links for 2008-03-23

• Rubin: 'A Lot Of Trouble Could Lie Ahead' - WSJ Economics Blog
• Gap in Life Expectancy Widens for the Nation - New York Times
• In Washington, a Split Over Regulation of Wall Street - New York Times
• Mortgage Meltdown for Dummies: Defining the Changes We Need - Fred Block
• Op-Classic, 1994: Arthur C. Clarke on Killer Comets - New York Times
• Iraq, $5,000 Per Second? - Kristof - New York Times
• Do we want Fed governors to stick around for 14 years? - Justin Fox
• Mark Thoma on the Mortgage-Backed Security Problem - ataxingmatter
• Will central banks buy real estate? Adopting Belarus standard.- Rybinski.eu
• A New-Keynesian Model with Unemployment - NBER - Blanchard and Gali

The Nation: Toward a New Deal

• Bill McKibben: A Green Corps
• Michael J. Copps: Not Your Father's FCC
• Andrea Batista Schlesinger: A Chaos of Experimentation
• Eric Schlosser: The Bare Minimum
• Frances Moore Lappé: The Only Fitting Tribute
• Adolph Reed Jr.: Race and the New Deal Coalition
• The Rev. Jesse Jackson: For the 'FDR'
• Andy Stern: Labor's New Deal
• Anna Deavere Smith: Potent Publics
• Sherle R. Schwenninger: Democratizing Capital
• Stephen Duncombe: FDR's Democratic Propaganda
• Howard Zinn: Beyond the New Deal

Comments

[anne]

http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/y/yeats/william_butler/y4c/complete.html#part110

1921

Easter 1916
By William Butler Yeats

I HAVE met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had done
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club,
Being certain that they and I

But lived where motley is worn:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.
That woman's days were spent
In ignorant good-will,
Her nights in argument
Until her voice grew shrill.
What voice more sweet than hers
When, young and beautiful,
She rode to harriers?
This man had kept a school
And rode our winged horse;
This other his helper and friend
Was coming into his force;
He might have won fame in the end,
So sensitive his nature seemed,
So daring and sweet his thought.
This other man I had dreamed
A drunken, vainglorious lout.
He had done most bitter wrong
To some who are near my heart,
Yet I number him in the song;
He, too, has resigned his part
In the casual comedy;
He, too, has been changed in his turn,
Transformed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.
Hearts with one purpose alone
Through summer and winter seem
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream.
The horse that comes from the road.
The rider, the birds that range
From cloud to tumbling cloud,
Minute by minute they change;
A shadow of cloud on the stream
Changes minute by minute;
A horse-hoof slides on the brim,
And a horse plashes within it;
The long-legged moor-hens dive,
And hens to moor-cocks call;
Minute by minute they live:
The stone's in the midst of all.
Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is Heaven's part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death;
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead;
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse —
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

[hari]

Rubins interview with WSJ - on foreclosure etc.

I'd like to remind you Rubin is NOT an economist. He's a lawyer who came into Clinton's Oval Office to redefine the macroeconomic policy of Dems. He spent a lot of time to find ways and means to deregulate the hi fi sector and more...

Citibanks boss (Wells) was his pal...and he went there after Treasury. Of all the people, I'd consider him the one to have been most effective in deregulating the hi fi sector and making sure Wells and his gang could get free ride into the investment bank sector too.

Imagine what Citi had to writeoff on not only subprime but its own SVI/CDOs and whatnots.

Now he has the audacity to tell WSJ to publically fund foreclosures! He must be joking...because there's still (I think) a lot of stuff on Citi's book that is not disclosed....

[anne]

What I have not asked is the attitude of Robert Rubin or Lawrence Summers to banking deregulation through the Clinton Presidency. Deregulation seemed to taken as a given once there was a Republican House of Representatives, but was there concern at Treasury or in the White House? Citigroup expressly acted on deregulation before there was signed legislation, to no evident criticism. I was puzzled, but have never aske about this.

[Denis Drew]

The one thing Eric Schlosser left out of his excellent survey of how the current minimum wage stands in our labor history was that average income DOUBLED since the peak minimum of $9.91/hr in 1968. Anytime we leave the growth of output per person out of any discussion we are inadvertently assisting the Malthusian outlook of Newt Gingrich and the Republicans -- which nearly all their economic positions depend solely on (think S.S.).

Just thought up the slickest, easiest anti-Malthusian argument of all in favor of an inflation indexed (and also growth adjusted) minimum wage:
You know how the Mal's love to point to that 101 price/demand chart to explain why a minimum wage increase will supposedly cost jobs? Anti-Mal's need only point out that an indexed minimum wage -- BY DEFINITION -- only raises the price curve of labor and ultimately the price of goods AFTER the demand curve has already RISEN in response to other workers getting their inflation raises first (or there wouldn't be any inflation) -- RESETTING the place where the curves intersected IN THE FIRST PLACE. (The overall demand curve rises also as productivity rises -- minimally 15 percent per decade.)

This makes watching the demand curve rise both nominally because of inflation and in real terms because of productivity growth for a decade since Bill Clinton's meager minimum was enacted, before finally raising the minimum again almost an economic crime against working humanity.

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/24/world/middleeast/24iraq.html

March 24, 2008

At Least 51 Are Killed in Attacks Across Iraq
By ERICA GOODE

Residents gathered around destroyed vehicles in the Shuala neighborhood of Baghdad after a bombing. Also, the U.S.-protected Green Zone came under heavy fire.

[Tomorrow's news, today. Only a move to peace can ever mean peace, so we must leave Iraq completely.]

[anne]

As for the Green Zone, is the zone beyond the pale or within the pale since the is Easter and at Easter the Irish turn to thinking of pales at least after egg hunting and, well, you know. The pale, which Rabbi K thought was found somewhere separating Russian Christian-Jewish communities, which was no doubt so, the pale was invented by the Irish who are good at such inventions.

When the British were sometime or other bent on killing the Irish for the peat or whatever, the Irish withdrew to Dublin and clever people that they were built a pale all around themselves, the better to mock the British who were beyond the pale ever after.

Thinking to the Green Zone, and shells flying in and out, and we in and they out, who is beyond the Pale? Interesting problem.

[ddt]

retail pricing power under pressure:

At Megastores, Hagglers Find Prices Are Flexible
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/23/business/23haggle.html?_r=3&pagewanted=1&ref=business&oref=slogin

SAN FRANCISCO — Shoppers are discovering an upside to the down economy. They are getting price breaks by reviving an age-old retail strategy: haggling.

A bargaining culture once confined largely to car showrooms and jewelry stores is taking root in major stores like Best Buy, Circuit City and Home Depot, as well as mom-and-pop operations.

Savvy consumers, empowered by the Internet and encouraged by a slowing economy, are finding that they can dicker on prices, not just on clearance items or big-ticket products like televisions but also on lower-cost goods like cameras, audio speakers, couches, rugs and even clothing.

The change is not particularly overt, and most store policies on bargaining are informal. Some major retailers, however, are quietly telling their salespeople that negotiating is acceptable.

“We want to work with the customer, and if that happens to mean negotiating a price, then we’re willing to look at that,” said Kathryn Gallagher, a spokeswoman for Home Depot.
..."

[kthomas]

I respect Rubin, but now is the time where I do very much enjoy watching him weasel and slither.