From the category archives:

Public Policy

October of the Fleeting Trillions

October 31, 2008

The magnitude of the financial injury worldwide and the costs to repair it are breathtaking.  But the loss of faith occasioned by what so many see as a colossal betrayal on the part of leaders and institutions may prove the most damaging of all. The tenth month in the Gregorian calendar will go into history [...]

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Would a Sensible Investor Buy into the Bush Bailout Plan?

September 26, 2008

Making bad investment decisions over risky products that people did not fully understand is what brought the United States and Wall Street to the brink. Is another terrible folly about to be repeated, even with echoes of the costs and misadventures of the Iraq war booming loudly across the land? Investors generally like a few details before [...]

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How Would You Like to be Remembered, Mr. Prime Minister?

December 14, 2007

In December 1957, a future prime minister of Canada received the Nobel prize for peace. In December 2007, a former prime minister is forced to explain to a skeptical country why he received envelopes stuffed with cash. It is hard to imagine a more striking contrast in political character. Yesterday, Brian Mulroney, Canada’s 18th prime [...]

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Outrage of the Week: Subprime Hypocrites in Retreat

December 7, 2007

The real purpose behind the Bush Administration’s plan is not to help the victims of the subprime turmoil, but rather the perpetrators of the economic crime who unleashed it in the first place. To justify their out-of-this-world bonuses, the titans of Wall Street and the kings of the home lending business, like Countrywide Financial’s Angelo [...]

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The Malleable Dr. Greenspan

September 15, 2007

Alan Greenspan, whose selective vision we have written about before, appears to have been “shocked, shocked” that tax cuts were contributing to the mounting deficit in the Bush administration. That is, if you believe his just released autobiography The Age of Turbulence. This is a man who, as head of the Fed until just 18 [...]

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Outrage of the Week: James Bartleman’s Two-Decade Silence over Air India Bombings

May 4, 2007

It was bizarre almost beyond belief. Though he now admits he had received advance intelligence that an Air India plane would be attacked by Sikh extremists on a weekend in June of 1985, he failed to tell his superiors. Nor did he apparently even do what almost every bureaucrat is programmed to do —write a [...]

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Outrage of the Week: Record Highs for Dow But Still No Increase in Minimum Wage

April 27, 2007

It was a week where it was reported that hedge fund manager James Simons made over $1.7 billion for 2006, the Dow Jones set a new record high and CEOs as a group continued to make more than at any time in history. Yet amid such unparalleled wealth, the U.S. Congress is only now getting [...]

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The Shrinking Mr. Wolfowitz

April 26, 2007

Larger men give up their posts before bringing disgrace upon themselves or their organizations. Smaller men cling to them like life rafts. When a CEO shows up at a board meeting with his lawyer and demands “fairness” after bringing embarrassment upon the institution he is supposed to be leading, it is time for somebody to [...]

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Outrage of the Week: The Decline and Folly of World Bank Head Paul Wolfowitz

April 13, 2007

He was appointed by his friend, the President, after detailing plans for the invasion of Iraq. His mission included tackling corruption and addressing issues of growing global poverty. And, in fact, he discovered a new tool for narrowing at least part of the wealth gap that plagues much of the world: direct the appointment of [...]

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