James Taranto at the WSJ writes Best of the Web Today and occasionally adds a ruthlessly mocking section titled “Everything is Spinning Out of Control” (itself a snide poke at a dumb AP article, “Is Everything Seemingly Spinning Out of Control?”). Regardless, I’ve finally found evidence that everything is actually spinning out of control. Deepwater Horizon? War in the Koreas? [...]
Goldman Sachs has been making headlines (again) after charges were filed by the SEC alleging that the company sold a financial product whose components were decided on in part by Paulson & Co., a company who made bets in a hedge fund that the product would see losses, without disclosing this to investors and thereby creating a conflict of interest. [...]
Ezra Klein has a balanced, sympathetic interview with an anonymous Harvard grad (history and political philosophy, my kind of guy/girl) who worked for Goldman Sachs after being recruited at Harvard. The key paragraph, the one that allows Ezra to suggest that the Ivy-Wall St. pipeline is not all about following the money, is this one: Investment banking was never something [...]
Exorbitant compensation threatens the stability of the banking system
In a culture that often values boldness above all else, American politics is surprisingly allergic to big ideas. Despite the clamor over President Obama's health-care reform plan, it is important to remember that it proposes fairly incremental changes.
Twilight is big. Yes, I realize that that was not exactly an original observation nor a particularly timely one. However, I just wanted to posit that quite aside from the merits of Twilight as such (have neither read nor seen it), the cultural prominence of Twilight/vampires in general really does speak to the conservative trope that America is a “center-right [...]
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 [...]
Urban America Volume 36, Number 2, Summer 2009. Letter from the Editor The Ten-Year Plan IAN MERRIFIELD Daring to end homelessness The Future of Urban Education Tiffany wen and jyoti jasrasaria The impact of new innovation on urban school systems Cities Without Limits Chris danello and ashley fabrizio How long-term factors drive municipal economies A New Approach to a Chronic [...]
Chris, I fear, has read too much into my use of the word “reactionary.” I meant only to suggest that Republicans have gone with libertarianism over, say, Huckabee-ism or Olympia Snowe-ism, because they are reacting to Obama’s ambitious economic progressivism. This is exactly what we would expect from a minority party: the majority gets to lay out its agenda first, [...]
Goldman Sachs reported profits of $1.6 billion for the first quarter of 2009, and is hoping to put their newly demonstrated strength to use, by paying back their TARP money and getting that pesky federal government off their backs. Quick thoughts: In that quarter, how much have they taken in government money, either direct (TARP) or indirect (Government-financed payouts from [...]
Congressional campaigns hinge on local issues This year’s election season was a tough one for Republicans running for Congress. Throughout the summer, leads in national polls and in underlying dynamics allowed Democrats to shape the tenor of many races. Yet history shows that national advantage often transfers to the ballot box in unexpected ways. While the national political climate impacted [...]
