Daniel Roth had an excellent piece in Wired ("Road Map for Financial Recovery") promoting financial transparency:
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/17-03/wp_reboot
But the volume of data obscures more than it reveals; financial reporting has become so transparent as to be invisible. Answering what should be simple questions—how secure is my cash account? How much of my bank's capital is tied up in risky debt obligations?—often seems to require a legal degree, as well as countless hours to dig through thousands of pages of documents. Undoubtedly, the warning signs of our current crisis—and the next one!—lie somewhere in all those filings, but good luck finding them...
That's why it's not enough to simply give the SEC—or any of its sister regulators—more authority; we need to rethink our entire philosophy of regulation. Instead of assigning oversight responsibility to a finite group of bureaucrats, we should enable every investor to act as a citizen-regulator. We should tap into the massive parallel processing power of people around the world by giving everyone the tools to track, analyze, and publicize financial machinations. The result would be a wave of decentralized innovation that can keep pace with Wall Street and allow the market to regulate itself—naturally punishing companies and investments that don't measure up—more efficiently than the regulators ever could.
Transparency and citizen-advocacy? Sounds positively American.
"And if an epitaph be my story, I'd have a short one ready for my own: I had a lover's quarrel with the world." -- Robert Frost
Monday, March 16, 2009
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Universal Healthcare--A Different Perspective
Zeke Emanuel, Chair, Dept of Bioethics, NIJ Clinical Center, came up with a plausible solution to the health care crisis in this month's Commonwealth Club Magazine (page 43, March 2009). I don't have a link to share, but the title of the article is, "Scrapping the System." Mr. Emanuel has a book, Healthcare, Guaranteed.
Bonus: Of course, there's a blog: http://www.healthcareguaranteed.org/blog.cfm
Bonus: Of course, there's a blog: http://www.healthcareguaranteed.org/blog.cfm
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Love in the Time of Automobiles
This NYT piece, about one man's love for his wife, ought to be made into a film:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/08/fashion/08love.html
Kudos to Mr. Layng Martine Jr. for being a good man.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/08/fashion/08love.html
This incredibly capable woman who loved to hike mountains, ride waves, and run marathons, who had cleared our sizable backyard of eight-foot-high brambles and helped me move all our furniture into three houses, suddenly couldn’t do any of those things, ever again.
Not long after getting home from the hospital, when we were having dinner by candlelight at our kitchen table, she burst into tears. “I don’t know if I can do this for the rest of my life,” she said.
All I could say was, “We’ll do it together.”Kudos to Mr. Layng Martine Jr. for being a good man.
Friday, March 13, 2009
Stewart Takes on Cramer, Part 3
Years from now, if anyone wants to see the aftermath of America's financial excesses, they should review these three videos (March 12, 2009, Daily Show).
The most salient part for me was this question, asked facetiously: "A CEO lied to you? Shocking." How did we get to a world where it seems like the last remaining honest CEO is Warren Buffett?
Cramer also makes a great point when he asks, "Where are the indictments for these people?" I remember many banking CEOs going on CNBC proclaiming the safety and financial position of their company. Stewart is right to be angry when he says that CNBC assisted Wall Street in putting the wool over Main Street's eyes. Indeed, where are the indictments?
Calling All Bush II Supporters
To those of you who supported George W. Bush, WSJ letter-writer Mr. Concini has some words for you:
During the eight years of his administration the unemployment rate went from 4.2% to 7.2%; consumer confidence dropped to an all-time low; a budget surplus of $200 billion became a deficit of over $1 trillion; more than a million families fell into poverty; six million more people lost health insurance; gains of our economic growth went almost entirely to the rich, while middle- and low-income families lost ground; the unnecessary Iraq war caused huge suffering and detracted from the more serious threat in Afghanistan; and perhaps less quantifiably, we suffered a world-wide decline of respect, prestige and power.
Maybe not the worst, but certainly a contender.
Dino J. De Concini
Washington
Ouch. From what I remember, George Bush the First was a fairly decent man. Just goes to show you: monarchies and royal families, no matter their various permutations, don't work.
During the eight years of his administration the unemployment rate went from 4.2% to 7.2%; consumer confidence dropped to an all-time low; a budget surplus of $200 billion became a deficit of over $1 trillion; more than a million families fell into poverty; six million more people lost health insurance; gains of our economic growth went almost entirely to the rich, while middle- and low-income families lost ground; the unnecessary Iraq war caused huge suffering and detracted from the more serious threat in Afghanistan; and perhaps less quantifiably, we suffered a world-wide decline of respect, prestige and power.
Maybe not the worst, but certainly a contender.
Dino J. De Concini
Washington
Ouch. From what I remember, George Bush the First was a fairly decent man. Just goes to show you: monarchies and royal families, no matter their various permutations, don't work.
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