Blog Feed: Many Peaces

The Move Is Official!

Published on 2011-09-09 19:22:00

Hey all,I've moved to IsOught.Posterous.com. New blog is Is/Ought, a nice philosophical koan. Simple and whatnot. I will soon be moving this feed to that address as well. Look for my first post over there later tonight or tomorrow, time permitting. > read more

Posting & A Change

Published on 2011-09-08 13:15:00

Hey Readers,I've been incredibly busy lately: it was crunch time at one job and I've been working to find another (not mutually exclusive, I do freelance work at the moment). Additionally, Blogger hasn't been running too smoothly on shiny new Lion (10.7), so I'll probably be moving to Wordpress or another service in the near future. I'll set this up as a redirect, so don't worry about having to remember a new address right away.What's more, I'll relaunch with a new name to indicate a focus speci [..] > read more

A Lack of Democratic Imagination

Published on 2011-09-05 00:43:00

I only have a few minutes, but I want to comment on President Obama's upcoming jobs speech: most observers think its going to be bold, simply because it would be unreasonable for it to be modest. I have heard this on NPR, on Bloomberg, in the New York Times, and elsewhere. There is a groundswell of hoping-against-hope progressives—perhaps Obama will take some kind of action.While this hopeful logic is understandable, I don't see much evidence for it at this point. Obama isn't likely to present [..] > read more

U.S. vs. General Assembly (Yes, Again)

Published on 2011-09-04 01:02:00

Ahead of a potential U.N. vote on recognizing Palestine as a member-state, "the State Department late last month issued a formal diplomatic message to more than 70 countries urging them to oppose any unilateral moves by the Palestinians at the United Nations."Unfortunately, this statement is badly misleading unless we define "unilateral moves" as moves with the backing of virtually the entire world except with West. YNetNews reported back on May: "the 116 states comprising the Non-Aligned moveme [..] > read more

Palin's "Crony Capitalism": A Bellwether?

Published on 2011-09-04 00:11:00

SourceFrom Sarah Palin yesterday: This system is "called corporate crony capitalism. It’s not the capitalism of free men and free markets, of innovation and hard work and ethics, of sacrifice and of risk. No, this is the capitalism of connections and government bailouts and handouts . . . and influence peddling and corporate welfare." Wow. I usually cringe at everything she says. But this? Not half bad, actually.The fact that Federal and state governments hand out favors that often determi [..] > read more

All Developing Countries Are Not Equal

Published on 2011-09-03 13:07:00

The Sustainable Business Blog at the Guardian ran a piece by Peter Davis on the private sector's role in global development. In support of the argument that the private sector has to be part of the World Bank's development plans, Davis highlights the fact that "net private capital flows to developing countries in 2007 topped $1tn. In the same year, overseas aid from OECD countries totalled $103.7bn."While this comparison is perfectly accurate, Davis glosses over differences between developing co [..] > read more

Lawsuits Aren't Regulation

Published on 2011-09-02 05:10:00

The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) will file several lawsuits against a number of large banks, seeking to recoup money lost by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the housing crash. "The suits will argue the banks, which assembled the mortgages and marketed them as securities to investors, failed to perform the due diligence required under securities law and missed evidence that borrowers’ incomes were inflated or falsified."SourceOn principle, sweeping Federal action against poor banking pra [..] > read more

Clearly, Food Stamps Caused the Recession

Published on 2011-08-28 22:48:00

from mediate.com Rick Perry criticized food stamps on Saturday, saying that they were a "symbol of the problem" and that he would work to make the Federal government "as inconsequential to you as [he] can." Coming from the guy who thinks "compassionate conservatism" is too liberal, I assume he wants to seriously curtail food stamps. After all, he doesn't prioritize the program in his current job: Texas has the "worst performing food stamp program in the nation," according to the Houston Chronicl [..] > read more

Irene, You Bring Out the Crazy

Published on 2011-08-27 22:11:00

foxnews.com frontpage 8/27 As I sit here in New Jersey waiting for Hurricane Irene to pass over us, I'm checking news outlets for updates. I'm right in the path of the storm, which is a strange feeling because we New Jerseyans aren't used to storms like this. It's pretty scary, actually. The tornado siren is going off in my town, something I've never heard before. Trees are beating against the window and the rain is pounding. Something out of the most noir of noir-y novels. Raymond Chandler meet [..] > read more

More Important Than Jackson Hole, WY

Published on 2011-08-26 23:44:00

Earlier this week, a long Bloomberg investigation confirmed $1.2 trillion in very low interest loans made by the Fed over the course of the financial crisis.The gist of the investigation is that the Fed made secret loans which mainly benefited large banks by providing credit at far below market rates (how does 1.1% sound?). These were often made on junk collateral, and troubled institutions tended to receive more. This program was necessary because of the extraordinary problems ensuring liquidit [..] > read more

Greek Austerity: Averting Whose Crisis?

Published on 2011-06-29 10:34:00

The next round of austerity passed in Greece today by a slim margin in Parliament. This frees up bailout money, ensuring that Greece won't default in the near future. The reactions have been overwhelmingly positive, except for in Greece. Th > read more

In Yemen, Things Go In Circles

Published on 2011-06-28 16:51:00

Reading up on Yemen, I came across a New York Times article: "According to the State Department spokesman, the United States agreed to the advisability of railroad construction but held that other projects were more urgent. As a consequence it was ag > read more

What Do Parking Prices Have to Do With Housing?

Published on 2011-06-26 23:13:00

I go down the Jersey Shore yesterday (no, not the same place they film the TV show), and boardwalk-owned parking is $20 for the day. Of course, the lots were empty. The publicly owned parking lot across the street was $2.25 for the day, and meters we > read more

Guest Post: California's Backwards Tax Ideology

Published on 2011-06-24 19:04:00

In California, the right-wing wins, even when it loses.California’s famously dysfunctional fiscal politics took a dramatic turn last week, as Governor Jerry Brown vetoed the budget passed by the Democratic majority in the state legislatur > read more

More Money = More Investment?

Published on 2011-06-24 16:49:00

Low tech earnings today sent the Dow Jones plunging, and analysts are saying this is going to go on for awhile. I can already hear the calls to get HR 1834 (the WIN America Campaign bill) passed so companies can "repatriate" profits made abroad > read more

Are U.S. Wages Catching up to Growth?

Published on 2011-06-23 10:23:00

The BEA reported yesterday that personal income growth rose to 1.8% in the first quarter of this year. This matches the BEA's advanced estimate of growth in the first quarter. In the fourth quarter of last year, GDP grew at 3.1% and wages grew at a p > read more

Greece, or How to Shrink an Economy

Published on 2011-06-22 23:43:00

The way the IMF, ECB and EU are handling the Greek debt crisis causes me to wonder if I'm really missing something about economics. The current program being offered for Greece consists auctioning off state assets, tax hikes, wage cuts and overnight > read more

Bankrupt Debt Ceiling Negotiations

Published on 2011-06-22 02:39:00

Senator Kent Conrad, a Democrat, is now demanding cuts in exchange for raising the debt ceiling. Leveraging the debt ceiling to fix deficit issues figures to inflict the most economic harm while making sure the process is undemocratic and potentially > read more

Hegel Gets a Mention in the NYT

Published on 2011-06-19 18:35:00

Today the New York Times ran a good opinion piece by John McCumber, a UCLA professor, questioning rational choice theory and mentioning (!) Hegel and Marx. It's encouraging to see this kind of stuff in a big newspaper, mostly because there are a lot > read more

The Economics of Suicide?

Published on 2011-06-19 01:14:00

On my way up visit friends in New Hampshire, stuck in endless traffic on the Meritt Parkway, I listened to the Freakonomics Radio episode on suicide and found myself frustrated with a couple of clear errors in argumentation and a quest > read more

Chomsky on Systemic Risk

Published on 2011-06-15 16:31:00

A few years ago, Noam Chomsky did an interview with The Real News Network with where he talks about systemic risk:The important point is that certain types of risk are underpriced. Chomsky says in part that financial institutions calculate the > read more

Well, That's Part of It

Published on 2011-06-14 16:57:00

The front page of the WaPo featured an article containing a shiny infographic, detailing who's to blame for three debt-creating policies: 1) tax cuts 2) wars 3) stimulus. There's a summary of how far we've fallen from sanguine 2001 projections:Source > read more

Newt Gingrich and Conquering Space

Published on 2011-06-13 21:24:00

Newt Gingrich just said in CNN's Republican debate that if we funded private space programs as much as we fund NASA, we would have a base on the moon. This is an absurd statement that sums up the view of the private sector in vogue among Republicans. > read more

Fracking on Campus

Published on 2011-06-10 21:54:00

A few weeks ago when I was still living in Ohio, I heard about an effort to open public lands to drilling. Last night, NPR's On Point had a show on the lack of National Park funding that mentioned this again. I decided to see where the proc > read more

Guest Posters & Sharing

Published on 2011-06-10 10:44:00

I've been talking with friends about posting on issues they're knowledgeable about and several have agreed, so look forward to semi-regular guest posts. I'm excited about this because the people I've been talking to know a ton about the issues they s > read more

The Pawlenty Plan

Published on 2011-06-09 01:09:00

In what seems like pandering to the conservative base, Tim Pawlenty has gone over the top in calling for a radical reduction in taxes for both businesses and individuals, as well as a redefinition of the social contract that has governed po > read more