June 18th, Tuesday | Anastasia & an Economist

The date is June 18th, Monday, and today I’m coming to you from La Serena, Chile. 

Today is the birthday of Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia, sometimes referred to as Princess Anastasia. Born in 1901, she was the youngest daughter of Tsar Nicholas II, the last Russian Tsar. 

Anastasia’s birth was a grave disappointment to her parents. The tsarina’s biological clock was ticking and instead of a male heir, they had produced a fourth girl. Fortunately, the birth of her brother Prince Alexei three years later spared Anastasia of any lasting resentment. 

With the focus off Anastasia and onto her sickly brother, she was free to behave as mischievously as she wished. According to governesses and palace guests, Anastasia was not a demure and proper princess, and preferred to run about and play tricks on the servants and her sisters.

Contrary to popular mythology, Anastasia was a full-fledged teen of 17 at the time of her murder, not a child of ten or eleven. In fact, all of the Romanov children were adults or teens at their death in 1918.

Seven remains of the Romanov family were recovered in 1991 but did not include Anastasia and Alexei. There had already been mass speculation about the fate of the children, Russian Royalists hoping and surmising that the youngest children had been spared or escaped. Women claiming to be Anastasia had come forward in decades prior, hoping to be embraced by Anastasia’s relatives, many of whom sat upon thrones throughout Europe.

However, in 2007 not far from the first Romanov gravesite, the remains of Alexei and Anastasia were discovered, finally putting to rest any question about the fate of the Romanov family.  

Today is the birthday of Sylvia Porter, American writer and economist. A native New Yorker, she was attending Hunter College in New York when Black Tuesday occurred in 1929. Her mother had invested about $30,000 overall into the stock market in the ‘20s and lost everything during the crash. Sylvia Porter had been studying English and switched majors to Economics hoping to understand the current American financial state.

Upon graduating she was able to finagle an assistant position with a small investment firm where she worked 12-hour days, gaining first-hand knowledge of the market’s idiosyncrasies. She pursued an MBA at New York University in the little time she had leftover.

As a woman, she was not readily welcomed into the male-dominated finance sector. So she made space for herself. At age 22, she convinced The New York Post to let her write a finance column three days a week. Her aim was to translate the Wall Street happenings for the common American. She wrote under the name S.F. Porter, knowing she had a better shot at being taken seriously if she left out her gender to the readership.

The column proved a success and The New York Post promoted her the financial editor a few years later. Porter published her first financial book for the common American in 1939 at the age of 26. 

When finance officials found out S.F. Porter was a woman, they tended to take greater offense at her criticism and retaliate with personal attacks. But Sylvia remained resolute.  She said herself “I've always been independent, and I don't see how it conflicts with femininity.”  The US Secretary of the Treasury, upon hearing S.F. Porter was a woman, took an alternate viewpoint. He sent Sylvia a bouquet of roses and admitted some of her barbs toward him were justified. 

Sylvia Porter became a staple in the financial world continuing to publish popular books on finance throughout her career. She was a sought after financial journalist for newspapers, magazines and periodicals and even gave advice to President Lyndon B. Johnson on the appointment of members of the Federal Reserve Board. 

Fire and Ice

Robert Frost

Some say the world will end in fire, 

Some say in ice. 

From what I've tasted of desire 

I hold with those who favor fire. 

But if it had to perish twice, 

I think I know enough of hate 

To say that for destruction ice 

Is also great 

And would suffice

Thank you for listening. I’m your host, Virginia Combs, wishing you a good morning, a better day, and a lovely evening.