Gold () is a chemical element with the symbol Au (from "gold") and an atomic number of 79. Gold is a dense, soft, shiny metal and the most malleable and ductile metal known. Pure gold has a bright yellow color and luster traditionally considered attractive, which it maintains without oxidizing in air or water. Chemically, gold is a transition metal and a group 11 element. It is one of the least reactive solid chemical elements. The metal therefore occurs often in free elemental (native) form, as nuggets or grains in rocks, in veins and in alluvial deposits. Less commonly, it occurs in minerals as gold compounds, usually with tellurium.

Gold resists attacks by individual acids, but it can be dissolved by the aqua regia (nitro-hydrochloric acid), so named because it dissolves gold. Gold also dissolves in alkaline solutions of cyanide, which have been used in mining. Gold dissolves in mercury, forming amalgam alloys. Gold is insoluble in nitric acid, which dissolves silver and base metals, a property that has long been used to confirm the presence of gold in items, giving rise to the term ''the acid test.''

Gold has been a valuable and highly sought-after precious metal for coinage, jewelry, and other arts since long before the beginning of recorded history. Gold standards have been the most common basis for monetary policies throughout human history, being widely supplanted by fiat currency only in the late 20th century. Gold has also been frequently linked to a wide variety of symbolisms and ideologies. A total of 165,000 tonnes of gold have been mined in human history, as of 2009. This is roughly equivalent to 5.3 billion troy ounces or, in terms of volume, about 8500 m³, or a cube 20.4 m on a side. The world consumption of new gold produced is about 50% in jewelry, 40% in investments, and 10% in industry.

Besides its widespread monetary and symbolic functions, gold has many practical uses in dentistry, electronics, and other fields. Its high malleability, ductility, resistance to corrosion and most other chemical reactions, and conductivity of electricity led to many uses of gold, including electric wiring, colored glass production and even gold leaf eating.

Characteristics

Gold is the most malleable and ductile of all metals; a single gram can be beaten into a sheet of 1 square meter, or an ounce into 300 square feet. Gold leaf can be beaten thin enough to become translucent. The transmitted light appears greenish blue, because gold strongly reflects yellow and red. Such semi-transparent sheets also strongly reflect infrared light, making them useful as infrared (radiant heat) shields in visors of heat-resistant suits, and in sun-visors for spacesuits.

Gold readily creates alloys with many other metals. These alloys can be produced to modify the hardness and other metallurgical properties, to control melting point or to create exotic colors (see below). Gold is a good conductor of heat and electricity and reflects infrared radiation strongly. Chemically, it is unaffected by air, moisture and most corrosive reagents, and is therefore well suited for use in coins and jewelry and as a protective coating on other, more reactive, metals. However, it is not chemically inert.

Common oxidation states of gold include +1 (gold(I) or aurous compounds) and +3 (gold(III) or auric compounds). Gold ions in solution are readily reduced and precipitated out as gold metal by adding any other metal as the reducing agent. The added metal is oxidized and dissolves allowing the gold to be displaced from solution and be recovered as a solid precipitate.

High quality pure metallic gold is tasteless and scentless, in keeping with its resistance to corrosion (it is metal ions which confer taste to metals).

In addition, gold is very dense, a cubic meter weighing 19,300 kg. By comparison, the density of lead is 11,340 kg/m³, and that of the densest element, osmium, is 22,610 kg/m³.

Color

Whereas most other pure metals are gray or silvery white, gold is yellow. This color is determined by the density of loosely bound (valence) electrons; those electrons oscillate as a collective "plasma" medium described in terms of a quasiparticle called plasmon. The frequency of these oscillations lies in the ultraviolet range for most metals, but it falls into the visible range for gold due to subtle relativistic effects that affect the orbitals around gold atoms. Similar effects impart a golden hue to metallic cesium (see relativistic quantum chemistry).

Common colored gold alloys such as rose gold can be created by the addition of various amounts of copper and silver, as indicated in the triangular diagram to the left. Alloys containing palladium or nickel are also important in commercial jewelry as these produce white gold alloys. Less commonly, addition of manganese, aluminium, iron, indium and other elements can produce more unusual colors of gold for various applications.

Isotopes

Gold has only one stable isotope, ¹⁹⁷Au, which is also its only naturally occurring isotope. Thirty-six radioisotopes have been synthesized ranging in atomic mass from 169 to 205. The most stable of these is ¹⁹⁵Au with a half-life of 186.1 days. The least stable is ¹⁷¹Au, which decays by proton emission with a half-life of 30 µs. Most of gold's radioisotopes with atomic masses below 197 decay by some combination of proton emission, α decay, and β+ decay. The exceptions are ¹⁹⁵Au, which decays by electron capture, and ¹⁹⁶Au, which decays most often by electron capture (93%) with a minor β- decay path (7%). All of gold's radioisotopes with atomic masses above 197 decay by β- decay.

At least 32 nuclear isomers have also been characterized, ranging in atomic mass from 170 to 200. Within that range, only ¹⁷⁸Au, ¹⁸⁰Au, ¹⁸¹Au, ¹⁸²Au, and ¹⁸⁸Au do not have isomers. Gold's most stable isomer is ^198m2Au with a half-life of 2.27 days. Gold's least stable isomer is ^{177 m2}Au with a half-life of only 7 ns. ^{184 m1}Au has three decay paths: β+ decay, isomeric transition, and alpha decay. No other isomer or isotope of gold has three decay paths.

Use and applications

Monetary exchange

Gold has been widely used throughout the world as a vehicle for monetary exchange, either by issuance and recognition of gold coins or other bare metal quantities, or through gold-convertible paper instruments by establishing gold standards in which the total value of issued money is represented in a store of gold reserves.

However, production has not grown in relation to the world's economies. Today, gold mining output is declining. With the sharp growth of economies in the 20th century, and increasing foreign exchange, the world's gold reserves and their trading market have become a small fraction of all markets and fixed exchange rates of currencies to gold were no longer sustained. At the beginning of World War I the warring nations moved to a fractional gold standard, inflating their currencies to finance the war effort. After World War II gold was replaced by a system of convertible currency following the Bretton Woods system. Gold standards and the direct convertibility of currencies to gold have been abandoned by world governments, being replaced by fiat currency in their stead. Switzerland was the last country to tie its currency to gold; it backed 40% of its value until the Swiss joined the International Monetary Fund in 1999.

Pure gold is too soft for day-to-day monetary use and is typically hardened by alloying with copper, silver or other base metals. The gold content of alloys is measured in carats (k). Pure gold is designated as 24k. English gold coins intended for circulation from 1526 into the 1930s were typically a standard 22k alloy called crown gold, for hardness (American gold coins for circulation after 1837 contained the slightly lower amount of 0.900 fine gold, or 21.6 kt).

Investment

Many holders of gold store it in form of bullion coins or bars as a hedge against inflation or other economic disruptions. However, some economists do not believe gold serves as a hedge against inflation or currency depreciation.

The ISO 4217 currency code of gold is XAU.

Modern bullion coins for investment or collector purposes do not require good mechanical wear properties; they are typically fine gold at 24k, although the American Gold Eagle, the British gold sovereign, and the South African Krugerrand continue to be minted in 22k metal in historical tradition. The ''special issue'' Canadian Gold Maple Leaf coin contains the highest purity gold of any bullion coin, at 99.999% or 0.99999, while the ''popular issue'' Canadian Gold Maple Leaf coin has a purity of 99.99%. Several other 99.99% pure gold coins are available. In 2006, the United States Mint began production of the American Buffalo gold bullion coin with a purity of 99.99%. The Australian Gold Kangaroos were first coined in 1986 as the Australian Gold Nugget but changed the reverse design in 1989. Other popular modern coins include the Austrian Vienna Philharmonic bullion coin and the Chinese Gold Panda.

Jewelry

Because of the softness of pure (24k) gold, it is usually alloyed with base metals for use in jewelry, altering its hardness and ductility, melting point, color and other properties. Alloys with lower caratage, typically 22k, 18k, 14k or 10k, contain higher percentages of copper, or other base metals or silver or palladium in the alloy. Copper is the most commonly used base metal, yielding a redder color. Eighteen-carat gold containing 25% copper is found in antique and Russian jewelry and has a distinct, though not dominant, copper cast, creating rose gold. Fourteen-carat gold-copper alloy is nearly identical in color to certain bronze alloys, and both may be used to produce police and other badges. Blue gold can be made by alloying with iron and purple gold can be made by alloying with aluminium, although rarely done except in specialized jewelry. Blue gold is more brittle and therefore more difficult to work with when making jewelry. Fourteen and eighteen carat gold alloys with silver alone appear greenish-yellow and are referred to as green gold. White gold alloys can be made with palladium or nickel. White 18-carat gold containing 17.3% nickel, 5.5% zinc and 2.2% copper is silvery in appearance. Nickel is toxic, however, and its release from nickel white gold is controlled by legislation in Europe. Alternative white gold alloys are available based on palladium, silver and other white metals, but the palladium alloys are more expensive than those using nickel. High-carat white gold alloys are far more resistant to corrosion than are either pure silver or sterling silver. The Japanese craft of Mokume-gane exploits the color contrasts between laminated colored gold alloys to produce decorative wood-grain effects.

Medicine

In medieval times, gold was often seen as beneficial for the health, in the belief that something so rare and beautiful could not be anything but healthy. Even some modern esotericists and forms of alternative medicine assign metallic gold a healing power. Some gold salts do have anti-inflammatory properties and are used as pharmaceuticals in the treatment of arthritis and other similar conditions. However, only salts and radioisotopes of gold are of pharmacological value, as elemental (metallic) gold is inert to all chemicals it encounters inside the body. In modern times, injectable gold has been proven to help to reduce the pain and swelling of rheumatoid arthritis and tuberculosis.

Gold alloys are used in restorative dentistry, especially in tooth restorations, such as crowns and permanent bridges. The gold alloys' slight malleability facilitates the creation of a superior molar mating surface with other teeth and produces results that are generally more satisfactory than those produced by the creation of porcelain crowns. The use of gold crowns in more prominent teeth such as incisors is favored in some cultures and discouraged in others.

Colloidal gold preparations (suspensions of gold nanoparticles) in water are intensely red-colored, and can be made with tightly controlled particle sizes up to a few tens of nanometers across by reduction of gold chloride with citrate or ascorbate ions. Colloidal gold is used in research applications in medicine, biology and materials science. The technique of immunogold labeling exploits the ability of the gold particles to adsorb protein molecules onto their surfaces. Colloidal gold particles coated with specific antibodies can be used as probes for the presence and position of antigens on the surfaces of cells. In ultrathin sections of tissues viewed by electron microscopy, the immunogold labels appear as extremely dense round spots at the position of the antigen. Colloidal gold is also the form of gold used as gold paint on ceramics prior to firing.

Gold, or alloys of gold and palladium, are applied as conductive coating to biological specimens and other non-conducting materials such as plastics and glass to be viewed in a scanning electron microscope. The coating, which is usually applied by sputtering with an argon plasma, has a triple role in this application. Gold's very high electrical conductivity drains electrical charge to earth, and its very high density provides stopping power for electrons in the electron beam, helping to limit the depth to which the electron beam penetrates the specimen. This improves definition of the position and topography of the specimen surface and increases the spatial resolution of the image. Gold also produces a high output of secondary electrons when irradiated by an electron beam, and these low-energy electrons are the most commonly used signal source used in the scanning electron microscope.

The isotope gold-198, (half-life 2.7 days) is used in some cancer treatments and for treating other diseases.

Food and drink

Gold can be used in food and has the E number 175. Gold leaf, flake or dust is used on and in some gourmet foods, notably sweets and drinks as decorative ingredient. Gold flake was used by the nobility in Medieval Europe as a decoration in food and drinks, in the form of leaf, flakes or dust, either to demonstrate the host's wealth or in the belief that something that valuable and rare must be beneficial for one's health. Danziger Goldwasser (German: Gold water of Danzig) or Goldwasser () is a traditional German herbal liqueur produced in what is today Gdańsk, Poland, and Schwabach, Germany, and contains flakes of gold leaf. There are also some expensive (~$1000) cocktails which contain flakes of gold leaf. However, since metallic gold is inert to all body chemistry, it has no taste, it provides no nutrition, and it leaves the body unaltered.

Industry

Gold solder is used for joining the components of gold jewelry by high-temperature hard soldering or brazing. If the work is to be of hallmarking quality, gold solder must match the carat weight of the work, and alloy formulas are manufactured in most industry-standard carat weights to color match yellow and white gold. Gold solder is usually made in at least three melting-point ranges referred to as Easy, Medium and Hard. By using the hard, high-melting point solder first, followed by solders with progressively lower melting points, goldsmiths can assemble complex items with several separate soldered joints.

Gold can be made into thread and used in embroidery.

Gold produces a deep, intense red color when used as a coloring agent in cranberry glass.

In photography, gold toners are used to shift the color of silver bromide black-and-white prints towards brown or blue tones, or to increase their stability. Used on sepia-toned prints, gold toners produce red tones. Kodak published formulas for several types of gold toners, which use gold as the chloride.

As gold is a good reflector of electromagnetic radiation such as infrared and visible light as well as radio waves, it is used for the protective coatings on many artificial satellites, in infrared protective faceplates in thermal protection suits and astronauts' helmets and in electronic warfare planes like the EA-6B Prowler.

Gold is used as the reflective layer on some high-end CDs.

Automobiles may use gold for heat dissipation. McLaren uses gold foil in the engine compartment of its F1 model. Gold can be manufactured so thin that it appears transparent. It is used in some aircraft cockpit windows for de-icing or anti-icing by passing electricity through it. The heat produced by the resistance of the gold is enough to deter ice from forming.

Electronics

The concentration of free electrons in gold metal is 5.90×10²² cm⁻³. Gold is highly conductive to electricity, and has been used for electrical wiring in some high-energy applications (only silver and copper are more conductive per volume, but gold has the advantage of corrosion resistance). For example, gold electrical wires were used during some of the Manhattan Project's atomic experiments, but large high current silver wires were used in the calutron isotope separator magnets in the project.

Though gold is attacked by free chlorine, its good conductivity and general resistance to oxidation and corrosion in other environments (including resistance to non-chlorinated acids) has led to its widespread industrial use in the electronic era as a thin layer coating electrical connectors of all kinds, thereby ensuring good connection. For example, gold is used in the connectors of the more expensive electronics cables, such as audio, video and USB cables. The benefit of using gold over other connector metals such as tin in these applications is highly debated. Gold connectors are often criticized by audio-visual experts as unnecessary for most consumers and seen as simply a marketing ploy. However, the use of gold in other applications in electronic sliding contacts in highly humid or corrosive atmospheres, and in use for contacts with a very high failure cost (certain computers, communications equipment, spacecraft, jet aircraft engines) remains very common.

Besides sliding electrical contacts, gold is also used in electrical contacts because of its resistance to corrosion, electrical conductivity, ductility and lack of toxicity. Switch contacts are generally subjected to more intense corrosion stress than are sliding contacts. Fine gold wires are used to connect semiconductor devices to their packages through a process known as wire bonding.

Commercial chemistry

Gold is attacked by and dissolves in alkaline solutions of potassium or sodium cyanide, to form the salt gold cyanide—a technique that has been used in extracting metallic gold from ores in the cyanide process. Gold cyanide is the electrolyte used in commercial electroplating of gold onto base metals and electroforming.

Gold chloride (chloroauric acid) solutions are used to make colloidal gold by reduction with citrate or ascorbate ions. Gold chloride and gold oxide are used to make highly valued cranberry or red-colored glass, which, like colloidal gold suspensions, contains evenly sized spherical gold nanoparticles.

History

Gold has been known and used by artisans since the Chalcolithic. Gold artifacts in the Balkans appear from the 4th millennium BC, such as that found in the Varna Necropolis. Gold artifacts such as the golden hats and the Nebra disk appeared in Central Europe from the 2nd millennium BC Bronze Age.

Egyptian hieroglyphs from as early as 2600 BC describe gold, which king Tushratta of the Mitanni claimed was "more plentiful than dirt" in Egypt. Egypt and especially Nubia had the resources to make them major gold-producing areas for much of history. The earliest known map is known as the Turin Papyrus Map and shows the plan of a gold mine in Nubia together with indications of the local geology. The primitive working methods are described by both Strabo and Diodorus Siculus, and included fire-setting. Large mines were also present across the Red Sea in what is now Saudi Arabia.

The legend of the golden fleece may refer to the use of fleeces to trap gold dust from placer deposits in the ancient world. Gold is mentioned frequently in the Old Testament, starting with Genesis 2:11 (at Havilah) and is included with the gifts of the magi in the first chapters of Matthew New Testament. The Book of Revelation 21:21 describes the city of New Jerusalem as having streets "made of pure gold, clear as crystal". The south-east corner of the Black Sea was famed for its gold. Exploitation is said to date from the time of Midas, and this gold was important in the establishment of what is probably the world's earliest coinage in Lydia around 610 BC. From the 6th or 5th century BC, the Chu (state) circulated the Ying Yuan, one kind of square gold coin.

In Roman metallurgy, new methods for extracting gold on a large scale were developed by introducing hydraulic mining methods, especially in Hispania from 25 BC onwards and in Dacia from 106 AD onwards. One of their largest mines was at Las Medulas in León (Spain), where seven long aqueducts enabled them to sluice most of a large alluvial deposit. The mines at Roşia Montană in Transylvania were also very large, and until very recently, still mined by opencast methods. They also exploited smaller deposits in Britain, such as placer and hard-rock deposits at Dolaucothi. The various methods they used are well described by Pliny the Elder in his encyclopedia Naturalis Historia written towards the end of the first century AD.

The Mali Empire in Africa was famed throughout the old world for its large amounts of gold. Mansa Musa, ruler of the empire (1312–1337) became famous throughout the old world for his great hajj to Mecca in 1324. When he passed through Cairo in July 1324, he was reportedly accompanied by a camel train that included thousands of people and nearly a hundred camels. He gave away so much gold that it depressed the price in Egypt for over a decade. A contemporary Arab historian remarked:

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The European exploration of the Americas was fueled in no small part by reports of the gold ornaments displayed in great profusion by Native American peoples, especially in Central America, Peru, Ecuador and Colombia. The Aztecs regarded gold as literally the product of the gods, calling it "god excrement" (''teocuitlatl'' in Nahuatl). However, for the indigenous peoples of North America, gold was considered useless, and they saw much greater value in other minerals, which were directly related to their utility, such as obsidian, flint, and slate.

Although the price of some platinum group metals can be much higher, gold has long been considered the most desirable of precious metals, and its value has been used as the standard for many currencies (known as the gold standard) in history. Gold has been used as a symbol for purity, value, royalty, and particularly roles that combine these properties. Gold as a sign of wealth and prestige was ridiculed by Thomas More in his treatise ''Utopia''. On that imaginary island, gold is so abundant that it is used to make chains for slaves, tableware and lavatory-seats. When ambassadors from other countries arrive, dressed in ostentatious gold jewels and badges, the Utopians mistake them for menial servants, paying homage instead to the most modestly dressed of their party.

There is an age-old tradition of biting gold to test its authenticity. Although this is certainly not a professional way of examining gold, the ''bite test'' should score the gold because gold is a soft metal, as indicated by its score on the Mohs' scale of mineral hardness. The purer the gold the easier it should be to mark it. Painted lead can cheat this test because lead is softer than gold (and may invite a small risk of lead poisoning if sufficient lead is absorbed by the biting).

Gold in antiquity was relatively easy to obtain geologically; however, 75% of all gold ever produced has been extracted since 1910. It has been estimated that all gold ever refined would form a single cube 20 m (66 ft) on a side (equivalent to 8,000 m³).

One main goal of the alchemists was to produce gold from other substances, such as lead — presumably by the interaction with a mythical substance called the philosopher's stone. Although they never succeeded in this attempt, the alchemists promoted an interest in what can be done with substances, and this laid a foundation for today's chemistry. Their symbol for gold was the circle with a point at its center (☉), which was also the astrological symbol and the ancient Chinese character for the Sun. For modern creation of artificial gold by neutron capture, see gold synthesis.

During the 19th century, gold rushes occurred whenever large gold deposits were discovered. The first documented discovery of gold in the United States was at the Reed Gold Mine near Georgeville, North Carolina in 1803. The first major gold strike in the United States occurred in a small north Georgia town called Dahlonega. Further gold rushes occurred in California, Colorado, the Black Hills, Otago in New Zealand, Australia, Witwatersrand in South Africa, and the Klondike in Canada.

Because of its historically high value, much of the gold mined throughout history is still in circulation in one form or another.

Occurrence

Gold's atomic number of 79 makes it one of the higher atomic number elements which occur naturally. Like all elements with atomic numbers larger than iron, gold is thought to have been formed from a supernova nucleosynthesis process. Their explosions scattered metal-containing dusts (including heavy elements like gold) into the region of space in which they later condensed into our solar system and the Earth.

On Earth, whenever elemental gold occurs, it appears most often as a metal solid solution of gold with silver, i.e. a gold silver alloy. Such alloys usually have a silver content of 8–10%. Electrum is elemental gold with more than 20% silver. Electrum's color runs from golden-silvery to silvery, dependent upon the silver content. The more silver, the lower the specific gravity.

Gold is found in ores made up of rock with very small or microscopic particles of gold. This gold ore is often found together with quartz or sulfide minerals such as ''Fool's Gold'', which is a pyrite. These are called lode deposits. Native gold is also found in the form of free flakes, grains or larger nuggets that have been eroded from rocks and end up in alluvial deposits (called placer deposits). Such free gold is always richer at the surface of gold-bearing veins owing to the oxidation of accompanying minerals followed by weathering, and washing of the dust into streams and rivers, where it collects and can be welded by water action to form nuggets.

Gold sometimes occurs combined with tellurium as the minerals calaverite, krennerite, nagyagite, petzite and sylvanite, and as the rare bismuthide maldonite (Au₂Bi) and antimonide aurostibite (AuSb₂). Gold also occurs in rare alloys with copper, lead, and mercury: the minerals auricupride (Cu₃Au), novodneprite (AuPb₃) and weishanite ((Au, Ag)₃Hg₂).

Recent research suggests that microbes can sometimes play an important role in forming gold deposits, transporting and precipitating gold to form grains and nuggets that collect in alluvial deposits.

The world's oceans contain gold. Measured concentrations of gold in the Atlantic and Northeast Pacific are 50–150 fmol/L or 10–30 parts per quadrillion (about 10–30 g/km³). In general, Au concentrations for Atlantic and Pacific samples are the same (~50 fmol/L) but less certain. Mediterranean deep waters contain higher concentrations of Au (100–150 fmol/L) attributed to wind-blown dust and/or rivers. At 10 parts per quadrillion the Earth's oceans would hold 15,000 tons of gold. These figures are three orders of magnitude less than reported in the literature prior to 1988, indicating contamination problems with the earlier data.

A number of people have claimed to be able to economically recover gold from sea water, but so far they have all been either mistaken or acted in an intentional deception. A so-called reverend, Prescott Jernegan ran a gold-from-seawater swindle in the United States in the 1890s. A British fraudster ran the same scam in England in the early 1900s. Fritz Haber (the German inventor of the Haber process) did research on the extraction of gold from sea water in an effort to help pay Germany's reparations following World War I. Based on the published values of 2 to 64 ppb of gold in seawater a commercially successful extraction seemed possible. After analysis of 4,000 water samples yielding an average of 0.004 ppb it became clear that the extraction would not be possible and he stopped the project. No commercially viable mechanism for performing gold extraction from sea water has yet been identified. Gold synthesis is not economically viable and is unlikely to become so in the foreseeable future.

Gallery of specimens of crystalline native gold

Production

Gold extraction is most economical in large, easily mined deposits. Ore grades as little as 0.5 mg/kg (0.5 parts per million, ppm) can be economical. Typical ore grades in open-pit mines are 1–5 mg/kg (1–5 ppm); ore grades in underground or hard rock mines are usually at least 3 mg/kg (3 ppm). Because ore grades of 30 mg/kg (30 ppm) are usually needed before gold is visible to the naked eye, in most gold mines the gold is invisible.

Since the 1880s, South Africa has been the source for a large proportion of the world's gold supply, with about 50% of all gold ever produced having come from South Africa. Production in 1970 accounted for 79% of the world supply, producing about 1,480 tonnes. 2008 production was 2,260 tonnes. In 2007 China (with 276 tonnes) overtook South Africa as the world's largest gold producer, the first time since 1905 that South Africa has not been the largest.

The city of Johannesburg located in South Africa was founded as a result of the Witwatersrand Gold Rush which resulted in the discovery of some of the largest gold deposits the world has ever seen. Gold fields located within the basin in the Free State and Gauteng provinces are extensive in strike and dip requiring some of the world's deepest mines, with the Savuka and TauTona mines being currently the world's deepest gold mine at 3,777 m. The Second Boer War of 1899–1901 between the British Empire and the Afrikaner Boers was at least partly over the rights of miners and possession of the gold wealth in South Africa.

Other major producers are the United States, Australia, Russia and Peru. Mines in South Dakota and Nevada supply two-thirds of gold used in the United States. In South America, the controversial project Pascua Lama aims at exploitation of rich fields in the high mountains of Atacama Desert, at the border between Chile and Argentina. Today about one-quarter of the world gold output is estimated to originate from artisanal or small scale mining.

After initial production, gold is often subsequently refined industrially by the Wohlwill process which is based on electrolysis or by the Miller process, that is chlorination in the melt. The Wohlwill process results in higher purity, but is more complex and is only applied in small-scale installations. Other methods of assaying and purifying smaller amounts of gold include parting and inquartation as well as cupellation, or refining methods based on the dissolution of gold in aqua regia.

At the end of 2009, it was estimated that all the gold ever mined totaled 165,000 tonnes This can be represented by a cube with an edge length of about 20.28 meters. At $1,600 per ounce, 165,000 tons of gold would have a value of $8.8 trillion.

The average gold mining and extraction costs were about US$317/oz in 2007, but these can vary widely depending on mining type and ore quality; global mine production amounted to 2,471.1 tonnes.

Most of the gold used in manufactured goods, jewelry, and works of art is eventually recovered and recycled. Some gold used in spacecraft and electronic equipment cannot be profitably recovered, but it is generally used in these applications in the form of extremely thin layers or extremely fine wires so that the total quantity used (and lost) is small compared to the total amount of gold produced and stockpiled. Thus there is little true consumption of new gold in the economic sense; the stock of gold remains essentially constant (at least in the modern world) while ownership shifts from one party to another. One estimate is that 85% of all the gold ever mined is still available in the world's easily recoverable stocks, with 15% having been lost, or used in non-recyclable industrial uses.

Consumption

The consumption of gold produced in the world is about 50% in jewelry, 40% in investments, and 10% in industry.

India is the world's largest single consumer of gold, as Indians buy about 25% of the world's gold, purchasing approximately 800 tonnes of gold every year, mostly for jewelry. India is also the largest importer of gold; in 2008, India imported around 400 tonnes of gold.

{| style="font-size: 95%; text-align: right;" class="wikitable sortable" border="0" |+ Gold jewellery consumption by country (in Tonnes). |- ! Country !! 2010 !! 2009 !! % Change |- | align=left| || 745.70 || 442.37 || +69 |- | align=left|Greater China || 428.00 || 376.96 || +14 |- | align=left| || 128.61 || 150.28 || -14 |- | align=left| || 74.07 || 75.16 || -1 |- | align=left| || 72.95 || 77.75 || -6 |- | align=left| || 67.50 || 60.12 || +12 |- | align=left| || 63.37 || 67.60 || -6 |- | align=left| || 53.43 || 56.68 || -6 |- | align=left| || 32.75 || 41.00 || -20 |- | align=left| || 27.35 || 31.75 || -14 |- | align=left|Other Gulf Countries || 21.97 || 24.10 || -10 |- | align=left| || 18.50 || 21.85 || -15 |- | align=left| || 15.87 || 18.83 || -16 |- | align=left| || 14.36 || 15.08 || -5 |- | align=left| || 6.28 || 7.33 || -14 |- | align=left|Total || 1805.60 || 1508.70 || +20 |- | align=left|''Other Countries'' || ''254.0'' || ''251.6'' || ''+1'' |- | align=left|World Total || 2059.6 || 1760.3 || +17 |}

Chemistry

Although gold is a noble metal, it forms many and diverse compounds. The oxidation state of gold in its compounds ranges from −1 to +5, but Au(I) and Au(III) dominate its chemistry. Au(I), referred to as the aurous ion, is the most common oxidation state with soft ligands such as thioethers, thiolates, and tertiary phosphines. Au(I) compounds are typically linear. A good example is Au(CN)₂⁻, which is the soluble form of gold encountered in mining. Curiously, aurous complexes of water are rare. The binary gold halides, such as AuCl, form zigzag polymeric chains, again featuring linear coordination at Au. Most drugs based on gold are Au(I) derivatives.

Au(III) (auric) is a common oxidation state, and is illustrated by gold(III) chloride, Au₂Cl₆. The gold atom centers in Au(III) complexes, like other d⁸ compounds, are typically square planar, with chemical bonds that have both covalent and ionic character.

Aqua regia, a 1:3 mixture of nitric acid and hydrochloric acid, dissolves gold. Nitric acid oxidizes the metal to +3 ions, but only in minute amounts, typically undetectable in the pure acid because of the chemical equilibrium of the reaction. However, the ions are removed from the equilibrium by hydrochloric acid, forming AuCl₄⁻ ions, or chloroauric acid, thereby enabling further oxidation.

Some free halogens react with gold. Gold also reacts in alkaline solutions of potassium cyanide. With mercury, it forms an amalgam.

Less common oxidation states

Less common oxidation states of gold include −1, +2, and +5.

The −1 oxidation state occurs in compounds containing the Au⁻ anion, called aurides. Caesium auride (CsAu), for example, crystallizes in the caesium chloride motif. Other aurides include those of Rb⁺, K⁺, and tetramethylammonium (CH₃)₄N⁺.

Gold(II) compounds are usually diamagnetic with Au–Au bonds such as [Au(CH₂)₂P(C₆H₅)₂]₂Cl₂. The evaporation of a solution of in concentrated produces red crystals of gold(II) sulfate, . Originally thought to be a mixed-valence compound, it has been shown to contain cations. A noteworthy, legitimate gold(II) complex is the tetraxenonogold(II) cation, which contains xenon as a ligand, found in [AuXe₄](Sb₂F₁₁)₂.

Gold pentafluoride and its derivative anion, , is the sole example of gold(V), the highest verified oxidation state.

Some gold compounds exhibit ''aurophilic bonding'', which describes the tendency of gold ions to interact at distances that are too long to be a conventional Au–Au bond but shorter that van der Waals bonding. The interaction is estimated to be comparable in strength to that of a hydrogen bond.

Mixed valence compounds

Well-defined cluster compounds are numerous. In such cases, gold has a fractional oxidation state. A representative example is the octahedral species {Au(P(C₆H₅)₃)}₆²⁺. Gold chalcogenides, such as gold sulfide, feature equal amounts of Au(I) and Au(III).

Toxicity

Pure metallic (elemental) gold is non-toxic and non-irritating when ingested and is sometimes used as a food decoration in the form of gold leaf. Metallic gold is also a component of the alcoholic drinks Goldschläger, Gold Strike, and Goldwasser. Metallic gold is approved as a food additive in the EU (E175 in the Codex Alimentarius). Although gold ion is toxic, the acceptance of metallic gold as a food additive is due to its relative chemical inertness, and resistance to being corroded or transformed into soluble salts (gold compounds) by any known chemical process which would be encountered in the human body.

Soluble compounds (gold salts) such as gold chloride are toxic to the liver and kidneys. Common cyanide salts of gold such as potassium gold cyanide, used in gold electroplating, are toxic by virtue of both their cyanide and gold content. There are rare cases of lethal gold poisoning from potassium gold cyanide. Gold toxicity can be ameliorated with chelation therapy with an agent such as Dimercaprol.

Gold metal was voted Allergen of the Year in 2001 by the American Contact Dermatitis Society. Gold contact allergies affect mostly women. Despite this, gold is a relatively non-potent contact allergen, in comparison with metals like nickel.

Price

Like other precious metals, gold is measured by troy weight and by grams. When it is alloyed with other metals the term ''carat'' or ''karat'' is used to indicate the purity of gold present, with 24 carats being pure gold and lower ratings proportionally less. The purity of a gold bar or coin can also be expressed as a decimal figure ranging from 0 to 1, known as the millesimal fineness, such as 0.995 being very pure.

The price of gold is determined through trading in the gold and derivatives markets, but a procedure known as the Gold Fixing in London, originating in September 1919, provides a daily benchmark price to the industry. The afternoon fixing was introduced in 1968 to provide a price when US markets are open.

Historically gold coinage was widely used as currency; when paper money was introduced, it typically was a receipt redeemable for gold coin or bullion. In a monetary system known as the gold standard, a certain weight of gold was given the name of a unit of currency. For a long period, the United States government set the value of the US dollar so that one troy ounce was equal to $20.67 ($664.56/kg), but in 1934 the dollar was devalued to $35.00 per troy ounce ($1125.27/kg). By 1961, it was becoming hard to maintain this price, and a pool of US and European banks agreed to manipulate the market to prevent further currency devaluation against increased gold demand.

On March 17, 1968, economic circumstances caused the collapse of the gold pool, and a two-tiered pricing scheme was established whereby gold was still used to settle international accounts at the old $35.00 per troy ounce ($1.13/g) but the price of gold on the private market was allowed to fluctuate; this two-tiered pricing system was abandoned in 1975 when the price of gold was left to find its free-market level. Central banks still hold historical gold reserves as a store of value although the level has generally been declining. The largest gold depository in the world is that of the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank in New York, which holds about 3% of the gold ever mined, as does the similarly laden U.S. Bullion Depository at Fort Knox. In 2005 the World Gold Council estimated total global gold supply to be 3,859 tonnes and demand to be 3,754 tonnes, giving a surplus of 105 tonnes.

Since 1968 the price of gold has ranged widely, from a high of $850/oz ($27,300/kg) on January 21, 1980, to a low of $252.90/oz ($8,131/kg) on June 21, 1999 (London Gold Fixing). The period from 1999 to 2001 marked the "Brown Bottom" after a 20-year bear market. Prices increased rapidly from 1991, but the 1980 high was not exceeded until January 3, 2008 when a new maximum of $865.35 per troy ounce was set. Another record price was set on March 17, 2008 at $1023.50/oz ($32,900/kg). In late 2009, gold markets experienced renewed momentum upwards due to increased demand and a weakening US dollar. On December 2, 2009, Gold passed the important barrier of US$1200 per ounce to close at $1215. Gold further rallied hitting new highs in May 2010 after the European Union debt crisis prompted further purchase of gold as a safe asset. On March 1, 2011, gold hit a new all-time high of $1432.57, based on investor concerns regarding ongoing unrest in North Africa as well as in the Middle East.

Since April 2001 the gold price has more than quintupled in value against the US dollar, hitting a new all-time high of $1,913.50 on August 23, 2011, prompting speculation that this long secular bear market has ended and a bull market has returned.

Symbolism

Gold has been highly valued in many societies throughout the ages. In keeping with this it has often had a strongly positive symbolic meaning closely connected to the values held in the highest esteem in the society in question. Gold may symbolize power, strength, wealth, warmth, happiness, love, hope, optimism, intelligence, justice, balance, perfection, summer, harvest and the sun.

Great human achievements are frequently rewarded with gold, in the form of gold medals, golden trophies and other decorations. Winners of athletic events and other graded competitions are usually awarded a gold medal (e.g., the Olympic Games). Many awards such as the Nobel Prize are made from gold as well. Other award statues and prizes are depicted in gold or are gold plated (such as the Academy Awards, the Golden Globe Awards, the Emmy Awards, the Palme d'Or, and the British Academy Film Awards).

Aristotle in his ethics used gold symbolism when referring to what is now commonly known as the "golden mean". Similarly, gold is associated with perfect or divine principles, such as in the case of the "golden ratio".

Gold represents great value. Respected people are treated with the most valued rule, the "golden rule". A company may give its most valued customers "gold cards" or make them "gold members". We value moments of peace and therefore we say: "silence is golden". In Greek mythology there was the "golden fleece".

Gold is further associated with the wisdom of aging and fruition. The fiftieth wedding anniversary is golden. Our precious latter years are sometimes considered "golden years". The height of a civilization is referred to as a "golden age".

In Christianity gold has sometimes been associated with the extremities of utmost evil and the greatest sanctity. In the Book of Exodus, the Golden Calf is a symbol of idolatry. In the Book of Genesis, Abraham was said to be rich in gold and silver, and Moses was instructed to cover the Mercy Seat of the Ark of the Covenant with pure gold. In Christian art the halos of Christ, Mary and the Christian saints are golden.

Medieval kings were inaugurated under the signs of sacred oil and a golden crown, the latter symbolizing the eternal shining light of heaven and thus a Christian king's divinely inspired authority. Wedding rings have long been made of gold. It is long lasting and unaffected by the passage of time and may aid in the ring symbolism of eternal vows before God and/or the sun and moon and the perfection the marriage signifies. In Orthodox Christianity, the wedded couple is adorned with a golden crown during the ceremony, an amalgamation of symbolic rites.

In popular culture gold holds many connotations but is most generally connected to terms such as good or great, such as in the phrases: "has a heart of gold", "that's golden!", "golden moment", "then you're golden!" and "golden boy". Gold also still holds its place as a symbol of wealth and through that, in many societies, success.

State emblem

In 1965, the California Legislature designated gold "the State Mineral and mineralogical emblem."

In 1968, the Alaska Legislature named gold "the official state mineral."

See also

Altai Mountains

Bulk leach extractable gold

Commodity fetishism (Marxist economic theory)

Digital gold currency

Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee

Gold bubble

Gold fingerprinting

Gold phosphine complex

Gold Prospectors Association of America

Mining in Roman Britain

Prospecting

Roman engineering

Tumbaga

References

External links

''Getting Gold'' 1898 book, www.lateralscience.co.uk

Technical Document on Extraction and Mining of Gold, www.epa.gov

Picture in the Element collection from Heinrich Pniok, www.pniok.de

Chemistry in its element podcast (MP3) from the Royal Society of Chemistry's Chemistry World: Gold www.rsc.org

Category:Chemical elements Category:Dental materials Category:Electrical conductors Category:Noble metals Category:Precious metals Category:Transition metals Category:Cubic minerals Category:Warrants issued in Hong Kong Stock Exchange

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name	Kanye West
background	solo_singer
birth name	Kanye Omari West
birth date	June 08, 1977
birth place	Atlanta, Georgia, United States
origin	Chicago, Illinois, United States
genre	Hip hop
instrument	Vocals, keyboards, sampler, percussion, synthesizer
occupation	Producer, rapper, musician, singer
years active	1996–present
label	GOOD Music, Roc-A-Fella, Def Jam
associated acts	Go Getters, Child Rebel Soldier, Jay-Z, The Throne, Common, John Legend, Kid Cudi, Rihanna, Jeff Bhasker, Pusha T, Mos Def, Mr Hudson, Talib Kweli, Big Sean, A-Trak, Pharrell, Lupe Fiasco, RZA
website	}}

Kanye Omari West (; born June 8, 1977) is an American rapper, singer, and record producer. West first rose to fame as a producer for Roc-A-Fella Records, where he eventually achieved recognition for his work on Jay-Z's album ''The Blueprint'', as well as hit singles for musical artists including Alicia Keys, Ludacris, and Janet Jackson. His style of production originally used pitched-up vocal samples from soul songs incorporated with his own drums and instruments. However, subsequent productions saw him broadening his musical palette and expressing influences encompassing '70s R&B;, baroque pop, trip hop, arena rock, folk, alternative, electronica, synth-pop, and classical music.

West released his debut album ''The College Dropout'' in 2004, his second album ''Late Registration'' in 2005, his third album ''Graduation'' in 2007, his fourth album ''808s & Heartbreak'' in 2008, and his fifth album ''My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy'' in 2010. West released a collaborative album, ''Watch the Throne'', with Jay-Z on August 8, 2011, which is the duo's first collaborative album. His five solo albums, all of which have gone platinum, have received numerous awards and critical acclaim. As of 2011, West has won a total of fourteen Grammy Awards. All albums have been very commercially successful, with ''My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy'' becoming his fourth consecutive No.1 album in the U.S. upon release. West has had 5 songs exceed 3 million in digital sales as of July 2011, with "Gold Digger" selling 3,086,000, "Stronger" selling 4,402,000, "Heartless" selling 3,742,000, "E.T." selling over 4,000,000 and "Love Lockdown" selling over 3,000,000 placing him third in overall digital sales of the past decade. He has sold over 25 million digital songs in the United States placing him second for solo male artists on the list and sixth overall for best selling digital artists.

West also runs his own record label GOOD Music, home to artists such as John Legend, Common and Kid Cudi. West's mascot and trademark is "Dropout Bear," a teddy bear which has appeared on the covers of three of his five albums as well as various single covers and music videos. About.com ranked Kanye West No.8 on their "Top 50 Hip-Hop Producers" list. On May 16, 2008, Kanye West was crowned by MTV as the year's No.1 "Hottest MC in the Game." On December 17, 2010, Kanye West was voted as the MTV Man of the Year by MTV. Billboard ranked Kanye West No. 3 on their list of Top 10 Producers of the decade. West has also been included in the Time 100 list of the most influential people in the world as well as being listed in a number of ''Forbes''' annual lists.

Early life

Kanye West was born in Atlanta, Georgia, where he lived with his parents. When he was three years old, his parents divorced, and he and his mother moved to Chicago, Illinois. His father was Ray West, a former Black Panther who was one of the first black photojournalists at ''The Atlanta Journal-Constitution,'' and is now a Christian counselor. West's mother, Dr. Donda West, was a Professor of English at Clark Atlanta University, and the Chair of the English Department at Chicago State University before retiring to serve as West's manager. He was raised in a middle-class background, attending Polaris High School in suburban Oak Lawn, Illinois after living in Chicago. When asked about his grades in high school, West replied, "I got A's and B's. And I'm not even frontin'".

West attended art classes at the American Academy of Art in Chicago, and also enrolled at Chicago State University, but dropped out to focus on his music career. While attending school, West produced for local artists. He later gained fame by producing hit singles for major hip hop/R&B; artists, including Jay-Z, Talib Kweli, Cam'ron, Paul Wall, Common, Mobb Deep, Jermaine Dupri, Scarface, The Game, Alicia Keys, Janet Jackson, John Legend among others. He also "ghost-produced" for his mentor Deric Angelettie, according to his song "Last Call" and the credits of Nas' "Poppa Was a Playa".

Music career

1996–2003: Career beginnings

Kanye West's first career productions came on Chicago rapper Grav's 1996 debut album ''Down to Earth''. West produced eight tracks on the album. While the album did not attract much attention and would be the only album released by Grav, West would soon be producing for higher profile artists. In 1998–1999 he produced for well-known artists such as Jermaine Dupri, Foxy Brown, Goodie Mob, and the group Harlem World.

West got his big break in the year 2000, when he began to produce for artists on Roc-a-Fella Records. He produced the well-received Jay-Z song "This Can't Be Life" off of the album ''The Dynasty: Roc La Familia''. West would later state that to create the beat for "This Can't Be Life", he sped up the drum beat from Dr. Dre's song "Xxplosive".

After producing for Jay-Z earlier, West’s sound was featured heavily on Jay-Z's critically acclaimed album ''The Blueprint,'' released September 11, 2001. His work was featured on the lead single "Izzo (H.O.V.A.)," "Heart of the City (Ain't No Love)" and a diss track against Nas and Mobb Deep named "Takeover"; West has worked with Mobb Deep and Nas since the track's release.

After meeting great commercial success and critical acclaim for his productions on ''The Blueprint'', West became a sought after producer in the hip-hop industry, even before he became known as a rapper and solo artist. In the years 2002–2003 he would produce for artists such as Nas, Scarface, Talib Kweli, Mos Def, T.I., Ludacris, DMX, and Monica. He also continued producing for Roc-a-Fella Records artists and contribued four tracks to Jay-Z's follow up album to ''The Blueprint'', ''The Blueprint²: The Gift & the Curse''.

After great successes as a producer, West now looked to pursue a career as a rapper and solo artist, but struggled to get a record deal. Chris Anokute, then A&R; at Def Jam, said that when West regularly dropped by the office to pick up his producer checks he would play demos of solo material to Anokute in his cubicle and bemoan the fact that no one was taking him seriously as a rapper. Jay-Z admitted that Roc-A-Fella was initially reluctant to support West as a rapper, claiming that he saw him as a producer first and foremost. Multiple record companies felt he was not as marketable as rappers who portray the "street image" prominent in hip hop culture. Beginning his career as a rapper, Kanye West recorded the third verse on the song "The Bounce" off of Jay-Z's ''The Blueprint²: The Gift & the Curse'', an album he produced for, from the same label he was signed to as a rapper.

2004–05: ''The College Dropout'' and ''Late Registration''

On October 23, 2002, West was involved in a near fatal car crash while driving home from the recording studio. The crash provided inspiration for West's first single, "Through the Wire". West's faith is apparent in many of his songs, such as "Jesus Walks", which became a staple at his benefit performances, such as the Live 8 concert. These songs were featured on West's debut album, ''The College Dropout'', which was released on Roc-A-Fella Records in February 2004, and went on to receive critical acclaim. The album also defined the style for which West would become known, including wordplay and sampling. The album was eventually certified triple platinum. Guest appearances included Jay-Z, Ludacris, GLC, Consequence, Talib Kweli, Mos Def, Common, and Syleena Johnson. The album also featured the singles, "All Falls Down" and "The New Workout Plan", as well as Twista's number one single, "Slow Jamz". During 2003 West also co-produced songs for British singer Javine Hylton, even appearing in the music video to Real Things playing the love interest of Javine.

West was involved in a financial dispute over Royce Da 5'9"'s song "Heartbeat", produced by West and released on ''Build & Destroy: The Lost Sessions''. West maintains that Royce never paid for the beat, but recorded to it and released it; hearing him on the beat, the original customers decided not to buy it from West. After the disagreement, West vowed to never work with Royce again. Other Kanye West-produced hit singles during the period ''The College Dropout'' was released included "I Changed My Mind" by Keyshia Cole, "Overnight Celebrity" by Twista and "Talk About Our Love" by Brandy.

Taking a more eclectic route, West collaborated with American film score composer Jon Brion to construct his second album, ''Late Registration'', which was released on August 30, 2005. Like its predecessor, the sophomore effort garnered universal acclaim from music critics. ''Late Registration'' topped countless critic polls and was revered as the best album of the year by numerous publications, including ''USA Today'', ''Spin'', and ''Time''. ''Rolling Stone'' awarded the album the highest position on their end of the year record list and hailed it as a "sweepingly generous, absurdly virtuosic hip-hop classic." The record earned the number one spot on the ''Village Voice'''s Pazz & Jop critics' poll of 2005 for the second consecutive year. ''Late Registration'' was also a commercial success, selling over 860,000 copies in its first week alone and topping the ''Billboard 200''. Grossing over 2.3 million units sold in the United States alone by year's end, ''Late Registration'' was considered by industry observers as the sole majorly successful album release of the fall of 2005, a season that was plagued by steadily declining CD sales. The second album earned eight Grammy Award nominations including ''Album of the Year'' and ''Record of the Year'' for the song "Gold Digger". The album is certified triple platinum.

On August 22, 2005, the MTV special ''All Eyes On Kanye West'' aired, in which West spoke out against homophobia in hip-hop. He claimed that hip-hop has always been about "speaking your mind and about breaking down barriers, but everyone in hip-hop discriminates against gay people." He then reflected on a personal experience. He said that he had a "turning point" when he realized one of his cousins was gay. He said regarding this experience: "This is my cousin. I love him and I've been discriminating against gays." He drew comparison between African Americans' struggle for civil rights and today's gay rights movement. The following year, in an interview with ''Entertainment Weekly'', West further expounded his experiences with and views on the relationship between the black and gay communities.

In September 2005, West announced that he would release his Pastelle Clothing line in spring 2006: "Now that I have a Grammy under my belt and ''Late Registration'' is finished, I am ready to launch my clothing line next spring." In that year, West produced the hit singles "Go" by Common and "Dreams" by The Game.

2007–09: ''Graduation'' and ''808s & Heartbreak''

In 2007, it was announced that West would be starring in a series directed by Larry Charles. He has been working on the pilot episode for the past two years with Larry Charles and Rick Rubin. He also had this to say on January 14: "I wouldn't do something as cliché as a reality show. At least give me the credit for being more creative than that. It's a situational half-hour comedy. It's fictional, and loosely based on my life. " West also collaborated with Japanese hip-hop group Teriyaki Boyz to produce the single "I Still Love H.E.R.," a reference to Common's 1994 single "I Used to Love H.E.R.". Further to this, during a radio appearance in early 2007, West, like many of his peers, recorded an impromptu freestyle to the popular song "Throw Some D's." The song that to all other rappers was about automobile rims, was used by West to comically refer to D-cup breasts. Because of the unexpected success of the song, West went on to make a video for the freestyle, in which he is seen playing his 'Old Ass Cousin'.

West was also featured in a new song called "Classic (Better Than I've Ever Been)". It was believed to be a single for, ''Graduation'', because he is featured on the track, but Nike quickly explained that it was for the Nike Air Force 1's anniversary. It was meant only to be an exclusive track for the company.

On March 25, 2007, he and his father Ray West supported World Water Day by having a "Walk for Water" rally. After a two-year break, West has returned to being a fashion columnist in lifestyle magazine ''Complex''. On July 7, 2007, West performed with The Police and John Mayer at the American leg of Live Earth. West hosted the August 17 edition of British comedy- variety show The Friday Night Project.

In July 2007, West changed the release date of ''Graduation'', his third album, from September 18, 2007, to the same release date as 50 Cent's album ''Curtis'', September 11, 2007. 50 Cent later claimed that if ''Graduation'' were to sell more records than ''Curtis,'' he would stop releasing solo albums. However, 50 Cent would later dispel his comments. The album has been certified double platinum. Guest appearances included T-Pain, Mos Def, and Lil Wayne.

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On August 26, 2007, West appeared as himself on the HBO television show ''Entourage'' which he used as a platform to premier his new single "Good Life" during the end credits. On September 9, 2007, West performed at the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards, losing in every category he was nominated for; he gave an angry speech immediately afterward. (see "Controversies" section)

Following the MTV stint, West was nominated in eight Grammy Award categories for the 50th annual Grammy Awards. He won four of them, including Best Rap Album for ''Graduation'' and Best Rap Solo Performance for "Stronger" from ''Graduation''. During the four-hour televised Grammy Awards ceremony, West also performed two songs: "Stronger" (with Daft Punk) and "Hey Mama" (in honor of his recently deceased mother).

West kicked off the Glow in the Dark Tour in Seattle at the Key Arena on April 16. The tour was originally scheduled to end in June in Cincinnati but was extended into August. Over the course of the tour West was joined by a varying group of opening acts, including Lupe Fiasco, Rihanna, N.E.R.D., DJ Craze, and Gnarls Barkley. On June 15, West was scheduled to perform a late night set at the Bonnaroo Music Festival. His performance started almost two hours late and ran for half of its alloted time, angering many fans in the audience. West later wrote an outraged entry on his blog, blaming the festival organizers as well as Pearl Jam's preceding set, which ran longer than expected.

On September 7, West debuted a new song "Love Lockdown" at the 2008 MTV Video Music Awards. "Love Lockdown" features no rapping and only singing using an auto-tune device. This song appears on West's fourth studio album, ''808s & Heartbreak''. The new album was expected to be released on December 16, but West announced on his blog on September 24, 2008, that he had finished the album and would be releasing it sometime in November, earlier than previously scheduled. In early October, West made a surprise appearance at a T.I. concert in Los Angeles, where he stated that ''808s & Heartbreak'' was scheduled to be released on November 25, though it was actually released on the 24th, and that the second single is "Heartless". The album was another number one album for West, even though the first week numbers fell well short of ''Graduation'' with 450,145 sold.

West performed at the American Music Awards ceremony on November 23. That same night he won two AMA awards, including Favorite Rap/Hip-Hop Album for ''Graduation'' and Favorite Rap/Hip-Hop Male Artist. West performed at the Democratic National Convention in Denver in August 2008, along with Wyclef Jean and N.E.R.D. in support of Barack Obama. On January 20, 2009, Kanye West performed at the Youth Inaugural Ball hosted by MTV for Obama's inauguration.

On February 17, 2009, West was named one of Top 10 Most Stylish Men in America by ''GQ''. The next day, February 18, 2009, West won International Male Solo Artist at The Brit Awards 2009. West was not in attendance but accepted his award with a video speech, saying "Barack is the 'Best Interracial Male' but I'm proud to be the Best International Male in the world.

In April 2009, Kanye West recorded a song called "Hurricane" with 30 Seconds to Mars to appear on their album ''This Is War'', but was not released due to legal issues with both record companies. The song was eventually released on the deluxe version of ''This Is War'', titled "Hurricane 2.0".

2010–present: ''My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy'' and ''Watch the Throne''

In May 2010, West made an animated television guest appearance on Fox's animated television series ''The Cleveland Show'' (a spin-off of ''Family Guy'') as the voice behind "Kenny West", a rival of Cleveland Brown's son. In his first episode he performed in a rap battle with Cleveland's son. The producers stated working with West was a very good experience and a reason they chose him was because they knew he was a fan of ''Family Guy''. Kenny West re-appeared in the season 2 premiere of ''The Cleveland Show''.

West spent the first half of 2010 in Honolulu, Hawaii, working on his new album with the working title ''"Good Ass Job"'', later named ''My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy'', released on November 22, 2010. West has cited Maya Angelou, Gil Scott-Heron and Nina Simone as his musical inspirations for this album. Outside production is said to come from RZA, Q-Tip, Pete Rock, and DJ Premier. West also had Justin Vernon flown into his studio on Oahu after seemingly expressing interest in sampling one of Bon Iver's songs; Vernon proceeded to feature on a number of new tracks, including "Lost In The World," which features Vernon's vocal line from Woods.

On May 28, the Dwele-assisted first single from the album, entitled "Power", leaked to the Internet. On June 30, the track was officially released via iTunes. The upcoming music video was quoted as being "apocalyptic, in a very personal way" by the director Marco Brambilla.

On September 12, 2010, West performed a new song, "Runaway" featuring Pusha T, at the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards. Shortly after the performance, Kanye revealed he was working on a 35 minute short film based around the song. The movie is said to be influenced by film noir and concerns a fallen phoenix whom Kanye falls in love with. On October 15, 2010, Kanye West was ranked 3rd in BET's "Top Ten Rappers of the 21st Century" list.

''Watch the Throne'', a collaborative studio album by West and Jay-Z, was released by Def Jam Recordings on August 8, 2011. It has been under production since August 2010 as part of West's GOOD Friday initiative of releasing new songs every Friday between August 20 and Christmas 2010. West said through a recent interview with MTV that the album is "going to be very dark and sexy, like couture hip hop." He appeared at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, performing the track "Lost in the World" from ''My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy''. On January 6, 2011, Kanye announced via Twitter that the first official single from ''Watch the Throne'' would be a song called "H•A•M" produced by Lex Luger. The song was released on January 11, 2011. On January 23, 2011, Kanye revealed via his Twitter account that he will be releasing a new album in summer 2011. On April 17, 2011, West closed the Coachella Festival with a headlining set that received glowing praise from fans and critics alike. On July 13, the official tracklisting for ''Watch The Throne'' was revealed. On July 20, a track titled "Otis" from the album was released in the iTunes Store. It samples "Try a Little Tenderness" by Otis Redding.

On October 19, 2011, West announced on his Twitter plans for a Spring 2012 GOOD Music album release.

Other ventures

Business ventures

In August 2008, West revealed plans to open 10 Fatburger restaurants in the Chicago area; the first was set to open in September 2008 in Orland Park. The second followed in January 2009, while a third location is yet to be revealed, although the process is being finalized. His company, KW Foods LLC, bought the rights to the chain in Chicago. Additionally, West planned to launch his fashion career, and applied for internships with major European fashion houses. He was due to release his own clothing line called Past Tell in 2009. He also collaborated with Nike to release his own shoe, Air Yeezys.

On January 22, 2009, during Paris Fashion Week, West introduced his first shoe line designed for Louis Vuitton. The line was released in summer 2009.

On October 01, 2011, Kanye West premiered his women's fashion label, DW Kanye West at Paris Fashion Week. He received support from DSquared2 duo Dean and Dan Caten, Olivier Theyskens, Jeremy Scott, Azzedine Alaïa, and the Olsen twins, who were also in attendance during his show. His debut fashion show received mixed-to-negative reviews, ranging from reserved observations by Style.com to excoriating commentary by The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the International Herald Tribune, Elleuk.com, The Daily Telegraph, Harper's Bazaar and many others.

Philanthropy

West started the "Kanye West Foundation" in Chicago in 2003. On August 24, 2007, West hosted the inaugural benefit concert to launch the foundation's partnership with Strong American Schools. It is focused on helping Latino and African American children stay in school and to get a proper education through grade school, high school, and college. The foundation also helps children to stay in high school by finding a path through music. West has contributed over $500,000 to his foundation. The foundation has also been called the "Donda West Foundation".

Kanye West has appeared and participated in many fundraisers, benefit concerts, and has done community work for Hurricane Katrina relief, the Kanye West Foundation, the Millions More Movement, 100 Black Men of America, a Live Earth concert benefit, World Water Day rally and march, Nike runs, and a MTV special helping young Iraq War veterans who struggle through debt and PTSD a second chance after returning home.

Musical style and influences

At the start of his career, Kanye West's production style often used pitched-up vocal samples, usually from soul songs, with his own drums and instruments. His first major release featuring his trademark vocal sampling style was "This Can't Be Life", a track from Jay-Z’s ''The Dynasty: Roc La Familia''. West said he sped up the drum beat of Dr. Dre's "Xxplosive" to use as a replacement for his drums on "This Can't Be Life".

West has said that Wu-Tang Clan producer RZA influenced him in his style, and has said on numerous occasions that Wu-Tang rappers Ghostface Killah and Ol' Dirty Bastard were some of his all-time favorites, "Wu-Tang? Me and my friends talk about this all the time... We think Wu-Tang had one of the biggest impacts as far as a movement. From slang to style of dress, skits, the samples. Similar to the [production] style I use, RZA has been doing that." RZA himself has spoken quite positively of the comparisons, stating in an interview for ''Rolling Stone'', "All good. I got super respect for Kanye. He came up to me about a year or two ago. He gave me mad praising and blessings... For people to say Wu-Tang inspire Kanye, Kanye is one of the biggest artists in the world. That goes back to what we say: 'Wu-Tang is forever.' Kanye is going to inspire people to be like him." After hearing his work on ''The Blueprint'', RZA claimed that a torch-passing had occurred between him and West, saying, "The shoes gotta be filled. If you ain't gonna do it, somebody else is gonna do it. That's how I feel about rap today."

While his use of sampling has lessened over time, West's production continues to feature distinctive and intricate string arrangements. This characteristic arose from him listening to the English trip hop group Portishead, whose 1998 live album ''Roseland NYC Live'', with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra inspired him to incorporate string sections into his hip hop production. Though he was unable to afford live instruments beyond violin riffs provided by Israeli violinist Miri Ben-Ari around the time of his debut album, its subsequent commercial success allowed him to hire his very own eleven-piece string orchestra. For a time, West stood as the sole current pop star to tour with a string section.

West has stated on several occasions that outside of work, he favors listening to rock music over hip-hop. He cites Franz Ferdinand, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and The Killers as some of his favorite musical groups. Additionally, on ''Graduation'', West drew inspiration from arena rock bands such as U2, The Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin for melody and chord progression. Both a fan and supporter of indie culture, West uses his official website to promote obscure indie rock bands, posting up music videos and mp3s on a daily basis. This musical affinity is mutual, as West has collaborated with indie artists such as Santigold, Peter Bjorn and John and Lykke Li while his songs have gone on to be covered countless times by myriad rock bands.

Personal life

Relationships

Kanye West and designer Alexis Phifer ended their 18-month engagement in 2008. The couple had been dating on and off since 2002, with West eventually proposing in August 2006. According to a friend, the couple's relationship had become increasingly strained, burdened by the sheer amount of time and attention West was dedicating to his current concert tour. "It's always sad when things like this end, and we remain friends," Phifer told ''People''.

West was also in a high profile on/off relationship with Amber Rose from 2008 until the summer of 2010.

Mother's death

On November 10, 2007, West's mother, Donda West, died of complications from cosmetic surgery involving abdominoplasty and breast augmentation. TMZ reported that Beverly Hills plastic surgeon Andre Aboolian refused to do the surgery because Donda West had a health condition that placed her at risk for a heart attack. Aboolian referred her to an internist to investigate her cardiac issue. Donda never met with the doctor recommended by Aboolian and had the procedures performed by a third doctor, Jan Adams. She was 58 years old (1949–2007).

Adams sent condolences to Donda West's family but declined to publicly discuss the procedure because of confidentiality. He had previously been under scrutiny by the medical board. Adams appeared on ''Larry King Live'' on November 20, 2007 but left before speaking. Two days later, he appeared again, with his attorney, stating he was there to "defend himself." He said that the recently released autopsy results "spoke for themselves". The final coroner's report January 10, 2008 concluded that Donda West died of "coronary artery disease and multiple post-operative factors due to or as a consequence of liposuction and mammoplasty."

The funeral and burial for Donda West was held in Oklahoma City on November 20, 2007. West held his first concert following the funeral at The O2 in London on November 22. He dedicated a performance of "Hey Mama", as well as a cover of Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'", to his mother, and did so on all other dates of his Glow in the Dark tour.

At a December 2008 press conference in New Zealand, West spoke about his mother's death for the first time. "It was like losing an arm and a leg and trying to walk through that," he told reporters.

California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger passed the "Donda West Law," a legislation which makes it mandatory for patients to provide medical clearance for elective cosmetic surgery.

Legal issues

In December 2006, Robert "Evel" Knievel sued West for trademark infringement in West's video for "Touch the Sky." Knievel took issue with a "sexually-charged video" in which West takes on the persona of "Evel Kanyevel" and attempts flying a rocket over a canyon. The suit filed in federal court claims infringement on his trademarked name and likeness. Knievel also claims the "vulgar and offensive" images depicted in the video damage his reputation. The suit seeks damages and to stop distribution of the video. West's attorneys argued that the music video amounted to satire and therefore was covered under the First Amendment. Just days before his death in November 2007, Knievel amicably settled the suit after being paid a visit from West, saying, "I thought he was a wonderful guy and quite a gentleman."

On September 11, 2008, West and his road manager/bodyguard Don "Don C." Crowley were arrested at Los Angeles International Airport and booked on charges of felony vandalism after an altercation with the paparazzi in which West and Crowley broke the photographers' cameras. West was later released from the Los Angeles Police Department's Pacific Division station in Culver City on $20,000 bail bond. On September 26, 2008 the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office said it would not file felony counts against West over the incident. Instead the case file was forwarded to the city attorney's office, which charged West with one count of misdemeanor vandalism, one count of grand theft and one count of battery and his manager with three counts of each on March 18, 2009. West's and Crowley's arraignment was delayed from an original date of April 14, 2009.

West was arrested again on November 14, 2008 at the Hilton hotel near Gateshead after another scuffle involving a photographer outside the famous Tup Tup Palace nightclub in Newcastle Upon Tyne. He was later released "with no further action", according to a police spokesperson.

Controversies

General media

West has had several controversies throughout his career. On September 2, 2005, during a benefit concert for Hurricane Katrina relief on NBC, A Concert for Hurricane Relief, West was a featured speaker. When West was presenting alongside actor Mike Myers, he deviated from the prepared script. Myers spoke next and continued to read the script. Once it was West's turn to speak again, he said "George Bush doesn't care about black people." At this point, telethon producer Rick Kaplan cut off the microphone and then cut away to Chris Tucker, who was unaware of the cut for a few seconds. Still, West's comment reached much of the United States. Bush stated in an interview that the comment was "one of the most disgusting moments” of his presidency.

In January 2006, West again sparked controversy when he appeared on the cover of ''Rolling Stone'' in the image of Jesus wearing a crown of thorns.

In November, 2010, Kanye West, in a taped interview with Matt Lauer for the Today Show, West expressed regret for his criticism of Bush. "I would tell George Bush in my moment of frustration, I didn't have the grounds to call him a racist," he told Lauer. "I believe that in a situation of high emotion like that we as human beings don't always choose the right words." The following day, Bush reacted to the apology in a live interview with Lauer saying he appreciated the rapper's remorse. "I'm not a hater," Bush said. "I don't hate Kanye West. I was talking about an environment in which people were willing to say things that hurt. Nobody wants to be called a racist if in your heart you believe in equality of races."

Reactions were mixed, but some felt that West had no need to apologize. "It was not the particulars of your words that mattered, it was the essence of a feeling of the insensitivity towards our communities that many of us have felt for far too long," noted Def Jam co-founder Russell Simmons. Dr. Boyce Watkins said that West was, "now part of the establishment, where waffling on your principles is fully expected. Bush deserved no apology, for you don’t apologize to a criminal after repudiating him for an egregious crime. " Bush himself was acceptive towards the apology, saying, "I appreciate that. It wasn't just Kanye West who was talking like that during Katrina, I cited him as an example, I cited others as an example as well. You know, I appreciate that."

Award shows

In 2004, West had his first of a number of incidents involving music award events. At the American Music Awards of 2004, West stormed out of the auditorium after losing Best New Artist to country singer Gretchen Wilson. He later commented, "I felt like I was definitely robbed [...] I was the best new artist this year." After the 2006 Grammy nominations were released, West said he would "really have a problem" if he did not win the Album of the Year, saying, "I don't care what I do, I don't care how much I stunt – you can never take away from the amount of work I put into it. I don't want to hear all of that politically correct stuff." On November 2, 2006, when his "Touch the Sky" failed to win Best Video at the MTV Europe Music Awards, West went onto the stage as the award was being presented to Justice and Simian for "We Are Your Friends" and argued that he should have won the award instead. Hundreds of news outlets worldwide criticized the outburst. On November 7, 2006, West apologized for this outburst publicly during his performance as support act for U2 for their Vertigo concert in Brisbane. He later spoofed the incident in the season premiere of ''Saturday Night Live''.

On September 9, 2007, West suggested that his race had to do with his being overlooked for opening the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards (VMAs) in favor of Britney Spears; he claimed, "Maybe my skin’s not right." West was performing at the event; that night, he lost all 5 awards that he was nominated for, including Best Male Artist and Video of the Year. After the show, he was visibly upset that he had lost at the VMAs two years in a row, stating that he would not come back to MTV ever again. He also appeared on several radio stations saying that when he made the song "Stronger" that it was his dream to open the VMAs with it. He has also stated that Spears has not had a hit in a long period of time and that MTV exploited her for ratings.

On September 13, 2009, during the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards while Taylor Swift was accepting her award for Best Female Video for "You Belong with Me", West went on stage and grabbed the microphone to proclaim that Beyoncé's video for "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)", nominated for the same award, was "one of the best videos of all time". He was subsequently removed from the remainder of the show for his actions. When Beyoncé later won the award for Best Video of the Year for "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)", she called Swift up on stage so that she could finish her acceptance speech. West was criticized by various celebrities for the outburst, and by President Barack Obama, who called West a "jackass" in an off-the-record comment. In addition, West's VMA disruption sparked a large influx of Internet photo memes with blogs, forums and "tweets" with the "Let you finish" photo-jokes. Subsequently, West posted two apologies for the outburst on his personal blog; one on the night of the incident and the other the same day he appeared on ''The Jay Leno Show'', on September 14, 2009, where he apologized again. After Swift appeared on ''The View'' two days after the outburst, partly to discuss the matter, West called her to apologize personally. Swift said she accepted his apology. In September 2010, West wrote a series of apologetic tweets addressed to Swift including "Beyonce didn't need that. MTV didn't need that and Taylor and her family friends and fans definitely didn't want or need that" and concluding with "I'm sorry Taylor." West also revealed he had written a song for Swift and if she did not accept the song, he would perform it himself. However, on November 8, 2010, in an interview with a Minnesota radio station, West seemed to recant a bit of his past apologies by attempting to describe the act at the 2009 awards show as "selfless" and downgrade the perception of disrespect it created.

Discography

Solo Albums

''The College Dropout'' (2004)

''Late Registration'' (2005)

''Graduation'' (2007)

''808s & Heartbreak'' (2008)

''My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy'' (2010)

Collaborations

''Watch the Throne'' (2011) – with Jay-Z

''G.O.O.D. Music'' (2012) – with GOOD Music artists

Filmography

''We Were Once a Fairytale'' (2009)

''Runaway'' (2010)

Awards and nominations

References

External links

Kanye West at Beatbuggy

Category:1977 births Category:African American rappers Category:African American record producers Category:African American male singers Category:American bloggers Category:American Christians Category:American hip hop record producers Category:American music industry executives Category:American music video directors Category:American pop musicians Category:Songwriters from Georgia (U.S. state) Category:Brit Award winners Category:Chicago State University alumni Category:Electro-hop musicians Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Hip hop musicians Category:Hip hop singers Category:Living people Category:Mercury Records artists Category:People from Atlanta, Georgia Category:Rappers from Chicago, Illinois Category:Roc-A-Fella Records artists Category:World Music Awards winners

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Name	Jamie Foxx
Birth name	Eric Marlon Bishop
Birth date	December 13, 1967
Birth place	Terrell, Texas, United States
Medium	Stand up, Film, Television, Radio, Music
Nationality	American
Active	1989–present
Associated acts	Kanye West, T.I., Keyshia Cole
Genre	Musical comedy, Political satire, Observational comedy, Character comedy, Black comedy
Subject	Race relations, Racism, African-American culture, Celebrities, Human sexuality, American politics, Current events, Self-deprecation
Occupation	Singer, Actor, Rapper, Comedian
Notable work	Law Abiding CitizenJamie King on The Jamie Foxx ShowRay Charles in RayNico in Rio
Working with	Flo Rida, Kanye West, A-Trak, KiD CuDi
Website	Official site }}

Eric Marlon Bishop (born December 13, 1967), professionally known as Jamie Foxx, is an American actor, singer-songwriter, stand-up comedian, and talk radio host. As an actor, his work in the film ''Ray'' earned him the Academy Award and BAFTA Award for Best Actor as well as the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a musical/comedy. He is also a Grammy Award winning musician, producing three albums which have charted highly on the Billboard 200: ''Unpredictable'', which topped the chart, ''Best Night of My Life'' and ''Intuition''.

Born in Terrell, Texas, Foxx was raised by his mother's adoptive parents. He performed in high school and was awarded with a scholarship to United States International University. In his twenties, Foxx began performing stand-up at comedy clubs, and eventually joined the cast of ''In Living Color'' in 1991; this exposure helped him land film roles and star in his own sitcom, ''The Jamie Foxx Show''. He released his debut album, ''Peep This'', in 1994, but he did not gain significant musical success until 2004 when he was featured in Twista's song "Slow Jamz". Also in 2004, Foxx played critically acclaimed roles in the films ''Collateral'' and ''Ray''. He released his second album, ''Unpredictable'', in 2005, which was helped by his collaboration on Kanye West's number-one single "Gold Digger". His third album ''Intuition'' was released in 2008 and was anchored by the single "Blame It". Foxx released his fourth studio album, ''Best Night of My Life'', in 2010.

Early life

Foxx was born as Eric Marlon Bishop on December 13, 1967, in Terrell, Texas. He is the son of Louise Annette Talley Dixon and Darrell Bishop. Foxx was abandoned seven months after birth, and was subsequently adopted and raised in Terrell by his mother's adoptive parents, Estelle and Mark Talley. Terrell was a racially segregated community at the time. Foxx had a strict Baptist upbringing and began piano lessons at the age of five by his grandmother's orders. As a teenager, he was a part-time pianist and choir leader in Terrell's New Hope Baptist Church. Jamie also was a good dancer.

Foxx attended Terrell High School, where he received top grades, played basketball and football as quarterback, and had an ambition to play for the Dallas Cowboys. He was the first player in the school's history to pass for more than 1,000 yards. He also sang in a band called Leather and Lace. After completing high school, Foxx received a scholarship to United States International University, where he studied classical music and composition. He has often acknowledged his grandmother's influence in his life as one of the greatest reasons for his success.

Stand-up career

After accepting a girlfriend's dare, Foxx told jokes and did impressions at a comedy club's open mic night in 1989. When he found that female comedians were often called first to perform, he changed his name to Jamie Foxx, feeling that it was an ambiguous enough name to disallow any biases. He chose his surname as a tribute to comedian Redd Foxx. In addition his recurrent ''In Living Color'' character LaWanda shared names with Redd's friend and co-worker, LaWanda Page.

Acting career

''In Living Color'' and other TV series

Foxx joined the cast of ''In Living Color'' in 1991 and subsequently played a recurring role in the comedy-drama sitcom ''Roc''. From 1996 to 2001, Foxx starred in his own sitcom ''The Jamie Foxx Show'', and in 1992 he made his film debut.

Film career

Foxx made his film debut in the 1992 comedy ''Toys''. His first dramatic role came in Oliver Stone's 1999 film ''Any Given Sunday'', where he portrayed a hard-partying American football player. He was cast in the role in part because of his background as a football player. Following ''Any Given Sunday'', Foxx was featured as taxi driver Max Durocher in the film ''Collateral'' alongside Tom Cruise, for which he received outstanding reviews and a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. His standout performance, however, was his portrayal of Ray Charles in the biopic ''Ray'' (2004), for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor and the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role.

Foxx is the second male in history to receive two acting Oscar nominations in the same year for two different movies, ''Collateral'' and ''Ray''. The only other male actor to achieve this was Al Pacino. In 2005, Foxx was invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Following these successes, Foxx appeared in ''Jarhead'', ''Miami Vice'', and ''Dreamgirls'', which were box-office hits, and lifted his profile even higher as a bankable star in Hollywood. 2007 brought him the lead role in the film ''The Kingdom'' opposite Chris Cooper, Jason Bateman, Jennifer Garner and Ashraf Barhom.

In September 2007, Foxx was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He said, upon receiving the honor, "[it was] one of the most amazing days of my life."

In April 2009, Foxx played the lead role in the dramatic film ''The Soloist''. A few months later in October 2009, He played a starring role along side Gerard Butler in the thriller Law Abiding Citizen. In April 2011, Foxx voiced Nico, a canary in the movie ''Rio''.

In 2011, Foxx was officially cast in the title role of, Django Unchained. It will be written and directed by Quentin Tarantino, and he will star alongside Christoph Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio, Samuel L. Jackson, and Kevin Costner.

Music career

Foxx began piano lessons at age five. In 1994, Foxx released an album (on the Fox record label) entitled ''Peep This''. His music career shifted into a higher gear when, in 2004, he was featured on rapper Twista's song, "Slow Jamz", which also featured Kanye West. The song reached number one on the U.S. ''Billboard'' Hot 100 singles chart, as well as number three on the UK singles chart. Foxx's second collaboration with Kanye West, "Gold Digger," in which he sang the "I Got a Woman" Ray Charles-influenced hook, went straight to number one on the ''Billboard'' Hot 100, and remained there for 10 weeks. In 2005, Foxx was featured on the single "Georgia" by Atlanta rappers Ludacris and Field Mob. The song sampled Ray Charles' hit "Georgia on My Mind."

Foxx released his second studio album, ''Unpredictable'', in December 2005. It debuted at number two, selling 598,000 copies in its first week. The following week, the album rose to number one, selling an additional 200,000 copies. To date, the album has sold 1.98 million copies in the United States, and was certified double Platinum by the RIAA. The album also charted on the UK Albums Chart, where it peaked at number nine. Foxx became the fourth artist to have won an Academy Award for an acting role and to have achieved a number-one record album in the US. (The other three to accomplish this feat were Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, and Barbra Streisand.) Foxx's first single from the album, the title track "Unpredictable" (featuring Ludacris), samples "Wildflower" by New Birth. The song peaked inside the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 and also made the UK top 20 singles chart. The second US single from the album was "DJ Play a Love Song," which reunited Foxx with Twista. In the UK, however, the second single was "Extravaganza," which saw Foxx once again collaborate with Kanye West. He was not, however, featured in the song's music video.

At the 2006 Black Entertainment Television (BET) Awards, Foxx won Best Duet/Collaboration with Kanye West for "Gold Digger" and tied with Mary J. Blige's "Be Without You" for Video of the year. On December 8, 2006, Foxx received four Grammy nominations, which included Best R&B; Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals for ''Love Changes'' featuring Mary J. Blige, Best R&B; Album for ''Unpredictable'', Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group for ''Georgia'' by Ludacris & Field Mob featuring Jamie Foxx, and Best Rap/Sung Collaboration for ''Unpredictable'' featuring Ludacris.

On January 22, 2007, Foxx was on Sirius Satellite Radio, announcing his new channel The Foxxhole. The channel features talk-radio programs, stand-up comedy albums, and music primarily by African-American performers, and features much of Foxx's own material as well. ''The Jamie Foxx Show'', Foxx's own talk-radio variety program, airs Friday evenings on The Foxxhole, and features Johnny Mack, Speedy, The Poetess, Lewis Dix, and T.D.P., as his co-hosts. Guests include popular musicians, actors, and fellow comedians.

He recorded a song with country superstars Rascal Flatts entitled "She Goes All the Way" for their album, ''Still Feels Good''. Foxx also performed background vocals for artist/songwriter Tank. He and The-Dream are featured on Plies' "Please Excuse My Hands." He also appeared on the remix of Ne-Yo's "Miss Independent" entitled "She Got Her Own." The track also features Fabolous. Foxx then collaborated with rapper The Game on the track "Around The World."

Foxx released his third album titled ''Intuition'' in 2008, featuring such artists as Kanye West, T.I., Lil Wayne, and T-Pain. The album's first single, "Just Like Me" featuring T.I., was promoted by a video directed by Brett Ratner and featuring an appearance by Taraji P. Henson. The second single "Blame It" featured T-Pain and became a top 5 single on the Billboard Hot 100 and a number-one single on the Billboard Hot R&B;/Hip-Hop Songs chart. The "Blame It" music video, directed by Hype Williams, features cameo appearances by Forest Whitaker, Samuel L. Jackson, Ron Howard, Quincy Jones, and Jake Gyllenhaal, among others. Foxx was also featured on T.I.'s single "Live in the Sky" from the album ''King''.

On April 6, 2009 Foxx performed the George Strait song "You Look So Good in Love" at the George Strait Artist of the Decade All-Star Concert. Foxx has been a fan of country music for many years.

Jamie Foxx hosted the 2009 BET Awards ceremony on June 28, 2009, which featured several tributes to pop star Michael Jackson, who had died three days prior to the show. Aside from performing "Blame It" with T-Pain and "She Got Her Own" with Ne-Yo and Fabolous, Foxx opened the show with a rendition of Jackson's "Beat It" dance routine and closed the show with a cover of The Jackson 5's "I'll Be There" with Ne-Yo. Foxx stated during the ceremony, "We want to celebrate this black man. He belongs to us and we shared him with everybody else."

Foxx released his fourth album, ''Best Night of My Life'', on December 21, 2010. The first single is "Winner", featuring Justin Timberlake and T.I.. The second single is "Living Better Now" featuring rapper Rick Ross and the third single is "Fall For Your Type" featuring rapper Drake.

Personal life

Foxx has a daughter, Corinne Bishop, who was born in 1994. Former ''Jamie Foxx Show'' co-star Garcelle Beauvais-Nilon made a public announcement on ''The Wendy Williams Show'' stating that Foxx has a second child. Foxx was spotted with the baby in Miami for New Year's Eve 2010, and it was revealed to be a girl.

Foxx performed a public service announcement for Do Something to promote food drives in local communities.

In April 2003, Foxx was involved in an incident with two police officers who were attempting to escort him and his sister out of Harrah's casino in New Orleans. Employees claimed they had failed to show identification upon entry. Originally charged with trespassing, disturbing the peace, battery on police officers and resisting arrest, Foxx pleaded no contest to disturbing the peace in exchange for the other charges being dropped, and was sentenced to a six month suspended jail term with two years probation and a $1500 fine.

Discography

''Peep This'' (1994)

''Unpredictable'' (2005)

''Intuition'' (2008)

''Best Night of My Life'' (2010)

Tours

The Unpredictable Tour (2006)

The Blame It Tour (2009)

Filmography

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1992		Baker
	''The Truth About Cats & Dogs''	Ed
''The Great White Hype''	Hassan El Ruk'n
1997	''Booty Call''	Bunz
1998	''The Players Club''	Blue
	''Held Up''	Michael
''Any Given Sunday''	Willie Beamen	Nominated — BET Awards
2000		Alvin Sanders
	''Date from Heaven''
	Drew 'Bundini' Brown
2003		Larry Jennings
	''[[Breakin' All the Rules''	Quincy Watson
	Max
	Ray Charles	Academy Award for Best ActorBAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading RoleBET Award for Best ActorBoston Society of Film Critics Award for Best ActorBroadcast Film Critics Association Award for Best ActorFlorida Film Critics Circle Award for Best ActorGolden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or ComedyKansas City Film Critics Circle Award for Best ActorLas Vegas Film Critics Society Award for Best ActorLondon Film Critics Circle Award for Best ActorNAACP Image Award for Outstanding Actor in a Motion PictureNational Board of Review Award for Best ActorNational Society of Film Critics Award for Best ActorPhoenix Film Critics Society Award for Best ActorSatellite Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or ComedyScreen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading RoleSeattle Film Critics Association Award for Best ActorVancouver Film Critics Circle Award for Best ActorWashington D.C. Area Film Critics Association Award for Best ActorNominated — MTV Movie Award for Best Male PerformanceNominated — Online Film Critics Society Award for Best ActorNominated — Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture
''Redemption: The Stan Tookie Williams Story''	Tookie
		Lt. Henry Purcell
	Staff Sgt. Sykes	Nominated — Black Movie Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor
		Ricardo Tubbs
	Curtis Taylor, Jr.
2007		Ronald Fleury
	''The Soloist''	Nathaniel Ayers
''Law Abiding Citizen''	Nick Rice
		Kelvin Briggs
''Due Date''	Darryl
		Nico	Voice
''Horrible Bosses''	Dean "Motherfucker" Jones
	''Django Unchained''	Django	Pre-Production
	James Seth Lynch	Filming

Awards and nominations

Television Awards

*1998, Outstanding Actor in a Comedy Series: ''The Jamie Foxx Show''

*1999, Outstanding Actor in a Comedy Series: ''The Jamie Foxx Show'' (nominated)

*2000, Outstanding Actor in a Comedy Series: ''The Jamie Foxx Show'' (nominated)

*2001, Outstanding Actor in a Comedy Series: ''The Jamie Foxx Show'' (nominated)

Music awards

American Music Awards

*2009, Favorite R&B;/Soul Male Artist (nominated)

*2006, Favorite R&B;/Soul Male Artist (winner)

*2006, Favorite R&B;/Soul Album: ''Unpredictable'' (nominated)

BET Awards

*2006, Best Male R&B; Artist (nominated)

*2006, Best Collaboration ("Unpredictable") with Ludacris (nominated)

*2009, Best Collaboration ("Blame It") with T-Pain (Winner)

*2009, Video of the Year: ("Blame It") (nominated)

*2009, Best Male R&B; Artist (nominated)

Grammy Awards n

*2010, Best R&B; Performance by a Duo or Group ("Blame It") with T-Pain (winner)

*2010, Best Contemporary R&B; Album (Intuition) (nominated)

*2010, Best R&B; Song ("Blame It") (nominated)

*2007, Best Rap/Sung Collaboration ("Unpredictable") with Ludacris (nominated)

*2007, Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group ("Georgia") with Ludacris & Field Mob (nominated)

*2007, Best R&B; Performance by a Duo or Group ("Love Changes") with Mary J. Blige (nominated)

*2007, Best R&B; Album (Unpredictable) (nominated)

*2006, Best Rap/Sung Collaboration ("Slow Jamz") with Twista & Kanye West (nominated)

*2006, Best Male R&B; Vocal Performance ("Creepin") (nominated)

*2009, Outstanding Male Artist (winner)

*2006, Outstanding Male Artist (winner)

MOBO Awards

*2006, Best R&B; Act (nominated)

MTV Video Music Awards

*2006, Best Hip-Hop Video: "Gold Digger" with Kanye West (nominated)

*2006, Best Ringtone: "Gold Digger" with Kanye West (nominated)

*2006, Best R&B; Video: "Unpredictable" featuring Ludacris (nominated)

*2004, MTV2 Award: "Slow Jamz" with Twista & Kanye West (nominated)

Soul Train Awards

*2009, Record of the Year: "Blame It" (winner)

*2009, Album of the Year: Intuition (nominated)

*2007, Best R&B;/Soul Album, Male: ''Unpredictable'' (winner)

*2006, Best Music Video: "Gold Digger" with Kanye West (winner)

*2006, Best R&B;/Soul Dance Cut: "Gold Digger" with Kanye West (nominated)

Vibe Awards

*2005, Best Collabo: "Gold Digger" with Kanye West (nominated)

*2004, Best Collabo: "Slow Jamz" with Twista & Kanye West (nominated)

Movie/TV Awards

Academy Awards

*2004, Nominated Best Supporting Actor – Collateral

* 2004, Won Best Actor – Ray

BAFTA Awards

*2005, Won Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role – Ray

*2004, Nominated Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role – Collateral

BET Awards

*2006, Nominated Best Actor

*2005, Won Best Actor

Black Movie Awards

*2006, Nominated Outstanding Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role – Jarhead

Black Reel Awards

*2007, Nominated – Best Actor – Dreamgirls

*2005, Won Best Actor, Drama – Ray

*2004, Won Best Actor – Redemption: The Stan Tookie Williams Story (TV)

*2004, Won Best Supporting Actor – Collateral

*2004, Nominated – Best Actor, Musical or Comedy – Breakin' All the Rules

*2002, Won Theatrical – Best Supporting Actor – Ali

*2000, Nominated – Best Supporting Actor – Any Given Sunday

Blockbuster Entertainment Awards

*2000, Nominated – Favorite Supporting Actor – Drama – Any Given Sunday

Boston Society of Film Critics Awards

*2004, Won Best Actor – Ray

Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards

*2005, Won Critics Choice Award Best Actor – Ray

*2004, Nominated Critics Choice Award Best Supporting Actor – Collateral

Florida Film Critics Circle Awards

*2004, Won FFCC Award Best Actor – Ray

Golden Globes

*2005, Won Golden Globe Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy – Ray

*2004, Nominated Golden Globe Best Performance by an Actor in a Mini-Series or a Motion Picture Made for Television – Redemption: The Stan Tookie Williams Story (TV)

*2004, Nominated Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture – Collateral

Hollywood Film Festival

*2004, Won Hollywood Breakthrough Award Breakthrough Actor

*2007, Nominated Outstanding Actor in a Motion Picture – Dreamgirls

*2005, Won Outstanding Actor in a Motion Picture – Ray

*2004, Won Outstanding Actor in a Television Movie, Mini-Series or Dramatic Special – Redemption: The Stan Tookie Williams Story (TV)

*2004, Nominated Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture – Collateral

*2002, Won Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture – Ali

*2001, Nominated Outstanding Actor in a Comedy Series – "The Jamie Foxx Show"

*2000, Nominated Outstanding Actor in a Comedy Series – "The Jamie Foxx Show"

*1999, Nominated Outstanding Actor in a Comedy Series – "The Jamie Foxx Show"

*1998, Nominated Outstanding Actor in a Comedy Series – "The Jamie Foxx Show"

Independent Spirit Awards

*2005, Nominated Best Male Lead – Redemption: The Stan Tookie Williams Story (TV)

Kansas City Film Critics Circle Awards

*2005, Won Best Actor – Ray (2004/I)

Kids' Choice Awards

*2001, Nominated Favorite Television Actor – "The Jamie Foxx Show"

*2000, Nominated Favorite Television Actor – "The Jamie Foxx Show"

Las Vegas Film Critics Society Awards

*2005, Won Sierra Award Best Actor – Ray

London Critics Circle Film Awards

*2005, Won ALFS Award Actor of the Year – Ray

MTV Movie Awards

*2005, Nominated Best Male Performance – Ray

*2000, Nominated Breakthrough Male Performance – Any Given Sunday

MovieGuide Awards

*2005, Won Grace Award Most Inspiring Television Acting – Redemption: The Stan Tookie Williams Story (TV)

National Board of Review

*2004, Won Best Actor – Ray

National Society of Film Critics Awards

*2005, Won Best Actor – Ray

Online Film Critics Society Awards

*2005, Nominated Best Actor – Ray

*2004, Won Best Supporting Actor – Collateral

People's Choice Awards

*2008, Nominated Favorite Leading Man

*2006, Nominated Favorite Leading Man

Phoenix Film Critics Society Awards

*2004, Won Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role – Ray

Prism Awards

*2005, Won Performance in a Feature Film – Ray

Satellite Awards

*2005, Won Golden Satellite Award Best Actor in a Miniseries or a Motion Picture Made for Television – Redemption: The Stan Tookie Williams Story (TV)

*2004, Won Best Actor in a Motion Picture, Comedy or Musical – Ray

*2004, Nominated Golden Satellite Award Best Actor in a Supporting Role, Drama – Collateral

Screen Actors Guild Awards

*2007, Nominated Actor Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture – Dreamgirls

*2005, Won Actor Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role – Ray

*2004, Nominated Actor Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture – Ray

*2004, Nominated Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role – Collateral

*2004, Nominated Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Television Movie or Miniseries – Redemption: The Stan Tookie Williams Story (TV)

Seattle Film Critics Awards

*'''2004, Won Best Actor – Ray

Southeastern Film Critics Association Awards

*2004, Won Best Actor – Ray

TV Land Awards

*2007, Nominated Little Screen/Big Screen Star

*2006, Nominated Little Screen/Big Screen Star

Teen Choice Awards

*2007, Nominated Choice Movie: Liplock – Dreamgirls

*2005, Nominated Choice Movie Actor: Drama – Ray

Vancouver Film Critics Circle

*2005, Won Best Actor – Ray

Washington DC Area Film Critics Association Awards

*2004, Won Best Actor – Ray

*2004, Won Best Supporting Actor – Collateral

Women in Film Crystal + Lucy Award

2005, co-recipient, Crystal Award

See also

List of Black Golden Globe Award winners and nominees

References

External links

Official Jamie Foxx Music Site

Category:1967 births Category:Actors from Texas Category:African American film actors Category:African American comedians Category:American adoptees Category:American male singers Category:American stand-up comedians Category:American comedy musicians Category:American television actors Category:American voice actors Category:BAFTA winners (people) Category:Best Actor BAFTA Award winners Category:Best Actor Academy Award winners Category:Best Musical or Comedy Actor Golden Globe (film) winners Category:Living people Category:People from Linden, Texas Category:People from the Dallas – Fort Worth Metroplex Category:African American television actors Category:Grammy Award winners Category:United States International University alumni

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name	David Letterman
pseudonym	Earl Hofert
birth date	April 12, 1947
birth place	Indianapolis, Indiana, U.S.
medium	Stand-up, talk show
nationality	American
genre	Observational comedy, surreal humor, deadpan
subject	Self-deprecation, everyday life
influences	Steve Allen, Johnny Carson, Jack Paar, Paul Dixon
influenced
website	CBS.com/latenight/lateshow
active	1974–present
domesticpartner	Regina Lasko (1986-2009)
spouse	Michelle Cook (1969–1977)Regina Lasko (2009–present)
Religion	Lutheran
notable work	Host of ''Late Night with David Letterman'' (NBC)Host of ''Late Show with David Letterman'' (CBS)
signature	David Letterman Autograph.svg

}} David Michael Letterman (born April 12, 1947) is an American television host and comedian. He hosts the late night television talk show, ''Late Show with David Letterman'', broadcast on CBS. Letterman has been a fixture on late night television since the 1982 debut of ''Late Night with David Letterman'' on NBC. Only Letterman's friend and mentor Johnny Carson had a longer late-night hosting career in the United States.

Letterman is also a television and film producer. His company Worldwide Pants produces his show as well as its network follow-up ''The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson''. Worldwide Pants has also produced several prime-time comedies, the most successful of which was ''Everybody Loves Raymond'', currently in syndication.

In 1996, David Letterman was ranked #45 on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Stars of All Time.

Early life and career

Letterman was born in Indianapolis, Indiana. His father, Harry Joseph Letterman (April 1915 – February 1973), was a florist of British descent; his mother Dorothy Letterman (''née'' Hofert, now Dorothy Mengering), a Presbyterian church secretary of German descent, is an occasional figure on the show, usually at holidays and birthdays.

Letterman lived on the north side of Indianapolis (Broad Ripple area), not far from Speedway, IN, and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and he enjoyed collecting model cars, including racers. In 2000, he told an interviewer for ''Esquire'' that, while growing up, he admired his father's ability to tell jokes and be the life of the party. Harry Joseph Letterman survived a heart attack at age 36, when David was a young boy. The fear of losing his father was constantly with Letterman as he grew up. The elder Letterman died of a second heart attack at age 57.

Letterman attended his hometown's Broad Ripple High School at the same time as Marilyn Tucker Quayle (wife of the former Vice President) and worked as a stock boy at the local Atlas supermarket. According to the ''Ball State Daily News'', he originally had wanted to attend Indiana University, but his grades weren't good enough, so he decided to attend Ball State University, in Muncie, Indiana. He is a member of the Sigma Chi Fraternity, and he graduated from what was then the Department of Radio and Television, in 1969. A self-described average student, Letterman endowed a scholarship for what he called "C students" at Ball State.

Though he registered for the draft and passed his physical after graduating from college, he was not drafted for service in Vietnam due to receiving a draft lottery number of 352 (out of 365).

Letterman began his broadcasting career as an announcer and newscaster at the college's student-run radio station—WBST—a 10-watt campus station which now is part of Indiana Public Radio. He was fired for treating classical music with irreverence.

Letterman then became involved with the founding of another campus station—WAGO-AM 570 (now WWHI, 91.3).

Letterman credits Paul Dixon—host of the ''Paul Dixon Show'', a Cincinnati-based talk show also shown in Indianapolis while Letterman was growing up—for inspiring his choice of career: :"I was just out of college [in 1969], and I really didn't know what I wanted to do. And then all of a sudden I saw him doing it [on TV]. And I thought: That's really what I want to do!"

Weatherman

Letterman began his career as a radio talk show host on WNTS (AM), and on Indianapolis television station WLWI (now called WTHR) as a local anchor and weatherman. He received some attention for his unpredictable on-air behavior, which included congratulating a tropical storm for being upgraded to a hurricane and predicting hail stones "the size of canned hams." He would also occasionally report the weather and the day's very high and low temps for fictitious cities ("Eight inches of snow in Bingree and surrounding areas.") while on another occasion saying that a state border had been erased. ("From space you can see the border between Indiana and Ohio has been erased. I'm not in favor of this.") He also starred in a local kiddie show, made wisecracks as host of a late night TV show called "Freeze-Dried Movies" (he once acted out a scene from "Godzilla" using plastic dinosaurs), and hosted a talk show that aired early on Saturday mornings called "Clover Power," in which he interviewed 4-H members about their projects.

In 1971, Letterman appeared as a pit road reporter for ABC Sports' tape-delayed coverage of the Indianapolis 500. David is initially introduced as Chris Economaki in his job as a corner reporter. He interviews Mario Andretti who has just crashed out of the race and asks him a question about traffic on the course.

Move to Los Angeles

In 1975, encouraged by his then-wife Michelle and several of his Sigma Chi fraternity brothers, Letterman moved to Los Angeles, California, with hope of becoming a comedy writer. He started off by writing material for comedian Jimmie Walker. He also began performing stand-up comedy at The Comedy Store, a proving ground for unknown comics.

Letterman appeared in the summer of 1977 on the short-lived ''Starland Vocal Band Show''. He has since joked about how fortunate he was that nobody would ever see his performance on the program (due to its low ratings).

Letterman had a stint as a cast member on Mary Tyler Moore's variety show, ''Mary''; a guest appearance on ''Mork & Mindy'' (as a parody of EST leader Werner Erhard); and appearances on game shows such as ''The $20,000 Pyramid'', ''The Gong Show'', ''Password Plus'' and ''Liar's Club''. He also hosted a 1977 pilot for a game show entitled ''The Riddlers'' that was never picked up. He was also screen tested for the lead role in ''Airplane!'', a role that eventually went to Robert Hays.

His dry, sarcastic humor caught the attention of scouts for ''The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson'', and Letterman was soon a regular guest on the show. Letterman became a favorite of Carson's and was a regular guest host for the show beginning in 1978. Letterman credits Carson as the person who influenced his career the most.

NBC

Morning show

On June 23, 1980, Letterman was given his own morning comedy show on NBC, ''The David Letterman Show''. It was originally 90 minutes long, but was shortened to 60 minutes in August 1980. The show was a critical success, winning two Emmy Awards, but was a ratings disappointment and was canceled in October 1980.

''Late Night with David Letterman''

NBC kept Letterman under contract to try him in a different time slot. ''Late Night with David Letterman'' debuted February 1, 1982; the first guest on the first show was Bill Murray. The show ran Monday through Thursday at 12:30 a.m. Eastern Time, immediately following ''The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson'' (a Friday night broadcast was added in June 1987. It was seen as being edgy and unpredictable, and soon developed a cult following (particularly among college students). Letterman's reputation as an acerbic interviewer was borne out in verbal sparring matches with Cher (who even called him an asshole on the show), Shirley MacLaine, Charles Grodin, and Madonna. The show also featured comedy segments and running characters, in a style heavily influenced by the 1950s and '60s programs of Steve Allen. Although Ernie Kovacs is often cited as an influence on the show, Letterman has denied this.

The show often featured quirky, genre-mocking regular features, including "Stupid Pet Tricks", dropping various objects off the roof of a five-story building, demonstrations of unorthodox clothing (such as suits made of Alka-Seltzer, Velcro and suet), a recurring Top 10 list, the Monkey-Cam (and the Audience Cam), and a facetious letter-answering segment. The Top 10 list, several "Film[s] by My Dog Bob" in which a camera was mounted on Letterman's own dog (often with comic results), Stupid Human Tricks, Small Town News, and Stupid Pet Tricks (which had its origins on Letterman's morning show) all eventually moved with Letterman to CBS.

Other memorable moments included Letterman using a bullhorn to interrupt a live interview on ''The Today Show'', announcing that he was the NBC president while not wearing any pants; interrupting Al Roker on WNBC-TV's broadcast of ''Live at Five'' by walking into their studio (which occupied the same floor of 30 Rockefeller Plaza as Letterman's studio); and staging "elevator races", complete with commentary by NBC Sports' Bob Costas. In one infamous appearance, in 1982, Andy Kaufman (who was already wearing a neck brace) appeared to be slapped and knocked to the ground by professional wrestler Jerry Lawler (though Lawler and Kaufman's friend Bob Zmuda later revealed that the event was staged.) In another memorable exchange, sex expert Dr. Ruth Westheimer included cucumbers in a list of handy sex objects that women could find at home. The following night, guest Ted Koppel asked Letterman "May I insert something here?" and Dave responded "OK, as long as it's not a cucumber."

''Late Show with David Letterman''

In 1992, Johnny Carson retired, and many fans believed that Letterman would become host of ''The Tonight Show''. When NBC instead gave the job to Jay Leno, Letterman departed NBC to host his own late-night show on CBS, opposite ''The Tonight Show'' at 11:30 p.m., called the ''Late Show with David Letterman''. The new show debuted on August 30, 1993 and was taped at the historic Ed Sullivan Theater, where Ed Sullivan taped his eponymous variety series from 1948 to 1971. For Letterman's arrival, CBS spent $8 million in renovations. In addition to that cost, CBS also signed Letterman to a lucrative three-year, $14 million/year contract, doubling his ''Late Night'' salary. The total cost for everything (renovations, negotiation right paid to NBC, signing Letterman, announcer Bill Wendell, Shaffer, the writers and the band) was over $140 million.

But while the expectation was that Letterman would retain his unique style and sense of humor with the move, ''Late Show'' was not an exact replica of his old NBC program. Recognizing the more formal mood (and wider audience) of his new time slot and studio, Letterman eschewed his trademark blazer with khaki pants and white sneakers wardrobe combination in favor of expensive shoes and tailored suits. The monologue was lengthened and Paul Shaffer and the "World's Most Dangerous Band" followed Letterman to CBS, but they added a brass section and were rebranded the "CBS Orchestra" as a short monologue and a small band were mandated by Carson while Letterman occupied the 12:30 slot. Additionally, because of intellectual property disagreements, Letterman was unable to import many of his ''Late Night'' segments verbatim, but he sidestepped this problem by simply renaming them (the "Top Ten List" became the "Late Show Top Ten", "Viewer Mail" became the "CBS Mailbag", etc.)

Popularity

The main competitor of ''The Late Show'' is NBC's ''The Tonight Show'', which was hosted by Jay Leno for nearly 16 years, but from June 1, 2009, to January 22, 2010, was hosted by Conan O'Brien. In 1993 and 1994, ''The Late Show'' consistently gained higher ratings than ''Tonight''. But in 1995, ratings dipped and Leno's show consistently beat Letterman's in the ratings; Leno typically attracted about 5 million nightly viewers between 1999 and 2009. ''The Late Show'' lost nearly half its audience during its competition with Leno, attracting 7.1 million viewers nightly in its 1993–94 season and about 3.8 million per night as of Leno's departure in 2009. In the final months of his first stint as host of ''The Tonight Show'', Leno beat Letterman in the ratings by a 1.3 million viewer margin (5.2 million to 3.9 million), and ''Nightline'' and ''The Late Show'' were virtually tied. Once O'Brien took over ''Tonight'', however, Letterman closed the gap in the ratings. O'Brien initially drove the median age of ''Tonight Show'' viewers from 55 to 45, with most older viewers opting to watch ''The Late Show'' instead.

Following Leno's return to ''The Tonight Show'', however, Leno has regained his lead.

Letterman's shows have garnered both critical and industry praise, receiving 67 Emmy Award nominations, winning 12 times in his first 20 years in late night television. From 1993–2009, Letterman ranked higher than Leno in the annual Harris Poll of ''Nation's Favorite TV Personality'' 12 times. For example, in 2003 and 2004 Letterman ranked second in that poll, behind only Oprah Winfrey, a year that Leno was ranked fifth. Leno was higher than Letterman on that poll three times during the same period, in 1998, 2007, and 2008.

Hosting the Academy Awards

On March 27, 1995, Letterman acted as the host for the 67th Academy Awards ceremony. Critics blasted Letterman for what they deemed a poor hosting of the Oscars, noting that his irreverent style undermined the traditional importance and glamor of the event. In a joke about their unusual names (inspired by a similar joke by Woody Allen), he started off by introducing Uma Thurman to Oprah Winfrey, and then the both of them to Keanu Reeves: "Oprah...Uma. Uma...Oprah," "Have you kids met Keanu?" This and many of his other jokes fell flat. Although Letterman attracted the highest ratings to the annual telecast since 1983, many felt that the bad publicity garnered by Letterman's hosting caused a decline in the ''Late Show'''s ratings.

Letterman recycled the apparent debacle into a long-running gag. On his first show after the Oscars, he joked, "Looking back, I had no idea that thing was being televised." He lampooned his stint two years later, during Billy Crystal's opening Oscar skit, which also parodied the plane-crashing scenes from that year's chief nominated film, ''The English Patient''.

For years afterward, Letterman recounted his hosting the Oscars, although the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences continued to hold Letterman in high regard and they had invited him to host the Oscars again. On September 7, 2010, he made an appearance on the premiere of the 14th season of ''The View'', and confirmed that he had been considered for hosting again.

Heart surgery hiatus

On January 14, 2000, a routine check-up revealed that an artery in Letterman's heart was severely obstructed. He was rushed to emergency surgery for a quintuple bypass.

During the initial weeks of his recovery, reruns of the ''Late Show'' were shown and introduced by friends of Letterman including Drew Barrymore, including Dr. O. Wayne Isom and physician Louis Aronne, who frequently appears on the show. In a show of emotion, Letterman was nearly in tears as he thanked the health care team with the words "These are the people who saved my life!" The episode earned an Emmy nomination. For a number of episodes, Letterman continued to crack jokes about his bypass, including saying, "Bypass surgery: it's when doctors surgically create new blood flow to your heart. A bypass is what happened to me when I didn't get ''The Tonight Show!'' It's a whole different thing." In a later running gag he lobbied his home state of Indiana to rename the freeway circling Indianapolis (I-465) "The David Letterman Bypass." He also featured a montage of faux news coverage of his bypass surgery, which included a clip of Dave's heart for sale on the Home Shopping Network. Letterman became friends with his doctors and nurses. In 2008, a ''Rolling Stone'' interview stated "he hosted a doctor and nurse who'd helped perform the emergency quintuple-bypass heart surgery that saved his life in 2000. 'These are people who were complete strangers when they opened my chest,' he says. 'And now, eight years later, they're among my best friends.' "

Additionally, Letterman invited the band Foo Fighters to play "Everlong", introducing them as "my favorite band, playing my favorite song." During a later Foo Fighters appearance, Letterman said that Foo Fighters had been in the middle of a South American tour which they canceled to come play on his comeback episode.

Letterman again handed over the reins of the show to several guest hosts (including Bill Cosby, Brad Garrett, Elvis Costello, John McEnroe, Vince Vaughn, Will Ferrell, Bonnie Hunt, Luke Wilson and bandleader Paul Shaffer) in February 2003, when he was diagnosed with a severe case of shingles. Later that year, Letterman made regular use of guest hosts—including Tom Arnold and Kelsey Grammer—for new shows broadcast on Fridays. In March 2007, Adam Sandler—who had been scheduled to be the lead guest—served as a guest host while Letterman was ill with a stomach virus.

Re-signing with CBS

In March 2002, as Letterman's contract with CBS neared expiration, ABC offered him the time slot for long-running news program ''Nightline'' with Ted Koppel. Letterman was interested as he believed he could never match Leno's ratings at CBS due to Letterman's complaint of weaker lead-ins from the network's late local news programs, but was reluctant to replace Koppel. Letterman addressed his decision to re-sign on the air, stating that he was content at CBS and that he had great respect for Koppel.

On December 4, 2006, CBS revealed that Letterman signed a new contract to host ''The Late Show with David Letterman'' through the fall of 2010. "I'm thrilled to be continuing on at CBS," said Letterman. "At my age you really don't want to have to learn a new commute." Letterman further joked about the subject by pulling up his right pants leg, revealing a tattoo, presumably temporary, of the ABC logo.

"Thirteen years ago, David Letterman put CBS late night on the map and in the process became one of the defining icons of our network," said Leslie Moonves, president and CEO of CBS Corporation. "His presence on our air is an ongoing source of pride, and the creativity and imagination that the ''Late Show'' puts forth every night is an ongoing display of the highest quality entertainment. We are truly honored that one of the most revered and talented entertainers of our time will continue to call CBS 'home.'"

According to a 2007 article in ''Forbes'' magazine, Letterman earned $40 million a year. A 2009 article in ''The New York Times'', however, said his salary was estimated at $32 million per year. In June 2009, Letterman's Worldwide Pants and CBS reached agreement to continue the ''Late Show'' until at least August 2012. The previous contract had been set to expire in 2010, and the two-year extension is shorter than the typical three-year contract period negotiated in the past. Worldwide Pants agreed to lower its fee for the show, though it had remained a "solid moneymaker for CBS" under the previous contract.

On the February 3, 2011 edition of the ''Late Show'', during an interview with Howard Stern, Letterman said he would continue to do his talk show for "maybe two years, I think."

2007–2008 writers' strike

The Late Show went off air for eight weeks during the months of November and December because of the Writers Guild of America strike. Letterman's production company—Worldwide Pants—was the first company to make an individual agreement with the WGA, thus allowing his show to come back on air on January 2, 2008. On his first episode since being off air, he surprised the viewing audience with his newly grown beard, which signified solidarity with the strike. His beard was shaved off during the show on January 7, 2008.

Letterman and Carson

NBC's decision to select Jay Leno and not Letterman to succeed Johnny Carson as host of ''The Tonight Show'' was an embarrassment to Carson, who had all but promised the succession to Letterman. Letterman maintained a close relationship with Carson through his break with NBC. Three years after he left for CBS, HBO produced a made-for-television movie called ''The Late Shift'', based on a book by ''New York Times'' reporter Bill Carter, chronicling the battle between Letterman and Leno for the coveted ''Tonight Show'' hosting spot. Letterman would mock the film for months afterward, specifically on how the actor playing him, John Michael Higgins, did not resemble him in the least. ("They took a guy who looked nothing like me and with make-up and special camera angles, turned him into a guy who looked nothing like me, with red hair.")

Carson later made a few cameo appearances as a guest on Letterman's show. Carson's final television appearance came May 13, 1994 on a ''Late Show'' episode taped in Los Angeles, when he made a surprise appearance during a 'Top 10 list' segment. The audience went wild as Letterman stood up and proudly invited Carson to sit at his desk. The applause was so protracted that Carson was unable to say anything, and he finally returned backstage as the applause continued (it was later explained that Carson had laryngitis, though Carson can be heard talking to Letterman during his appearance).

In early 2005, it was revealed that Carson still kept up with current events and late-night TV right up to his death that year, and that he occasionally sent jokes to Letterman, who used these jokes in his monologue; according to CBS senior vice president Peter Lassally (a onetime producer for both men), Carson got "a big kick out of it." Letterman would do a characteristic Johnny Carson golf swing after delivering one of Carson's jokes. In a tribute to Carson, all of the opening monologue jokes during the first show following Carson's death were written by Carson.

Lassally also claimed that Carson had always believed Letterman, not Leno, to be his "rightful successor." Letterman also frequently employs some of Carson's trademark bits on his show, including "Carnac the Magnificent" (with Paul Shaffer as Carnac), "Stump the Band" and the "Week in Review."

Letterman and Oprah Winfrey

On September 10, 2007, Letterman made his first appearance on ''The Oprah Winfrey Show'' at Madison Square Garden in New York City. He shared pictures of his son and live-in girlfriend. The so-called feud between Letterman and Winfrey apparently ended in 2005 when Winfrey appeared on CBS's ''Late Show with David Letterman'' on December 2, in an event Letterman jokingly referred to as "the Super Bowl of Love". Winfrey had previously appeared on Letterman's show when he was hosting NBC's ''Late Night'' on May 2, 1989.

Winfrey and Letterman also appeared together in a Late Show promo that aired during CBS's coverage of Super Bowl XLI in February 2007, with the two sitting next to each other on the couch watching the game. Since the game was played between the Indianapolis Colts and Chicago Bears, the Indianapolis-born Letterman wears a Peyton Manning jersey, while Winfrey—who tapes her show in Chicago—is in a Brian Urlacher jersey. Three years later, during CBS's coverage of Super Bowl XLIV, the two appeared again, this time with Winfrey sitting on a couch between Letterman and Jay Leno. The appearance was Letterman's idea: Leno flew to New York City in an NBC corporate jet, sneaking into the Ed Sullivan Theater during the ''Late Show'''s February 4 taping wearing a disguise, meeting Winfrey and Letterman at a living room set created in the theater's balcony where they taped their promo.

Response to Internet death threat

On August 17, 2011 it was reported that a Muslim militant had posted a death threat against Letterman on a website frequented by Al-Qaeda supporters, calling on American Muslims to kill Letterman for making a joke about the death of an Al-Qaeda leader killed in a drone strike in Pakistan in June 2011. In his show on August 22, Letterman joked about the threat, saying "State Department authorities are looking into this. They're not taking this lightly. They’re looking into it. They're questioning, they're interrogating, there's an electronic trail — but everybody knows it's Leno."

Appearances in other media

Letterman appeared in issue 239 of the Marvel comic book ''The Avengers'', in which the title characters are guests on ''Late Night''. A parody of Letterman, named "David Endochrine," is gassed to death along with his bandleader named "Paul" and their audience in Frank Miller's ''The Dark Knight Returns''.

Letterman appeared in the pilot episode of the short-lived 1986 series "Coach Toast", and he appears with a bag over his head as a guest on Bonnie Hunt's ca. 1993 sitcom ''The Building''. He also appears in The Simpsons, as himself in a couch gag when The Simpsons find themselves (and the couch) in "Late Night with David Letterman." He had a cameo in the feature film ''Cabin Boy'', with Chris Elliott, who worked as a writer on Letterman's show. In this and other appearances, Letterman is listed in the credits as "Earl Hofert", the name of Letterman's maternal grandfather. He also appeared as himself in the Howard Stern biopic Private Parts as well as the 1999 Andy Kaufman biopic ''Man on the Moon'', in a few episodes of Garry Shandling's 1990s TV series ''The Larry Sanders Show'' and in "The Abstinence", a 1996 episode of the sitcom ''Seinfeld''. Letterman also made an uncredited appearance in the first episode of the third season of the sitcom The Nanny.

Letterman provided vocals for the Warren Zevon song "Hit Somebody" from ''My Ride's Here'', and provided the voice for Butt-head's father in the 1996 animated film ''Beavis and Butt-head Do America''.

In 2010, a documentary ''Dying to Do Letterman'' was released directed by Joke Fincioen and Biagio Messina featuring Steve Mazan, a stand up comic, who has cancer and wants to appear on the Letterman Show. The film won Best Documentary and Jury Awards at the Cinequest Film Festival. Steve Mazan published a same-titled book (full title, ''Dying to Do Letterman: Turning Someday into Today'' about his own saga.

Other projects

Worldwide Pants

Letterman started his own production company—Worldwide Pants Incorporated—which produced his show and several others, including ''Everybody Loves Raymond'', ''The Late Late Show'', and several critically acclaimed, but short-lived television series for Bonnie Hunt. Worldwide Pants also produced the dramedy program ''Ed'', which aired on NBC from 2000–2004. It was Letterman's first association with NBC since he left the network in 1993. During ''Ed's'' run, the star, Tom Cavanagh, appeared as a guest on ''The Late Show'' several times.

In 2005, Worldwide Pants produced its first feature film, ''Strangers with Candy'', which was a prequel to the Comedy Central TV series of the same title. In 2007, Worldwide Pants produced the ABC comedy series, ''Knights of Prosperity''.

Worldwide Pants made significant news in December 2007 when it was announced that Letterman's company had independently negotiated its own contract with the Writers Guild of America, East, thus allowing Letterman, Craig Ferguson, and their writers to return to work, while the union continued its strike against production companies, networks and studios who had not reached an agreement.

Record company

In late April 2010, several music industry websites reported that Letterman started a record label named Clear Entertainment/C.E. Music and signed his first artist, Runner Runner. Lucy Walsh announced on her MySpace page that she has been signed by Letterman and Clear Entertainment/C.E. Music and is working on her album.

Rahal Letterman Racing

Rahal Letterman Racing (RLR) is an auto racing team that currently races in the American Le Mans Series, and part-time in the Indy Racing League. It is co-owned by 1986 Indianapolis 500 winner Bobby Rahal and Letterman himself, and is based in Hilliard, Ohio. The team won the 2004 Indianapolis 500 with driver Buddy Rice. Letterman was a pit reporter for ABC in the 1971 Indianapolis 500.

American Foundation for Courtesy and Grooming

American Foundation for Courtesy and Grooming is Letterman's private foundation. Through it, Letterman has donated millions of dollars to charities and other non-profits in Indiana and Montana, celebrity-affiliated organizations such as Paul Newman's Hole in the Wall Gang Camp, universities such as Ball State, and other organizations such as the American Cancer Society, Salvation Army, and Doctors Without Borders.

Personal life

Marriages and long-term relationships

In 1969, Letterman married Michelle Cook; the marriage ended by divorce in 1977. He also had a long-term relationship with former head writer and producer on ''Late Night'', Merrill Markoe. In fact, Markoe was the mind behind several ''Late Night'' staples, such as "Stupid Pet/Human Tricks".

Letterman has a son, Harry Joseph Letterman (born on November 3, 2003), with Regina Lasko. Harry is named after Letterman's father. In 2005, police discovered a plot to kidnap Harry Letterman and ransom him for $5 million. Kelly Frank, a house painter who had worked for Letterman, was charged in the conspiracy.

Letterman and Lasko, who had been together since 1986, wed on March 19, 2009, during a quiet courthouse civil ceremony in Choteau, Montana, where he purchased a ranch in 1999. Letterman announced the marriage during the taping of his March 23 show, shortly after congratulating Bruce Willis for getting married the previous week. Letterman told the audience he nearly missed the ceremony because his truck became stuck in mud two miles from their house. The family resides in North Salem, New York, on a estate.

Stalking incidents

Beginning in May 1988, Letterman was stalked by Margaret Mary Ray, a woman suffering from schizophrenia. She once stole his Porsche, repeatedly broke into his house, and camped out on his tennis court. Her exploits drew national attention, and Letterman occasionally joked about her behavior in his show, although never mentioning her name. After she committed suicide in 1998, Letterman told the ''New York Times'' that he had had great compassion for her, and publicly expressed sympathy.

Extortion attempt and revelation of affairs

On his October 1, 2009 show, Letterman announced that he had been the victim of an extortion attempt by someone threatening to reveal that he had had sex with several of his female employees, confirming the relationships. He stated that three weeks earlier (on September 9, 2009) someone had left a package in his car with material he said he would write into a screenplay and a book if Letterman did not pay him $2 million. Letterman said that he contacted the Manhattan District Attorney's office, ultimately cooperating with them to conduct a sting operation involving giving the man a phony check. Subsequently, Robert J. "Joe" Halderman, a producer of the CBS true crime journalism series ''48 Hours'', was arrested after trying to deposit the check. He was indicted by a Manhattan grand jury and pleaded not guilty to a charge of attempted grand larceny on October 2, 2009. Eventually, on March 9, 2010, he pleaded guilty to this same felony and served a 6-month jail sentence, followed by probation and community service.

A central figure in the case and one of the women Letterman had had a sexual relationship with was his longtime personal assistant Stephanie Birkitt who often appeared with him in his show. She had also worked for ''48 Hours''. Until a month prior to the revelations she had shared a residence with Halderman, who allegedly had copied her personal diary and used it, along with private emails, in the blackmail package.

On October 3, 2009, a former CBS employee, Holly Hester, announced that she and Letterman had engaged in a year-long "secret" affair in the early 1990s while she was his intern and a student at New York University.

In the days following the initial announcement of the affairs and the arrest, several prominent women, including Kathie Lee Gifford, co-host of NBC's ''Today Show'', and NBC news anchor Ann Curry questioned whether Letterman's affairs with subordinates created an unfair working environment. A spokesman for Worldwide Pants said that the company's sexual harassment policy did not prohibit sexual relationships between managers and employees. According to business news reporter Eve Tahmincioglu, "CBS suppliers are supposed to follow the company's business conduct policies" and the CBS 2008 Business Conduct Statement states that "If a consenting romantic or sexual relationship between a supervisor and a direct or indirect subordinate should develop, CBS requires the supervisor to disclose this information to his or her Company's Human Resources Department..."

On October 5, 2009, Letterman devoted a segment of his show to a public apology to his wife and staff. Three days later, Worldwide Pants announced that Birkitt had been placed on a "paid leave of absence" from the ''Late Show''. On October 15, CBS News announced that the company's Chief Investigative Correspondent, Armen Keteyian, had been assigned to conduct an "in-depth investigation" into Halderman's blackmail of Letterman.

Awards and honors

Awards

In his capacities as either a writer, producer, performer, or as part of a writing team, Letterman is among the most nominated people in Emmy Award history with 52 nominations, winning two Daytime Emmys and five Primetime Emmys since 1981. His nomination record is second only to producer Jac Venza, who holds the record for the most Emmy nominations for an individual (57). Letterman has been nominated every year since 1984, when he first appeared on late night television as the host of ''Late Night with David Letterman.'' Additionally, he has won four American Comedy Awards. Letterman was the first recipient of the Johnny Carson Award for Comedic Excellence at The Comedy Awards in 2011.

David Letterman Communication and Media Building

On September 7, 2007, Letterman visited his alma mater, Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, for the dedication of a communications facility named in his honor for his dedication to the university throughout his career as a comedian. The $21 million, David Letterman Communication and Media Building opened for the 2007 Fall semester. It features state-of-the-art recording equipment and facilities. Thousands of Ball State students, faculty, and local residents welcomed Letterman back to Indiana. Letterman's emotional speech touched on his struggles as a college student and his late father, and also included the "top ten good things about having your name on a building", finishing with, "if reasonable people can put my name on a $21 million building, anything is possible."

At the same time, Letterman also received a Sagamore of the Wabash award given by Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, which recognizes distinguished service to the state of Indiana.

References

External links

David Letterman's Feb. 24, 1978 appearance on ''90 Minutes Live''

Official ''Late Show'' biography

1999 article on Letterman from Salon.com

Tape of Letterman announcing affairs/extortion attempt on Late Show

Category:1947 births Category:Living people Category:American entertainment industry businesspeople Category:American people of German descent Category:American television talk show hosts Category:Ball State University alumni Category:Daytime Emmy Award winners Category:Emmy Award winners Category:Indianapolis, Indiana television anchors Category:Indy Racing League owners Category:People from Indianapolis, Indiana Category:Weather presenters

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name	Paul Krugman
school tradition	Keynesian economics
color	darkorange
birth date	February 28, 1953
birth place	Albany, New York
nationality	United States
institution	Princeton University,London School of Economics
field	International economics, Macroeconomics
alma mater	MIT (PhD)Yale University (B.A.)
influences	John Maynard KeynesJohn HicksJagdish BhagwatiRudi DornbuschJames TobinAvinash DixitJoseph Stiglitz
opposed	Freshwater economics Austrian school
influenced	Marc Melitz
contributions	International Trade TheoryNew Trade TheoryNew Economic Geography
awards	John Bates Clark Medal (1991)Príncipe de Asturias Prize (2004)Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics (2008)
signature
repec prefix	e
repec id	pkr10 }}

Paul Robin Krugman (; born February 28, 1953) is an American economist, professor of Economics and International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, Centenary Professor at the London School of Economics, and an op-ed columnist for ''The New York Times''. In 2008, Krugman won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics for his contributions to New Trade Theory and New Economic Geography. According to the Nobel Prize Committee, the prize was given for Krugman's work explaining the patterns of international trade and the geographic concentration of wealth, by examining the impact of economies of scale and of consumer preferences for diverse goods and services.

Krugman is known in academia for his work on international economics (including trade theory, economic geography, and international finance), liquidity traps and currency crises. According to the IDEAS/RePEc rankings, he is the 15th most widely cited economist in the world today.

, Krugman has authored 20 books and has published over 200 scholarly articles in professional journals and edited volumes. He has also written more than 750 columns dealing with current economic and political issues for ''The New York Times''. Krugman's ''International Economics: Theory and Policy'', co-authored with Maurice Obstfeld, is a standard college textbook on international economics. He also writes on political and economic topics for the general public, as well as on topics ranging from income distribution to international economics. Krugman considers himself a liberal, calling one of his books and his ''New York Times'' blog "The Conscience of a Liberal".

Personal life

Krugman is the son of David and Anita Krugman and the grandson of Jewish immigrants from Brest-Litovsk. He was born in Albany, NY and grew up in Nassau County, New York. He graduated from John F. Kennedy High School in Bellmore. He is married to Robin Wells, his second wife, a yoga instructor and academic economist who has collaborated on textbooks with Krugman. Krugman reports that he is a distant relative of conservative journalist David Frum. He has described himself as a "Loner. Ordinarily shy. Shy with individuals."

According to Krugman, his interest in economics began with Isaac Asimov's ''Foundation'' novels, in which the social scientists of the future use "psychohistory" to attempt to save civilization. Since "psychohistory" in Asimov's sense of the word does not exist, Krugman turned to economics, which he considered the next best thing.

Academic career

Krugman earned his B.A. in economics from Yale University in 1974 and his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1977. While at MIT he was part of a small group of MIT students sent to work for the Central Bank of Portugal for three months in summer 1976, in the chaotic aftermath of the Carnation Revolution. From 1982 to 1983, he spent a year working at the Reagan White House as a staff member of the Council of Economic Advisers. He taught at Yale University, MIT, UC Berkeley, the London School of Economics, and Stanford University before joining Princeton University in 2000 as professor of economics and international affairs. He is also currently a centenary professor at the London School of Economics, and a member of the Group of Thirty international economic body. He has been a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research since 1979. Most recently, Dr. Krugman was President of the Eastern Economic Association.

Paul Krugman has written extensively on international economics, including international trade, economic geography, and international finance. The Research Papers in Economics project ranked him as the 14th most influential economist in the world as of March 2011 based on his academic contributions. Krugman's ''International Economics: Theory and Policy'', co-authored with Maurice Obstfeld, is a standard college textbook on international economics. Krugman also writes on economic topics for the general public, sometimes on international economic topics but also on income distribution and public policy.

The Nobel Prize Committee stated that Krugman's main contribution is his analysis of the impact of economies of scale, combined with the assumption that consumers appreciate diversity, on international trade and on the location of economic activity. The importance of spatial issues in economics has been enhanced by Krugman's ability to popularize this complicated theory with the help of easy-to-read books and state-of-the-art syntheses. "Krugman was beyond doubt the key player in 'placing geographical analysis squarely in the economic mainstream' ... and in conferring it the central role it now assumes."

In 1978, Krugman wrote ''The Theory of Interstellar Trade'', a tongue-in-cheek essay on computing interest rates on goods in transit near the speed of light. He says he wrote it to cheer himself up when he was "an oppressed assistant professor".

New trade theory

Prior to Krugman's work, trade theory (see David Ricardo and Hecksher-Ohlin model) emphasized trade based on the comparative advantage of countries with very different characteristics, such as a country with a high agricultural productivity trading agricultural products for industrial products from a country with a high industrial productivity. However, in the 20th century, an ever larger share of trade occurred between countries with very similar characteristics, which is difficult to explain by comparative advantage. Krugman's explanation of trade between similar countries was proposed in a 1979 paper in the ''Journal of International Economics'', and involves two key assumptions: that consumers prefer a diverse choice of brands, and that production favors economies of scale. Consumers' preference for diversity explains the survival of different versions of cars like Volvo and BMW. But because of economies of scale, it is not profitable to spread the production of Volvos all over the world; instead, it is concentrated in a few factories and therefore in a few countries (or maybe just one). This logic explains how each country may specialize in producing a few brands of any given type of product, instead of specializing in different types of products.

Many models of international trade now follow Krugman's lead, incorporating economies of scale in production and a preference for diversity in consumption. This way of modeling trade has come to be called New Trade Theory.

Krugman's theory also took into account transportation costs, a key feature in producing the "home market effect", which would later feature in his work on the new economic geography. The home market effect "states that, ceteris paribus, the country with the larger demand for a good shall, at equilibrium, produce a more than proportionate share of that good and be a net exporter of it." The home market effect was an unexpected result, and Krugman initially questioned it, but ultimately concluded that the mathematics of the model were correct.

When there are economies of scale in production, it is possible that countries may become 'locked in' to disadvantageous patterns of trade. Nonetheless, trade remains beneficial in general, even between similar countries, because it permits firms to save on costs by producing at a larger, more efficient scale, and because it increases the range of brands available and sharpens the competition between firms. Krugman has usually been supportive of free trade and globalization. He has also been critical of industrial policy, which New Trade Theory suggests might offer nations rent-seeking advantages if "strategic industries" can be identified, saying it's not clear that such identification can be done accurately enough to matter.

New economic geography

It took an interval of eleven years, but ultimately Krugman's work on New Trade Theory (NTT) converged to what is usually called the "new economic geography" (NEG), which Krugman began to develop in a seminal 1991 paper in the ''Journal of Political Economy''. In Krugman's own words, the passage from NTT to NEG was "obvious in retrospect; but it certainly took me a while to see it. ... The only good news was that nobody else picked up that $100 bill lying on the sidewalk in the interim." This would become Krugman's most-cited academic paper: by early 2009, it had 857 citations, more than double his second-ranked paper. Krugman called the paper "the love of my life in academic work."

The "home market effect" that Krugman discovered in NTT also features in NEG, which interprets agglomeration "as the outcome of the interaction of increasing returns, trade costs and factor price differences." If trade is largely shaped by economies of scale, as Krugman's trade theory argues, then those economic regions with most production will be more profitable and will therefore attract even more production. That is, NTT trade theory implies that instead of spreading out evenly around the world, production will tend to concentrate in a few countries, regions, or cities, which will become densely populated but will also have higher levels of income.

International finance

Krugman has also been influential in the field of international finance. As a graduate student, Krugman visited the Federal Reserve Board, where Stephen Salant and Dale Henderson were completing their discussion paper on speculative attacks in the gold market. Krugman adapted their model for the foreign exchange market, resulting in a 1979 paper on currency crises in the ''Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking'', which showed that fixed exchange rate regimes are unlikely to end smoothly: instead, they end in a sudden speculative attack. Krugman's paper is considered one of the main contributions to the 'first generation' of currency crisis models, and it is his second-most-cited paper (457 citations as of early 2009).

In response to the global financial crisis of 2008, Krugman proposed, in an informal "mimeo" style of publication, an "international finance multiplier", to help explain the unexpected speed with which the global crisis had occurred. He argued that when, ''"highly leveraged financial institutions [HLIs], which do a lot of cross-border investment [....] lose heavily in one market [...] they find themselves undercapitalized, and have to sell off assets across the board. This drives down prices, putting pressure on the balance sheets of other HLIs, and so on."'' Such a rapid contagion had hitherto been considered unlikely because of "decoupling" in a globalized economy. He first announced that he was working on such a model on his blog, on October 5, 2008. Within days of its appearance, it was being discussed on some popular economics-oriented blogs. The note was soon being cited in papers (draft and published) by other economists, even though it had not itself been through ordinary peer review processes.

Macroeconomics and fiscal policy

Krugman has done much to revive discussion of the liquidity trap as a topic in economics. He recommended aggressive fiscal policy to counter Japan's lost decade in the 1990s, arguing that the country was mired in a Keynesian liquidity trap. The debate he started at that time over liquidity traps and what policies best address them continues in the economics literature.

Krugman had argued in ''The Return of Depression Economics'' that Japan was in a liquidity trap in the late 1990s, since the central bank could not drop interest rates any lower to escape economic stagnation. The core of Krugman's policy proposal for addressing Japan's liquidity trap was inflation targeting, which, he argued "most nearly approaches the usual goal of modern stabilization policy, which is to provide adequate demand in a clean, unobtrusive way that does not distort the allocation of resources." The proposal appeared first in a web posting on his academic site. This mimeo-draft was soon cited, but was also misread by some as repeating his earlier advice that Japan's best hope was in "turning on the printing presses", as recommended by Milton Friedman, John Makin, and others.

Krugman has since drawn parallels between Japan's 'lost decade' and the late 2000s recession, arguing that expansionary fiscal policy is necessary as the major industrialized economies are mired in a liquidity trap. In response to economists who point out that the Japanese economy recovered despite not pursuing his policy prescriptions, Krugman maintains that it was an export-led boom that pulled Japan out of its economic slump in the late-90s, rather than reforms of the financial system.

Nobel Memorial Prize

Krugman was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, the sole recipient for 2008. This prize includes an award of about $1.4 million and was given to Krugman for his work associated with New Trade Theory and the New Economic Geography. In the words of the prize committee, "By having integrated economies of scale into explicit general equilibrium models, Paul Krugman has deepened our understanding of the determinants of trade and the location of economic activity."

Awards

1991, American Economic Association, John Bates Clark Medal. Since it was awarded to only one person, once every two years (prior to 2009), ''The Economist'' has described the Clark Medal as 'slightly harder to get than a Nobel prize'. 1992, Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS). 1995, Adam Smith Award of the National Association for Business Economics

1998, Doctor ''honoris causa'' in Economics awarded by Free University of Berlin Freie Universität Berlin in Germany

2000, H.C. Recktenwald Prize in Economics, awarded by University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany.

2002, ''Editor and Publisher'', Columnist of the Year. 2004, Fundación Príncipe de Asturias (Spain), Prince of Asturias Awards in Social Sciences. 2004, Doctor of Humane Letters ''honoris causa'', Haverford College 2008, Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics (formally The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel) for Krugman's contributions to New Trade Theory. He became the twelfth John Bates Clark Medal winner to be awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize.

Author

In the 1990s, besides academic books and textbooks, Krugman increasingly began writing books for a general audience on issues he considered important for public policy. In ''The Age of Diminished Expectations'' (1990), he wrote in particular about the increasing US income inequality in the "New Economy" of the 1990s. He attributes the rise in income inequality in part to changes in technology, but principally to a change in political atmosphere which he attributes to Movement Conservatives.

In September 2003, Krugman published a collection of his columns under the title, ''The Great Unraveling'', about the Bush administration's economic and foreign policies and the US economy in the early 2000s. His columns argued that the large deficits during that time were generated by the Bush administration as a result of decreasing taxes on the rich, increasing public spending, and fighting the Iraq war. Krugman wrote that these policies were unsustainable in the long run and would eventually generate a major economic crisis. The book was a best-seller.

In 2007, Krugman published ''The Conscience of a Liberal,'' whose title references Barry Goldwater's ''Conscience of a Conservative''. It details the history of wealth and income gaps in the United States in the 20th century. The book describes how the gap between rich and poor declined greatly in middle of the century, and then widened in the last two decades to levels higher even than in the 1920s. Most economists (including Krugman) had regarded the late-20th century divergence as resulting largely from changes in technology and trade. In ''Conscience'', Krugman argues that government policies played a much greater role than commonly thought both in reducing inequality in the 1930s through 1970s and in increasing it in the 1980s through the present, and criticizes the Bush administration for implementing policies that Krugman believes widened the gap between the rich and poor.

Krugman also argued that Republicans owed their electoral successes to their ability to exploit the race issue to win political dominance of the South. Krugman argues that Ronald Reagan had used the "Southern Strategy" to signal sympathy for racism without saying anything overtly racist, citing as an example Reagan's coining of the term "welfare queen".

In his book, Krugman proposed a "new New Deal", which included placing more emphasis on social and medical programs and less on national defense. Liberal journalist and author Michael Tomasky argued that in ''The Conscience of a Liberal'' Krugman is committed "to accurate history even when some fudging might be in order for the sake of political expediency." In a review for ''The New York Times'', Pulitzer prize-winning historian David M. Kennedy stated, "Like the rants of Rush Limbaugh or the films of Michael Moore, Krugman's shrill polemic may hearten the faithful, but it will do little to persuade the unconvinced".

In late 2008, Krugman published a substantial updating of an earlier work, entitled "The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008". In the book, he discusses the failure of the United States regulatory system to keep pace with a financial system increasingly out-of-control, and the causes of and possible ways to contain the greatest financial crisis since the 1930s.

Published works

Academic books (authored or coauthored)

''The Spatial Economy – Cities, Regions and International Trade'' (July 1999), with Masahisa Fujita and Anthony Venables. MIT Press, ISBN 0-262-06204-6

''The Self Organizing Economy'' (February 1996), ISBN 1-55786-698-8

''EMU and the Regions'' (December 1995), with Guillermo de la Dehesa. ISBN 1-56708-038-3

''Development, Geography, and Economic Theory (Ohlin Lectures)'' (September 1995), ISBN 0-262-11203-5

''Foreign Direct Investment in the United States (3rd Edition)'' (February 1995), with Edward M. Graham. ISBN 0-88132-204-0

''World Savings Shortage'' (September 1994), ISBN 0-88132-161-3

''What Do We Need to Know About the International Monetary System? (Essays in International Finance, No 190 July 1993)'' ISBN 0-88165-097-8

''Currencies and Crises'' (June 1992), ISBN 0-262-11165-9

''Geography and Trade (Gaston Eyskens Lecture Series)'' (August 1991), ISBN 0-262-11159-4

''The Risks Facing the World Economy'' (July 1991), with Guillermo de la Dehesa and Charles Taylor. ISBN 1-56708-073-1

''Has the Adjustment Process Worked? (Policy Analyses in International Economics, 34)'' (June 1991), ISBN 0-88132-116-8

''Rethinking International Trade'' (April 1990), ISBN 0-262-11148-9

''Trade Policy and Market Structure'' (March 1989), with Elhanan Helpman. ISBN 0-262-08182-2

''Exchange-Rate Instability (Lionel Robbins Lectures)'' (November 1988), ISBN 0-262-11140-3

''Adjustment in the World Economy'' (August 1987) ISBN 1-56708-023-5

''Market Structure and Foreign Trade: Increasing Returns, Imperfect Competition, and the International Economy'' (May 1985), with Elhanan Helpman. ISBN 0-262-08150-4

Academic books (edited or coedited)

''Currency Crises (National Bureau of Economic Research Conference Report)'' (September 2000), ISBN 0-226-45462-2

''Trade with Japan : Has the Door Opened Wider? (National Bureau of Economic Research Project Report)'' (March 1995), ISBN 0-226-45459-2

''Empirical Studies of Strategic Trade Policy (National Bureau of Economic Research Project Report)'' (April 1994), co-edited with Alasdair Smith. ISBN 0-226-45460-6

''Exchange Rate Targets and Currency Bands'' (October 1991), co-edited with Marcus Miller. ISBN 0-521-41533-0

''Strategic Trade Policy and the New International Economics'' (January 1986), ISBN 0-262-11112-8

Economics textbooks

''Economics: European Edition'' (Spring 2007), with Robin Wells and Kathryn Graddy. ISBN 0-7167-9956-1

''Macroeconomics'' (February 2006), with Robin Wells. ISBN 0-7167-6763-5

''Economics'', first edition (December 2005), with Robin Wells. ISBN 1-57259-150-1

''Economics'', second edition (2009), with Robin Wells. ISBN 0-7167-7158-6

''Microeconomics'' (March 2004), with Robin Wells. ISBN 0-7167-5997-7

''International Economics: Theory and Policy'', with Maurice Obstfeld. 7th Edition (2006), ISBN 0-321-29383-5; 1st Edition (1998), ISBN 0-673-52186-9

Books for a general audience

''The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008'' (December 2008) ISBN 0-393-07101-4

*An updated version of his previous work.

''The Conscience of a Liberal'' (October 2007) ISBN 0-393-06069-1

''The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century'' (September 2003) ISBN 0-393-05850-6

*A book of his ''The New York Times'' columns, many deal with the economic policies of the Bush administration or the economy in general.

''Fuzzy Math: The Essential Guide to the Bush Tax Plan'' (May 4, 2001) ISBN 0-393-05062-9

''The Return of Depression Economics'' (May 1999) ISBN 0-393-04839-X

*Considers the long economic stagnation of Japan through the 1990s, the Asian financial crisis, and problems in Latin America.

* ''The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008'' (December 2008) ISBN 0-393-07101-4

''The Accidental Theorist and Other Dispatches from the Dismal Science'' (May 1998) ISBN 0-393-04638-9

*Essay collection, primarily from Krugman's writing for ''Slate''.

''Pop Internationalism'' (March 1996) ISBN 0-262-11210-8

*Essay collection, covering largely the same ground as ''Peddling Prosperity''.

''Peddling Prosperity: Economic Sense and Nonsense in an Age of Diminished Expectations'' (April 1995) ISBN 0-393-31292-5

*History of economic thought from the first rumblings of revolt against Keynesian economics to the present, for the layman.

''The Age of Diminished Expectations: U.S. Economic Policy in the 1990s'' (1990) ISBN 0-262-11156-X

* A "briefing book" on the major policy issues around the economy.

* Revised and Updated, January 1994, ISBN 0-262-61092-2

* Third Edition, August 1997, ISBN 0-262-11224-8

Selected academic articles

(1998) 'It's Baaack: Japan's Slump and the Return of the Liquidity Trap' ''Brookings Papers on Economic Activity'' 1998, pp. 137–205.

(1996) 'Are currency crises self-fulfilling?' ''NBER Macroeconomics Annual'' 11, pp. 345–78.

(1995)

(1991) 'Increasing returns and economic geography'. ''Journal of Political Economy'' 99, pp. 483–99.

(1991)

(1991) 'History versus expectations'. ''Quarterly Journal of Economics'' 106 (2), pp. 651–67.

(1981) 'Intra-industry specialization and the gains from trade'. ''Journal of Political Economy'' 89, pp. 959–73.

(1980) 'Scale economies, product differentiation, and the pattern of trade'. ''American Economic Review'' 70, pp. 950–59.

(1979) 'A model of balance-of-payments crises'. ''Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking'' 11, pp. 311–25.

(1979) 'Increasing returns, monopolistic competition, and international trade'. ''Journal of International Economics'' 9, pp. 469–79.

Commentator

Economist J. Peter Neary has noted that Krugman "has written on a wide range of topics, always combining one of the best prose styles in the profession with an ability to construct elegant, insightful and useful models." Neary added that "no discussion of his work could fail to mention his transition from Academic Superstar to Public Intellectual. Through his extensive writings, including a regular column for ''The New York Times'', monographs and textbooks at every level, and books on economics and current affairs for the general public ... he has probably done more than any other writer to explain economic principles to a wide audience." Krugman has been described as the most controversial economist in his generation and according to Michael Tomasky since 1992 he has moved "from being a center-left scholar to being a liberal polemicist." In 2010, ''The Economist'' described him as a left-leaning pundit.

From the mid-1990s onwards, Krugman wrote for ''Fortune'' (1997–99) and ''Slate'' (1996–99), and then for ''The Harvard Business Review'', ''Foreign Policy'', ''The Economist'', ''Harper's'', and ''Washington Monthly''. In this period Krugman critiqued various positions commonly taken on economic issues from across the political spectrum, from protectionism and opposition to the World Trade Organization on the left to supply side economics on the right.

During the 1992 presidential campaign Krugman praised Bill Clinton's economic plan in ''The New York Times'', and Clinton's campaign used some of Krugman's work on income inequality. At the time, it was considered likely that Clinton would offer him a position in the new administration, but allegedly Krugman's volatility and outspokenness caused Clinton to look elsewhere. Krugman later said that he was "temperamentally unsuited for that kind of role. You have to be very good at people skills, biting your tongue when people say silly things." In a Fresh Dialogues interview, Krugman added, "you have to be reasonably organized...I can move into a pristine office and within three days it will look like a grenade went off."

In 1999, near the height of the dot com boom, ''The New York Times'' approached Krugman to write a bi-weekly column on "the vagaries of business and economics in an age of prosperity." His first columns in 2000 addressed business and economic issues, but as the 2000 US presidential campaign progressed, Krugman increasingly focused on George W. Bush's policy proposals. According to Krugman, this was partly due to "the silence of the media - those 'liberal media' conservatives complain about...." Krugman accused Bush of repeatedly misrepresenting his proposals, and criticized the proposals themselves. After Bush's election, and his perseverance with his proposed tax cut in the midst of the slump (which Krugman argued would do little to help the economy but substantially raise the fiscal deficit), Krugman's columns grew angrier and more focused on the administration. As Alan Blinder put it in 2002, "There's been a kind of missionary quality to his writing since then ... He's trying to stop something now, using the power of the pen." Partly as a result, Krugman's twice-weekly column on the Op-Ed page of ''The New York Times'' has made him, according to Nicholas Confessore, "the most important political columnist in America... he is almost alone in analyzing the most important story in politics in recent years – the seamless melding of corporate, class, and political party interests at which the Bush administration excels." In an interview in late 2009, Krugman said his missionary zeal had changed in the post-Bush era and he described the Obama administration as "good guys but not as forceful as I'd like...When I argue with them in my column this is a serious discussion. We really are in effect speaking across the transom here." Krugman says he's more effective at driving change outside the administration than inside it, "now, I'm trying to make this progressive moment in American history a success. So that's where I'm pushing."

Krugman's columns have drawn criticism as well as praise. A 2003 article in ''The Economist'' questioned Krugman's "growing tendency to attribute all the world's ills to George Bush," citing critics who felt that "his relentless partisanship is getting in the way of his argument" and claiming errors of economic and political reasoning in his columns. Daniel Okrent, a former ''The New York Times'' ombudsman, in his farewell column, criticized Krugman for what he said was "the disturbing habit of shaping, slicing and selectively citing numbers in a fashion that pleases his acolytes but leaves him open to substantive assaults."

Krugman's New York Times blog is "The Conscience of a Liberal," devoted largely to economics and politics. Krugman has become a favorite of netroots liberals because of his robust, full-throated defense of liberal economic and social policies, and his aggressiveness in their defense, which is generally uncharacteristic of establishment media figures. Because of this implacability, Krugman has been (favorably) referred to by many online commentators and bloggers (such as Andrew Sullivan and John Cole) as "K-Thug."

East Asian growth

In a 1994 ''Foreign Affairs'' article, Paul Krugman argued that it was a myth that the economic successes of the East Asian 'tigers' constituted an economic miracle. He argued that their rise was fueled by mobilizing resources and that their growth rates would inevitably slow. His article helped popularize the argument made by Lawrence Lau and Alwyn Young, among others, that the growth of economies in East Asia was not the result of new and original economic models, but rather from high capital investment and increasing labor force participation, and that total factor productivity had not increased. Krugman argued that in the long term, only increasing total factor productivity can lead to sustained economic growth. Krugman's article was highly criticized in many Asian countries when it first appeared, and subsequent studies disputed some of Krugman's conclusions. However, it also stimulated a great deal of research, and may have caused the Singapore government to provide incentives for technological progress.

During the 1997 Asian financial crisis, Krugman advocated currency controls as a way to mitigate the crisis. Writing in a ''Fortune'' magazine article, he suggested exchange controls as "a solution so unfashionable, so stigmatized, that hardly anyone has dared suggest it." Malaysia was the only country that adopted such controls, and although the Malaysian government credited its rapid economic recovery on currency controls, the relationship is disputed. Krugman later stated that the controls might not have been necessary at the time they were applied, but that nevertheless "Malaysia has proved a point—namely, that controlling capital in a crisis is at least feasible." Krugman more recently pointed out that emergency capital controls have even been endorsed by the IMF, and are no longer considered radical policy.

U.S. economic policies

In the early 2000s, Krugman repeatedly criticized the Bush tax cuts, both before and after they were enacted. Krugman argued that the tax cuts enlarged the budget deficit without improving the economy, and that they enriched the wealthy – worsening income distribution in the US. Krugman advocated lower interest rates (to promote spending on housing and other durable goods), and increased government spending on infrastructure, military, and unemployment benefits, arguing that these policies would have a larger stimulus effect, and unlike permanent tax cuts, would only temporarily increase the budget deficit.

In August 2005, after Alan Greenspan expressed concern over housing markets, Krugman criticized Greenspan's earlier reluctance to regulate the mortgage and related financial markets, arguing that "[he's] like a man who suggests leaving the barn door ajar, and then – after the horse is gone – delivers a lecture on the importance of keeping your animals properly locked up."

Krugman has repeatedly expressed his view that Greenspan and Phil Gramm are the two individuals most responsible for causing the subprime crisis. Krugman points to Greenspan and Gramm for the key roles they played in keeping derivatives, financial markets, and investment banks unregulated, and to the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which repealed Great Depression era safeguards that prevented commercial banks, investment banks and insurance companies from merging.

Krugman has also been critical of some of the Obama administration's economic policies. He has criticized the Obama stimulus plan as being too small and inadequate given the size of the economy and the banking rescue plan as misdirected; Krugman wrote in ''The New York Times'': "an overwhelming majority [of the American public] believes that the government is spending too much to help large financial institutions. This suggests that the administration's money-for-nothing financial policy will eventually deplete its political capital." In particular, he considered the Obama administration's actions to prop up the US financial system in 2009 to be impractical and unduly favorable to Wall Street bankers. In anticipation of President Obama's Job Summit in December 2009, Krugman said in a Fresh Dialogues interview, "This jobs summit can't be an empty exercise…he can't come out with a proposal for $10 or $20 Billion of stuff because people will view that as a joke. There has to be a significant job proposal…I have in mind something like $300 Billion."

Krugman has recently criticized China's exchange rate policy, which he believes to be a significant drag on global economic recovery from the Late-2000s recession, and he has advocated a "surcharge" on Chinese imports to the US in response. Jeremy Warner of ''The Daily Telegraph'' accused Krugman of advocating a return to self-destructive protectionism.

In April 2010, as the Senate began considering new financial regulations, Krugman argued that the regulations should not only regulate financial innovation, but also tax financial-industry profits and remuneration. He cited a paper by Andrei Shleifer and Robert Vishny released the previous week, which concludes that most innovation was in fact about "providing investors with false substitutes for [traditional] assets like bank deposits," and once investors realize the sheer number of securities that are unsafe a "flight to safety" occurs which necessarily leads to "financial fragility."

In his June 28, 2010 column in ''The New York Times'', in light of the recent G-20 Toronto Summit, Krugman criticized world leaders for agreeing to halve deficits by 2013. Krugman claimed that these efforts could lead the global economy into the early stages of a "third depression" and leave "millions of lives blighted by the absence of jobs." He advocated instead the continued stimulus of economies to foster greater growth.

Economic views

Krugman identifies as a Keynesian and a saltwater economist, and he has criticized the freshwater school on macroeconomics. Though he applies New Keynesian theory in some of his work, he has also criticized it for lacking predictive power and for hewing to ideas like the Efficient Markets Hypothesis and Rational Expectations.

In the wake of the 2007-2009 financial crisis he has remarked that he is "gravitating towards a Keynes-Fisher-Minsky view of macroeconomics." Post-Keynesian observers cite commonalities between Krugman's views and those of the Post-Keynesian school. In recent academic work, he has collaborated with Gauti Eggertsson on a New Keynesian model of debt-overhang and debt-driven slumps. This theory argues that the "paradox of toil", together with the paradox of flexibility, can exacerbate a liquidity trap, reducing demand and employment.

Political views

Krugman describes himself as liberal, and has explained that he views the term "liberal" in the American context to mean "more or less what social democratic means in Europe." In a 2009 ''Newsweek'' article, Evan Thomas described Krugman as having "all the credentials of a ranking member of the East coast liberal establishment" but also as someone who is anti-establishment, a "scourge of the Bush administration," and a critic of the Obama administration. In 1996, ''Newsweek'' [[Michael Hirsh (journalist)|Michael Hirsh ]] remarked "Say this for Krugman: though an unabashed liberal ... he's ideologically colorblind. He savages the supply-siders of the Reagan-Bush era with the same glee as he does the 'strategic traders' of the Clinton administration."

Krugman has advocated free markets in contexts where they are often viewed as controversial. He has written against rent control in favor of supply and demand, likened the opposition against free trade and globalization to the opposition against evolution via natural selection, opposed farm subsidies, argued that "sweatshops" are preferable to unemployment, dismissed the case for 'living wages', argued against mandates, subsidies, and tax breaks for ethanol, questioned NASA's manned space flights, and has written against U.S. zoning laws and European labor market regulation.

Free trade

Krugman's views on free trade have provoked considerable ire from the anti-globalism movement. He once famously quipped that, "If there were an Economist's Creed, it would surely contain the affirmations 'I understand the Principle of Comparative Advantage' and 'I advocate Free Trade'."

Although Krugman argues in the same article that, given the findings of New Trade Theory, : ... free trade is not passé, but it is an idea that has irretrievably lost its innocence. Its status has shifted from optimum to reasonable rule of thumb...it can never again be asserted as the policy that economic theory tells us is always right.

Krugman nevertheless declares in favor of free trade given the enormous political costs of actively engaging in strategic trade policy (i.e. rent-seeking) and because there is no clear method for a government to discover which industries will ultimately yield positive returns. Furthermore, Krugman expressed in that article that the phenomena of increasing returns (of which strategic trade policy depends) by no means disproves the underlying truth behind comparative advantage.

U.S. race relations

Krugman has repeatedly criticized the Republican Party leadership for what he sees as a strategic (but largely tacit) reliance on racial divisions. In his ''Conscience of a Liberal'', he wrote

Krugman also once wrote in defense of Glenn Loury, a conservative black economist, that Loury, in defiance of many African-American political leaders, had clearly seen and articulated that "the problems facing African-Americans had changed. The biggest barrier to progress was no longer active racism of whites but internal social problems of the black community."

On working in the Reagan Administration

Krugman worked for Martin Feldstein when the latter was appointed chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers and chief economic advisor to President Ronald Reagan. He later wrote in an autobiographical essay, "It was, in a way, strange for me to be part of the Reagan Administration. I was then and still am an unabashed defender of the welfare state, which I regard as the most decent social arrangement yet devised." Krugman found the time "thrilling, then disillusioning". He did not fit into the Washington political environment, and was not tempted to stay on.

On Gordon Brown vs David Cameron

Krugman has praised Gordon Brown, the former British Prime Minister, whom he described as "more impressive than any US politician" after a three-hour conversation with him. Krugman asserted that Brown "defined the character of the worldwide financial rescue effort" and urged British voters not to support the opposition Conservative Party in the 2010 General Election, arguing their Party Leader David Cameron "has had little to offer other than to raise the red flag of fiscal panic."

Controversies

Enron

In early 1999, Krugman served on an advisory panel (including Larry Lindsey and Robert Zoellick) that offered Enron executives briefings on economic and political issues. He resigned from the panel in the fall of 1999 to comply with ''The New York Times'' rules regarding conflicts of interest, when he accepted the ''Times'' offer to become an op-ed columnist. Krugman later stated that he was paid $37,500 (not $50,000 as often reported - his early resignation cost him part of his fee), and that, for consulting that required him to spend four days in Houston, the fee was "rather low compared with my usual rates", which were around $20,000 for a one-hour speech. He also stated that the advisory panel "had no function that I was aware of", and that he later interpreted his role as being "just another brick in the wall" Enron used to build an image.

When the story of Enron's corporate scandals broke two years later, Krugman was accused of unethical journalism, specifically of having a conflict of interest. Some of his critics claimed that "The Ascent of E-man," an article Krugman wrote for Fortune magazine about the rise of the market as illustrated by Enron's energy trading, was biased by Krugman's earlier consulting work for them. Krugman later argued that "The Ascent of E-Man" was in character, writing "I have always been a free-market Keynesian: I like free markets, but I want some government supervision to correct market failures and ensure stability." Krugman noted his previous relationship with Enron in that article and in other articles he wrote on the company. Krugman was one of the first to argue that deregulation of the California energy market had led to market manipulation by energy companies.

References in popular culture

Krugman appears as himself in a cameo in the 2010 comedy film ''Get Him to the Greek''.

Krugman is the subject of the satirical folk song "The Krugman Blues" from Loudon Wainwright III's 2010 album ''10 Songs For The New Depression''.^video

See also

Capitol Hill Baby-Sitting Co-op, popularized in Krugman's book, ''Peddling Prosperity''

List of economists

List of Jewish Nobel laureates

List of newspaper columnists

References

External links

Paul Krugman uFollow page with an index of his columns and posts

Profile and column archive at ''The New York Times''

* The Conscience of a Liberal blog

KrugmanOnline.com features books by Paul Krugman, a custom search engine, and aggregated content from the web.

The Unofficial Paul Krugman Archive contains nearly all his pre-Times Select articles

Paul Krugman (MIT) archives of his Slate and Fortune columns plus other writings 1996-2000

The Increasing Returns Revolution in Trade and Geography 2008 lecture at NobelPrize.org

Profile and Papers at Research Papers in Economics/RePEc

Publications at the National Bureau of Economic Research

Video: Open Mind Interview, 2002: Part One, 2002,Part Two

Audio: The New Class War In America featuring Amy Goodman, Paul Krugman, Greg Palast and Randi Rhodes recorded on June 13, 2006 at The New York Society for Ethical Culture, mp3 format, Video: alternate

Video: Paul Krugman speaks at the World Affairs Council - September 2007

Video: The Conscience of a Liberal (November 3, 2007) - lecture from Mr. Krugman's 2007 book tour.

Video of debate/discussion with Paul Krugman and Mario Cuomo on Bloggingheads.tv

How Paul Krugman Found Politics, Larissa MacFarquhar, ''The New Yorker'', March 1, 2010

Paul Krugman's video interview on Big Think

Category:1953 births Category:Academics of the London School of Economics Category:American bloggers Category:American columnists Category:American economists Category:American essayists Category:American foreign policy writers Category:American Nobel laureates Category:American people of Belarusian-Jewish descent Category:Enron Category:Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Category:Fellows of the Econometric Society Category:Jewish American social scientists Category:Living people Category:Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni Category:Keynesians Category:The New York Times columnists Category:Nobel laureates in Economics Category:People from Nassau County, New York Category:Princeton University faculty Category:Trade economists Category:United States Council of Economic Advisors Category:Yale University alumni

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