Monday, September 14, 2009
Santorum Eyeing the White House
The Hill is reporting that former Pennsylvania Senator Rick 'Man-on-Dog' Santorum is thinking about running for President in 2012. Santorum was Sarah Palin before Sarah Palin was Sarah Palin. He's the guy that equated homosexuality to beastiality and pedophilia (I guess he was one of many). I don't think he will actually run. After all, he got beat in Pennsylvania, what makes him think he can win nationwide? However, I do worry that too many birthers, Birchers, and tenthers will enter the race (Palin, Santorum, etc) that they will split the base vote allowing an actually competitive moderate Republican to emerge. Of course, even the moderates are sounding like nut-jobs (case-in-point: Gov. Tim Pawlenty recently said that states should look into nullification via the 10th Amendment, only later to retract that statement). The only other Republican that you could imagine running would be former Mass. Governor Mitt Romney, and a divided base works perfectly for him, wondering if Mr. Santorum is eyeing a veep slot on the ticket.
Friday, September 11, 2009
Thoughts on the President's Health Insurance Reform Speech
The President can give one hell of a speech. No denying it, he's incredibly talented. The soaring oratory can sometimes crowd out the analysis, and a couple days on, distance can provide clarity.
1. The President did a good job sounding bipartisan. Now, given the current make up of the Senate and House, it's very unlikely that many, if any Republicans will sign on to whatever legislation makes it out of committee, so when I say he did a good job, I don't mean that it will actually make the bill BIPARTISAN. Like Ezra Klein has said, there is a new era of bipartisanship, one in which bipartisanship is mostly about posturing, and that's because the audience isn't in the Congress, it's the public. To maintain a winning coalition you must satisfy the need of the 'independents' for bipartisanship. That's hard considering the Republican caucus has decided that obstruction is their best political opportunity at present (and that's likely because all the 'accomidationists' lost to Democrats in the 2006 and 2008 election cycles). Sounding bipartisan is being bipartisan, and the President did a good job sounding bipartisan.
2. Still wondering why the public option isn't just, hey, anyone can buy into Medicare. People who have Medicare like it, a lot. So much so that they have convinced themselves that 'government' has nothing to do with it. Sure, you'd be called a 'socialist' but that's what you're called anyway. I've been trying to figure out if it would have made this process harder or easier, and I have no idea.
3. Why $900 Billion? Senator Baucus seemed to arbitrarily choose this to make his 'Gang of Six' work. That seems to have worked itself out as well as it could (it makes the President at least sound bipartisan, which, for the moment is all bipartisan can mean), so why stick to it. It was arbitrary in the first place. I mean that's what 'moderates' seem to be all about, arbitrarily cutting the price by 10%. Why does it matter if a DEFICIT NEUTRAL program is $1 trillion or $900 billion? Isn't what matters the effectiveness of the program?
4. The President offered up a concession to Republicans in the form a pilot program on tort reform limits. Limiting damages in law suits does not reduce health-care costs. Texas, not surprisingly, instituted the harshest limits in the US some years ago (2003 or 2004) and they are still leading the nation in health-care costs. There is no evidence that tort reform reduces health care costs.
5. I am curious about what kind of savings there would be through simply introducing a universal mandate and a highly regulated exchange system. Even instituting price controls, like defined benefit packages at a defined cost, maybe even a non-profit base level health insurance system supplemented by a for-profit additional benefit system (I think this is, more or less, how the Swiss do it). Could this bend the curve at all? Would it depend on how many people sign up for a basic plan (I imagine many would)? Of course, this would only affect 30 million folks who will enter the exchanges, the rest of us have our employer's purchasing power to use as leverage to lower insurance premiums.
More later...
1. The President did a good job sounding bipartisan. Now, given the current make up of the Senate and House, it's very unlikely that many, if any Republicans will sign on to whatever legislation makes it out of committee, so when I say he did a good job, I don't mean that it will actually make the bill BIPARTISAN. Like Ezra Klein has said, there is a new era of bipartisanship, one in which bipartisanship is mostly about posturing, and that's because the audience isn't in the Congress, it's the public. To maintain a winning coalition you must satisfy the need of the 'independents' for bipartisanship. That's hard considering the Republican caucus has decided that obstruction is their best political opportunity at present (and that's likely because all the 'accomidationists' lost to Democrats in the 2006 and 2008 election cycles). Sounding bipartisan is being bipartisan, and the President did a good job sounding bipartisan.
2. Still wondering why the public option isn't just, hey, anyone can buy into Medicare. People who have Medicare like it, a lot. So much so that they have convinced themselves that 'government' has nothing to do with it. Sure, you'd be called a 'socialist' but that's what you're called anyway. I've been trying to figure out if it would have made this process harder or easier, and I have no idea.
3. Why $900 Billion? Senator Baucus seemed to arbitrarily choose this to make his 'Gang of Six' work. That seems to have worked itself out as well as it could (it makes the President at least sound bipartisan, which, for the moment is all bipartisan can mean), so why stick to it. It was arbitrary in the first place. I mean that's what 'moderates' seem to be all about, arbitrarily cutting the price by 10%. Why does it matter if a DEFICIT NEUTRAL program is $1 trillion or $900 billion? Isn't what matters the effectiveness of the program?
4. The President offered up a concession to Republicans in the form a pilot program on tort reform limits. Limiting damages in law suits does not reduce health-care costs. Texas, not surprisingly, instituted the harshest limits in the US some years ago (2003 or 2004) and they are still leading the nation in health-care costs. There is no evidence that tort reform reduces health care costs.
5. I am curious about what kind of savings there would be through simply introducing a universal mandate and a highly regulated exchange system. Even instituting price controls, like defined benefit packages at a defined cost, maybe even a non-profit base level health insurance system supplemented by a for-profit additional benefit system (I think this is, more or less, how the Swiss do it). Could this bend the curve at all? Would it depend on how many people sign up for a basic plan (I imagine many would)? Of course, this would only affect 30 million folks who will enter the exchanges, the rest of us have our employer's purchasing power to use as leverage to lower insurance premiums.
More later...
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
The Hawks Have Flown the Coop
Spencer Ackerman wonders where have all the hawks gone, after Andrew Exum refused to be labeled a supporter of the war in Afghanistan on The News Hour.
The world seems turned on its head in just a few months. No more 'good war' and 'just war' and 'necessary war' talk. Guess that's what happens when you have a Democratic President running a war that only 30% of Dems support and 70% of Republicans support. Dems won't carry too much water on it, Republicans won't support a thing out of this White House, and no hawks to be found.
The world seems turned on its head in just a few months. No more 'good war' and 'just war' and 'necessary war' talk. Guess that's what happens when you have a Democratic President running a war that only 30% of Dems support and 70% of Republicans support. Dems won't carry too much water on it, Republicans won't support a thing out of this White House, and no hawks to be found.
Best Take-down of the Year?
Definitely the best post of the week, Kevin Drum takes down Mr. David 'strange amnesia' Brooks.
Japan's Election and Climate Reform
TNR has a report on the prospects for climate reform in Japan...
today's election in Japan will likely have big consequences for climate policy. The Democratic Party of Japan, which just pole-vaulted into power and basically ended 54 years of one-party rule, has promised to cut the country's emissions 25 percent below 1990 levels by 2020—closer in line with what scientists are urging—as well as set up a cap-and-trade system for carbon...
Really?!
Smith-Cotton High School banned the band's tshirts because they were titled Brass Evolutions 2009. The reference to evolution didn't pass the crazy zealot parent test. Some complaints and the school banned the shirts.
The band debuted the T-shirts when it marched in the Missouri State Fair parade. Summers said he was surprised when he received a direct complaint after the parade.
While the shirts don’t directly violate the district’s dress code, Assistant Superintendent Brad Pollitt said complaints by parents made him take action.
“I made the decision to have the band members turn the shirts in after several concerned parents brought the shirts to my attention,” Pollitt said.
Pollitt said the district is required by law to remain neutral where religion is concerned.
“If the shirts had said ‘Brass Resurrections’ and had a picture of Jesus on the cross, we would have done the same thing,” he said.
Jobless Recovery (aka Purgatory)
Matt Yglesias posted about the BLS report today. It was interesting so I read the report. I guess this is what Paul Krugman has been talking about.
That means we worked a lot less but only made a little less. We pulled the slack out of the economy. This doesn't bode well for adding jobs to the economy. The only question is, what will the new normal be???
If previous demand was artificially high because of artificially high wealth (incomes were certainly not up) due to an artificially inflated stock market (tech bubble) and housing market (housing bubble) and easy credit (low interest rates and expanding credit card debt), then consumption was 'artificially' inflated and the labor market was also 'artificially' inflated. The new normal could be high unless consumption rises (economically unlikely), or government spending remains elevated (politically unlikely).
Now, I'm a self-described progressive democrat, small d, which basically means I'm a socialist. I don't know if I buy the new normal. I'm no fool, I realize full employment is nearly impossible, but that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about agreeing to a new normal that could be between 6% and 9% (that's U-3, let alone U-6). That's simply unacceptable.
“Nonfarm business sector labor productivity increased at a 6.6 percent annual rate during the second quarter of 2009, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. This was the largest productivity increase since the third quarter of 2003, and reflects declines of 1.5 percent in output and 7.6 percent in hours worked.”
That means we worked a lot less but only made a little less. We pulled the slack out of the economy. This doesn't bode well for adding jobs to the economy. The only question is, what will the new normal be???
If previous demand was artificially high because of artificially high wealth (incomes were certainly not up) due to an artificially inflated stock market (tech bubble) and housing market (housing bubble) and easy credit (low interest rates and expanding credit card debt), then consumption was 'artificially' inflated and the labor market was also 'artificially' inflated. The new normal could be high unless consumption rises (economically unlikely), or government spending remains elevated (politically unlikely).
Now, I'm a self-described progressive democrat, small d, which basically means I'm a socialist. I don't know if I buy the new normal. I'm no fool, I realize full employment is nearly impossible, but that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about agreeing to a new normal that could be between 6% and 9% (that's U-3, let alone U-6). That's simply unacceptable.
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Do-Over??? or Redo???
So the Republicans are calling for obstruction and a re-start on health insurance reform. I also heard Moynihan acolyte Larry O'Donnell on Left, Right and Center warn Democrats against a Dems-only approach to reform (I assume he means reconciliation), saying that the late Senator Kennedy advised Clinton to do a Dems-only bill and we all know how that ended. Side point: why do Republicans get do go with reconciliation (see Medicare post) but not Democrats?
These calls for a do-over/re-start and threats to obstruct and delay are part of a long-standing strategy by the GOP to kill health insurance reform and to re-animate their own political future, and according to the polls it might be working. We're seeing slipping numbers for Democrats up and down the ticket for 2010. And, I'm guessing Republicans are walking with a spring-in-their-collective-step hoping to turn 2010 into a 1994 redo.
Truth is no one sees 2010 getting as bloody for Dems as 1994 (when they lost 54 seats), however, many a prognosticator has gleaned an upcoming route by Republicans from their chicken bones and tarot cards. Republicans have found their rallying cry, and you can hear the bellowing begin.
What is important to remember is that in 1994 you had low turnout (as you might expect from a mid-term election), but an energized right (fighting the illegitimate Clinton Administration) and a scared geriatric crowd (Hillarycare and all that) voted in large numbers while a demoralized Left/Center-Left stayed home, depressed by President Clinton's NAFTA policy and his failure to reform health care. To quote a previous entry...
That said, there is a lesson to be learned here, but it's not what David Brooks or Sen. Mitch McConnell says it is, the real danger is not in promoting a government take over of health care, the real danger is in NOT PASSING REAL REFORM. The right is energized, grandma and grandpa are scared, this was always going to happen. The Right, as Kevin Drum wrote today, authorized a 'scorched earth counterattack to Obama's entire agenda.' They lied. And, as the Wire reminds us, the bigger the lie the more they believe it. The real test for President Obama is whether he'll be able to stand up and energize the Left by actually passing reform, and whether he can win back Independents by not giving in to the craziness of either side and pass reform that doesn't smell of ideology or capitulation. He won't have much help from the grassroots. The grassroots has had a hard time getting energized, because the President has been so far removed from the process, because the process is complicated (five bills, each of which is hundreds of pages) and because we have a mainstream media that reports process and conflict, not substance and nuance (see the WaPo Ombudsman's column from this Sunday) resulting in a population that just doesn't understand the legislation. In retrospect, The grassroots should have been energized for a single payer option by the unions and MoveOn.org, which would have created a pressure from the Left that would have made the 'public option' the sensible compromise that it is, and not the baby in the bathwater for the Left.
The point is, the Right doesn't want a do-over they want a redo, a redo of 1994. If all those Democratic Congressmen want to win, they need to pass health insurance reform. Energize the Left for once. It's time to dance with the one that brought you and pass reform. Do it like you mean it, Mr. President, and maybe the Left won't stay home in 2010. And show some leadership by standing firm to both sides and maybe some of those independents will remember what they liked about you in the first place.
These calls for a do-over/re-start and threats to obstruct and delay are part of a long-standing strategy by the GOP to kill health insurance reform and to re-animate their own political future, and according to the polls it might be working. We're seeing slipping numbers for Democrats up and down the ticket for 2010. And, I'm guessing Republicans are walking with a spring-in-their-collective-step hoping to turn 2010 into a 1994 redo.
Truth is no one sees 2010 getting as bloody for Dems as 1994 (when they lost 54 seats), however, many a prognosticator has gleaned an upcoming route by Republicans from their chicken bones and tarot cards. Republicans have found their rallying cry, and you can hear the bellowing begin.
What is important to remember is that in 1994 you had low turnout (as you might expect from a mid-term election), but an energized right (fighting the illegitimate Clinton Administration) and a scared geriatric crowd (Hillarycare and all that) voted in large numbers while a demoralized Left/Center-Left stayed home, depressed by President Clinton's NAFTA policy and his failure to reform health care. To quote a previous entry...
First, let's get one thing straight, 1994 was not a revolution. The midterm elections saw a paltry 38.8% nationwide turnout, and the Republicans only received 19% of the eligible vote. The number of Dems voting declined across much of the nation, while Republican turnout increased. The nation saw a 21% drop in the reported participation rates of those with incomes of $15,000 and lower, while there was a 33% increase in the share of the vote cast by those whose incomes were $50,000 and over. African Americans turnout saw a decline of 2 percentage points and turnout among young people declined to 14.5% of eligible voters. And men only slightly increased their share of the electorate (disproving the "angry white guy" myth). The 54 seat pickup for Republicans in the House and 8 seat pickup in the Senate has been seen as the culmination of a decades long realignment in the states of the old Confederacy. Even as Democrats had a significant registration advantage (37.8% to 22.4%) the region had been voting for Republican Presidential candidates since Nixon. This "realignment" has often been cast as a revolt at the base of the Democratic Party because of the "race issue," i.e. the Democratic support of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act which essentially destroyed much of the legal infrastructure of Jim Crow. This "southern strategy" mythology has been widely discredited, in fact there was little or no significant shift at the bottom rungs of the socio-economic ladder from support for the Dems to the GOP. Once again, the myth of the disaffected, poor, angry white man was true in anecdote only. The real "realignment" happened much further up the economic ladder. Which makes it not much of a realignment since Americans with upper incomes typically vote Republican. The depressed turnout among Democratic loyalists (the poor, the young, and black folks) accounts for the 1994 turnout.
That said, there is a lesson to be learned here, but it's not what David Brooks or Sen. Mitch McConnell says it is, the real danger is not in promoting a government take over of health care, the real danger is in NOT PASSING REAL REFORM. The right is energized, grandma and grandpa are scared, this was always going to happen. The Right, as Kevin Drum wrote today, authorized a 'scorched earth counterattack to Obama's entire agenda.' They lied. And, as the Wire reminds us, the bigger the lie the more they believe it. The real test for President Obama is whether he'll be able to stand up and energize the Left by actually passing reform, and whether he can win back Independents by not giving in to the craziness of either side and pass reform that doesn't smell of ideology or capitulation. He won't have much help from the grassroots. The grassroots has had a hard time getting energized, because the President has been so far removed from the process, because the process is complicated (five bills, each of which is hundreds of pages) and because we have a mainstream media that reports process and conflict, not substance and nuance (see the WaPo Ombudsman's column from this Sunday) resulting in a population that just doesn't understand the legislation. In retrospect, The grassroots should have been energized for a single payer option by the unions and MoveOn.org, which would have created a pressure from the Left that would have made the 'public option' the sensible compromise that it is, and not the baby in the bathwater for the Left.
The point is, the Right doesn't want a do-over they want a redo, a redo of 1994. If all those Democratic Congressmen want to win, they need to pass health insurance reform. Energize the Left for once. It's time to dance with the one that brought you and pass reform. Do it like you mean it, Mr. President, and maybe the Left won't stay home in 2010. And show some leadership by standing firm to both sides and maybe some of those independents will remember what they liked about you in the first place.
'My Parents Bought me an SAT Tutor on our Trip to Europe'
Yes, I once overheard that statement.
Last week NYT's Economix blog had some interesting graphs on the correlation between parental income and SAT scores. In a nut shell: yep, you guessed it, the more your parents make, the better the kids do on the SAT.
UPDATE: Matt Yglesias has a post on these numbers, but adds some interesting OMB data.
Last week NYT's Economix blog had some interesting graphs on the correlation between parental income and SAT scores. In a nut shell: yep, you guessed it, the more your parents make, the better the kids do on the SAT.
UPDATE: Matt Yglesias has a post on these numbers, but adds some interesting OMB data.
The MSM, the Left, and the Problem of Being RIGHT
By 'right' I mean correct.
It seems that being wrong will almost never harm your career in the MSM (mainstream media). However, being right, and being right early almost never helps, in fact, being right can really hurt you.
Case in point. CNBC's uber-annoying, I-wanna-cuddle-with-CEOs Maria Bartiromo appeared on CNBC today to 'debate' health insurance reform with Rep. Anthony Weiner. In the course of the interview he praised Medicare as a very popular 'public' insurance system in the US. Bartiromo then asked Rep. Weiner, "How come you don't use it [Medicare]? You don't have it. How come you don't have it?" Weiner is 44 years old.
Matt Yglesias has a great post about this very problem, that is the problem with being right and Left in America. Yglesias discusses a report from Dean Baker (Center for Economic and Policy Research) from 2002 which called a spade a spade, or in this case, a housing bubble a, well, housing bubble. And for his heroic prescience, does he get a new plush job and does he get hailed as a hero? Nope. He's just that nutty crank on the soap-box on the Left who says the sky is falling while everyone else says 'It's great beach weather!'
As Mr. Yglesias writes: 'if you start warning about something and then it doesn’t happen, and then you keep nagging people, and then you keep complaining about how nobody’s listening to you, you start getting dismissed as a crank. And when you’re proven right, you’re still that crank nobody wants to listen to. You don’t get hailed as a hero.'
It seems that being wrong will almost never harm your career in the MSM (mainstream media). However, being right, and being right early almost never helps, in fact, being right can really hurt you.
Case in point. CNBC's uber-annoying, I-wanna-cuddle-with-CEOs Maria Bartiromo appeared on CNBC today to 'debate' health insurance reform with Rep. Anthony Weiner. In the course of the interview he praised Medicare as a very popular 'public' insurance system in the US. Bartiromo then asked Rep. Weiner, "How come you don't use it [Medicare]? You don't have it. How come you don't have it?" Weiner is 44 years old.
Matt Yglesias has a great post about this very problem, that is the problem with being right and Left in America. Yglesias discusses a report from Dean Baker (Center for Economic and Policy Research) from 2002 which called a spade a spade, or in this case, a housing bubble a, well, housing bubble. And for his heroic prescience, does he get a new plush job and does he get hailed as a hero? Nope. He's just that nutty crank on the soap-box on the Left who says the sky is falling while everyone else says 'It's great beach weather!'
As Mr. Yglesias writes: 'if you start warning about something and then it doesn’t happen, and then you keep nagging people, and then you keep complaining about how nobody’s listening to you, you start getting dismissed as a crank. And when you’re proven right, you’re still that crank nobody wants to listen to. You don’t get hailed as a hero.'
The Republicans and Medicare
I love politics. It makes the thing you hate into the thing you love, well, so long as it polls well.
Remember when Republicans were ideologically consistent and opposed Medicare? It wasn't that long ago. Now you have the Chairman of the Republican Party, Mr. Michael Steele saying that retirees need a 'bill of rights' for Medicare. Just a few years ago you had President Bush passing the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act.
I was thinking about that this weekend, and found a post by Matt Yglesias that answered my questions. So, I'll just let him tell you...
No 60 votes necessary for the Republican Congress. No pay-go requirements for the Republican administration. To make matters worse, Senators Baucus and Grassley both vote FOR the expansion. Now they're all like, 'well, I just don't know if death panels and cost controls are a good idea.'
WHY?!
Remember when Republicans were ideologically consistent and opposed Medicare? It wasn't that long ago. Now you have the Chairman of the Republican Party, Mr. Michael Steele saying that retirees need a 'bill of rights' for Medicare. Just a few years ago you had President Bush passing the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act.
I was thinking about that this weekend, and found a post by Matt Yglesias that answered my questions. So, I'll just let him tell you...
When thinking about health insurance reform, it is worth looking back at the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act. For one thing, in its final form it passed the United States Senate by a vote of 54 to 44. For another thing, unlike the House or HELP health care bills, it added hundreds of billions of dollars to the 10-year deficit window. And it contained nothing that even purported to “bend the curve” over the long term.
No 60 votes necessary for the Republican Congress. No pay-go requirements for the Republican administration. To make matters worse, Senators Baucus and Grassley both vote FOR the expansion. Now they're all like, 'well, I just don't know if death panels and cost controls are a good idea.'
WHY?!
What's with Tom Ridge?
I was pressured, no I wasn't. Yes I was, no I wasn't.
Tom Ridge is confusing me. He's on Rachel Maddow, denying that 'politics' influenced anyone's decision making process regarding the decision to raise the threat level prior to the 2004 elections. I get why people on the Left have a problem with the threat-level being raised before an election, the incumbent President had, on average, gotten a bump in the polls any time there was a decision to raise the threat level. I also get why the White House may have HONESTLY thought they should raise the threat level, it was an election. It's a great day to attack (from the perspective of a terrorist). The real issue is not whether the Bush Administration 'politicized' the process, but rather, whether the process made any sense to begin with. I can picture some lonely political appointee sitting around trying to discern what day Al Qaeda might attack. Maybe there were tarot cards involved, or chicken bones or something. I can just picture him/her, 'well, July 4th, that's kind of an important day, I bet that would be a day a terrorist might like to attack us.' There was probably more to it than that, but I bet that was at the root of a lot of the threat level increases.
The other issue at hand is, what was the point of the color coded threat level thermometer? Am I supposed to stay home the day we go to yellow? Cancel my flights? Just get irrationally afraid, even though I'm living in rural Arkansas and have a 0.0 likelihood of ever being targeted by any terrorist, minus our local right-wing militia member or abortion bomber? That's the real issue. Did they ever politicize it? Who knows? How could you tell the difference?
Tom Ridge is confusing me. He's on Rachel Maddow, denying that 'politics' influenced anyone's decision making process regarding the decision to raise the threat level prior to the 2004 elections. I get why people on the Left have a problem with the threat-level being raised before an election, the incumbent President had, on average, gotten a bump in the polls any time there was a decision to raise the threat level. I also get why the White House may have HONESTLY thought they should raise the threat level, it was an election. It's a great day to attack (from the perspective of a terrorist). The real issue is not whether the Bush Administration 'politicized' the process, but rather, whether the process made any sense to begin with. I can picture some lonely political appointee sitting around trying to discern what day Al Qaeda might attack. Maybe there were tarot cards involved, or chicken bones or something. I can just picture him/her, 'well, July 4th, that's kind of an important day, I bet that would be a day a terrorist might like to attack us.' There was probably more to it than that, but I bet that was at the root of a lot of the threat level increases.
The other issue at hand is, what was the point of the color coded threat level thermometer? Am I supposed to stay home the day we go to yellow? Cancel my flights? Just get irrationally afraid, even though I'm living in rural Arkansas and have a 0.0 likelihood of ever being targeted by any terrorist, minus our local right-wing militia member or abortion bomber? That's the real issue. Did they ever politicize it? Who knows? How could you tell the difference?
Friday, August 28, 2009
NTSB Report an excuse for union busting???
So Fox is reporting that the NTSB Report on the helicopter-plane crash in New York City was the result of incompetence on the behalf of the air traffic controllers. Fox didn't come out and blame unions, but I wonder if it will be much time before Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, and Sean Hannity make this an argument against unions in general.
Scaling back
So a lot of folks are talking about breaking the health-insurance bills in half and passing them as parts, and now, with the death of Senator Kennedy, folks are discussing a scaled down bill and promoting a gradual move to universal coverage and cost-cutting.
Part of it is trust. Do you really trust that a scaled down bill will ever be 'scaled up'? Do you think that we'll ever gradually increase the coverage of the uninsured? Maybe some of this is about the victory of the Right in destroying our faith and trust in government, their reactionary extremism has polarized this nation and undermined even a base-level belief in the efficacy of government.
Part of it is that these reforms must happen together to create a winning coalition. The 'individual mandate' means a boon for insurance companies. To get progressives to agree to the mandate you have to truly reform the private sector insurance market. These must happen together. They must also include an employer mandate to keep employers from dropping millions of employees into the private insurance market, and to pay for the increased cost in covering everyone. These reforms are tied up together to create a reform package that actually accomplishes reform.
Part of it is trust. Do you really trust that a scaled down bill will ever be 'scaled up'? Do you think that we'll ever gradually increase the coverage of the uninsured? Maybe some of this is about the victory of the Right in destroying our faith and trust in government, their reactionary extremism has polarized this nation and undermined even a base-level belief in the efficacy of government.
Part of it is that these reforms must happen together to create a winning coalition. The 'individual mandate' means a boon for insurance companies. To get progressives to agree to the mandate you have to truly reform the private sector insurance market. These must happen together. They must also include an employer mandate to keep employers from dropping millions of employees into the private insurance market, and to pay for the increased cost in covering everyone. These reforms are tied up together to create a reform package that actually accomplishes reform.
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Anything for a buck
So the GOP is sending out 'surveys' that suggest that Republicans may be denied health-care. The surveys are attached to fund-raising info. Like Joe Klein said, the republicans have jumped the shark.
It's because they ELECT their wingnuts...
Recently I've found myself in conversations that went something like this.
'The Left has their nutjobs too.'
'Yes, but the media is biased, I mean only Fox News gave airtime to the 9/11 Truthies, and that was to mock them and paint the left with that brush. It doesn't seem to work with the wing-nuts on the Right.'
It's true, it seems the the MSM give DRAMATICALLY more airtime to the right-wing crazies than they ever did to the left-wing ones. It also seems that the more anyone tries to paint the Right with the 'birthers/tea-baggers' label, the more they seem to embrace it.
A couple weeks ago Ezra Klein had a great post on the asymmetrical coverage of political extremism. His point, the right gets coverage cause they want it. They ELECT their crazies, or at least their pols seem to embrace the crazies. You have Senator Grassley, former Vice-Presidential candidate and Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin, and Minority Leader Rep. John Boehner all giving credibility to the 'death panel' lie, and countless other pols embracing the tea-baggers/birthers/town-hall nut-jobs. The MSM is justified in covering this, it's news when those three people say anything, let alone anything like the US government is planning to systematically euthanize the American elderly. It's like all the grown-ups have gone home and we're left with remnants of a once great party, it's just too bad we're still treating the Republicans like the party they once were, and not the party of crazies and obstructionists that they have become.
'The Left has their nutjobs too.'
'Yes, but the media is biased, I mean only Fox News gave airtime to the 9/11 Truthies, and that was to mock them and paint the left with that brush. It doesn't seem to work with the wing-nuts on the Right.'
It's true, it seems the the MSM give DRAMATICALLY more airtime to the right-wing crazies than they ever did to the left-wing ones. It also seems that the more anyone tries to paint the Right with the 'birthers/tea-baggers' label, the more they seem to embrace it.
A couple weeks ago Ezra Klein had a great post on the asymmetrical coverage of political extremism. His point, the right gets coverage cause they want it. They ELECT their crazies, or at least their pols seem to embrace the crazies. You have Senator Grassley, former Vice-Presidential candidate and Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin, and Minority Leader Rep. John Boehner all giving credibility to the 'death panel' lie, and countless other pols embracing the tea-baggers/birthers/town-hall nut-jobs. The MSM is justified in covering this, it's news when those three people say anything, let alone anything like the US government is planning to systematically euthanize the American elderly. It's like all the grown-ups have gone home and we're left with remnants of a once great party, it's just too bad we're still treating the Republicans like the party they once were, and not the party of crazies and obstructionists that they have become.
What?!
According to ThinkProgress, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee is headlining a conference on the threat of 'electromagnetic pulse' attacks. This shit sounds like the plot of the last GI Joe movie... I wonder if that where they got the idea...
Another Warrior in Rammell's War against Satan
This guy has just been indicted for threatening the family of an abortion clinic director.
These incidents are increasing. The murder of Dr. Tiller, the Department of Homeland Security report, the shooting at the Holocaust Museum, the Tea Parties, the health-care town halls, the guys with guns at the town halls, the death panels, the death books, etc.
I think it was Paul Krugman that said that when Republicans get into office it's almost like they're incompetent on purpose just to discredit the entire idea of government. Now it seems like they're on their way to trying to discredit the idea of democracy.
These incidents are increasing. The murder of Dr. Tiller, the Department of Homeland Security report, the shooting at the Holocaust Museum, the Tea Parties, the health-care town halls, the guys with guns at the town halls, the death panels, the death books, etc.
I think it was Paul Krugman that said that when Republicans get into office it's almost like they're incompetent on purpose just to discredit the entire idea of government. Now it seems like they're on their way to trying to discredit the idea of democracy.
Rex Rammell's War against Satan
Tea-bagger and ex-elk rancher Rex Rammell is running for the governorship of Idaho. On Tuesday at a GOP rally he joked about 'hunting' President Obama.
In 2008 he ran, unsuccessfully as an Independent candidate for Senator. In fact, it seems that he has a long list of offices that he has unsuccessfully run for (also check here and here).
In fact, it's confusing exactly what Rex is running for, his website says he's running for governor, but he also evidently announced that he is running against Rep. Mike Simpson for the 2nd District seat in the US House of Representatives.
Mr. Rammell is also an author. Here is a long quote from the beginning of the book, A Nation Divided: The War for America's Soul...
You can't make this stuff up... 'And despotism and tyranny abounded. An man lost his freedom. And the capitalists fought back as blood covered the earth...' I must of missed that day in US history (or maybe world history, not sure). Then he introduces us to his war against Satan...
That said, the guy does seem to have a pretty good sense of humor.
The interesting thing is how organized these folks are. He's seems to be somehow affiliated with the Freedom21 Conference (it's a right-wing conspiracy-minded show-and-tell in Oklahoma City of all places--coincidence? I think not), and a whole host of other extremist organizations. Just five minutes on Google and the layers of this are truly astounding.
Got the book quotes here.
In 2008 he ran, unsuccessfully as an Independent candidate for Senator. In fact, it seems that he has a long list of offices that he has unsuccessfully run for (also check here and here).
In fact, it's confusing exactly what Rex is running for, his website says he's running for governor, but he also evidently announced that he is running against Rep. Mike Simpson for the 2nd District seat in the US House of Representatives.
Mr. Rammell is also an author. Here is a long quote from the beginning of the book, A Nation Divided: The War for America's Soul...
In the beginning there were socialists and capitalists. The socialists said “let us force our neighbors to be charitable that all mankind may be equal.” The capitalists said “let us give our neighbors freedom that they may choose to be charitable for charity freely given is true charity.” But the socialists disagreed that man could ever rise to be charitable; he must be forced. The capitalists disagreed. And henceforth the war for freedom began.
And men made themselves kings and rulers. And despotism and tyranny abounded. And man lost his freedom. And the capitalists fought back as blood covered the earth. And the great Father who sits on his throne in the heavens watched and wept as man fought for his freedom. But man was not worthy of freedom. And more blood covered the earth. Then a righteous people arose and the Father said it is time for man to be free. And the people fought against the King and the Father sent his angels. And the people won their freedom. And the people knew they must bind the ambitions of men. So they assembled their wisest and counseled together and asked the Father to help them create a Constitution. But men’s thirst for power continued. And the Constitution was argued and its meaning distorted. And men began again to lose their freedom…
You can't make this stuff up... 'And despotism and tyranny abounded. An man lost his freedom. And the capitalists fought back as blood covered the earth...' I must of missed that day in US history (or maybe world history, not sure). Then he introduces us to his war against Satan...
…And the capitalists fought back for their freedom and vowed to save the Constitution. And God was on their side. And the armies of socialism led by Satan began to fear. And good men and women rallied to the cause. And the Constitution’s original meaning was accepted. And America reset her course. And she returned to her glory. And freedom and happiness were once again found in America!
That said, the guy does seem to have a pretty good sense of humor.
The interesting thing is how organized these folks are. He's seems to be somehow affiliated with the Freedom21 Conference (it's a right-wing conspiracy-minded show-and-tell in Oklahoma City of all places--coincidence? I think not), and a whole host of other extremist organizations. Just five minutes on Google and the layers of this are truly astounding.
Got the book quotes here.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Avoiding the Most Trusted Man in News
Jason Linkins has an interesting theory on the release of the torture docs. They were postponed until the Daily Show went on summer hiatus! Interesting theory. I for one want to believe it, and so it shall be believed!
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Chairman Bernanke the 'Regulator'???
So, Chairman Bernanke is in for four more years. As everyone is saying, the next four are gonna be hell. There is going to be significant pressure to keep lower interest rates to stimulate economic growth and also significant pressure to raise interest rates to soak up some of the liquidity (how much pressure may depend on unemployment). But my concern is with the Fed's new role as systemic regulator.
Before Chairman Volcker (a Democrat, just proving you don't have to be a conservative Republican to do the job well). The Fed was somewhat dysfunctional (remember stagflation?) and now seems to have become competent at doing it's primary job--adjusting the flow of money into the economy (moderating the pressure toward inflation and deflation).
However, as the Fed moves into it's new role as systemic regulator, we need to think about the future not the past. Yes, Chairman Bernanke saved the economy from collapse, but what about the NEXT job, regulating the systemically significant parts of the economy (think financial services plus insurance). Will he do what needs to be done?
I don't know. I have my doubts. For example, prior to the crash, back in 2004 he gave a speech called the Great Moderation in which he praised Fed policy as the source of decreased market volatility. We now know that the Fed fell down on the job and didn't regulate what it could have and should have regulated and that led to to some serious market volatility. Volatility that nearly sent this nation into another depression. The Fed under Chairman Bernanke was able to prevent a financial system collapse because he bailed out the banks (I personally think just about anyone would have done that--and he almost failed at that when he let Lehman Brothers go under), but will he be able to regulate? I just don't know.
Before Chairman Volcker (a Democrat, just proving you don't have to be a conservative Republican to do the job well). The Fed was somewhat dysfunctional (remember stagflation?) and now seems to have become competent at doing it's primary job--adjusting the flow of money into the economy (moderating the pressure toward inflation and deflation).
However, as the Fed moves into it's new role as systemic regulator, we need to think about the future not the past. Yes, Chairman Bernanke saved the economy from collapse, but what about the NEXT job, regulating the systemically significant parts of the economy (think financial services plus insurance). Will he do what needs to be done?
I don't know. I have my doubts. For example, prior to the crash, back in 2004 he gave a speech called the Great Moderation in which he praised Fed policy as the source of decreased market volatility. We now know that the Fed fell down on the job and didn't regulate what it could have and should have regulated and that led to to some serious market volatility. Volatility that nearly sent this nation into another depression. The Fed under Chairman Bernanke was able to prevent a financial system collapse because he bailed out the banks (I personally think just about anyone would have done that--and he almost failed at that when he let Lehman Brothers go under), but will he be able to regulate? I just don't know.
Tax the Endowment
What would happen if we taxed Harvard's endowment until it improved access to lower income populations? It's an interesting thought experiment from Felix Salmon at Reuters.
How to reign in Wall Street
Matt Ylgesias and Kevin Drum had a back-and-forth today that relates to my call for more progressive tax instruments to pay for stimulus/bailouts and entitlements (including an expanded role in health-care).
Yglesias says we can use tax policy to attempt to put downward pressure on Wall Street compensation which might be a factor in limiting personal avarice as an incentive for rampant and irresponsible risk taking.
Drum comes back and argues that as a practical matter 50% is an upper bound and that in terms of effective tax rates, we'll likely see much less than that actually paid. He goes on to say that tax policy is a broad-brush.
I remember when the collapse was happening Jared Diamond said that societies that came back from collapse had one thing in common, a shared history of pain. Suffering up and down the income spectrum served as a warning to reform or die. I'm worried that there just hasn't been enough pain for the rich. Like Drum said, it's back to business on Wall Street, with no sign of meaningful regulation (Bernanke was afterall just re-nominated).
Yglesias says we can use tax policy to attempt to put downward pressure on Wall Street compensation which might be a factor in limiting personal avarice as an incentive for rampant and irresponsible risk taking.
we actually have a well-established method of taking market distributions of income and trying to transmogrify it into a more just, useful, and welfare-enhancing deployment of social resources — taxes and public services....It strikes me as ultimately unlikely that the political process will be able to micromanage high finance in a way that strikes people as meeting the claims of justice. But the political process very much can collect tax revenues and use that revenue to finance things that we currently “can’t afford” like more widespread provision of health care services, better rail transportation, cleaner streets, more police officers, more and better pre-kindergarten, etc.
Drum comes back and argues that as a practical matter 50% is an upper bound and that in terms of effective tax rates, we'll likely see much less than that actually paid. He goes on to say that tax policy is a broad-brush.
Overall, there's not much question that Wall Street bankers are going to continue to be paid astronomical sums as long as the firms they run are making astronomical profits. And that's the key problem. Tax policy can help — though it's a pretty broad brush — but the fundamental problem is that the finance sector in the U.S. is so damn big. And it's seemingly an unstoppable juggernaut: Wall Street income may have been down last year, but even the biggest economic collapse since World War II hasn't made even a medium term dent. A mere year later, the overall size and profitability of the finance industry is on track to be about the same size as it was during the boom years.
I remember when the collapse was happening Jared Diamond said that societies that came back from collapse had one thing in common, a shared history of pain. Suffering up and down the income spectrum served as a warning to reform or die. I'm worried that there just hasn't been enough pain for the rich. Like Drum said, it's back to business on Wall Street, with no sign of meaningful regulation (Bernanke was afterall just re-nominated).
Big Debt and Big Unemployment
Krugman has a pretty pessimistic post on the OMB numbers, which he says will put debt at 70-80% of GDP by the end of the next decade. That's a huge number. Huge. We've had higher debt, but that was following a world war. The OMB also has unemployment at 9.7% in 2010 and 8% in 2011. That's also huge. These numbers call for contradictory medicines. Spending to cut unemployment, along with low interest rates to spur growth; and revenue increases to cut the debt and high interest rates to soak up the liquidity.
I'm not sure we need really high interest rates, if we're looking at 8-9% unemployment two years out, will there really be too much liquidity? Regardless, big debt means new revenue (which is actually, maybe, a good thing to deal with inequality, which Krugman discusses here).
Most of the increases in national wealth and income have been concentrated in the hands of a very small group of elites, now it's time to take it back and make stimulate our economy and pay for entitlements.
I'm not sure we need really high interest rates, if we're looking at 8-9% unemployment two years out, will there really be too much liquidity? Regardless, big debt means new revenue (which is actually, maybe, a good thing to deal with inequality, which Krugman discusses here).
Most of the increases in national wealth and income have been concentrated in the hands of a very small group of elites, now it's time to take it back and make stimulate our economy and pay for entitlements.
Why the Death Book is just plain wrong...
Here is a good summary of the craziness behind the 'Death Book' controversy.
Taibbi on Healthcare
Matt Taibbi said something really interesting and really stupid in his brief promo-interviews on RollingStone.com for his new article Sick and Wrong. The interesting thing he said was that the bills have a grandfather clause that allows terrible insurance policies to stand, which will give a competitive advantage to firms with shitty and cheap policies versus those who will have to generate new health insurance policies in the future. This is interesting for the very reason that it means that reform will not really help those people who are say, employed by Wal Mart.
The stupid thing he says is that health insurance reform will be like the Iraq War for Democrats, i.e. something they will ultimately have to apologize for. That's stupid. A good bill is possible without single payer and even a public option. Here are nine reasons why a bill, even without a public option, is a good thing.
The stupid thing he says is that health insurance reform will be like the Iraq War for Democrats, i.e. something they will ultimately have to apologize for. That's stupid. A good bill is possible without single payer and even a public option. Here are nine reasons why a bill, even without a public option, is a good thing.
Tabarrok via Drum
Kevin Drum quotes Alex Tabarrok's defense of the public option, which basically says that if there is an individual mandate insurers will increase their prices. I would just add that this is more likely for health insurance than car insurance (which remains competitively priced even with mandated coverage) because of the regional quasi-monopolies that health insurers already have.
Monday, August 24, 2009
The Other Side
So, here is a link to The Agenda's argument against the public option. It's probably the most concisely argued view from the other side that I've read.
Basically what Salam is arguing is that there are three paths...
All three offer savings. Over ten years they save, respectively, $3B, $2B, and $1B.
If one or two happens then providers (doctors, hospitals, etc.) will engage in cost-shifting, where they make up for the lack of cash from the public option by charging more money to the private insurers. This will lead to higher co-pays, deductibles, etc. and will lead to a single-payer system, and that's just bad (doesn't say why, but medical innovation and wait times will probably top the list).
Salam does end on a slightly anemic note, but does say that we can save money by creating more efficient provider networks. Which is true. Places like Mayo and Cleveland have a much more efficient system, and that's partly because they don't engage in fee-for-service pricing. Which is why the reform package pushes for 'bundling' payments!
Basically what Salam is arguing is that there are three paths...
* Public Plan with Medicare Payment Rates. This path includes a public health insurance plan that pays providers at Medicare rates and is offered alongside private plans within a national health insurance exchange.
* Public Plan with Intermediate Payment Rates. This path includes a public insurance plan that pays providers at rates set midway between current Medicare and private plan rates and is offered alongside private plans in a national health insurance exchange—and subject to the same market rules as they are.
* Private Plans. This path does not include a public plan option; it includes only private plans offered to employers and individuals through a national health insurance exchange.
All three offer savings. Over ten years they save, respectively, $3B, $2B, and $1B.
If one or two happens then providers (doctors, hospitals, etc.) will engage in cost-shifting, where they make up for the lack of cash from the public option by charging more money to the private insurers. This will lead to higher co-pays, deductibles, etc. and will lead to a single-payer system, and that's just bad (doesn't say why, but medical innovation and wait times will probably top the list).
Salam does end on a slightly anemic note, but does say that we can save money by creating more efficient provider networks. Which is true. Places like Mayo and Cleveland have a much more efficient system, and that's partly because they don't engage in fee-for-service pricing. Which is why the reform package pushes for 'bundling' payments!
'Depressing in its innanity'
Krugman gets the tone just write...
And that's a great point. There haven't been any coherent arguments against the public option, just that it's politically unfeasible, and that it might be popular and successful.
He also makes a subsequent point about financial regulation...
Krugman suggests that it's the money talking on both health-insurance and financial reforms...
'The debate over the public option has, as I said, been depressing in its inanity. Opponents of the option — not just Republicans, but Democrats like Senator Kent Conrad and Senator Ben Nelson — have offered no coherent arguments against it.'
And that's a great point. There haven't been any coherent arguments against the public option, just that it's politically unfeasible, and that it might be popular and successful.
He also makes a subsequent point about financial regulation...
There’s a lot to be said about the financial disaster of the last two years, but the short version is simple: politicians in the thrall of Reaganite ideology dismantled the New Deal regulations that had prevented banking crises for half a century, believing that financial markets could take care of themselves. The effect was to make the financial system vulnerable to a 1930s-style crisis — and the crisis came....
Efforts to strengthen bank regulation appear to be losing steam, as opponents of reform declare that more regulation would lead to less financial innovation — this just months after the wonders of innovation brought our financial system to the edge of collapse, a collapse that was averted only with huge infusions of taxpayer funds.
Krugman suggests that it's the money talking on both health-insurance and financial reforms...
Part of the answer is that there’s a lot of money behind them. “It is difficult to get a man to understand something,” said Upton Sinclair, “when his salary” — or, I would add, his campaign contributions — “depend upon his not understanding it.”
More on Goldman Sachs
Matt Taibbi posts an interesting analysis of a WSJ piece describing how GS gives out info to commission paying players before it's public, allowing them to buy early and then flip it back when the info is made public, in this case making 6%. He follows with a wild quote from Cramer about how his wife made her money basically just flipping stocks back after GS or ML analysts went public.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Who is Bluffing?
Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND) recently reported that there has never been enough votes in the Senate for a 'robust' public option. That's interesting. Must be some of that 'new math' I used to hear about when I was a kid.
Ezra Klein gives us the play-by-play in the actual legislative steps that a reform bill faces. What he reminds us of is, once the bill leaves conference committee it goes to each chamber, if it has any public option it will pass the House, easy enough. Then we go to the anti-democratic, anachronistic US Senate where there are three options, vote yes or no, or filibuster. The Democrats control 60 seats, they need 60 votes to pass the bill, you can assume 55 of those (assuming Byrd and Kennedy can vote). The hold outs might include Ben Nelson, Kent Conrad, Joe Lieberman, Max Baucus, Mary Landrieu, and Arlen Specter. The Republicans that want a bill passed include Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe, and Richard Lugar. Then there are the dead-enders that are still in the debate (Chuck Grassley, John Kyl, Mike Enzi, Judd Gregg). The question, as Mr. Klein states, who is going to filibuster? Are they really willing to do this? Who is bluffing?
Ezra Klein gives us the play-by-play in the actual legislative steps that a reform bill faces. What he reminds us of is, once the bill leaves conference committee it goes to each chamber, if it has any public option it will pass the House, easy enough. Then we go to the anti-democratic, anachronistic US Senate where there are three options, vote yes or no, or filibuster. The Democrats control 60 seats, they need 60 votes to pass the bill, you can assume 55 of those (assuming Byrd and Kennedy can vote). The hold outs might include Ben Nelson, Kent Conrad, Joe Lieberman, Max Baucus, Mary Landrieu, and Arlen Specter. The Republicans that want a bill passed include Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe, and Richard Lugar. Then there are the dead-enders that are still in the debate (Chuck Grassley, John Kyl, Mike Enzi, Judd Gregg). The question, as Mr. Klein states, who is going to filibuster? Are they really willing to do this? Who is bluffing?
Friday, August 7, 2009
Link-a-palooza
Stuff I haven't read, or have, and want to suggest...
Michael Lewis' great article from Dec. is still great... The End by Michael Lewis
Michael Lewis' other great article about AIG... The Man Who Crashed the World by Michael Lewis
Everybody seems to be thinking and writing about obesity recently, this is a great one... The Politics of Thinking Thin: It's about the Kids by Marc Ambinder
Another 'fatter' option, a review of the literature... XXXL: Why are Americans so Fat? by Elizabeth Kolbert
Best article on the political economy of the American health-care... The Cost Conundrum: What a Texas town can teach us about health-care by Atul Gawande
A cogent reminder of why bi-partisanship is so hard to find (because all the Moderate Republicans lost)... The Senate's Bad Deal by Harold Meyerson
Four days, sounds like too many to me. This is a great analysis and call to arms... Should Thursday be the New Friday: The Environmental and Economic Pluses of a Four-day Workweek by Lynne Peeples
More Praise for a Four Day Week... The Case for a Four Day Workweek by Brad Plumer
Great 'fighting the last war' analysis... The Ghosts of ClintonCare by Ezra Klein
Dali and Pico... The Doctor is Within by Pico Iyer
Krugman hates markets, I love Krugman... Why Markets Can't Cure Health-care by Paul Krugman
Is Sheila Bair the victim of sexism?... Loaded for Bair: Why Sexism is Behind the Attacks on the FDIC Chief by Maureen Tkacik
2008 in the numbers... Stories and Stats: The Truth about Obama's Victory wasn't in the Papers by Andrew Gelman and John Sides
Michael Lewis' great article from Dec. is still great... The End by Michael Lewis
Michael Lewis' other great article about AIG... The Man Who Crashed the World by Michael Lewis
Everybody seems to be thinking and writing about obesity recently, this is a great one... The Politics of Thinking Thin: It's about the Kids by Marc Ambinder
Another 'fatter' option, a review of the literature... XXXL: Why are Americans so Fat? by Elizabeth Kolbert
Best article on the political economy of the American health-care... The Cost Conundrum: What a Texas town can teach us about health-care by Atul Gawande
A cogent reminder of why bi-partisanship is so hard to find (because all the Moderate Republicans lost)... The Senate's Bad Deal by Harold Meyerson
Four days, sounds like too many to me. This is a great analysis and call to arms... Should Thursday be the New Friday: The Environmental and Economic Pluses of a Four-day Workweek by Lynne Peeples
More Praise for a Four Day Week... The Case for a Four Day Workweek by Brad Plumer
Great 'fighting the last war' analysis... The Ghosts of ClintonCare by Ezra Klein
Dali and Pico... The Doctor is Within by Pico Iyer
Krugman hates markets, I love Krugman... Why Markets Can't Cure Health-care by Paul Krugman
Is Sheila Bair the victim of sexism?... Loaded for Bair: Why Sexism is Behind the Attacks on the FDIC Chief by Maureen Tkacik
2008 in the numbers... Stories and Stats: The Truth about Obama's Victory wasn't in the Papers by Andrew Gelman and John Sides
What happens when a WaPo columnist stops being nice???
Wa Po business columnist Steve Pearlstein stops being nice today. It's about time. I hope others begin to see the sanity through the shouting.
Here is a quick bite. The whole thing is worth a read.
Here is a quick bite. The whole thing is worth a read.
Health reform is a test of whether this country can function once again as a civil society -- whether we can trust ourselves to embrace the big, important changes that require everyone to give up something in order to make everyone better off. Republican leaders are eager to see us fail that test. We need to show them that no matter how many lies they tell or how many scare tactics they concoct, Americans will come together and get this done.
If health reform is to be anyone's Waterloo, let it be theirs.
Where is the 'I feel your pain' moment???
President Obama has recently been called our 'economist-in-chief' (by Ezra Klein) and our 'professor-in-chief' (by Paul Krugman). When one of our biggest health-care policy wonks and a professor of economics describe you in such terms you know you have a problem.
President Obama can describe the problem and analyze the different options and forces influencing the process, but can he make you feel the moral imperative of health-care reform? He should be able to, theoretically. His mother died of cancer while trying to negotiate her way into coverage.
I know that feeling. The same thing happened to my mother. It can be too hard to talk about. It's a matter of compartmentalization. It's how we survive with great loss. Don't know if that means much. It's not gonna help pass health-care reform, not unless he can use his experience to make us feel that moral imperative.
President Obama can describe the problem and analyze the different options and forces influencing the process, but can he make you feel the moral imperative of health-care reform? He should be able to, theoretically. His mother died of cancer while trying to negotiate her way into coverage.
I know that feeling. The same thing happened to my mother. It can be too hard to talk about. It's a matter of compartmentalization. It's how we survive with great loss. Don't know if that means much. It's not gonna help pass health-care reform, not unless he can use his experience to make us feel that moral imperative.
Cap-and-Trade vs. Carbon Tax
A couple days ago Paul Krugman argued that opposing cap-and-trade was foolish because fighting global warming is so necessary. I agree that it is, but there is a phenomenally better way to achieve the same ends. A carbon tax. The effect of cap-and-trade will be higher energy prices, essentially the same effect as imposing a carbon tax. The difference is that the 'profits' from cap-and-trade will go to the financial system that trades and speculates in the emission permits (and nearly destroyed our whole economy a few months back). Fear of speculation isn't unfounded, it's prescient. A carbon tax isn't an impossible dream, it's the absolutely right policy. Moving from a federal revenue system based on income taxes (and the regressive Social Security tax) to one based on a carbon tax might be the best thing anyone can ever do for this nation and our world. It's worth losing an election over. Sometimes you fight the fight that needs fighting.
Thursday, August 6, 2009
What exactly are they opposing???
Matt Yglesias and Ezra Klein both make excellent points today. First, Matt Yglesias argues that Sen. Baucus is primarily to blame for the slow pace of progress on health reform...
There’s a reason, after all, why the President wanted the process to be much further along at this point. And I think a big part of that reason is that it’d be much easier to get people engaged and mobilized if there was a thing “the health care bill” that people were supposed to be getting engaged and mobilized about. By contrast, those most full of passionate intensity on the other side are basically prepared to oppose reform sight unseen. But without knowing much about what the content of “reform” is or who it is who’s backing “reform” it’s hard to know what to say about it. At the moment, progressives are simultaneously trying to impact the shape of “reform” (reasonable public option, reasonably generous subsidies and minimum benefits packages) while also trying to push for “reform” to win out against the opponents of “reform.” If the various congressional leaders ever work out what “reform” is, then no matter how disappointed folks may be with some aspects of it, I’m pretty sure just about everyone will find themselves pushing for it.
But by dragging out the process of defining what the proposal is this long, congress in general—but mostly Baucus in particular—have guaranteed a sort of asymmetrical summer.
Ezra Klein shows that according to a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll the specifics of the health reform are generally popular while the administration's plan isn't. Pretty normal considering that poll after poll shows that progressive policies are often very popular with the public, while the names of those policies (welfare, universal health-care, even single-payer) are not. The right cannot play the game fairly, so they turn to demonizing, lying, and just plain shouting to win.
But what both posts reminded me of, is that there isn't A BILL TO OPPOSE. The fascistic tea-bagging, fear-mongering hooligans who are shouting down elected representatives are opposing what exactly? There isn't a bill to oppose. Which is bad precisely because the big unknown feeds into that old paranoid style of American politics. What they are opposing isn't health reform, cause they don't know a thing about it. So, what are they opposing?
Liberals always claim that folks are opposing the 'changes' happening. The decline of our social connectedness, the rapid growth of minority populations, increasing social equality, the decline of the stable two-parent family, global competition for jobs, the rise of foreign powers, the decline of the industrial state, the rise of the consumer-service oriented economy, stagnating wages, etc. Liberals argue these 'game changers' are pushing people toward xenophobic paranoia, religious revivalism, and political/religious extremism. So, a liberal would argue, that many of these oh so angry and paranoid folks are really opposing these changes when they talk of immigration, health reform, taxes, welfare, etc. Which might explain why the states that are 'suffering' the most at the hands of these changes are the politically conservative communities where racism, xenophobia, religious revivalism, and reactionary politics thrives.
I wonder what a conservative would say? Maybe that 'the people' (never trust anyone who uses the phrase 'the people') love free markets and hate government. Or, maybe that's too simplistic. Maybe I should watch Fox News and report back. It seems like most of the conservative talking points on the blogosphere are just fabrications and prevarications.
There’s a reason, after all, why the President wanted the process to be much further along at this point. And I think a big part of that reason is that it’d be much easier to get people engaged and mobilized if there was a thing “the health care bill” that people were supposed to be getting engaged and mobilized about. By contrast, those most full of passionate intensity on the other side are basically prepared to oppose reform sight unseen. But without knowing much about what the content of “reform” is or who it is who’s backing “reform” it’s hard to know what to say about it. At the moment, progressives are simultaneously trying to impact the shape of “reform” (reasonable public option, reasonably generous subsidies and minimum benefits packages) while also trying to push for “reform” to win out against the opponents of “reform.” If the various congressional leaders ever work out what “reform” is, then no matter how disappointed folks may be with some aspects of it, I’m pretty sure just about everyone will find themselves pushing for it.
But by dragging out the process of defining what the proposal is this long, congress in general—but mostly Baucus in particular—have guaranteed a sort of asymmetrical summer.
Ezra Klein shows that according to a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll the specifics of the health reform are generally popular while the administration's plan isn't. Pretty normal considering that poll after poll shows that progressive policies are often very popular with the public, while the names of those policies (welfare, universal health-care, even single-payer) are not. The right cannot play the game fairly, so they turn to demonizing, lying, and just plain shouting to win.
But what both posts reminded me of, is that there isn't A BILL TO OPPOSE. The fascistic tea-bagging, fear-mongering hooligans who are shouting down elected representatives are opposing what exactly? There isn't a bill to oppose. Which is bad precisely because the big unknown feeds into that old paranoid style of American politics. What they are opposing isn't health reform, cause they don't know a thing about it. So, what are they opposing?
Liberals always claim that folks are opposing the 'changes' happening. The decline of our social connectedness, the rapid growth of minority populations, increasing social equality, the decline of the stable two-parent family, global competition for jobs, the rise of foreign powers, the decline of the industrial state, the rise of the consumer-service oriented economy, stagnating wages, etc. Liberals argue these 'game changers' are pushing people toward xenophobic paranoia, religious revivalism, and political/religious extremism. So, a liberal would argue, that many of these oh so angry and paranoid folks are really opposing these changes when they talk of immigration, health reform, taxes, welfare, etc. Which might explain why the states that are 'suffering' the most at the hands of these changes are the politically conservative communities where racism, xenophobia, religious revivalism, and reactionary politics thrives.
I wonder what a conservative would say? Maybe that 'the people' (never trust anyone who uses the phrase 'the people') love free markets and hate government. Or, maybe that's too simplistic. Maybe I should watch Fox News and report back. It seems like most of the conservative talking points on the blogosphere are just fabrications and prevarications.
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Black Suburbanization... White Female Employment Discrimination...
There is an argument I've heard advanced, that when Jim Crow 'died' with the passage of the voting rights acts and the civil rights act and all the court decisions that went along with the Civil Rights Era, and blacks began to have access to 'white' stores, that black-owned businesses suffered dramatically and as blacks began to move to the suburbs that the 'modern' black ghetto worsened. I wish I knew enough to say how large the impact was.
Similarly, Senator Bennet articulated another common argument recently that I've heard many times before. Education has suffered because more women had more access to the job market. Whereas education was once one of the few areas educated women could find employment, now there are a myriad of choices, meaning that the best left, leaving the rest, who, maybe weren't as good. What the impact of this 'exodus' from teaching to other professional careers was, I don't know. I don't know if it even exists. But I'm very curious.
Similarly, Senator Bennet articulated another common argument recently that I've heard many times before. Education has suffered because more women had more access to the job market. Whereas education was once one of the few areas educated women could find employment, now there are a myriad of choices, meaning that the best left, leaving the rest, who, maybe weren't as good. What the impact of this 'exodus' from teaching to other professional careers was, I don't know. I don't know if it even exists. But I'm very curious.
Random Thoughts on Education
Sen. Bennet (D-CO) was Denver's public schools superintendent before he joined the Senate, replacing Ken Salazar who moved into the Department of Interior. He gave an interview recently, and it inspired some thoughts...
As a former teacher I can attest to the reverse incentive this places on young teachers who want to move between the public school system, academia, and policy work. You get none of the extra compensation that other educators get. This also puts pressure on bad teachers to stay in a job that they should not be in. What if we re-imagined retirement policy...
Say we shift to defined contribution (I'm generally against this, but seems like tilting at windmills at this point). Everyone gets an automatic contribution of, I don't know, $2,000 a year, and up to another $2,000 in matching contribution to a tax-free IRA/401(k). Then you incentivize staying. After 5 years you get a bonus contribution of an additional $5,000, after 10 years another $10,000, and so on.
That kind of incentive system might work to keep good teachers in the job, or at least give them the rewards they have earned. Other strategies for keeping good teachers in the job include a universal bonus of $2,000 after every four years of teaching, and scale it up for teachers who actually demonstrate improvement of student outcomes and teachers who work with the lowest performing students. Teacher quality has the largest impact on student performance out of all other variables and it is probably the most cost effective with which to 'tinker'.
Other important factors toward improving student outcome focus mostly on physical resources and dollars, some cost a lot, more support staff, new building construction and smaller class sizes, some not as much, hr reform and 'small' schools. We have a limited amount of dollars and we should therefore focus on what can get us the largest bang for the buck and that is improving teacher quality. There are many ways to do this: reform HR, performance pay, widening the recruitment pool, better professional development, but the most important is probably reforming teacher assessment, figuring out who are good teachers and who are not.
After working in a school for three years, I can name the bottom 10% of teachers, they are easy to spot. The best 10% are also pretty easy to spot, but telling the difference between the middle 80%, now that is hard, after all, when the bell rings the door closes. I bet that if you did some statistical analysis on test scores over the last three years at any school, correlated student improvement to previous teachers, and looked for a pattern, you would see one. I also bet that if you went to the teachers who are 'high' performers, and told them, I bet you would be the first person to tell them anything like that in years. There is no feedback for teachers, you have to create your own systems. I tried to. Skills testing at the beginning of the year, and at the end of the year. But, I'm no assessment 'expert' (no one teaches assessment in Ed. school programs). That's what's needed the most, better ways of evaluating teacher performance that are tied to student improvement.
The way most school districts and states pay teachers in this country (is) if you leave any time in the first 20 years, you leave with what you've contributed to your retirement system ... but if you stay for 30 years, you (get) a pension that's worth three times what your Social Security is worth.
No matter what else you want to do, you have to stay, (because) you've worked all these years just to get to that place. When you think that between 70 to 80 percent of what we spend on K-12 in this country is spent on compensation and this is the way that we spend it, you need to ask yourself, "Are we providing a set of incentives that actually makes sense?"
As a former teacher I can attest to the reverse incentive this places on young teachers who want to move between the public school system, academia, and policy work. You get none of the extra compensation that other educators get. This also puts pressure on bad teachers to stay in a job that they should not be in. What if we re-imagined retirement policy...
Say we shift to defined contribution (I'm generally against this, but seems like tilting at windmills at this point). Everyone gets an automatic contribution of, I don't know, $2,000 a year, and up to another $2,000 in matching contribution to a tax-free IRA/401(k). Then you incentivize staying. After 5 years you get a bonus contribution of an additional $5,000, after 10 years another $10,000, and so on.
That kind of incentive system might work to keep good teachers in the job, or at least give them the rewards they have earned. Other strategies for keeping good teachers in the job include a universal bonus of $2,000 after every four years of teaching, and scale it up for teachers who actually demonstrate improvement of student outcomes and teachers who work with the lowest performing students. Teacher quality has the largest impact on student performance out of all other variables and it is probably the most cost effective with which to 'tinker'.
Other important factors toward improving student outcome focus mostly on physical resources and dollars, some cost a lot, more support staff, new building construction and smaller class sizes, some not as much, hr reform and 'small' schools. We have a limited amount of dollars and we should therefore focus on what can get us the largest bang for the buck and that is improving teacher quality. There are many ways to do this: reform HR, performance pay, widening the recruitment pool, better professional development, but the most important is probably reforming teacher assessment, figuring out who are good teachers and who are not.
After working in a school for three years, I can name the bottom 10% of teachers, they are easy to spot. The best 10% are also pretty easy to spot, but telling the difference between the middle 80%, now that is hard, after all, when the bell rings the door closes. I bet that if you did some statistical analysis on test scores over the last three years at any school, correlated student improvement to previous teachers, and looked for a pattern, you would see one. I also bet that if you went to the teachers who are 'high' performers, and told them, I bet you would be the first person to tell them anything like that in years. There is no feedback for teachers, you have to create your own systems. I tried to. Skills testing at the beginning of the year, and at the end of the year. But, I'm no assessment 'expert' (no one teaches assessment in Ed. school programs). That's what's needed the most, better ways of evaluating teacher performance that are tied to student improvement.
One More Smart Idea
Forgot to promote the IMAC provision in the health-care reform package. This is the provision that creates an oversight board for Medicare. Here is more.
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Cash for Clunkers
Great article on the cash-for-clunkers. Takes a look at it from a lot of different angles. Definitely worth a read.
Good Ideas in Health-Care Reform
Some of the best ideas in the debate:
1. Loan forgiveness for primary care physicians. We need 'em, there aren't enough of them, and they aren't paid very much, especially in comparison with specialists. Pushing more MD students into primary care will have an effect on all of our health-care experiences. In addition, Medicare and Medicaid (which supplies 40% of all the health-care dollars spent in the US) could increase their payments. Some proposals suggest 5-10%.
2. F*CK the Blue Dogs. One of the 'concessions' demanded by the Chien de Azure was to force the public option to negotiate without the purchasing power of Medicare, thus giving lie to their purported goal of cutting costs. Now, they say that it's unfair to force private insurers to compete with an insurance plan that gets to negotiate with the power of Medicare. That's kind of true. It's also true that it's unfair for Americans to think they have insurance only to face rescission at the hands of some faceless corporate cost-saving algorithm or, what's worse, a cubicle-dwelling person who has to live with the knowledge that their job is to look for ways to dis-insure their fellow human beings.
3. The Employer Mandate. Gotta have one, without it you'll have (by some estimates) 40 million Americans losing their insurance to enter the exchange system where they'll have to buy their own insurance individually, which is incredibly inefficient. Where the line gets drawn is important. Small businesses will have to be excluded or brought in gradually to make it politically palatable. Those that don't offer coverage will be taxed, which will help subsidize the cost of the government covering them in the public plan.
4. Get rid of Medicare Advantage. So, President Bush thought it would be a good idea to subsidize private insurers offering Medicare, only problem, they aren't as efficient as Medicare. So, Bush decided to simply pay more for it, 13% more. That's just dumb.
5. Keep the Public Option! So, the idea behind the public option is that it will offer insurance plans that benefit from lower overhead costs (money isn't spent to subsidize huge bureaucracies to decide who not to cover and there isn't any profit) and the possibility of access to the purchasing power of Medicare.
6. Tax the high-end 'gold-platted' insurance policies. The revenue can help fund the costs associated with covering more people (many through the Public Option). Besides, these policies help promote over-treatment.
7. End rescission based on 'pre-existing conditions'. One extremely important regulation, so important, along with the public option, will likely mean that the health-insurance industry succeeds in pushing and individual mandate.
8. End the fee-for-service system. The worst part of the system could arguably be the fee-for-service, it promotes over-treatment and waste. There are various ideas out there. Doctors could work in teams and get lump-sum payments, this is how the Mayo and Cleveland Clinics works.
9. Expand Medicare from 65 to 55. No one is seriously talking about it, but it's the best non-idea out there. It's politically impossible (akin to arguing for Medicare-for-all), so that's that. Ezra Klein describes here.
10. Robust health-care exchange. Ezra Klein calls it the most important part of health-care reform. In fact, I'll let him take it from here.
11. Disclose the value of employer health-care plans, it's a form of compensation after all.
And, finally...
Paying for it all...
1. Carbon Tax. For the dreamer in all of us.
2. Super-wealth surcharge tax. Why should people who make $25 million a year pay the same rate as someone who makes $250,000? Half of $25 million is still $12.5 million, that's enough, seriously. Besides, using the wealth of the uber-wealthy to make INVESTMENTS is what we are all about (Americans I mean, not socialists--well, us too).
3. Tax the gold-plated health plans. It might discourage over-treatment, and besides it's a form of compensation.
4. Close the loop-holes, all of 'em. I heard that Goldman Sachs paid less than one percent of their revenue in taxes, I mean, come on! At least pretend this shit is fair!
1. Loan forgiveness for primary care physicians. We need 'em, there aren't enough of them, and they aren't paid very much, especially in comparison with specialists. Pushing more MD students into primary care will have an effect on all of our health-care experiences. In addition, Medicare and Medicaid (which supplies 40% of all the health-care dollars spent in the US) could increase their payments. Some proposals suggest 5-10%.
2. F*CK the Blue Dogs. One of the 'concessions' demanded by the Chien de Azure was to force the public option to negotiate without the purchasing power of Medicare, thus giving lie to their purported goal of cutting costs. Now, they say that it's unfair to force private insurers to compete with an insurance plan that gets to negotiate with the power of Medicare. That's kind of true. It's also true that it's unfair for Americans to think they have insurance only to face rescission at the hands of some faceless corporate cost-saving algorithm or, what's worse, a cubicle-dwelling person who has to live with the knowledge that their job is to look for ways to dis-insure their fellow human beings.
3. The Employer Mandate. Gotta have one, without it you'll have (by some estimates) 40 million Americans losing their insurance to enter the exchange system where they'll have to buy their own insurance individually, which is incredibly inefficient. Where the line gets drawn is important. Small businesses will have to be excluded or brought in gradually to make it politically palatable. Those that don't offer coverage will be taxed, which will help subsidize the cost of the government covering them in the public plan.
4. Get rid of Medicare Advantage. So, President Bush thought it would be a good idea to subsidize private insurers offering Medicare, only problem, they aren't as efficient as Medicare. So, Bush decided to simply pay more for it, 13% more. That's just dumb.
5. Keep the Public Option! So, the idea behind the public option is that it will offer insurance plans that benefit from lower overhead costs (money isn't spent to subsidize huge bureaucracies to decide who not to cover and there isn't any profit) and the possibility of access to the purchasing power of Medicare.
6. Tax the high-end 'gold-platted' insurance policies. The revenue can help fund the costs associated with covering more people (many through the Public Option). Besides, these policies help promote over-treatment.
7. End rescission based on 'pre-existing conditions'. One extremely important regulation, so important, along with the public option, will likely mean that the health-insurance industry succeeds in pushing and individual mandate.
8. End the fee-for-service system. The worst part of the system could arguably be the fee-for-service, it promotes over-treatment and waste. There are various ideas out there. Doctors could work in teams and get lump-sum payments, this is how the Mayo and Cleveland Clinics works.
9. Expand Medicare from 65 to 55. No one is seriously talking about it, but it's the best non-idea out there. It's politically impossible (akin to arguing for Medicare-for-all), so that's that. Ezra Klein describes here.
10. Robust health-care exchange. Ezra Klein calls it the most important part of health-care reform. In fact, I'll let him take it from here.
11. Disclose the value of employer health-care plans, it's a form of compensation after all.
And, finally...
Paying for it all...
1. Carbon Tax. For the dreamer in all of us.
2. Super-wealth surcharge tax. Why should people who make $25 million a year pay the same rate as someone who makes $250,000? Half of $25 million is still $12.5 million, that's enough, seriously. Besides, using the wealth of the uber-wealthy to make INVESTMENTS is what we are all about (Americans I mean, not socialists--well, us too).
3. Tax the gold-plated health plans. It might discourage over-treatment, and besides it's a form of compensation.
4. Close the loop-holes, all of 'em. I heard that Goldman Sachs paid less than one percent of their revenue in taxes, I mean, come on! At least pretend this shit is fair!
Health-care Myths De-Bunked
Linda Bergthold does a great job parsing the truth from the fictions in the on-going health-care debate.
Big-Business America
The cubicle is as American as apple pie, or at least that's what CEPR says via Krugman today.
The illusion of America: small towns, small business entrepreneurs, everybody is middle class, meritocracy and all that jazz, it just ain't true, at least not anymore.
The illusion of America: small towns, small business entrepreneurs, everybody is middle class, meritocracy and all that jazz, it just ain't true, at least not anymore.
Forty Percent
Forty percent. That's how much of the health-care dollars spent in the US are spent by federal and state governments through Medicare and Medicaid. And, on average these are the expensive health-care patients, namely, the elderly and the poor.
We've all heard the 'keep the government away from my Medicare' story coming out of the public forums and to explain this seemingly inexplicable contradiction I suggest you spend an afternoon watching Fox News and then read Richard Hofstadter's The Paranoid Style in American Politics.
I suppose this applies to the 'birthers' as well. President Obama would always be illegitimate in some peoples' eyes - if it's not his birth certificate it would be the swearing in or some other nonsense issue.
The obvious contradiction of saying that the elderly and our veterans can have a government form of health-care insurance but that the rest of us cannot is so ridiculous as to be laughable.
We've all heard the 'keep the government away from my Medicare' story coming out of the public forums and to explain this seemingly inexplicable contradiction I suggest you spend an afternoon watching Fox News and then read Richard Hofstadter's The Paranoid Style in American Politics.
I suppose this applies to the 'birthers' as well. President Obama would always be illegitimate in some peoples' eyes - if it's not his birth certificate it would be the swearing in or some other nonsense issue.
The obvious contradiction of saying that the elderly and our veterans can have a government form of health-care insurance but that the rest of us cannot is so ridiculous as to be laughable.
Do we need a new Fairness Doctrine?
As I was watching the Daily Show and Rachel Maddow last night, my always simmering rage at the Republican echo chamber grew and grew.
As I watched President Obama celebrate the new GI-Bill I thought, "this is Roosevelt-level Presidential leadership, but the 'pro-military' right-wing of the Republican Party will likely never even hear about the new GI-Bill." I guess it's the Dems fault, they should talk about it, but would it get coverage? It gets coverage by Rachel, but Fox would never cover it, what then about the others? Is it the media's fault - the blood-in-the-water / conflict-sells / 24-hours-to-fill / he-said-she-said mainstream media?
With a new Fairness Doctrine Fox News would be out of business, CNN wouldn't change that much, MSNBC wouldn't change much, just Keith, maybe Rachel. Even a modified Fairness Doctrine would be better than what we have now.
As I watched President Obama celebrate the new GI-Bill I thought, "this is Roosevelt-level Presidential leadership, but the 'pro-military' right-wing of the Republican Party will likely never even hear about the new GI-Bill." I guess it's the Dems fault, they should talk about it, but would it get coverage? It gets coverage by Rachel, but Fox would never cover it, what then about the others? Is it the media's fault - the blood-in-the-water / conflict-sells / 24-hours-to-fill / he-said-she-said mainstream media?
With a new Fairness Doctrine Fox News would be out of business, CNN wouldn't change that much, MSNBC wouldn't change much, just Keith, maybe Rachel. Even a modified Fairness Doctrine would be better than what we have now.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Was it Walter???
Slate poses the question, was it Walter or was it the Fairness Doctrine? An interesting question in my book. I gotta feel like it was the Doctrine plus the mustache plus the company on the survey, but an interesting post-obit piece nonetheless.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Really?!
Ok, so, there is an excruciating piece in the Atlantic this month. Last month was a great article about a 70+ year Harvard psych study (which I may still write about), but this month is something wholly different. Check it out. I'm going to write about it soon.
Blood in the street? Well, no BBQ for you.
I think it's weird that the only action that the administration has taken against Iran is to rescind its invitation to a July 4th BBQ.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Who would have thought it, Nixon is shockingly disgusting, even now
He did it again. Nixon is still shockingly disgusting. The NYT reports that Nixon believed abortion was necessary in cases of rape and interracial relationships. Yes, that's right RAPE and interracial relationships. These are equivalent in Nixon's eyes. I mean, I knew he was a racist, but damn.
WSJ reports on Iran's use of European Electronic Surveillance
WSJ has an interesting story about how European technology was purchased by the Islamic regime to censor the Internet and spy on computer users. Seems to me that this is why we need robust trade restrictions against regimes like Iran, North Korea, Burma, etc.
Also thought it interesting that the regime implemented the spying and censoring software under the auspices of preventing pornography.
Also thought it interesting that the regime implemented the spying and censoring software under the auspices of preventing pornography.
Nate Silver takes on the impact of $ on the public option
Nate Silver posts an interesting piece on the intersection between special interest money and political support for the public option. The conclusion is pretty obvious (more money equals less support) but the graph is cool. Like all these debates, it's interesting to ask, 'what came first, the position or the cash?'
6 Degrees of Wing-Nuttery
Ezra Klein has an interesting take on Steven Hill's proposal for a randomly selected group of California citizens to re-write the state's constitution. Sounds like a good idea unless they all select Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh...
Monday, June 22, 2009
Health-care: Ezra on Stein's Law
Ezra Klein posted an interesting (if a little wonky) piece in the WaPo today about health-care costs and the choices we face as a nation... here is about half of the post, it's good:
The system is currently biased toward the worst form of cost control: rationing by income. Every year, we contain costs by quietly letting 2 million or so more people fall into the ranks of the uninsured. And why not? It does not require an act of Congress. It does not require a war with a powerful interest group. The same cannot be said for cutting provider payments, implementing comparative effectiveness research, founding a public plan or bargaining with pharmaceutical companies. And so the system, which prefers to avoid conflict, prefers letting people lose their coverage to changing how providers practice medicine, because letting people lose their coverage does not require conflict. It's government. As Tom Geoghegan has said, it likes the quiet life.
In a Stein's Law world, we admit that the day of reckoning is imminent. The question is how we'd like it to look. And I'd prefer that the system not be quietly biased toward saving money on the backs of individual people as opposed to providers. Our incentives have gotten a bit insane when you need 60 votes in the Senate to let Medicare bargain down prescription drug prices but no one ever needs to approve a 10 million rise in the ranks of the uninsured. If we agree that hard choices are imminent, we should also be able to agree that there's a utility in setting up incentives for Congress to make them well.
Healthcare: Texas Style
Amazing story from New Yorker earlier this month on the incentives behind the rising healthcare costs. Story through the lens of McAllen, TX, a small Texas town that boasts one of the highest healthcare costs in the nation. It's well worth the read.
Monday, June 1, 2009
Fingerprinting at Gamestop
Via David Sirota @Nerdivore: Broward Co., FL (yes, that Broward Co.) is collecting thumb prints of people returning video games. Sounds like a bad joke, sort of creepy. Can't imagine that there is anything nefarious possible, but the idea definitely makes me a little uncomfortable.
Friday, April 3, 2009
Thank you Iowa!
I take back all the bad things I might have ever said about Iowa.
Be Brave. Be Wise. Be Compassionate.
Be Brave. Be Wise. Be Compassionate.
Friday, March 27, 2009
The Danger of Homophily
Yesterday, I ruminated on the ever-increasing degree of modern homophily and how that might wipe away the "overexposure" argument against allowing a President a lot of face time on television. Today, I want to write about how our modern degree of homophily (or self-segregation) impacts our political discourse and culture.
One of the ugly effects of self-segregation is extremism. Harvard Prof and Obama advisor, Cass Sunstein, writes a lot about how people become extreme, and one of his most interesting findings is that surrounding yourself with like-minded people will squelch diversity of thought and push normally moderate individuals toward extreme positions. I recently read about an experiment he performed in Colorado where he recruited a group of self-identified liberals to discuss politics amongst themselves for a day and followed that with a group of self-identified conservatives to do the same. His findings: spending time with like-minded people led the group to become intolerant of diversity and increasingly extreme in their opinions. This makes sense if you've ever talked with someone who watches Lou Dobbs or listens to Rush Limbaugh every day. When we lose access to the "other side" we become intolerant and extreme. Sunstein found the same thing among our impartial and enlightened class of judges. He found that three-judge panels that were all-Republican appointments became more radical in their thinking, as did panels of three-judge Democratic appointments.
Now consider Congress for a moment. Over the last three decades the Congress has become increasingly polarized and our political debates more partisan. Each caucus increasingly ideologically homogeneous signaling a parlimentarization of Congress. This, I believe is no accident. At the same time that we have increasingly segregated ourselves in communities of like-minded people and have increasingly adhered to a smaller and smaller number of sources for new information we have also seen a move toward polarization, partisanship, intolerance, and extremism (this may be especially true of those of us that primarily use the Internet for information and are therefore potential victims of cyberbalkanization--I know that I for one have a daily new and blog loop that rarely includes more than one or two conservatives).
This may even be true of class, as we have created more and more million dollar zip codes, keeping up with the Joneses has become truly unprecedented in scale and scope. How much is too much? It's a cultural measure and when you're only surrounded by extreme wealth it redefines "extreme". All of a sudden a Ponzi-scheme or "accounting irregularities" doesn't look so bad. It's the psychology of the bubble, but maybe the bubble is bigger than we think. Maybe the bubble isn't just about housing prices or tech stocks but about the bubbles that we have all moved into where all you can hear is the echo of agreement.
Homophily and the echo chamber that you, I, and many of our fellow citizens reside in, may be one of the most dangerous aspects of our modern cultural life. I think this may be more serious for the right-wing simply because of their potential psychological predisposition toward authoritarianism (think John Dean's Conservatives without Conscience or Chris Hedges' American Fascists). Then again how soon we forget Mr. Lenin, Mr. Mao, and Mr. Castro.
We can often see the danger among other cultures in other lands, and we are all-too-eager to declare their lack of open debate dangerous, but we are not so eager to contemplate on our own polarization. And then as stories often do, everything changes, maybe. And in comes President Obama, seeing that self-segregation and calling it out as what it is, un-American. His call for a renewed spirit of shared responsibility and "bi-partisanship", and his reawakening of the common good is a repudiation of the culture wars as much as it is an indictment of homophily. The question is, will his administration back the rhetoric with policy? One good sign is that Cass Sunstein has become the regulatory czar of the Obama Administration, my only concern is that his theories of "Nudges" and "Constitutional Minimalism" suggest he may aim too low, but then again that might just prove his point.
Be Brave. Be Wise. Be Compassionate.
One of the ugly effects of self-segregation is extremism. Harvard Prof and Obama advisor, Cass Sunstein, writes a lot about how people become extreme, and one of his most interesting findings is that surrounding yourself with like-minded people will squelch diversity of thought and push normally moderate individuals toward extreme positions. I recently read about an experiment he performed in Colorado where he recruited a group of self-identified liberals to discuss politics amongst themselves for a day and followed that with a group of self-identified conservatives to do the same. His findings: spending time with like-minded people led the group to become intolerant of diversity and increasingly extreme in their opinions. This makes sense if you've ever talked with someone who watches Lou Dobbs or listens to Rush Limbaugh every day. When we lose access to the "other side" we become intolerant and extreme. Sunstein found the same thing among our impartial and enlightened class of judges. He found that three-judge panels that were all-Republican appointments became more radical in their thinking, as did panels of three-judge Democratic appointments.
Now consider Congress for a moment. Over the last three decades the Congress has become increasingly polarized and our political debates more partisan. Each caucus increasingly ideologically homogeneous signaling a parlimentarization of Congress. This, I believe is no accident. At the same time that we have increasingly segregated ourselves in communities of like-minded people and have increasingly adhered to a smaller and smaller number of sources for new information we have also seen a move toward polarization, partisanship, intolerance, and extremism (this may be especially true of those of us that primarily use the Internet for information and are therefore potential victims of cyberbalkanization--I know that I for one have a daily new and blog loop that rarely includes more than one or two conservatives).
This may even be true of class, as we have created more and more million dollar zip codes, keeping up with the Joneses has become truly unprecedented in scale and scope. How much is too much? It's a cultural measure and when you're only surrounded by extreme wealth it redefines "extreme". All of a sudden a Ponzi-scheme or "accounting irregularities" doesn't look so bad. It's the psychology of the bubble, but maybe the bubble is bigger than we think. Maybe the bubble isn't just about housing prices or tech stocks but about the bubbles that we have all moved into where all you can hear is the echo of agreement.
Homophily and the echo chamber that you, I, and many of our fellow citizens reside in, may be one of the most dangerous aspects of our modern cultural life. I think this may be more serious for the right-wing simply because of their potential psychological predisposition toward authoritarianism (think John Dean's Conservatives without Conscience or Chris Hedges' American Fascists). Then again how soon we forget Mr. Lenin, Mr. Mao, and Mr. Castro.
We can often see the danger among other cultures in other lands, and we are all-too-eager to declare their lack of open debate dangerous, but we are not so eager to contemplate on our own polarization. And then as stories often do, everything changes, maybe. And in comes President Obama, seeing that self-segregation and calling it out as what it is, un-American. His call for a renewed spirit of shared responsibility and "bi-partisanship", and his reawakening of the common good is a repudiation of the culture wars as much as it is an indictment of homophily. The question is, will his administration back the rhetoric with policy? One good sign is that Cass Sunstein has become the regulatory czar of the Obama Administration, my only concern is that his theories of "Nudges" and "Constitutional Minimalism" suggest he may aim too low, but then again that might just prove his point.
Be Brave. Be Wise. Be Compassionate.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Ruminating on Homophily and Selling the President's Message
Homophily means simply that people have a tendency to surround themselves with people similar to themselves. This near-universal tendency is amplified to an extreme extent by our modern culture and technology dominated lives. This doesn't JUST refer to race, language, ethnicity or nationality, although they are clearly the most obvious examples, and it doesn't just refer to residential segregation, although that is probably the most recognized form. It's grown to a true phenomenon, as Robert Samuelson observed in a column called The 'Big Sort': The New Segregation. This cultural cocooning means that the modern American can realistically expect to almost NEVER encounter an opinion or lifestyle that disagrees with them. Whether it's your news source (ESPN, NYTimes, CNN, Fox, CBN, PerezHilton.com, etc.) or religion (think Utah or Ave Maria, FL), whatever your world view happens to be, you can continually reinforce it.
Perhaps it's the modern media, the ease with which we can find our comforting sources of information and the ease with which we can filter anything that might upset us. Whatever the reason or source the phenomenon came to mind while watching the President's Online Townhall today. I silently wondered whether the President might become overexposed, I also wondered if this constant campaigning is a good thing. To the first question I decided that given the extreme modern homophily we experience it is likely very unlikely that the President will experience overexposure. More likely, the juxtaposition of a President out and about in many situations (Mr. Obama) to a President you almost never saw except standing in one of four interchangeable sets (you know the one with the flags, or the one in the Oval Office, or the Rose Garden, or the screen with various aphorisms and political catch phrases plastered across it) likely communicates a narrative of a President who is in actively pursuing solutions to our myriad problems. It also meets the American people where they are, online or watching The Tonight Show or ESPN or 60 Minutes. Overexposure implies that people will tire of seeing the President (if they see him more than once and for more than a few minutes at any one time to begin with). There used to be this notion of keeping the President away from the media to make those few communications more powerful, but our modern electorate doesn't tune in like it once did and even if you count the echo effect that a rare appearance might generate, it won't communicate with the persuadables, those who are voters but don't follow politics or the news very often.
As to the other point, the constant campaign. Every President thinks about re-election and uses it as a guide to their actions and has done so forever. It's a good thing so long as it doesn't mean a President begins to lead from behind and follow public opinion like a lap dog looking for it's next bone to chew on. And I really don't think you can say that about this President, not yet at least. What might be problematic is when you're campaigning without an opponent. Which the President is doing right now, I mean, how can you be the good guy when there is no bad guy? It's hard, and bipartisanship, or at least the effort toward bipartisanship, is necessary to keep your poll numbers high among independents and moderates which gives you political capital (ideally at least). Maybe that's why the effort to tempt the Rush into the ring. What really might turn the stomach is when it's their guy (or gal) in the office and they're doing a good job of it, that's what makes the blood boil.
Be Brave. Be Wise. Be Compassionate.
Perhaps it's the modern media, the ease with which we can find our comforting sources of information and the ease with which we can filter anything that might upset us. Whatever the reason or source the phenomenon came to mind while watching the President's Online Townhall today. I silently wondered whether the President might become overexposed, I also wondered if this constant campaigning is a good thing. To the first question I decided that given the extreme modern homophily we experience it is likely very unlikely that the President will experience overexposure. More likely, the juxtaposition of a President out and about in many situations (Mr. Obama) to a President you almost never saw except standing in one of four interchangeable sets (you know the one with the flags, or the one in the Oval Office, or the Rose Garden, or the screen with various aphorisms and political catch phrases plastered across it) likely communicates a narrative of a President who is in actively pursuing solutions to our myriad problems. It also meets the American people where they are, online or watching The Tonight Show or ESPN or 60 Minutes. Overexposure implies that people will tire of seeing the President (if they see him more than once and for more than a few minutes at any one time to begin with). There used to be this notion of keeping the President away from the media to make those few communications more powerful, but our modern electorate doesn't tune in like it once did and even if you count the echo effect that a rare appearance might generate, it won't communicate with the persuadables, those who are voters but don't follow politics or the news very often.
As to the other point, the constant campaign. Every President thinks about re-election and uses it as a guide to their actions and has done so forever. It's a good thing so long as it doesn't mean a President begins to lead from behind and follow public opinion like a lap dog looking for it's next bone to chew on. And I really don't think you can say that about this President, not yet at least. What might be problematic is when you're campaigning without an opponent. Which the President is doing right now, I mean, how can you be the good guy when there is no bad guy? It's hard, and bipartisanship, or at least the effort toward bipartisanship, is necessary to keep your poll numbers high among independents and moderates which gives you political capital (ideally at least). Maybe that's why the effort to tempt the Rush into the ring. What really might turn the stomach is when it's their guy (or gal) in the office and they're doing a good job of it, that's what makes the blood boil.
Be Brave. Be Wise. Be Compassionate.
A Phenomenally Better Commentary on the Geithner Plan
So, this is a much better commentary than the one I provided today.
It's a live Discussion between Felix Salmon, James Kwak, Brad DeLong, and Mark Thoma.
Link.
Be Brave. Be Wise. Be Compassionate.
It's a live Discussion between Felix Salmon, James Kwak, Brad DeLong, and Mark Thoma.
Link.
Be Brave. Be Wise. Be Compassionate.
The Geithner Plan
The 24-hour corporate media has been blasting a lot of hate Sec. Geithner's way. Every story needs a villain and Mr. Geithner's charisma problem may have ensured it was his head on the chopping block. It's unfair and lazy, but since when has that mattered much.
There are essentially three options.
1. "Nationalization" - this isn't really an option, you can't do it, the job is just too big. The US banking system is too centralized; the twenty largest banks in the US hold something like 90% of all deposits. It would take thousands of FDIC bureaucrats to take over just a fraction of those banks; it's just not realistic, at least not now. If it happened, it would probably go like this, Friday the bank is taken over, not just one bank but all, you have to do them all at one time because if you do it one-by-one the ensuing panic on other banks would be disastrous. So you close down and put them into receivership, all the good parts you would sell immediately and the bad parts you would place into a asset fund managed by professionals who sell the "toxic assets" piece-by-piece and try to get the best price possible. This is what happened with the savings and loan crisis in the 1980s and 1990s. A Resolution Trust Corporation was created to handle the resulting "bad assets" and they were sold off piece-by-piece. The problem is one of scale, this is problem is too big, we're talking the ENTIRE US BANKING SYSTEM, or close enough to that to make "nationalization" fundamentally untenable. Something similar also happened in Japan and Scandinavia in the 1990s. Japan did a piecemeal capital infusion program that kept insolvent banks alive which prevented consumer and investor confidence from returning and created "zombie banks" that were no longer really alive without their infusions from the Japanese government. Scandinavia did a temporary nationalization that worked very effectively, and if the American economy was the size of the Swedish economy we might be able to do that now, but it's not, so we can't.
2. "Let 'em Fail" - Again, an option that isn't really an option. You can't let them fail, we would cease to have an economy, literally.
3. "Something Else" - The only real choice. Keep the banks alive, at least the ones that cannot fail because we can't effectively manage their "nationalization" or bankruptcy. The FDIC has been closing and selling banks dozens of times over the last few months, but we can't do that with Citi or Bank of America. Like I said earlier, you'd have to do it at one time to prevent a panic and then you'd have to hope there is enough private capital to buy the banks and enough bureaucrats to do it. We've effectively kept the banks alive by providing direct capital infusions. There are a lot of problems in doing this, too many to really list, but needless to say this cannot be the sole solution mainly because it does nothing to address the true anchor on the banks balance sheets, toxic assets. No one wants to deal with a bank that has an unknowable balance sheet. The market for housing went illiquid, meaning you cannot sell into the market, so a house that was worth $200,000 now appears to be worth only $100,000 because no one is buying. A loss of 50% of a banks assets (mortgages, mortgage backed securities, etc.) or even 20% can destroy a bank, making it insolvent. So, in addition to preventing failure by increasing capital ($250 Billion from TARP and a whole bunch more from the Federal Reserve) you have to do something about the toxic assets, but what? If you nationalized you would just hold on to them until the market improved, but we cannot nationalize on a scale that would make this effective, so we need to do something else. We need to remove them from the balance sheets of banks, you need to buy them. The problem is in determining their worth. How much is it all worth? No one knows. The banks, mostly because they have to, argues the assets are close to 100% of their previous value, however, the market disagrees. So, the biggest debate is how much to pay. If you pay the market value, the banks will lose too much and stay insolvent, accomplishing nothing. So, you need to get the other money in the economy (private asset management firms) to get to buy the assets at a high enough value to keep the banks solvent, but low enough to ensure a they make money (so they'll actually buy them).
So, that is what the Geithner Plan does. It ensures the purchase, guaranteeing that a private asset management firm that purchases these toxic assets cannot lose more than their initial investment, any further loses are the taxpayers. Any profit belongs to the firm. It could work. Those, like Dr. Krugman and others, that disagree think that banks won't sell the assets at a low enough value to ensure that firms can buy them and sell them at a profit, meaning the tax payers will have to bail out the firms and not really solving anything. Or, the banks just won't sell, again, not solving anything. Those who favor a Swedish "nationalization" need to acknowledge that it's a hard lift and has as many unknowns as the Geithner Plan. That being said, if the auction does not work (the Geithner Plan calls for an auction to sell off the toxic assets) the "Swedish" plan can go forward.
Another fact to consider is that to enact the "Swedish" plan we would need to determine which banks need to be placed into receivership ("stress-test") and we need to staff up to take over the banks (which takes a few months). So, if we were to enact a Swedish model, we wouldn't tell anyone and we would have to "pretend" we were going with another option that removes the assets.
So, in closing, the Geithner Plan does a good job, it addresses the toxic assets in a way that gets private asset management firms to bite, and hopefully bite hard enough to get banks to sell. That is the big "IF" of the plan, it can work, but only "IF" private firms buy high enough for the banks and low enough to sell off for a profit. The risk of the firms buying too low (so low the banks don't sell or if they do the firms cannot sell) means we are at a great risk of ensuring undercapitalized banks, maybe even insolvent, "zombie banks". However, the shadow banking system (FDIC) might be preparing in an undisclosed location for the kind of massive intervention that a "Swedish" solution would require.
Be Brave. Be Wise. Be Compassionate.
There are essentially three options.
1. "Nationalization" - this isn't really an option, you can't do it, the job is just too big. The US banking system is too centralized; the twenty largest banks in the US hold something like 90% of all deposits. It would take thousands of FDIC bureaucrats to take over just a fraction of those banks; it's just not realistic, at least not now. If it happened, it would probably go like this, Friday the bank is taken over, not just one bank but all, you have to do them all at one time because if you do it one-by-one the ensuing panic on other banks would be disastrous. So you close down and put them into receivership, all the good parts you would sell immediately and the bad parts you would place into a asset fund managed by professionals who sell the "toxic assets" piece-by-piece and try to get the best price possible. This is what happened with the savings and loan crisis in the 1980s and 1990s. A Resolution Trust Corporation was created to handle the resulting "bad assets" and they were sold off piece-by-piece. The problem is one of scale, this is problem is too big, we're talking the ENTIRE US BANKING SYSTEM, or close enough to that to make "nationalization" fundamentally untenable. Something similar also happened in Japan and Scandinavia in the 1990s. Japan did a piecemeal capital infusion program that kept insolvent banks alive which prevented consumer and investor confidence from returning and created "zombie banks" that were no longer really alive without their infusions from the Japanese government. Scandinavia did a temporary nationalization that worked very effectively, and if the American economy was the size of the Swedish economy we might be able to do that now, but it's not, so we can't.
2. "Let 'em Fail" - Again, an option that isn't really an option. You can't let them fail, we would cease to have an economy, literally.
3. "Something Else" - The only real choice. Keep the banks alive, at least the ones that cannot fail because we can't effectively manage their "nationalization" or bankruptcy. The FDIC has been closing and selling banks dozens of times over the last few months, but we can't do that with Citi or Bank of America. Like I said earlier, you'd have to do it at one time to prevent a panic and then you'd have to hope there is enough private capital to buy the banks and enough bureaucrats to do it. We've effectively kept the banks alive by providing direct capital infusions. There are a lot of problems in doing this, too many to really list, but needless to say this cannot be the sole solution mainly because it does nothing to address the true anchor on the banks balance sheets, toxic assets. No one wants to deal with a bank that has an unknowable balance sheet. The market for housing went illiquid, meaning you cannot sell into the market, so a house that was worth $200,000 now appears to be worth only $100,000 because no one is buying. A loss of 50% of a banks assets (mortgages, mortgage backed securities, etc.) or even 20% can destroy a bank, making it insolvent. So, in addition to preventing failure by increasing capital ($250 Billion from TARP and a whole bunch more from the Federal Reserve) you have to do something about the toxic assets, but what? If you nationalized you would just hold on to them until the market improved, but we cannot nationalize on a scale that would make this effective, so we need to do something else. We need to remove them from the balance sheets of banks, you need to buy them. The problem is in determining their worth. How much is it all worth? No one knows. The banks, mostly because they have to, argues the assets are close to 100% of their previous value, however, the market disagrees. So, the biggest debate is how much to pay. If you pay the market value, the banks will lose too much and stay insolvent, accomplishing nothing. So, you need to get the other money in the economy (private asset management firms) to get to buy the assets at a high enough value to keep the banks solvent, but low enough to ensure a they make money (so they'll actually buy them).
So, that is what the Geithner Plan does. It ensures the purchase, guaranteeing that a private asset management firm that purchases these toxic assets cannot lose more than their initial investment, any further loses are the taxpayers. Any profit belongs to the firm. It could work. Those, like Dr. Krugman and others, that disagree think that banks won't sell the assets at a low enough value to ensure that firms can buy them and sell them at a profit, meaning the tax payers will have to bail out the firms and not really solving anything. Or, the banks just won't sell, again, not solving anything. Those who favor a Swedish "nationalization" need to acknowledge that it's a hard lift and has as many unknowns as the Geithner Plan. That being said, if the auction does not work (the Geithner Plan calls for an auction to sell off the toxic assets) the "Swedish" plan can go forward.
Another fact to consider is that to enact the "Swedish" plan we would need to determine which banks need to be placed into receivership ("stress-test") and we need to staff up to take over the banks (which takes a few months). So, if we were to enact a Swedish model, we wouldn't tell anyone and we would have to "pretend" we were going with another option that removes the assets.
So, in closing, the Geithner Plan does a good job, it addresses the toxic assets in a way that gets private asset management firms to bite, and hopefully bite hard enough to get banks to sell. That is the big "IF" of the plan, it can work, but only "IF" private firms buy high enough for the banks and low enough to sell off for a profit. The risk of the firms buying too low (so low the banks don't sell or if they do the firms cannot sell) means we are at a great risk of ensuring undercapitalized banks, maybe even insolvent, "zombie banks". However, the shadow banking system (FDIC) might be preparing in an undisclosed location for the kind of massive intervention that a "Swedish" solution would require.
Be Brave. Be Wise. Be Compassionate.
One Year Out
It's been a rough year. The urgency of the moment and the complex nature of the challenges we face and the fact that I've been unemployed for a couple months means I am coming out of retirement.
Be Brave. Be Wise. Be Compassionate.
Be Brave. Be Wise. Be Compassionate.
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