Below is a piece on financial regulation from HPR alum Rahul Prabhakar ’09. Rahul is now a Fellow at the Glover Park Group in Washington D.C. ——————————————————————————————————————- Over the past month, the U.S. Congress has held a series of hearings to debate the Obama Administration’s proposal to overhaul the American financial regulatory structure. The fates of the SEC, CFTC, and ... Read More
Tolerance and hyperpowers History often remembers empires as power-hungry, violent aggressors that conquer at the expense of victim nations. In Day of Empire, Amy Chua uses case studies of empires of the past, present, and future (such as Rome, America, and potentially, countries like India) as well as failed “hyperpowers” (such as Nazi Germany) to challenge this understanding of empires ... Read More
Concerns over the role of the poll are misguided The high number of public opinion polls was impossible to miss during the 2008 election, and, though the horserace is on break, professional pollsters are keeping busy. Polling is no longer a part-time business, and a wide variety of opinion polls, covering everything from congressional and presidential job approval to health ... Read More
Daring to end homelessness While the recent collapse of the U.S. housing market has prompted a renewed debate about American homeownership and its future, the related topic of homelessness has remained largely ignored. Hundreds of thousands of citizens live lives of addiction and mental illness on the streets of American cities. On any given day, 900,000 people — including 200,000 ... Read More
GM has come forward this morning and announced that the only way they will survive is to be nationalized. That’s right, they are voluntarily asking to be taken over by the Department of the Treasury. This seems worrying, for a number of obvious reasons. If they’re incorporated into the government and that becomes the status quo, there’s a real risk ... Read More
The government has opened 20 criminal investigations into the TARP program. Bankers screwing people out of money? I never thought I’d see the day! Snark aside, honestly, what else would you expect? It was a large amount of money being dispensed with in a short time in a period of national emergency; it’s very easy to take advantage of that ... Read More
Every time I read a strategy memo for the next Republican party, I panic a little. It’s a sudden fear – oh no, what if they figure it out this time? – that quickly subsides, because usually the argument is poor enough that the party to which I happen to be illogically loyal has little to fear. But when intelligent ... Read More
New prospects for stable democracy Four years ago, the Iraqi national elections were riddled with fraudulent voting, sectarian boycotts, and insurgent attacks. Although the accomplishment of largely free and fair elections drew praise from onlookers around the world, the elections still suffered from violence and low turnout; this seemed to indicate how difficult, even impossible, the transition to democracy would ... Read More
The economic crisis strikes Main Street
Maritime piracy and the global economy
What Obama's election means for international relations
Here referring not to disdain of the volk, but rather to rule by elites. Obama’s presidency is going to confront a number of entrenched, very powerful elites who will clash in very significant ways, so I thought I’d take a stab at a quick rundown. Educated Elite: Easily the largest group here, but the least institutionally entrenched. Their sole institutional ... Read More
Over at my favored conservative haunt, Victor Davis Hanson argues that Obama, while posturing himself in opposition to the Bush economic record, is actually proposing “more of the same.” This requires Hanson to say that Bush’s primary economic sin, and the cause of the economic meltdown, was “reckless Keynesian spending.” But whatever one thinks of Bush’s spending practices, they had ... Read More
recently read an article by Bernard-Henri Levy in the New Republic on the financial crisis, which I highly recommend. There was one part I found highly affecting, which was the quotation, from a French historian, that “History is tragic.” The American Dream consists of a long, drawn-out rejection of this idea. When we look at the two presidential candidates, ... Read More
