Tag: Punting the Pundits

Steve Ballmer’s surprise announcement that he will be resigning as Microsoft’s C.E.O. has set off a huge flood of commentary. Being neither a tech geek nor a management guru, I can’t add much on those fronts. I do, however, think I know a bit about economics, and I also read a lot of history. So the Ballmer announcement has me thinking about network externalities and Ibn Khaldun. And thinking about these things, I’d argue, can help ensure that we draw the right lessons from this particular corporate upheaval. [..]

First, about network externalities: Consider the state of the computer industry circa 2000, when Microsoft’s share price hit its peak and the company seemed utterly dominant. Remember the T-shirts depicting Bill Gates as a Borg (part of the hive mind from “Star Trek”), with the legend, “Resistance is futile. Prepare to be assimilated”? Remember when Microsoft was at the center of concerns about antitrust enforcement?

The odd thing was that nobody seemed to like Microsoft’s products. By all accounts, Apple computers were better than PCs using Windows as their operating system. Yet the vast majority of desktop and laptop computers ran Windows. Why?

Anat R. Admati: We’re All Still Hostages to the Big Banks

NEARLY five years after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers touched off a global financial crisis, we are no safer. Huge, complex and opaque banks continue to take enormous risks that endanger the economy. From Washington to Berlin, banking lobbyists have blocked essential reforms at every turn. Their efforts at obfuscation and influence-buying are no surprise. What’s shameful is how easily our leaders have caved in, and how quickly the lessons of the crisis have been forgotten.

We will never have a safe and healthy global financial system until banks are forced to rely much more on money from their owners and shareholders to finance their loans and investments. Forget all the jargon, and just focus on this simple rule.

William K. Black: Bhide: Pick a ‘Boring’ Fed Chair Because Supervision Is the Key and It Requires ‘Dullness’

There have been a flurry of columns by economists and finance scholars claiming that Obama has decided that the next Fed Chair needs to be a strong supervisor and supporting that decision. Why, when, and how Obama underwent such a miraculous “Road to Damascus” conversion to favor vigorous regulation, supervision, and prosecution given the fact that early in his term he promoted Timothy Geithner and reappointed Ben Bernanke – two of the most spectacular supervisory failures in history – is never explained. Why this zeal for vigorous supervision only applies to the Fed is never explained. Why the economists and finance scholars suddenly (again, with the exception of Prasch) support making tough supervision a top priority of the new Fed Chair is never explained convincingly. Perhaps there was an entire caravan of economist traveling with Obama on the Road to Damascus.

Dean Baker: The Machines Displacing Middle Wage Jobs: Don’t Let the Facts Get in the Way of a Comforting Story

We are hearing endless accounts of how technology is displacing middle wage jobs (e.g. see the piece by David Autor and David Dorn in the NYT today). That would be work like manfacturing jobs, bookkeeping jobs, and other jobs that used to provide a middle class standard of living. It’s a comforting story for the people who control the media, but it happens not to be true.

The story told by Autor and Dorn is that technology displaces these jobs putting downward pressure on the wages of formerly middle class workers. At the same time it creates more jobs for the people who program the machines, hence we see higher wages for high end workers.

John Nochols: ‘New York Times’ to New York Democrats: Get Over That ‘Hope and Idealism’

The editors of The New York Times wanted everyone to read their endorsement of Christine Quinn for the Democratic nomination for mayor of the nation’s largest city. [..]

So, in a Democratic primary, the Times encourages voters to back the candidate who is most like a term-limited former Republican who was last re-elected as an independent.

Translation: for New York Democrats who are satisfied with the status quo, there’s a way to keep on keeping on.

A few months ago, a saleswoman at Macy’s tried to wheedle me into renewing my expired store credit card by offering a deep discount on the towels I was buying. So I dug it out of my wallet, where it was nestled between an expired press pass to the Texas State Capitol and an expired library card from Manchester, N.H., and happily handed it over.

She looked at it, puzzled. “But this isn’t your name,” she said.

The card said Daniel Collins. That’s my husband, who I believe has never been to Macy’s, or bought a towel, in his entire life.  [..]

I’m telling you all this because on Monday we will celebrate Women’s Equality Day, the anniversary of the 19th Amendment and women’s right to vote. That was in 1920, and there’s no longer anyone around who can tell us what that felt like to be disenfranchised because of your sex. But there are plenty of people who recall the time when women couldn’t get credit in their own name.

Laura Flanders: Americans Are Working Too Damn Hard

A lot of us will go to Washington again to mark that occasion, and we’ll march for jobs again, as well we should, given the current climate. But can I admit something?

I wish we were marching for less work, not more of it.

I know, it’s cheeky to talk about time off.  Unemployment is high and jobs are scarce.  Americans are supposed to feel grateful to have paid work at all. A vacation too?  We’re so busy tightening our belts and “leaning in” that even when we do get vacation days at work, we often skip them. Admit it – did you feel guilty taking every last day this summer, or (more likely) guilty that you didn’t?

Patrick Cockburn: Evidence of Chemical Attack Seems Compelling, but Remember There’s a Propaganda War On

Ghouta just east of Damascus are graphic and moving. But they are likely to be viewed sceptically because the claims so much resemble those made about Saddam Hussein’s possession of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) before the US and British invasion of Iraq in 2003. Nevertheless, the present claim differs from previous ones in the number of dead, variously put at between 213 and 1,360 and the quantity of YouTube evidence of the dead and dying supported by interviews with local activists.

Like the Iraqi opposition to Saddam, who provided most of the evidence of WMDs, the Syrian opposition has every incentive to show the Syrian government deploying chemical weapons in order to trigger foreign intervention. Although the US has gone cold on armed involvement in Syria, President Obama did say a year ago that President Bashar al-Assad’s use of such weapons was “a red line”. The implication is that the US would respond militarily, though just how has never been spelt out.

Ben Winzner: Chelsea Manning Was No Criminal

Many Americans have been perplexed about how to view the prosecution of Chelsea Manning, who was sentenced this week under the name Bradley Manning.

On the one hand, they’re not comfortable with the notion that any Army private should be able to decide for herself, without consequences, which government records should be made public. On the other, they’ve witnessed, time and again, government officials abusing their classification authority to protect themselves from embarrassment and accountability, not to protect the nation from harm, and they wonder why much of the information that Manning disclosed had been hidden from the public in the first place.

Congress is in recess, but you’d hardly know it. This has been the most do-nothing, gridlocked Congress in decades. But the recess at least offers a pause in the ongoing partisan fighting that’s sure to resume in a few weeks.

It also offers an opportunity to step back and ask ourselves what’s really at stake.

A society — any society — is defined as a set of mutual benefits and duties embodied most visibly in public institutions: public schools, public libraries, public transportation, public hospitals, public parks, public museums, public recreation, public universities, and so on.

Public institutions are supported by all taxpayers, and are available to all. If the tax system is progressive, those who are better off (and who, presumably, have benefitted from many of these same public institutions) help pay for everyone else.

Robert Creamer: Is There a Difference Between a Third World Autocrat and a Wall Street Mogul?

In America we tend to look down on Third World autocrats who siphon their country’s wealth into their personal Swiss bank accounts at the expense of their citizens. But I would argue we have our own class of kleptocrats that in many ways behave the same way — and often with the same result.

I was recently at a seminar in Africa that focused heavily on human rights.

One of the most insightful participants made a powerful argument that autocratic leaders who violate their people’s human rights by restricting their freedom of speech and assembly were even more culpable for human rights violations when they siphon off millions of dollars into Swiss bank accounts and deprived their country’s children of decent health care, education and an opportunity to make a prosperous life. [..]

But what exactly is the difference between those autocrats and some of the wealthiest men on Wall Street – the “Masters of the Universe”?

Richard (RJ) Eskow: Honor Dr. King’s Revolutionary Vision – by Fighting For It

Our nation is about to commemorate the 1963 March on Washington. Over the next few days there will be new marches and new speeches, along with lots of black-and-white photographs and film clips of that historic day. We’ll remember the wisdom and courage of the civil rights movement’s leaders and heroes.

Many words of praise will be addressed to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The pain of losing him still lingers – not only for the human tragedy of a life cut short, but because he had so much guidance to offer us about the struggles we face today.

Dr. King was a leader in the fight against segregation. But he also recognized that racial justice was woven inseparably into a seamless garment of justice that touches every aspect of modern life. From the gulf of time, from a half-century of struggle and change, his words speak directly to the challenges we face today. We periodically revisit them for inspiration and guidance, and we need them today more than ever.

E. J. Dionne, Jr.: The Dream Did Not Come Free

The things we forget about the March on Washington are the things we most need to remember 50 years on.

We forget that the majestically peaceful assemblage that moved a nation came in the wake of brutal resistance to civil rights and equality. And that there would be more to come. [..]

King called our country forward on that beautiful day in 1963, but he also called out our failings. He told us there could be no peace without justice, and no justice without struggle. We honor him best by sharing not only his hope but also his impatience and his resolve.

Attorney General Eric Holder said many encouraging things in his important speech on the future of sentencing reform, but the most striking thing may have been what he did not say. In all his 4,000 words on America’s “broken” legal system – and particularly on its outlandishly harsh and ineffective sentencing laws – there was not one mention of executive clemency.

That power, which the Constitution explicitly grants to the president, has always served as an indispensable check on the injustices of the legal system and as a means of demonstrating forgiveness where it is called for. It was once used freely; presidents issued more than 10,000 grants of clemency between 1885 and 1930 alone. But mercy is a four-letter word in an era when politicians have competed to see who can be toughest on crime.

New York Times Editorial Board: Bradley Manning’s Excessive Sentence

Certainly, Private Manning faced punishment.  [..]

But 35 years is far too long a sentence by any standard. In more than two weeks of hearings, government lawyers presented vague and largely speculative claims that Private Manning’s leaks had endangered lives and “chilled” diplomatic relations. On the other hand, much of what Private Manning released was of public value, including a video of a military helicopter shooting at two vans and killing civilians, including two Reuters journalists. [..]

Army Col. Denise R. Lind, the judge who sentenced Private Manning, also reduced his rank to the lowest in the military and dishonorably discharged him. Those are appropriate punishments. But the larger issue, which is not resolved by Private Manning’s sentencing, is the federal government’s addiction to secrecy and what it will do when faced with future leaks, an inevitability when 92 million documents are classified in a year and more than 4 million Americans have security clearance.

In their drastic attempt to put Private Manning away for most of the rest of his life, prosecutors were also trying to discourage other potential leakers, but as the continuing release of classified documents by Edward Snowden shows, even the threat of significant prison time is not a deterrent when people believe their government keeps too many secrets.

Robrt Sheeer: The Moment the U.S. Ended Iran’s Brief Experiment in Democracy

Sixty years ago this week, on Aug. 19, 1953, the United States, in collaboration with Britain, successfully staged a coup in Iran to overthrow democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh that a newly declassified CIA document reveals was designed to preserve the control of Western companies over Iran’s rich oil fields.

The U.S. government at the time of the coup easily had manipulated Western media into denigrating Mossadegh as intemperate, unstable and an otherwise unreliable ally in the Cold War, but the real motivation for hijacking Iran’s history was Mossadegh’s move to nationalize Western-controlled oil assets in Iran.

Richard (RJ) Eskow: Cynicism Is Corporate America’s Greatest Weapon. Disarm It.

September’s coming up fast, and we know what that means. Soon Congress will be back in session and we’ll be inundated with fresh evidence that our democracy is broken. That makes this a good time to reflect on the powerful forces arrayed against the public interest –

– and to remind ourselves that they can still lose.

If you’re a citizen who’s willing to take action, you have more power than you realize.  As the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington approaches, it’s a good time to remember that too.

Granted, my perspective may be a little skewed. I spent several years of my professional life working primarily behind the Iron Curtain – before, during, and after the fall of European Communism. That experience, for someone interested in economics, was something like what an astronomer might feel at the birth of a star.  And for anyone who believes in political activism, it was inspiring and enlightening.  In a few short months the impossible became the imaginable, the imaginable became an opportunity, and an opportunity was turned into the event that transformed the world.

“Just lunch, or is it Campaign 2016 just getting started?” one pundit breathlessly asks of a meal between President Obama and his former secretary of state, Hillary Clinton. The New York Times does a deep dive into the Clinton Foundation, while others list “The People Already Rearranging Their Lives for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Campaign.” And every major news outlet has asked some form of this question: Is America ready for a woman president? [..]

Will shattering the Oval Office’s glass ceiling and electing a madam president be an inspiring achievement for this country? Of course. Do we also need madam mayors, madam senators, madam councilwomen, madam sheriffs, madam governors and madam congresswomen all across the nation? You betcha.

Naureen Shah: Obama has not delivered on May’s promise of transparency on drones

An escalation of drone strikes in Yemen highlights the fact that the US public is still in the dark about this use of lethal force

The past two weeks have seen an escalation in drone strikes more dramatic than any since 2009. [..]

Earlier this summer, however, there was hope for a different way forward. In late May, the White House released more information about US drone strikes than it ever had before. Following a major address on national security by President Obama, the government pledged to keep sharing “as much information as possible”.

In fact, since May, the White House has not officially released any new information on drone strikes (though leaks still abound). While NSA surveillance has taken center-stage, the government’s policy of secrecy and obfuscation on drones persists, too. Past critics of the drone program – ranging from Senator Rand Paul (Republican, Kentucky) to Senator Ron Wyden (Democrat, Oregon) – should take notice. It is time to renew and expand the demand for answers about who is being killed.

Amy Davidson: Breaking the Rules Thousands of Times at the N.S.A.

But how many thousands? As it turns out, there are numbers packed into the numbers. An “incident” can have affected multiple people-even multitudes. In a single one of the two thousand seven hundred and seventy-six cases, someone at the N.S.A. made a mistake in entering a number into a search request. As a result, instead of pulling information on phone calls from Egypt (country code 20) the agency got data on “a large number” of calls from Washington, D.C. (area code 202). How many, and what did they learn? There are more Egyptians than there are Washingtonians, but the N.S.A.’s mandate forbids it from spying on Americans, and singling out an area as politicized as Washington seems particularly unfortunate. Mistyping the country code for Iran could have left analysts looking at calls in North Carolina and Louisiana. Another incident involved “the unlawful retention of 3,032 files that the surveillance court had ordered the NSA to destroy…. Each file contained an undisclosed number of telephone call records.” The Post said that it was not able to tell how many Americans were affected in all. Those two examples suggest that the number could be very, very big-even by the N.S.A.’s standards.

Michelle Chen: Caring for Workers Who Care for Our Loved Ones

For many seniors, growing older means facing new kinds of stress-such as fragile health, a tight budget on a fixed income, or the travails of living alone.

And for the people who care for the aging, the stress can be just as severe. When her client is going through a rough time, one domestic worker says she lives through every minute of it, too: “Sometimes we stay there for five days…and we don’t know what’s outside…You cannot leave the job.”

Stories like this one, recorded as part of a survey of New York’s care workers, form the invisible pillar of an evolving industry that is making the private home the center of public health, and in the process, reshaping our relationships of family, work, community and social service. Yet the home care workforce, which is driven largely by poor women of color, mirrors inequities embedded in the low-wage economy. At work, caregivers manage the lives of our loved ones while often facing exploitation and abuse, and after a long day of delivering comfort to vulnerable clients, many struggle themselves to cope with ingrained poverty their communities.

In one sense Glenn Greenwald’s being gay has nothing to do with the work he’s done as a journalist and commentator, including the revelations of government surveillance he’s helped bring to light in recent months. On the other hand, as he’s stated himself, growing up gay has given him a keen awareness of injustice, and certainly that’s true with regard to a government collecting personal information about its citizens. More than that, Glenn’s being gay seems to have been used against him in recent months. One lurid report in June about his past involvement in an LLC that had a business interest in a gay porn company seemed like a ridiculously feeble attempt to dirty him up by using homophobia as a weapon.

Now Glenn’s relationship is being drawn into the spotlight, as his partner David Miranda, a Brazilian citizen, was detained for nine hours over the weekend at London’s Heathrow airport on his way from Berlin back to Rio, where he and Glenn live together. David was detained under Britain’s Terrorism Act and had his laptop, phone and all of his data confiscated and not returned, after he was held for almost half a day with the possibility of arrest. That’s an attack on every one of us who are journalists, and frankly, every one of us who are in relationships, gay or otherwise.

Eugene Robinson: Arbitrary, and Uncalled For

For all who believe in colorblind justice-and want to see fewer African-American and Hispanic men caught up in the system-there are two items of good news: a judge’s ruling ordering changes in New York’s “stop and frisk” policy and Attorney General Eric Holder’s initiative to keep nonviolent drug offenders out of prison. [..]

Ending the presumption that African-American and Hispanic men are beyond redemption would be a powerful legacy for the first black president and the first black attorney general to leave behind.

Steven Simon: America Has No Leverage in Egypt

EGYPT has entered a dark tunnel, and it is difficult to say when, and in what condition, it will emerge.

Many Americans, in the meantime, are outraged that the Obama administration has not exerted its supposed leverage, in the form of military aid, to pressure the Egyptian army to restore a democratic form of government.

But it is time for some realism about that leverage. A yearly sum of $1.3 billion may seem persuasive, but this money has always been intended to secure foreign policy outcomes, not domestic political arrangements that the United States favors.

Paul Buchheit: The Scariest Man in America

Scary because he claims “We don’t have the power to coerce anybody” while providing massive funding to organizations that attack public education, social programs, worker salaries, business regulations, and the environment.

Scary because he refers to himself with words like ‘integrity’ and ‘principles’ while saying “I want my fair share — and that’s all of it.”

Scary because he declares, “I want my legacy to be…a better way of life for…all Americans.” Here is some of the legacy of Charles Koch: [..]

In every successful struggle there’s a time to celebrate a hard-fought victory. When it comes to Social Security, this is not that time.

It’s true that, after including the “chained CPI” benefit cut in his latest budget, the president seems to have dropped the idea. And it’s true there’s no talk of a “Grand Bargain” on the horizon.  But it would still be a serious mistake to become complacent about Social Security.

Even now, in the August heat and summer doldrums, there are stirrings which suggest a deal could be on the way. Washington insiders report that meetings are being held to hammer it out. Republicans are now publicly backing the president’s proposed cuts.

Robert Kuttner: Our Ministry of Planning

The New York Times had a terrific Sunday article on a new waste-to-energy technology that could convert massive quantities of trash into synthetic natural gas. This technology, from isn’t perfect — the product is still a carbon fuel. But unlike hydro-fracking, it doesn’t destroy land and water supplies and it’s a lot cleaner than oil or coal. Earlier versions of such waste-to-energy systems have divided environmentalists, both because they are still carbon and because they use very high temperature incineration, which is frowned upon by many green advocates even when it is clean.

That controversy is all grist for a different article, however. What stood out for me in the Times piece was the client of the new technology — the U.S. Army. Next year, the producer, Sierra Energy, will be supplying waste-produced gas for a small military base in Monterrey, and, if all goes well, to larger installations.

Michael Winship: Cash and Congress: The Tie that Binds

That’s what former Rep. Steven LaTourette told National Journal the other day. He was quoted in an article that asked the question, “Is Congress Simply No Fun Anymore?”

No, it isn’t.

Not that it was ever a vacation trip to Busch Gardens (on his honeymoon, an ex-in-law of mine spent a day at that European-themed park in Virginia and came home convinced he’d actually been to six countries). And certainly no one truly misses the 19th century days when members of Congress thrashed other members with canes (although I can imagine the reality show any day now on The Learning Channel).

But seriously. “Although partisanship is an enduring part of American politics, the type of hyper-partisanship we see now – I can’t find a precedent for it in the past 100 years.” So sayeth Bill Galston, a Brookings Institution senior fellow and co-founder of No Labels, which has herded 82 Democratic and Republican lawmakers into a “Problem Solvers Coalition.” Boy, is that ever the triumph of hope over experience.

Ralph Nader: Paul Volcker’s Latest Hurrah

When towering Paul Volcker speaks, people tend to listen. Formerly the no-nonsense chairman of the Federal Reserve, he proposed measures after the Wall Street crash of 2008 to deal with the “too big to fail” intimidations of the giant banks. With fewer gigantic banks after the Crash, Congress and Obama listened, in some measure, to his ideas for reforms and enacted the so-called Volcker amendment.

Now at age 85, Volcker has launched the Volcker Alliance to improve public administration and implementation of policies and by doing so advance the public interest to improve protections and services for the people. Public trust means more people will participate in governmental decisions and hold government officials responsive and accountable.

Congress began its summer recess last week and won’t reconvene until after Labor Day. You’d be forgiven for not noticing a difference. With just 15 bills signed into law so far this year, the 113th Congress is on pace to be the most unproductive since at least the 1940s.

But just because the legislature has ceased to function doesn’t mean our government has. Political decision making has moved to peripheral public entities, where power is exercised less transparently and accountability to voters is less direct. What we’re losing in the process isn’t government – it’s democracy.

Ralph Nader: Time to Stop Undermining Homeownership

Here’s a startling fact — more than 10 million Americans have been evicted from their homes since 2007. That’s nearly the entire population of the state of Michigan. Just imagine if the people of an entire state were rendered homeless overnight — it would be quite a calamity. The news media would no doubt cover it 24/7, millions of dollars would be raised in aid, and thousands would volunteer to help shelter the displaced. Any companies responsible for such a massive displacement of people would be vilified — think of the public relations lashing BP received after the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. While the housing crisis does not spur the same emotional response from the media and the general population as say, a natural disaster or a terrorist attack; perhaps it should. The housing crisis was not an inevitable glitch in the system, but rather a long-foreseen consequence of an industry running rampant in the name of profit.

The housing crisis is a multi-faceted issue with many moving parts, but here are some recent developments that warrant discussion.

Amy Goodman: Stop-and-Frisk: The World According to Questlove

Hip-hop hit a milestone this week, turning 40 years old. The same week, Federal District Court Judge Shira Scheindlin, in a 195-page ruling, declared the New York Police Department’s practice of stop-and-frisk unconstitutional. Hip-hop and stop-and-frisk are central aspects of the lives of millions of people, especially black and Latino youths.

Ahmir Thompson was just 2 years old when hip-hop got its start in 1973, but already had shown his talent for music. Thompson is now known professionally as Questlove, an accomplished musician and producer, music director and drummer for the Grammy Award-winning hip-hop band The Roots, which is the house band on the NBC show “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.” He and The Roots soon will move with Fallon to the even more popular “The Tonight Show.” Despite his success, Questlove confronts racism in his daily life. But he has built a platform, a following, which he uses to challenge the status quo, like stop-and-frisk.

David Sirota: A Civics Lesson From America’s Education Debate

Paradoxes come in all different forms, but here’s one that perfectly fits this Gilded Age: The most significant lesson from the ongoing debate about American education has little to do with schools and everything to do with money. This lesson comes from a series of recent scandals that expose the financial motives of the leaders of the so-called education “reform” movement-the one that is trying to privatize public schools.