Tag: economy

Categories
Economic Social & Political

Rationale for a nightmare

<![CDATA["This notion that the economy is self-stabilising is usually right but it is wrong a few times a century. And this is one of those times…." Lawrence Summers, Obama economic advisor in today’s Financial Times.
This is the wrong argument, one that supports unregulated markets most of the time. Rather, we’ve learned that the balance of market and regulatory power is something that cannot remain static over time, that constant retooling is needed. IF we want to think differently, it’s time to acknowledge that mixed markets are the healthiest and that, once this crisis is over, there is no “going back,” because the unregulated economy has demonstrated it is a ruinous economy.
Warren Buffett agrees: “We want to err on the side next time of not allowing big institutions to get as unchecked on leverage as we have allowed them to do.”]]>

Categories
Social & Political

Our "CEO President" and the economic record

<![CDATA[George W. Bush liked to call himself a "CEO President"—though even that conceit has passed away now—so let's look at the record of the performance of our economy to see what his results look like.
Here is the Dow Jones Industrial Average from the first business day after Inauguration Day in 2001 through today.

George W. Bush's economic stewardship in a nutshell

You can check this yourself here. Unfortunately, we are not done, yet.
By the time Bush leaves office, his team of cronies and their lax approach to regulation will have managed to do worse damage to the economy than the 9/11 terrorists—who were trying.]]>

Categories
Social & Political

An alternative to the bail-out that makes sense

<![CDATA[James K. Galbraith writes in the Washington Post, arguing that, with all the big investment banks gone already, the best move is to fund the FDIC to cover all deposits and just be done with it. Then, take steps to shore up local governments.
It's a thoughtful alternative to buying bad paper. Read, think.]]>

Categories
Uncategorized

The runaway candidate

<![CDATA[Now he’s out of the race. McCain should continue the debates, regardless of what he wants to spend his days doing. It is essential to our democracy that we hear from the candidates about all the issues.
If Senator McCain wants to suspend his campaign, he should drop out of the race and let someone who wants to answer to the American people run in his place. That would rule out Sarah Palin as a presidential candidate, as well.]]>

Categories
Social & Political

A broken home

Categories
Social & Political

Recovery or double-dip?

Categories
Social & Political

How we got in this hole

<![CDATA[Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize winner, explains in two sentences how we got where we are economically and why it was easy to fall for the story along the way.

Falling Down
The task of unraveling all that went wrong in our financial system is a difficult one, but in essence the financial system’s latest innovation was to devise fee structures that were often far from transparent and that allowed it to generate enormous profits–private rewards that were not commensurate with social benefits. The imperfections of information (resulting from the non-transparency) led to imperfections in competition, helping to explain why the usual maxim that competition drives profits to zero seemed not to hold.

Remember all the talk about the miraculous new economy? Suckers born every minute.
Without sustained investment in American intellectual capital, we will end up living on the vanquished memories of when this country was great being doled out at the Republican convention this week.

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Categories
Business & Technology

You Kant be social and barbaric?

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“All industries, arts, and crafts have gained by the division of labour—that is to say, one man no longer does everything, but but each confines himself to a particular task, differing markedly from the highest perfection and with greater ease. Where tasks are not so distinguished and divided, where every man is a jack of all trades, there industry is still sunk in utter barbarity.”—Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals

It’s interesting to note that in the evolving economy, we are both more specialized and necessarily more generalist. We must specialize deeply in the tasks we want to accomplish for remuneration and generalists in those we share freely as part of the exchange of information that allows new value to spring from social software. We’re just not clear about where the dividing line is or where it will be in the future.]]>