Krugman on Financial Crisis

Taming the Beast

America came out of the Great Depression with a pretty effective financial safety net, based on a fundamental quid pro quo: the government stood ready to rescue banks if they got in trouble, but only on the condition that those banks accept regulation of the risks they were allowed to take.

Over time, however, many of the roles traditionally filled by regulated banks were taken over by unregulated institutions — the “shadow banking system,” which relied on complex financial arrangements to bypass those safety regulations.

Now, the shadow banking system is facing the 21st-century equivalent of the wave of bank runs that swept America in the early 1930s. And the government is rushing in to help, with hundreds of billions from the Federal Reserve, and hundreds of billions more from government-sponsored institutions like Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Home Loan Banks.

Given the risks to the economy if the financial system melts down, this rescue mission is justified. But you don’t have to be an economic radical, or even a vocal reformer like Representative Barney Frank, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, to see that what’s happening now is the quid without the quo.

Last week Robert Rubin, the former Treasury secretary, declared that Mr. Frank is right about the need for expanded regulation. Mr. Rubin put it clearly: If Wall Street companies can count on being rescued like banks, then they need to be regulated like banks.

Makes sense to me.

There's something that doesn't make a lot of sense to me, and hasn't for a long time. Government regulates in order to protect the public, in large part because companies make decisions to improve their profit margin, not to "establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity." That's the job of (the people as) government. The job of a corporation is to make money. As long as corporations have no social conscience, which is a rant for a different day, as long as corporations are tasked in this world with obligations other than providing for the common defense, promoting the general welfare, etc., they *need* to be regulated by the government.

So, whenever someone comes along and says we should deregulate some market somewhere, I think a) that's asking the government to abdicate its responsibility, and b) deregulation never seems to accomplish the goal my typical deregulation afficionado touts, which is something along the lines of better lives for all of us if only we'd let "the market" work. Well, "the market" never behaves the way they taught us in high school economics (yes, we used to have econ classes in high school. And civics in junior high. How 'bout that?) because "the market" is never, ever, the "perfect" market that you use in economics class hypotheticals.

I want environmental regulation of companies (hi, EPA). I want regulations that ensure I get paid overtime when I work overtime. I want regulations that protect my pension. I want regulation that protects my person (hi, OSHA!) from harm and I want regulations that protect my human dignity as well. Business is the business of America, but the real business of America is protecting the common good and promoting the general welfare. *That* is the mission statement of America, friends and neighbors.

In the broader social sense, the corporation is just a tool to achieve that goal. When properly regulated.

Global Warming Killing Antarctica

Cracking up: the ice shelf as big as Northern Ireland

"In this case things are happening more rapidly than we thought. We didn't really understand how sensitive these ice shelves are to climate change," said Dr Vaughan, who predicted in the 1990s that it would take 30 years for the ice shelf to break up.

Ice shelves form along the coasts and, because the ice is already floating on water, their disintegration does not affect sea levels. However, scientists believe that their rapid disappearance could lead to the faster movement into the ocean of the massive, land-based ice sheets and glaciers – which do raise sea levels.

The Wilkins ice shelf covers an area of about 5,282 square miles and satellite images taken at the end of February revealed that the rapid disintegration began after an iceberg the size of the Isle of Man broke away from its western edge.

New Record for Most Distant Object in Sky Visible to Naked Eye

Naked-Eye Gamma Ray Burst.

A powerful gamma ray burst detected March 19th by NASA's Swift satellite has shattered the record for the most distant object that could be seen with the naked eye.

One summer when I was in undergrad I did astrophysics research, specifically, working with data on high-energy particles emitted by black hole candidates. A high energy particle triggers a shower of lesser-energy particles when it hits the atmosphere and interacts with the particles that make up the atmosphere, and it all cascades farther and farther (if energetic enough) until the shower eventually propagates down to the ground. In general, the higher the energy of the incoming particle, the higher the energy of the particles in the shower hitting your detector on the ground. Plus, the more atmosphere the shower is propagating through, the more energy is used up.

So, the highest energy particles that come in almost horizontally have cascaded through the most atmosphere to get to you, and thus were really REALLY high energy before they started, and thus might be from a black hole.

I worked on processing those data measurements calculating the incident angle of the initial particle, to then determine if it was from a black hole candidate. Fun stuff. I love science.

Arthur C. Clarke, dead at 90

No!

Sci-fi guru Arthur C. Clarke dies at 90

Tent Cities in America Today

Bushburbs growing as more lose homes

Politicizing the DOJ

Christ, how are we even going to *start* cleaning this mess up?

Down the Politicized Rabbit Hole

Wanted: Good Biography of Madame Chiang Kai-Shek

After reading this intro to On Soong Mei-ling, who later became Madame Chiang Kai-Shek, at IntlLawGrrls, I need a good biography of her that really gets into the history of Taiwan, too.

Internet, recommend!

Choosing to do...

From Crooks and Liars, from The Daily Show:

Jon Stewart and Senior White House Correspondent John Oliver discuss Bush’s recent trip to Africa.

STEWART: It’s hard for you to accept that the President has done something admirable?

OLIVER: Well, it’s just [stammers] What’s his angle? He’s not running for reelection. There’s no ulterior military objective. He’s got no chance of becoming King of Africa. What the HELL is going on?

STEWART: Maybe he’s just trying to do something good in a difficult part of the world.

OLIVER: No! No! That makes it worse! Over the past seven excruciating years I’ve come to terms with the President being incompetent. The fact that we now know that he’s capable of doing good all along and has simply chosen not to, that really burns!

Yeah, it does.

This year's Dem race

I love it, we got a real live horse race, people. Now, that's reality TV worth watching. (I suppose if I had TV reception I'd feel otherwise, knowing me, and the crass, superficial reporting the U.S. seems so prone to broadcast.)

The news on the radio just mentioned something about folks in Rhode Island being thrilled to actually be relevant. That's how elections should be, neighbors. Every vote, in every state. Relevant.

Hate, Hate Speech, and Hate Crimes

Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez on fear and loathing of Latinos. In Hollywood, and everywhere else.

Here's Something I Don't Get

Don't all you people with iPods jammed in your ears want to know what's going on behind you?

I'm quite sure that if I can hear someone's iPod music as they walk past me, it's drowning out quite a bit of the ambient sound. What does that mean? It means you don't hear the car engine behind you. Or someone on a bicycle trying to get past you and saying "excuse me". Repeatedly. Or the serial killer skulking in the shadows, muttering to himself about the blue angels with bloody hooks for hands, as he waits for his chance. (Made you look!)

I don't know about everybody else, but when I'm walking around Boston, one of the walkingest towns around, I'm pretty keen on my safety, as a general rule, and that requires paying attention to sounds, as well as to sights.

I just don't get this urge people seem to have block off one of their senses as they run their errands.

Next thing you know, all the cool kids will be wearing blinders or something, and blocking off their peripheral vision. Why bother?

Global Warming and Antarctic Glaciers

Antarctic glaciers surge to ocean

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

Got a Great Piece of Male Privilege A Couple Weeks Ago

Being a feminist and having worked on sites like The 3rd WWWave (http://www.3rdwwwave.com), I get vitriol poured in my ear now and then (just like Hamlet's dad, only I'm not dead, although, on the Internet, can you really tell?).

A few weeks back, it was an email message addressed to "c*nts", describing all the ways in which women rule the world, topped off with the reminder that the author doesn't hate all women, just those women who think he's wrong.

Well, I'm one of those women. This person in his missive made a great many inaccurate assertions, broad sweeping statements to a one, and none of them substantiated:

1. A woman will be given a much lighter sentence than a man convicted of the same crime.

Not that I'm aware of. The federal sentencing guidelines (USSG), for example, do not distinguish by gender. Provide your data.

2. A woman can falsely accuse a man of rape or spousal abuse, and he'll be instantly presumed guilty; the law will by default take her side.

Alas, no, as first- and second-year law students get to learn. On the contrary, the woman is often unofficially placed on trial. If deemed "a slut", or otherwise "asking for it", and what c*nt isn't, you know, her attacker will go free and her life is ruined.

3. Women get everything in divorce settlements. Always.

Anything with "always" or "invariably" in a remark about the law is almost surely wrong. It's not at all uncommon these days for divorcing parties to sell the house and split the proceeds. That said, yes, women are more likely to be presumptively the proper parent for primary custody of children (and the attendant child support - and where do you think child support goes, for Mom's trips to Tahiti? No, to support the child), even though, as women, we earn between 70 and 80 cents to you masculine dollar. Both of those facts can be connected to sexist assumptions about proper child-rearing roles and a woman's "place".

4. Women are overcompensated in sexual harrassment lawsuits-an immature joke or gesture does not entitle you to a ten million dollar settlement.

Provide your data. And while you're at it, how many women don't report harrassment (or worse) because they know the system is against them?

Consider this: Rapists in the ranks: Sexual assaults are frequent, and frequently ignored, in the armed services.

5. Girls get more attention in school than boys do.

Bullshit. Boys are so used to getting the bulk of the attention, that when teachers start actually treating boys and girls equally, boys perceive the situation incorrectly, and see that equal time as unequal. See, e.g., Tanenbaum, L. (1994, July 28). Hey, Teach! The Nation, 280-284.

6. TV sitcoms stereotype men as idiots.

Yes, they do seem to. You, as a man, should do something about it. Don't expect me to clean things up for you, that's just pandering to the stereotype if you do that, isn't it? How about starting by asking yourself why the childlike male and mommy-like female is such an enduring icon. Is your mother the only woman in the world, ever? Why?

7. Violence perpetuated by women against men is seen as acceptable.

Provide your data.


If women ran the world, would we have less representation in government, less money, be told we have to hide ourselves at night to be safe, be demonized by various religions, and all the other crap we alternately fight and put up with daily?

Waterboarding is Officially Torture

As if anyone but a Bush toady had doubts: U.N. says waterboarding should be prosecuted as torture

"I would have no problems with describing this practice as falling under the prohibition of torture," the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, told a news conference in Mexico City.

Arbour made her comment in response to a question about whether U.S. officials could be tried for the use of waterboarding that referred to CIA director Michael Hayden telling Congress on Tuesday his agency had used waterboarding on three detainees captured after the September 11 attacks.

Violators of the U.N. Convention against Torture should be prosecuted under the principle of 'universal jurisdiction' which allows countries to try accused war criminals from other nations, Arbour said.

We're right up there with Latin American dictatorships in the 70s and 80s. Yes, dictatorships. "Latin American dictatorships in the 1970s and 1980s were known to use waterboarding on political prisoners."

Yes, We Do Torture - Bonus! 9/11 Commission Corruption!

I. CIA admits waterboarding inmates

II. Ties Between White House, Sept 11 Chief