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he stumbled o the stage and tore therotator cu in his right shoulder (“Ithink you’re taking stepping down alittle too seriously,” a riend joked later).The injury landed him on the operatingtable, where he would return less thantwo years later with a broken hand.As the nancial crisis started totake hold throughout the country, a liecrisis—and legacy crisis, perhaps—took shape as well. Restless nightsand melancholic laments to riendsevolved into depression, because “atmy age,” he says, “when you’re goingthrough these kinds o transitions it’s very dicult.” And so he reverted back to two o his avorite pastimes to curehimsel: psychotherapy sessions and hisreputation as a decit hawk.“I had an image o what it mightbe like on my deathbed to have all thismoney that I don’t need and being very concerned about the uture and nothaving done anything,” Peterson says.“And I thought that was unacceptable.”He thought o the old adage his ormerproessor at the University o Chicago,George Stigler, once told him: when you don’t have a choice, you don’t havea problem. As Peterson saw it, he hadno alternative—he had to spend thatmoney. “What am I going to do, sit outon the beach and count my dollars? Play gol every day o my lie? I didn’t think the typical retirement lie was or me.”Peterson looked to ellowbillionaires and realized that “virtually all the ones I really admired were majorphilanthropists.” So, he writes, likeMichael Bloomberg, George Soros,Eli Broad and his role model DavidRockeeller, “I decided that was whatI wanted to do.” He and his wiewould soon become the third mostgenerous American philanthropistsin 2008, according to The Chronicleo Philanthropy. Beneciaries besidesthe new oundation included thePeterson Institute or InternationalEconomics (another creation o his),Sesame Workshop and the New York-Presbyterian Hospital. Years o harping about scaldiscipline and generational inequity had already made Peterson a targetamong riends. They mock his relentlesscrusade and the plethora o op-eds andarticles it has produced or the New York Review o Books, Times Sunday Magazine and Atlantic Monthly. He’swritten ve books that point out hulking yet somehow unseen nancial crises,including most recently Gray Dawn:How the Coming Age Wave WillTransorm America - and the World in1999 and Running on Empty: How theDemocratic and Republican PartiesAre Bankrupting Our Future and WhatAmericans Can Do About It in 2004.“Once you put it down, you won’t beable to pick it up,” joked Ted Sorenson,President Kennedy’s speechwriterabout one. Leslie H. Gelb, a riend andcolleague at the Council on ForeignRelations, recently ried that while ittook him 15 years to write one book inthe time it took Peterson to write ve, “itwas easy since [Peterson’s] were all thesame book with new covers.”Peterson needed his new oundationto be dierent.Back in 2007, Peterson satalongside riends Paul Volcker, WarrenBuett and Bob Kerrey on a panelsponsored by the Concord Coalition, anorganization that advocates or scally responsible public policy that Petersonhelped ound in 1992, as David Walkeraccepted the Concord Coalition’s“Economic Patriot Award.” Walker wasComptroller General o the UnitedStates and head o the GovernmentAccountability Oce since PresidentClinton had appointed him in 1998. Headvocated many o the same policiesabout which Peterson was passionate onhis “Fiscal Wake-Up Tour,” a series o Coalition-sponsored visits to cities andcollege campuses nationwide to bringattention to the ederal government’sgrowing budget decits. Petersonrecruited him relentlessly or weeks, Walker says, until “he convinced methat I would probably have a betterchance o accomplishing my nalobjective by coming with him and beingable to do things at the oundation that Icouldn’t do as Comptroller General.” Walker and Peterson warn o “large and growing budget decits,dismal national and personal savingsrates, and a ballooning national debtthat endangers the viability o SocialSecurity, Medicare, and our economy itsel.” A ticker on the let side o theoundation’s website keeps track o a number too big or most o us tocomprehend: $56,400,000,000,000—all those zeros mean trillion—whichequals the “Real National Debt”according to their research team.It is ollowed by another ominousgure, $184,000, the burden o every individual American today. The U.S.government puts the gure closer to$11 trillion but the oundation contendsthat its number accounts or thegovernment’s ununded promises tomilitary pensions, existing debt, SocialSecurity and Medicare benets and thelike. They project that these latter twoentitlement programs represent almost$43 trillion o red ink alone and citestudies showing that both unds willrun out o money long beore Peterson’sgrandchildren reach retirement age.Peterson has been a lielongRepublican, but claries, “I am aRockeeller Republican. And thereare two o us let, David Rockeellerand mysel, I think.” His party has lethim down prooundly, which “at leastused to have a principle called scalconservatism,” he says with a heavy sigh. “I could not have imagined thatwe’d have a Republican administrationthat got rid o spending caps, got rido pay-as-you-go and had endless taxcuts and terric increases in spending.”Peterson’s lectures to George W. Bushon the immorality o providing long-term tax cuts to “genuine at cats” likehimsel at the expense o more pressingentitlement reorm have long allen ondea ears, and he has loudly lambastedthe ormer president’s administrationand Republican Congress or overseeingthe “biggest, most reckless deteriorationo America’s nances in history.”During the 2008 presidentialelections, Peterson supported JohnMcCain, calling him “a true scalconservative.” But, says Michael,one o Peterson’s our sons and theoundation’s vice chairman, “theoundation is strictly nonpartisan andnonideological and Obama’s victory didn’t change our mission in any way. Itthem a strong sense o “enough.” Witha third-grade education and no English,Peterson’s ather opened a successuldiner at which Peterson, the eldestchild, took his rst job at age 8 countingmoney.Peterson was an overachieverthroughout grade school, masteringGreek and the clarinet and receivingonly one “B” ater ailing to draw rogs inhigh school biology. He struggled withhis weight throughout childhood (andwould into adulthood) and his motherorbid him to play contact sports.Classmates labeled him a “sissy.” Buti those years taught him anything, “itwas that I could prevail through sheerobsessive diligence,” he refects. “I couldout-work and out-study almost anybody,and i that’s what it took to conquer asituation, that’s what I would do.”The amily business made enoughmoney to send Peterson to college, andater a brie stint at MIT he went onto graduate summa cum laude with adegree in retailing rom Northwesterninstead. There, he writes, “I ound outthat I was good at what would later becalled multi-tasking, and that I liked it.I was restless in my interests and gotbored doing just one thing. I didn’t knowit at the time, but I was setting a patternI would ollow or the rest o my lie.”
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