Again, hat tip to Cuumbaya.
Again, I love this.
CC
who has always liked the Christian Science Monitor. She has obvious disagreements, but the writing is always top-notch.
Ps. Here's the Freakonomics blog on what the hell is going on with the economy.
PPs. If you must have an insulting nickname for Sarah Palin, I vote for "Moosealini."
PPPs. Get your daily dose of irony right here.
3 comments:
"who has always liked the Christian Science Monitor. She has obvious disagreements, but the writing is always top-notch."
Lol... couldn't have said it better.
Yep. Worth and dignity... even though I believe I agree with Bill Schulz on "inherent," we also agree that it's critical to extend and affirm the worth and dignity of all.
In disagreeing, it's easy to step into dislike, and from dislike (and even disgust with policy and perspectives) into demonizing. Far too easy to find examples of that to even bother to point to them.
As for the economics... reading between the lines what I see is that the government will bail out those companies that overextend in ways that make many other companies' stability depend on them. Which is a sort of recipe for irresponsibility that the government will cover, no? Reminds me a bit of the observation that after Iraq, the logic of a state not on good terms with the US actually wanting to get nuclear weapons improved--it would (a la North Korea) protect one from being invaded by the US. In the end, what's being discouraged isn't what one really wants to discourage.
Which is an observation I might have expected the author of Freakonomics to point out.
Re: the explanation of the financial mess, I think it ignores the role of the credit rating agencies and the fact that the government turned over a regulatory function to private entities paid by the people who wanted the securities rated. I'd supplement the Freakonomics explanation by listening to the NPR "This American Life" about the "giant pool of money," which goes more into root causes of the subprime mortgage meltdown that underlies so much of the current crisis. If you want to go even further back, I recommend John Coffee's book on Gatekeepers, which came out before this particular house of cards started toppling, but helps you see how some of the same factors in the Enron and Worldcom bankruptcies are still in play today.
Post a Comment