasury previously received when it sold the bonds went into the pockets of players providing goods or services to the government, and those dollars continue to exist in those pockets. Now the Fed creates new dollars to put back into the pockets of the original bond buyers.

In other words, when the Federal Reserve buys Treasury bonds from players in the real economy, total dollars in the economy do increase. This is the full meaning of QE2 and other phrases. It is the action that commentators are in fact describing when they speak of the Fed “pumping money into the economy.”

The answer to our original question — why Fed actions have not restored the economy and significantly reduced unemployment — now becomes clear. The economic players from whom the Fed buys Treasury bonds haven’t spent the increased dollars on goods or services, because they bought the Treasury bonds in the first place as investments, and they count the bonds or the dollars in their assets. The vast majority of government bonds that are traded are exchanged among those investors — including pension funds, hedge funds, etc. — with dollars changing pockets among them constantly. When the Fed steps in and buys government bonds, it is simply acting as another trader among all the asset traders — and not the largest one. The Fed’s major announcement last year that it would buy up to $100 billion of Treasury bonds per month should be seen in the context of the whole market. Outstanding Treasury bonds now total over $17 trillion, of which some $300 billion to $400 billion trade daily.

In essence, through its purchases of Treasury bonds, the Fed creates more dollars to circulate among asset traders. To reduce unemployment, the government will have to put more dollars into the hands of those who will spend them on goods and services. Their additional buying will encourage more business borrowing and an expansion of the nation’s productive capacity.

Malcolm Mitchell is editor and publisher of Investment Policy magazine. He lives in New York and East Hampton.