I could be wrong....
The answer can be summed up in one word: expectations. Once enough people start assuming that the government's response to any economic slowdown will be more government borrowing and spending, they can place financial bets on that assumption. For example, they can bet that the government will ensure that lots of money remains available in the economy, and that they can therefore raise prices accordingly, or demand higher wages. As these bets pile up, they dampen the effect of the intervention they anticipate, forcing the government into an even more extreme intervention to achieve the same result--further heightening expectations for future interventions. Eventually, expectations match the government's maximum feasible effort, and all interventions fail. Only a completely new, unanticipated form of intervention can hope to work.
more fromicouldbewrong.blogspot.com
The Reckoning - Taking Hard New Look at a Greenspan Legacy - Series - NYTimes.com
Today, with the world caught in an economic tempest that Mr. Greenspan recently described as “the type of wrenching financial crisis that comes along only once in a century,” his faith in derivatives remains unshaken.
The problem is not that the contracts failed, he says. Rather, the people using them got greedy. A lack of integrity spawned the crisis, he argued in a speech a week ago at Georgetown University, intimating that those peddling derivatives were not as reliable as “the pharmacist who fills the prescription ordered by our physician.”
more fromwww.nytimes.com
Federal Theatre Project - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Federal Theatre Project (FTP) was a New Deal project to fund theatre and other live artistic performances in the United States during the Great Depression. It was one of five Federal One projects sponsored by the Works Projects Administration (WPA). The FTP's primary goal was employment of out-of-work artists, writers, and directors, with the secondary aim of entertaining poor families and creating relevant art.
more fromen.wikipedia.org
The Reckoning - Agency’s ’04 Rule Let Banks Pile Up New Debt - Series - NYTimes.com
Many events in Washington, on Wall Street and elsewhere around the country have led to what has been called the most serious financial crisis since the 1930s. But decisions made at a brief meeting on April 28, 2004, explain why the problems could spin out of control. The agency’s failure to follow through on those decisions also explains why Washington regulators did not see what was coming.
On that bright spring afternoon, the five members of the Securities and Exchange Commission met in a basement hearing room to consider an urgent plea by the big investment banks.
They wanted an exemption for their brokerage units from an old regulation that limited the amount of debt they could take on.
more fromwww.nytimes.com
World Bank - Welcome to the World Bank Developer Network!
The World Bank's first API offers 114 indicators from key data sources and 12,000 development photos (see all sources). We are releasing this API because we believe this information can be mapped, visualized and mashed up in an unlimited number of ways that will help develop a better understanding of trends and patterns around key development issues.
more fromdeveloper.worldbank.org
Naomi Klein: Free market ideology is far from finished | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
This spectacle necessarily raises the question: if the state can intervene to save corporations that took reckless risks in the housing markets, why can't it intervene to prevent millions of Americans from imminent foreclosure?
more fromwww.guardian.co.uk
OnTheCommons.org » Wall Street's Next Target: Roads and Bridges
Behind all the genteel business-speak, allow me to offer a plain-speak translation of what the New York Times business section declared today:
“Hurry, hurry, hurry! Step right up and sell off your public infrastructure treasures financed by generations of previous taxpayers! Give them to Wall Street – whom you just bailed out at discount prices – and let them earn fantastic, guaranteed rates of return for decades to come while cutting amenities and ignoring evolving public needs. You poor schlumpy taxpayers can continue to shoulder the high-risk, long-term investments. And if any of those public assets begin to look attractive – say, the Internet, wifi spectrum or federally financed drug research — why, we’ll be sure to swoop down and be the first take them away from you. After all, we have more money and better access to your elected leaders than you do!”
The New York Times is a great institution, but can we please shed the “liberal” moniker that is so often attached to it? A precious commons is threatened by enclosure, and all we hear is cheering.
more fromwww.onthecommons.org
Net-enhanced democracy: Amazing progress, solvable challenges « Jon Udell
more fromblog.jonudell.net
OpenCongress - S.3126 Energy Resource Development Act of 2008
in list: MN-Politics
more fromwww.opencongress.org
Grants.gov
more fromwww.grants.gov
IMLS - Grant Applicants
Institute of Museum and Library Studies
more fromwww.imls.gov
Open CRS Network - CRS Reports for the People
A project of the Center for Democracy & Technology through the cooperation of several organizations and collectors of CRS Reports, Open CRS provides citizens access to CRS Reports already in the public domain and encourages Congress to provide public access to all CRS Reports.
more fromwww.opencrs.com
Notation: * = Private bookmark and comment|… = Clipping [?] | … = Public highlight [?]
