30 April 2010
What Is the Point of a Petition?
A Petition is not a Referendum. It is not an Election. It is a tool used by persons who wish to influence someone in power (e.g. an employer, the peoples’ representatives in a liberal democracy, a beneficent ruler). Its effectiveness is determined by the respect that someone in power pays to the petition signers.
So anonymity defeats the purpose of a petition. In his OpEd article in the April 28, 2010 Wall Street Journal, “Neighbor Against Neighbor,” Dick Carpenter proposes that the “loads of information” provided by the media and interest groups are sufficient for decision-makers like voters to make up their mind; but how much can they trust those information-sources? Individuals in a society where intermediaries like the left- or right-wing media and lobbying organizations are driven by commercial objectives need a more personal basis for judging the merits of an issue.
Speech is being squelched by the diminishment of civility in modern life. Without the courage of our convictions, there is no hope for democratic government.
A Petition is not a Referendum. It is not an Election. It is a tool used by persons who wish to influence someone in power (e.g. an employer, the peoples’ representatives in a liberal democracy, a beneficent ruler). Its effectiveness is determined by the respect that someone in power pays to the petition signers.
So anonymity defeats the purpose of a petition. In his OpEd article in the April 28, 2010 Wall Street Journal, “Neighbor Against Neighbor,” Dick Carpenter proposes that the “loads of information” provided by the media and interest groups are sufficient for decision-makers like voters to make up their mind; but how much can they trust those information-sources? Individuals in a society where intermediaries like the left- or right-wing media and lobbying organizations are driven by commercial objectives need a more personal basis for judging the merits of an issue.
Speech is being squelched by the diminishment of civility in modern life. Without the courage of our convictions, there is no hope for democratic government.
28 April 2010
Lessons of S&L Crisis Not Learned
The Junk Bond heyday of the nineteen-eighties thrived on the insatiable appetite of Savings and Loan Banks for the high returns promised by low-grade corporate securities floated to finance speculative mergers and acquisitions. Drexel Burnham Lambert, the king of that market, was forced into bankruptcy by political crusaders.
Now Goldman Sachs has become the favorite whipping boy of misguided Congressmen, White House officials, and others pandering to economically devastated voters and customers across the country. It was an error to force Goldman and other private investment banks to convert into commercial banks with access to nearly free loans from the Federal Reserve at the onset of the “Great Recession” in late 2008.
The Goldman executives who testified before a U.S. Senate investigations committee on April 27, 2010, were reminded how expensive those Federal Reserve funds really are. In point of fact, Goldman, not to mention BankAmerica, Citibank, JPMorgan-Chase and others probably did not need government loans and equity investments in order to survive the collapse of the sub prime mortgage market. However, panic-stricken White Hous, Treasury and Federal Reserve officials used their power to stuff that liquidity down their throats as a palliative for concerned investors abroad, on whose credit the whole U.S. economy ultimately depends.
What appeared to be a serendipitous opportunity to access cheap loans to fund increased trading activity has become a trap for Goldman Sachs in the morass of fiduciary duty to its supposed banking customers. In fact, Goldman’s customers are not widows and orphans—they are institutions who know that Goldman offers them complicated financial products that they can use to manage their speculative financial portfolios under the rubric, “Buyer beware.”
The Junk Bond heyday of the nineteen-eighties thrived on the insatiable appetite of Savings and Loan Banks for the high returns promised by low-grade corporate securities floated to finance speculative mergers and acquisitions. Drexel Burnham Lambert, the king of that market, was forced into bankruptcy by political crusaders.
Now Goldman Sachs has become the favorite whipping boy of misguided Congressmen, White House officials, and others pandering to economically devastated voters and customers across the country. It was an error to force Goldman and other private investment banks to convert into commercial banks with access to nearly free loans from the Federal Reserve at the onset of the “Great Recession” in late 2008.
The Goldman executives who testified before a U.S. Senate investigations committee on April 27, 2010, were reminded how expensive those Federal Reserve funds really are. In point of fact, Goldman, not to mention BankAmerica, Citibank, JPMorgan-Chase and others probably did not need government loans and equity investments in order to survive the collapse of the sub prime mortgage market. However, panic-stricken White Hous, Treasury and Federal Reserve officials used their power to stuff that liquidity down their throats as a palliative for concerned investors abroad, on whose credit the whole U.S. economy ultimately depends.
What appeared to be a serendipitous opportunity to access cheap loans to fund increased trading activity has become a trap for Goldman Sachs in the morass of fiduciary duty to its supposed banking customers. In fact, Goldman’s customers are not widows and orphans—they are institutions who know that Goldman offers them complicated financial products that they can use to manage their speculative financial portfolios under the rubric, “Buyer beware.”
26 April 2010
Everyday Scholarship
Should you earn college credit for foxtrot?
We seem to be sliding down a slippery slope. Colleges are becoming finishing scbools.
It used to be that the skills of daily life were taught at home. Good dancers or cooks learned from their parents, neighbors or professional instructors. . . or on the street corner, as Bruce Eric Kaplan said in his April 19, 2010, New Yorker cartoon caption: “I have to take him to his class for things kids used to learn on their own.”
Should you earn college credit for foxtrot?
We seem to be sliding down a slippery slope. Colleges are becoming finishing scbools.
It used to be that the skills of daily life were taught at home. Good dancers or cooks learned from their parents, neighbors or professional instructors. . . or on the street corner, as Bruce Eric Kaplan said in his April 19, 2010, New Yorker cartoon caption: “I have to take him to his class for things kids used to learn on their own.”
17 April 2010
Debating Nuclear Doctrine
The discussion of President Obama’s Nuclear Posture Review and his new START Treaty with Russia in the April 13, 2010, Wall Street Journal began and ended with by far its most cogent analyses. George P. Shultz and Richard Burt both correctly identify the greatest nuclear threats to world security as proliferation and terrorism. Those dangers are made more ominous by improved and more numerous nuclear arms; reducing and eventually eliminating them is the undeniably rational policy.
Deterrence in this situation cannot effectively be accomplished through reliance on new or better designed nuclear weapons. As Mr. Shultz says, more vigilant intelligence and discriminating use of conventional lethal force, when necessary, are what is needed to carry us forward to an orderly and peaceful world society.
The discussion of President Obama’s Nuclear Posture Review and his new START Treaty with Russia in the April 13, 2010, Wall Street Journal began and ended with by far its most cogent analyses. George P. Shultz and Richard Burt both correctly identify the greatest nuclear threats to world security as proliferation and terrorism. Those dangers are made more ominous by improved and more numerous nuclear arms; reducing and eventually eliminating them is the undeniably rational policy.
Deterrence in this situation cannot effectively be accomplished through reliance on new or better designed nuclear weapons. As Mr. Shultz says, more vigilant intelligence and discriminating use of conventional lethal force, when necessary, are what is needed to carry us forward to an orderly and peaceful world society.
The Soul and Evolution
Is it possible that God created humans by infusing living mammals with an eternal soul? That is my understanding of the story of Adam and Eve. It has always confounded my reconciliation of religious belief with the science of evolution.
Along with physical changes in the human species over time, our cognitive abilities have also been transformed from the instincts of the hunter-gatherer to the compulsive creativity of engineers, artists, scientists, managers and producers. Leaving aside how presumptuous it may be to assign a higher value to mankind’s more recent accomplishments than to its early survival, it is mystifying that the Supreme Being would have chosen to breathe spiritual life into hominid organisms that would take millennia to build the cultures and civilizations needed to presume an ability to dispense with Him.
Did He not see this coming? Does His existence depend on their worshipful or indifferent acknowledgement? If so, does it matter?
Miracles are what we call positive interventions in worldly life by spiritual beings; they are an alternative to coincidence. If that is all they are, there may not be any other evidence of an everlasting life. In fact, luck and happenstance are probably more rational explanations of miraculous events. They offer a plausible basis for the origin of the universe, as well.
At one time, it was thought that a metaphysics of spiritual life was needed in order to keep order in society. Evolution, and now DNA research and genetic engineering, have been seen as dangerous challenges to that system of social power. The information technology revolution may bring an end to that seeming antagonism between orderly human behavior and freedom from domination. A widely knowledgeable population will more willingly behave in a way that is supportive of the common good. We may be able one day to live in a Rawlsian universe (cf. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice) that is free of the menacing fantasy of life after death
Is it possible that God created humans by infusing living mammals with an eternal soul? That is my understanding of the story of Adam and Eve. It has always confounded my reconciliation of religious belief with the science of evolution.
Along with physical changes in the human species over time, our cognitive abilities have also been transformed from the instincts of the hunter-gatherer to the compulsive creativity of engineers, artists, scientists, managers and producers. Leaving aside how presumptuous it may be to assign a higher value to mankind’s more recent accomplishments than to its early survival, it is mystifying that the Supreme Being would have chosen to breathe spiritual life into hominid organisms that would take millennia to build the cultures and civilizations needed to presume an ability to dispense with Him.
Did He not see this coming? Does His existence depend on their worshipful or indifferent acknowledgement? If so, does it matter?
Miracles are what we call positive interventions in worldly life by spiritual beings; they are an alternative to coincidence. If that is all they are, there may not be any other evidence of an everlasting life. In fact, luck and happenstance are probably more rational explanations of miraculous events. They offer a plausible basis for the origin of the universe, as well.
At one time, it was thought that a metaphysics of spiritual life was needed in order to keep order in society. Evolution, and now DNA research and genetic engineering, have been seen as dangerous challenges to that system of social power. The information technology revolution may bring an end to that seeming antagonism between orderly human behavior and freedom from domination. A widely knowledgeable population will more willingly behave in a way that is supportive of the common good. We may be able one day to live in a Rawlsian universe (cf. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice) that is free of the menacing fantasy of life after death
