links for 2009-10-30

• FT.com / John Gapper – A three-way split is the most logical
  By insisting on the break-up of the ING Group into its banking and insurance divisions – and on it divesting its US direct savings arm – Ms Kroes set a welcome precedent this week. She made a troublesome too-big-to-fail institution shrink.

  The US, meanwhile, is joining the UK and others in proceeding in the opposite direction. Rather than making the Citigroups and Deutsche Banks of the world get smaller, they are bolstering them and preparing to deal with them next time they sink.

  As Terry Smith, chief executive of the broker Tullett Prebon and a former banking analyst, puts it, this is “like the designer of the Titanic arguing that the provision of extra lifeboats would solve the problem”.

  (tags: ing goldman_sachs banking investment recommended finance tbtf risk business gambling bailout crisis incentives regulation government)
• Asia, America, and Higher Ed | WBUR and NPR – On Point with Tom Ashbrook
  For many decades, through economic ups and downs, the United States has had one big consolation and wellspring of faith in the future: the second-to-none American system of higher education, with universities dominating the world in new research and new horizons.

  American higher ed is still second to none. But it’s stalled out in recession and cutbacks. And Asian higher education is storming to the fore. Billions and billions are being poured into universities in China and beyond. Giant ambitions. Giant resources.

  This hour, On Point: Rising Asia challenges the American university.

  (tags: asia usa education university college future china radio economics engineering technology)

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links for 2009-10-29

• The Death of Fun
  Suddenly, the garish burlesque of hair metal was rendered immediately irrelevant by grunge, and pop culture never looked back. The rarefied ’80s tendency by some artists to take cultural icons more seriously — Watchmen, The Dark Knight, Batman: Year One — was just the preamble to a new generation of brooding, tortured anti-heroes incapable of enjoying life — and, by extension, making the enjoyment of life seem childish.
  (tags: culture tv movies entertainment depravity 80s children innocence fun)

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links for 2009-10-28

• Bankers Facing Personal Liquidity Crises — New York Magazine
  Funding illiquid long-term investments by short-term borrowing—that is, having mismatched assets and liabilities—is the oldest financial trap of all. It took down Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, and now it is squeezing the bankers themselves. Even the rich can be repossessed.
  (tags: banking finance compensation bonuses crisis goldman_sachs)

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links for 2009-10-27

• John Gapper – Goldman should be allowed to fail
  So, if Goldman Sachs took on more risk when its equity was held by outsiders than with its partners’ own money, what can we expect now that the government implicitly accepts that it is “too big to fail”? Goldman has an even bigger incentive to risk other people’s money.
  (tags: goldman_sachs banking risk compensation bonuses government regulation business incentives moral_hazard)

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links for 2009-10-25

• China: The Recession's Real Winner – Fareed Zakaria
  China entered the crisis in an entirely different position. It was running a budget surplus and had been raising interest rates to tamp down excessive growth. Its banks had been reining in consumer spending and excessive credit. So when the crisis hit, the Chinese government could adopt textbook policies to jump-start growth. It could lower interest rates, raise government spending, ease up on credit, and encourage consumers to start spending. Having been disciplined during the fat years, Beijing could now ease up during the lean ones.
  (tags: china growth economics infrastructure policy stimulus crisis investment government)
• 50 Years of Space Exploration on Flickr – Photo Sharing!
  (tags: space exploration infographic history)
• At Great Lakes, Tom Hanks Gets Back To His Roots : NPR
  In a lively conversation with Scott Simon for the public TV series Backstage With …, Tom Hanks took on the perils — and pleasures — of fame. An hourlong version of the interview will be broadcast in January 2010 on many PBS stations.
  (tags: tom_hanks interview radio entertainment movies fun acting)

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links for 2009-10-22

• Whose Country? – Andrew Sullivan
  The English, lulled by their marination in American pop culture from infancy, and beguiled by the same language, can live out their days in this country never actually noting that it is an alien land – stranger than you might have ever imagined, crueler than you realized, but somehow also more inspiring than you ever thought possible….

  It struck me almost at once, if only in the music I heard all around me – and then in so many other linguistic, cultural, rhetorical, spiritual ways: white Americans do not realize how black they are.

  (tags: history andrew_sullivan race slavery buchanan racism black white usa culture england)
• Martin Wolf – How to manage the gigantic financial cuckoo in our nest
  Either we impose a credible threat of bankruptcy, or institutions we have to support are made safer, or, better, we have both of these. Open-ended insurance of weakly regulated institutions that take complex gambles is intolerable. We dare not return to business as usual. It is as simple – and brutal – as that.
  (tags: martin_wolf finance risk incentives greed government bailout crisis power regulation banking economics)
• Jane Mayer: The Risks Of A Remote-Controlled War : NPR
  Jane Mayer, a political journalist based in Washington, D.C., is a staff writer for The New Yorker, where she covers politics for the weekly magazine. In the October 26 issue, Mayer examines the ethics and controversies surrounding the CIA's covert drone program, in which remotely controlled, unmanned planes target terror suspects in Pakistan and elsewhere.

  Mayer writes that unlike the military's publicly acknowledged drone program in Afghanistan and Iraq — both official war zones — the CIA's campaign doesn't operate in support of U.S. troops on the ground. Instead it's a secret program, run partly by private contractors, that amounts to "targeted international killings by the state," in the words of one human-rights lawyer. Because of its covert status, there's "no visible system of accountability in place," Mayer writes…

  (tags: jane_mayer terrorism pakistan iraq afghanistan al_qaeda war law drones technology ethics transparency interview radio morality killings war_crimes)

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links for 2009-10-21

• Andrew Sorkin's 'Inside Story' On Financial Collapse : NPR
  Financial journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin talks with Fresh Air host Terry Gross about his investigation into what really happened one year ago, during the financial collapse and bailout. It's an epic tale that's he's documented in a new book: Too Big To Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System — and Themselves.
  (tags: finance capitalism banking bailout npr sorkin crisis paulson bush_administration government wall_street bonuses compensation risk moral_hazard recommended)
• Who Will Be The Next Carlos Slim? | The New Republic
  Many states have been taken over by bankers; there is no shame in fighting and losing against what Jefferson called the “monied aristocracy.” But few governments, even the weakest, have handed over the keys as quietly as we did.
  (tags: simon_johnson economics banking finance corruption government bailout future power crisis)

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links for 2009-10-20

• Obama's right. It's time to stop taking Fox's skewed news seriously. – By Jacob Weisberg
  That Rupert Murdoch may skew the news rightward more for commercial than ideological reasons is somewhat beside the point. What matters is the way that Fox's successful model has invaded the bloodstream of the American media. By showing that ideologically distorted news can drive ratings, Ailes has provoked his rivals at CNN and MSNBC to experiment with a variety of populist and ideological takes on the news. It's Fox that led CNN's Lou Dobbs to remodel himself into a nativist cartoon. It's Fox that led MSNBC to amp up Keith Olbermann. Fox hasn't just corrupted its own coverage. Through its influence, it has made all of cable news unpleasant and unreliable.
  (tags: politics media bias fox_news cable tv news partisanship conservative obama journalism)
• Explaining Science With Substance … And Style : NPR
  Scientists sometimes have a hard time communicating new research in a way that makes a more general audience care. In his new book Don't Be Such A Scientist, Randy Olson — a marine biology professor turned filmmaker — shares his hypotheses about why scientists need to communicate their substance with a little more style.

  "With the knowledge of science we can solve resource limitations, cure diseases, and make society work happily," he writes, "but only if people can figure out what in the world scientists are talking about and why they should care."

  (tags: science communication media npr public)

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links for 2009-10-18

• Supply-Side Economics, R.I.P. – Bruce Bartlett
  The supply-siders are to a large extent responsible for this mess, myself included. We opened Pandora's Box when we got the Republican Party to abandon the balanced budget as its signature economic policy and adopt tax cuts as its raison d'être. In particular, the idea that tax cuts will "starve the beast" and automatically shrink the size of government is extremely pernicious.
  (tags: dogma keynes bartlett economics policy politics taxes recession stimulus credibility conservative macroeconomics monetary fiscal recommended irrationality lessons reagan capitalism deficit ideology)
• A Visual Guide to Where Your Federal Tax Dollars Go
  (tags: usa economics taxes budget infographic war defense)
• Matthew Yglesias » The Cable Effect
  The dichotomy between CNN domestic and CNN International underscores the fact that domestic US news reporting organizations, for the most part, treat Americans as if they’re developmentally disabled toddlers. It’s Pikachu news, focused on sharp graphics and catch phrase of the day, whereas CNN International reports a wider range of news in language that a high schooler can comprehend.
  (tags: yglesias cnn media news stupidity usa distraction attention journalism)

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links for 2009-10-15

• How The Modern Patient Drives Up Health Costs : NPR
  "Every time you start reading about this disease, you say, 'Oh my god, I have that!' Then you read about another disease and you say, 'Oh my god, I have that, too!' " Moore says. "So, the same thing that triggers medical students to worry that they have these diseases is part of what triggers people watching television or surfing the Internet to believe they have these conditions. Continued re-exposure to suggestions of symptoms makes people look for things."
  (tags: patients doctors health health_care reform medicine advertising)
• Selling Sickness: How Drug Ads Changed Health Care : NPR
  "Nobody had ever thought that these drugs should be or could be advertised to the patients. It was just outside of people's brains," Davis says. "They thought that only doctors could understand the products. They're technical products. They're scientific products."
  (tags: npr medicine advertising drugs doctors health health_care regulation patients culture)
• Not Good Enough – Thomas Friedman
  So, please, spare me the lectures about how important Afghanistan and Pakistan are today. I get the stakes. But we can’t want a more decent Afghanistan than the country’s own president. If we do, we have no real local partner who will be able to hold the allegiance of the people, and we will not succeed — whether with more troops, more drones or more money.
  (tags: thomas_friedman afghanistan karzai government corruption politics foreign_policy strategy military democracy)

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