theoretical condensed wealth

Dear Dr. Laughlin,

On 60 Minutes last night, there was a segment about the increased demand for mortgage-based securities as the result of the creation of financial products using the ideas of a Nobel prize winning physicist. A bit of googling led me to your autobiography at the Nobel website where you said "A few days after the Nobel Prize announcement I got the following wonderful e-mail from Andrew Tikofsky, one of my best graduate students, who is now on Wall Street." Dr. Tikofsky was portfolio manager SCHWAB TAXABLE BOND FUNDS until February 27, 2008.

I have a Ph.D. in psychology and had a fair amount of experience interacting with economists and engineers when I directed the Decision, Risk and Management Sciences Program at the National Science Foundation from 2001-2003. However, I cannot understand the relevance of your research on high-temperature superconductivity theory, doped Mott insulators, fractional quantum Hall effect, condensed matter lattice gauge theories, fractional quantum numbers and/or conventional Feynman rules to the creation of financial instruments that facilitate the buying and selling of residential mortgages by decreasing the perceived riskiness of the commodities. If you could give me a one or two sentence summary of the relevance of your research on "theoretical condensed matter" to Dr. Tikofsky's research on "theoretical condensed wealth" I would greatly appreciate it.

Sincerely,

Deborah Frisch, Ph.D.
Eugene, OR 97402