David Brooks’ silly season seems to have found an Indian Summer, as he goes on about his imaginary friends Mr. Bentham and Mr. Hume: If you put Mr. Bentham in charge of the government, he’d proceed with confidence. If you told him to solve a complicated issue like the global-warming problem, he’d gather the smartest [...]
Archive for the ‘Corruption’ Category
Role of Government
Posted in Corruption, Energy Policy, Health Care, Middle East on October 7, 2009 | 11 Comments »
Swiss Health
Posted in Corruption, Foreigners, Health Care on October 2, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Bit of a Swiss theme this week; first the Polanski drama, then the planted articles in the Times discussing Swiss health care. See, it isn’t so bad to do without the public option – the Swiss do just fine. That is quite correct: the Swiss have a better health care system than we have, and [...]
Tell Us What You Really Want
Posted in Corruption, Housing Crisis, Housing Policy, Meltdown on October 1, 2009 | 4 Comments »
Courtesy of Mike Konczal at Rortybomb (itself a thoughtful compilation of a variety of articles, especially this one from Interfluidity), this gem from the Mortgage Bankers Association: The centerpiece of MBA’s recommendation is the creation of a new line of mortgage-backed securities (MBS). Each security would have two components – a loan level guarantee provided by [...]
Olympics of Stupid
Posted in Basketball, China, Corruption, Football, Foreigners, Germany, Housing Policy, Labor Policy, Olympics, Soccer on September 30, 2009 | 10 Comments »
Not long after saying that health care was more important than lobbying for the Olympics, Barack Obama decided to make the trip to Copenhagen to lobby to put the 2016 Olympics in Chicago. On this one, here’s hoping he loses.
The World Upside Down
Posted in Corruption, Meltdown, Obama, Tim Geithner on September 24, 2009 | 4 Comments »
The Kansas Supreme Court has given, if not the green light, at least a very long yellow to people who want to try to drag out foreclosure processes with versions of the “show the note” strategy: [I]n the event that a mortgage loan somehow separates interests of the note and the deed of trust, with [...]
Turf War Run Wild
Posted in Corruption, Meltdown, Tim Geithner on September 23, 2009 | 11 Comments »
The FDIC is nearly out of cash, the victim of almost a hundred bank failures this year and a few particularly large ones last year. Now, that shouldn’t be too big of a problem (it may be a symptom of a problem) in and of itself; after all, the FDIC is a government agency, and [...]
Vulture in the Eye of the Beholder
Posted in Africa, Corruption, Finance, Foreigners on September 22, 2009 | 9 Comments »
Felix Salmon relays Johann Hari’s article in the Independent criticizing “vulture” funds: Would you ever march up to a destitute African who is shivering with Aids and demand he “pay back” tens of thousands of pounds he didn’t borrow – with interest? I only ask because this is in effect happening, here, in British and [...]
Swiss Principles
Posted in Corruption, Foreigners, Middle East, Transportation Policy on August 23, 2009 | 4 Comments »
When it came time for Switzerland to decide between an angry US Internal Revenue Service and its own constitution, the good people in Bern made the only decision they could: they forgot the details of the bank secrecy provision of their constitution and decided to turn over four thousand names of American UBS clients. Tax [...]
Killing Fannie
Posted in Corruption, Housing Crisis, Housing Policy on August 19, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Mike Konczal has been writing at Rortybomb and now Baseline about structural fixes to the housing market. I thought of his work when reading this Times article on the real estate appraisal business: On May 1, a sweeping change took effect that was meant to reduce the conflicts of interest in home appraisals while safeguarding [...]
Incentives
Posted in China, Corruption, George W. Bush, Meltdown, Obama on August 12, 2009 | 8 Comments »
Simon Johnson, over at Baseline: The reason real to worry about China, however, has very little to do with external balances, China’s dollar holdings, or even capital flows. It’s about productivity and rent-seeking. China mostly invests in activities that raise productivity, raising the amount of goods and services that they can produce. This could be manufacturing [...]
