[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 32 (Tuesday, March 2, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2144-S2145]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




   LEO MELAMED REFLECTS ON THE ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

 Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I rise today to share with my 
colleagues an essay written by a great Chicagoan, and the father of our 
modern-day futures industry, Leo Melamed. I believe his essay, 
Reflections on the Twentieth Century, eloquently captures the essence 
of this great nation.
  Mr. President, Leo Melamed had to travel a long hard road to reach 
the pinnacle of success. As a boy, he survived the Holocaust, coming to 
the United States to find a better life for his family. Growing up on 
the streets of Chicago, Leo was able to climb the ladder of opportunity 
and make that better life for himself and his family. His early 
experiences gave him a deep appreciation of the importance of a free 
society and an open economy.
  Leo Melamed's heroic story embodies the American Dream. The young man 
who came to Chicago with little has, through hard work, tenacity, 
intellect and energy, given much to the world. In 1972, he launched the 
International Monetary Market (IMM), the first financial futures 
market. He has also achieved the position of Chairman Emeritus and 
Senior Policy Advisor for the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), and is 
the author of several books. His leadership over the past quarter 
century has been critical in helping transform the Chicago Mercantile 
Exchange from a domestic agricultural exchange to the world's foremost 
financial futures exchange.
  Currently, Melamed serves as chairman and CEO of Sakura Dellaher, 
Inc., a global futures organization which he formed in 1993 by 
combining the Sakura Bank, Ltd., one of the world's largest banks, and 
Dellaher Investment Company, Inc., a Futures Commission Merchant (FCM) 
he established in 1965. As a member of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange 
and the Chicago Board of Trade, and with an ability to operate in all 
world futures markets, Sakura Dellaher, Inc., assists financial 
institutions in their management of risk. Because of Leo's exemplary 
accomplishments and contributions to the field of financial futures, he 
has been recognized as ``the father of the futures market concept.''
  I should also add, Mr. President, that the March 1999 issue of 
Chicago magazine has chosen Leo Melamed as one of the Most Important 
Chicagoans of the 20th Century. The article states: ``As de facto 
leader of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange for a quarter of a century, 
Melamed transformed the moribund exchange, introducing foreign currency 
and gold as commodities to be auctioned off in the trading pits. Thanks 
to those decisions, Chicago is today the world capital of currency 
futures trading.'' Leo Melamed deserves great recognition for his 
outstanding contributions to the city he loves so much.
  Mr. President, I ask that the full text of Leo Melamed's essay, 
Reflections on the Twentieth Century, be printed in the Record.
  The essay follows:

                  Reflections on the Twentieth Century

                            (By Leo Melamed)

       The Twentieth Century, my father told me before his death, 
     represented a new low in the history of mankind. ``The 
     Holocaust,'' he said, ``was an indelible blot on human 
     conscience, one that could never be expunged.''
       Still, my father always tempered his realism with a large 
     dose of optimism. He had, after all, against all odds, 
     managed to save himself and his immediate family from the 
     inevitability of the gas chambers. Were that not the case, 
     this kid from Bialystok would not be here to receive this 
     incredible Weizmann Institute honor nor tell his story. And 
     quite a story it is!
       I don't mean simply the story of how my father snatched his 
     wife and son from the clutches of the Nazis. I don't mean 
     simply the story of how my parents outwitted both the Gestapo 
     and the KGB during a time in history when, in Humphrey 
     Bogart's words, ``the world didn't give a hill of beans about 
     the lives of three people.'' I don't mean simply the story of 
     our race for freedom across Europe and Siberia during a 
     moment in history when the world had gone quite mad. And I 
     don't mean simply the story of Consul General Chiune 
     Sugihara, the Japanese Oscar Schindler who chose the follow 
     the dictates of his God rather than those of his Foreign 
     Office and, in direct violation of their orders, issued life 
     saving transit visas to some 6000 Jews trapped in Lithuania--
     the Melamdoviches among them. Six months later all of us 
     would have been machine-gunned to death along with 10,000 
     others in Kovno.
       No, I don't mean simply all of that, although all of that 
     is a helluva story. But there is yet another dimension to the 
     story here. I mean the story of the splendor of America! For 
     it was here, here in this land of the free and home of the 
     brave that the kid from Bialystok was given the opportunity 
     to grow up on the streets of Chicago, to climb the rungs of 
     social order without money or clout, and to use his 
     imagination and skills so that in a small way he could 
     contribute to the growth of American markets. In doing so he 
     not only justified fate's decision to spare his life, but 
     more important, attested to the majesty of this nation.
       Because within my story lies the essence of America, the 
     fundamental beauty of the United States Constitution and the 
     genius of its creators. For throughout the years, thru ups 
     and downs, thru defeats and victories, thru innovations which 
     challenged sacred market doctrines, and ideas which defied 
     status quo, no one ever questioned my right to dream, nor 
     rejected my views simply because I as an immigrant, 
     without proper credentials, without American roots, 
     without wealth, without influence, or because I was a Jew. 
     Intellectual values always won out over provincial 
     considerations, rational thought always prevailed over 
     irrational prejudice, merit always found its way to the 
     top. Say what you will, point out the defects, protest the 
     inequities, but at the end of the day my story represents 
     the real truth about America.
       For these reasons, after all was said and done, my parents 
     were optimists. They agree, that in spite of the two World 
     Wars, in spite of the horrors and atrocities, the Twentieth 
     Century was nevertheless a most remarkable century. They 
     watched the world go from the horse and buggy--to main form 
     of transportation at their birth--to Apollo Eleven which in 
     1969 took Neil Armstrong to the moon.
       Indeed, it is hard to fathom that at the dawn of my 
     parent's century, Britannia was still the empire on which the 
     sun never set; the railroads were in their Golden Age, 
     automobiles were considered nothing but a fad, the phonograph 
     was the most popular form of home entertainment, and life 
     expectancy for the American male was but 48. Sigmund Freud 
     first published his ``Interpretation of Dreams,'' and Albert 
     Einstein, the foremost thinker of the century, had just 
     published his theory of relativity.
       Of course, the event that would have the most profound 
     effect on the direction of our present century occurred back 
     in 1848--smack dab in the middle of the Nineteenth Century: 
     Karl Marx and his associate, Friedrich Engels, published the 
     Communist Manifesto. The concept of communism would dominate 
     the political thought of Europe and later Asia for most of 
     the Twentieth Century.

[[Page S2145]]

       Today, some 150 years after the concept was conceived, we 
     know it to have been an unmitigated failure. Indeed, those of 
     us, citizens of planet Earth fortunate enough to be present 
     in the final decade of the Twentieth Century, have been 
     privileged to witness events equal to any celebrated 
     milestone in the history of mankind. In what seemed like a 
     made for TV video, we were ringside spectators at a global 
     rebellion. In less than an eye-blink the Berlin Wall fell, 
     Germany was unified, Apartheid ended, Eastern Europe was 
     liberated, the Cold War ceased, and a doctrine that impaired 
     the freedom of three generations and misdirected the destiny 
     of the entire planet for seven decades was decisively 
     repudiated.
       What a magnificent triumph of democracy and freedom. What a 
     glorious victory for capitalism and free markets. What a 
     majestic tribute to Thomas Jefferson, Adam Smith, Abraham 
     Lincoln, and Milton Friedman. What a divine time to be alive. 
     Surely these events represented some of the defining moments 
     of the Twentieth Century. Ironically, the lynch-pin of all 
     that occurred will not be found in the political or economic 
     arena, but rather in the sciences. One hundred years after 
     the Communist Manifesto, to be precise, on December 23, 
     1947--smack dab in the middle of the Twentieth Century--two 
     Bell Laboratory scientists invented the first transistor. It 
     was the birth of a technology that would serve to dominate 
     the balance of this century and, I dare say, much of the 
     Twenty-first as well. The Digital Age was upon us.
       Transistors and their offspring, the microchip, transformed 
     everything: the computer, the space program, the television, 
     the telephone, the markets, and, to be sure, 
     telecommunications. Modern telecommunications became the 
     common denominator which gave everyone the ability to make a 
     stark, uncompromising comparison of political and economic 
     systems. The truth could no longer be hidden from the people. 
     We had migrated said Walter Wriston of Citicorp from the gold 
     standard to the ``information standard.''
       In a very real sense, the technology of the Twentieth 
     Century moved mankind from the big to the little. It is a 
     trend that will surely continue. In physics, this century 
     began with the theory of General Relativity; this dealt with 
     the vast, with the universe. From there we journeyed to 
     comprehension of the infinitesimal, to quantum physics. 
     Physicists were now able to decode nature's age-old secrets. 
     Similarly, in biology we also moved from macro to micro--from 
     individual cells to gene engineering. We entered an era of 
     biomedical research where we can probe the fundamental 
     components of life and remedy mankind's most distressing 
     afflictions.
       Thus, in stark contrast to the signals at the turn of the 
     last century, the evidence today is overwhelming that the 
     next century will be dominated by the information standard. 
     Today, millions of transistors are etched on wafers of 
     silicon. On these microchips all the world's information can 
     be stored in digital form and transmitted to every corner of 
     the globe via the Internet. This will change the way we live, 
     the way we work, and the way we play. Indeed, the Digital 
     Revolution will direct the next century just as the 
     Industrial Revolution directed much of the Twentieth.
       So there you have it: the pain, the progress, and the 
     promise of my parent's century. It would be grand to believe 
     that we have learned from our mistakes, that only enlightened 
     times await us, but I am afraid that would be a bit 
     pollyannaish. Still, we stand on the threshold of immense 
     scientific breakthroughs and the future looks brighter than 
     it ever was. Indeed, the Weizman Institute of Science 
     symbolizes the scientific miracles of the Twentieth Century 
     and points the direction for the world as we enter the Twenty 
     First. If my parents were still present, they would surely 
     tell this kid from Bialystok to await the next century with 
     great anticipation and with infinite optimism.
       Thank you.

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