links for 2010-02-27

• Trades in Greek Debt Add to Country’s Financing Burden – NYTimes.com
  Bets by some of the same banks that helped Greece shroud its mounting debts may actually now be pushing the nation closer to the brink of financial ruin.
  (tags: goldman_sachs investment greece euro debt cds finance morality greed law)

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links for 2010-02-24

• Quants: The Alchemists of Wall Street
  (tags: documentary wall_street quant crisis greed banking mathematics wilmott derman finance economics software prediction)

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links for 2010-02-22

• The Fat Lady Has Sung – Thomas Friedman
  While it would certainly help if the president voiced a more compelling narrative, I am under no illusion that this alone would solve all his problems and ours. It comes back to us: We have to demand the truth from our politicians and be ready to accept it ourselves. We simply do not have another presidency to waste. There are no more fat years to eat through. If Obama fails, we all fail.
  (tags: thomas_friedman obama recommended leadership conservative partisanship crisis usa economics deficit politics responsibility cynicism)

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links for 2010-02-21

• Tea Party Lights Fuse for Rebellion on Right – NYTimes.com
  Politicians courting the Tea Party movement are also alluding to Patriot dogma. At a Tea Party protest in Las Vegas, Joe Heck, a Republican running for Congress, blamed both the Democratic and Republican Parties for moving the country toward “socialistic tyranny.” In Texas, Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican seeking re-election, threw his support behind the state sovereignty movement. And in Indiana, Richard Behney, a Republican Senate candidate, told Tea Party supporters what he would do if the 2010 elections did not produce results to his liking: “I’m cleaning my guns and getting ready for the big show. And I’m serious about that, and I bet you are, too.”
  (tags: tea_party conservative conspiracy extremism partisanship irrationality media hate politics populism palin)

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links for 2010-02-19

• Inside the Apocalyptic Soviet Doomsday Machine
  Valery Yarynich glances nervously over his shoulder. Clad in a brown leather jacket, the 72-year-old former Soviet colonel is hunkered in the back of the dimly lit Iron Gate restaurant in Washington, DC. It's March 2009—the Berlin Wall came down two decades ago—but the lean and fit Yarynich is as jumpy as an informant dodging the KGB. He begins to whisper, quietly but firmly.
  (tags: soviet russia nuclear war cold_war politics reagan gorbachev to_read)
• Wall Street’s Elder Statesmen Favor a Return to Tighter Regulation – NYTimes.com
  While the younger generation, very visibly led by Lloyd C. Blankfein, chief executive of Goldman Sachs, lobbies Congress against such regulation, their spiritual elders support the reform proposed by Paul A. Volcker and, surprisingly, even more restrictions. “I am a believer that the system has gone badly awry and needs massive reform,” said Mr. Bogle, the 80-year-old founder and for many years chief executive of the Vanguard Group, the huge mutual fund company.
  (tags: volcker soros bogle finance regulation banking investment crisis government trading wall_street greed)

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links for 2010-02-18

• Payback Time – Party Gridlock in Washington Feeds Fear of a Debt Crisis – Series – NYTimes.com
  “I used to think it would take a global financial crisis to get both parties to the table, but we just had one,” said G. William Hoagland, who was a fiscal policy adviser to Senate Republican leaders and a witness to past bipartisan budget summits. “These days I wonder if this country is even governable.”
  (tags: debt deficit budget usa partisanship nihilism conservative irrationality politics crisis washington)
• Congress, Money & the Constitution – On Point with Tom Ashbrook
  Latest Gallup poll approval rating for the U.S. Congress: 18 percent. Eight in ten Americans now disapprove of the body that’s supposed to most directly represent them in Washington.

  It’s a new low since the Supreme Court ruled that corporate cash can roll once more directly into campaigning.

  Some want new laws to blunt the court’s decision. Others want more — like a constitutional convention to radically push back the influence of big money on Capitol Hill. Or new laws to radically rework the two-party system.

  This hour, On Point: Legal scholars Lawrence Lessig and Jonathan Turley on remaking Congress.

  (tags: on_point radio congress senate constitution usa corruption government morality law)
• FRONTLINE: The Warning | PBS
  "We didn't truly know the dangers of the market, because it was a dark market," says Brooksley Born, the head of an obscure federal regulatory agency — the Commodity Futures Trading Commission [CFTC] — who not only warned of the potential for economic meltdown in the late 1990s, but also tried to convince the country's key economic powerbrokers to take actions that could have helped avert the crisis. "They were totally opposed to it," Born says. "That puzzled me. What was it that was in this market that had to be hidden?"
  (tags: pbs tv documentary finance greed crisis banking regulation recommended greenspan ltcm derivatives secrecy government wall_street fraud)

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links for 2010-02-16

• Re-Examining The Cold War Arms Race – Fresh Air
  Journalist David E. Hoffman's new book The Dead Hand revisits the high stakes maneuvering that took place during the Cold War arms race and details the inner-workings of the Soviet nuclear program.

  Hoffman had access to secret Kremlin documents while researching his book, which chronicles the Soviets' internal deliberations, offers new insight into the roles of Mikhail Gorbachev and President Reagan, and describes the urgent search for nuclear and biological hazards left behind after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

  (tags: radio cold_war russia soviet foreign_policy war nuclear diplomacy secrecy)

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links for 2010-02-13

• Classical Cadenzas – Erik Tarloff
  There comes a point in virtually every concerto from the classical period when the orchestra comes to a sudden halt and the soloist takes flight with a couple of minutes of difficult (or at least difficult-sounding) passage-work interspersed with fragments of melody derived from what's been previously heard. This music usually culminates in an extended trill, after which the orchestra re-enters, bringing the movement to a speedy conclusion, more often than not without any further participation from the soloist.
  (tags: cadenza music classical improvisation composer mozart creativity)

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links for 2010-02-10

• America Is Not Yet Lost – Paul Krugman
  [T]he Senate used to be ruled by “traditions of comity, courtesy, reciprocity, and accommodation.” But that was then. Rules that used to be workable have become crippling now that one of the nation’s major political parties has descended into nihilism, seeing no harm — in fact, political dividends — in making the nation ungovernable.
  (tags: krugman senate government politics partisanship republican usa poland recommended filibuster nihilism lessons history)
• No Exit – Andrew Bacevich
  Since 1945, the United States military has devoted itself to the proposition that, Hiroshima notwithstanding, war still works—that, despite the advent of nuclear weapons, organized violence directed by a professional military elite remains politically purposeful. From the time U.S. forces entered Korea in 1950 to the time they entered Iraq in 2003, the officer corps attempted repeatedly to demonstrate the validity of this hypothesis.

  The results have been disappointing.

  (tags: bacevich usa history lessons recommended war foreign_policy neoconservative politics)
• Dan Ariely: Bonuses boost activity, not quality
  If our tests mimic the real world, then massive bonuses clearly don't work. They may not only cost employers more but also discourage executives from working to the best of their abilities. The financial crisis, perhaps, didn't happen in spite of the bonuses, but because of them.

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links for 2010-02-08

• Blame the childish, ignorant American public—not politicians—for our political and economic crisis. – By Jacob Weisberg – Slate Magazine
  Anybody who says you can't have it both ways clearly hasn't been spending much time reading opinion polls lately. One year ago, 59 percent of the American public liked the stimulus plan, according to Gallup. A few months later, with the economy still deeply mired in recession, a majority of the same size said Obama was spending too much money on it. There's nothing wrong with changing your mind, of course, but opinion polls over the last year reflect something altogether more troubling: a country that simultaneously demands and rejects action on unemployment, deficits, health care, climate change, and a whole host of other major problems. Sixty percent of Americans want stricter regulations of financial institutions. But nearly the same proportion says we're suffering from too much regulation on business. That kind of illogic—or, if you prefer, susceptibility to rhetorical manipulation—is what locks the status quo in place.
  (tags: slate politics recommended irrationality vote usa opinion budget deficit republican nihilism poll populism entitlements economics tax spending)

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