“An entire world at war and I’m left out of it? God will not allow this to happen. I will be allowed to fulfill my destiny!”
–Patton
Some quick preliminaries: Born 1966 in the Bronx, the son of a New York City police officer and a German immigrant. Family left the City when I was six and moved to New York State’s Mid-Hudson region, where I spent the rest of my youth. I’m the younger of two sons.
Through a variety of bizarre career twists and turns, I did wind up with a rather variegated résumé. After a rather ordinary undergraduate stint (except for starting at 16 after graduating from high school a year early) at Lehigh University studying Business & Economics, I enrolled in the Ph.D. program in Economics at Cornell University.
After earnings my M.A., however, I decided to leave for a variety or reasons, including my disenchantment with the increasing “mathematization” of economics.
So I left academia to pursue a career on Wall Street, bouncing back and forth between equity research and compliance positions. Along the way I became a Chartered Financial Analyst.
I’ve lived in New York City since 1993 — in Bay Ridge and Kensington in Brooklyn and Yorkville and Murray Hill in Manhattan before buying my current apartment on the Upper East Side three years ago.
I’ve been out since I was 25. That may be late by today’s standards but was not unusual back in the early 1990s.
In 1998, while on the equity research side of the Wall Street fence, I was offered a position back on the compliance side of the business, with the opportunity to go to law school part-time. Halfway through my studies (Brooklyn Law School) my firm was bought out by my current employer and the law degree became extraneous, though I decided to stick it out. I graduated, cum laude, in 2003 and was admitted to the New York bar in 2004. My legal interests are constitutional law, criminal procedure and torts.
So that explains the unorthodox C.V. Why the blog?
Well the two sort of go together. It certainly seems like the right time for a gay libertarian econo-lawyer to accept the challenge of arguing in favor of the sort of things you might expect a gay libertarian econo-lawyer to argue for.
The way things are going in the world these days, with the struggle for gay rights, the decline of libertarianism and the rise of religious conservatism and fiscal recklessness in the Republican Party, and what seems like an increasing lack of popular understanding of basic economics in the media, I increasingly found myself with a lot to say.
So I’m saying it.
For those interested in Kip the person and not Kip the blogger: Although the blog is taking up an increasingly large chunk of my free time, I do have interests outside of politics, economics and the law.
My intellectual interests outside of the law and economic theory include American history, especially early Nineteenth Century politics and the history of New York City generally. I also do all the other cultural things you’d expect of a cosmopolitan New Yorker — museums and Broadway and Lincoln Center and such. My non-urban recreational interests include chess, ice skating and casino gambling.
I also enjoy traveling, especially to Europe. Past excursions have included Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Scotland, Ireland, Prague, Iceland and the Netherlands, as well as Toronto, Montreal, Nova Scotia, Hawaii, Prague, Iceland, Mexico City, Peru and most major destinations in the continental U.S. I also try to visit San Francisco every year or two, and I also visit my parents in Las Vegas three times a year.
I also record the occasional YouTube video.
In March 2004, right after the bar exam, I adopted Diamond. She is the joy of my life. Her biography is here.
Anyone who enjoys my blog who either lives in or is visiting NYC is always welcome to contact me.
Cheers…
Christopher Tozzo is available for freelance commentaries, media interviews, panel discussions or other public engagements. His services are always provided pro bono.
