random($foo) is the occassionally still updated blog of Leonard Lin. My pics are on Flickr, code is on Github. @lhl on Twitter. More »
Jon Stewart is able to articulate some of the things that are so exasperating about this whole situation and that the “real” media has been remiss on. Worth watching.
For geeks wondering about whether these systemic issues might be fixable, Toby Segaran and Jesper Andersen gave an interesting talk at ETech about developing a more robust credit rating system (it picks up in the last third where they start demoing what they’ve been doing). Check out Freerisk to see what they’re up to.
I’ve been otherwise occupied this month, so I’ve only had a chance to keep an intermittent eye on the Stimulus Plan and its development. One of the things that I was a bit disappointed to find is that despite the copious amounts back-and-forth prattle coverage and the much better ongoing discussions in the economic/biz blogs that I follow, that I couldn’t find a really good single page/resource for describing in simple, understandable terms what’s happening to the economy and why economic stimulus is needed and how the plan will help.
One of the first places I went to was WhiteHouse.gov and the complete failure in communicating and selling the stimulus plan on there, especially coming from my experience on the campaign, was a (surprising) failure on the part of the Obama administration. And, while I think that this past week has been much better with the President’s recent WP op-ed and tonight’s press conference (video), I think that having a good, concise one-pager would still be an enormous benefit.
It’s one thing to talk about a full-blown crisis, but an image like this (posted Friday on Nancy Pelosi’s blog) makes things much clearer:
(Here’s a version with job losses from all post-WWII recessions, although I don’t know if they’re using consistent measurements)
Also, from a understanding macro-economics or fractional banking perspective, I think that there’s a pretty big gap in terms of understanding what’s going on (about 3min in to hear about the details of the bank run):
For me, the things I’d be most interested in are the economic projections (job losses? GDP shortfall?) and accessible breakdowns of the stimulus plan effects (hint: a 100pg PDF is not the ideal format), the effects of the infrastructure investments, and comparisons of tax cuts vs direct spending:
Lastly and perhaps most importantly I think is that spotlight on the economy needs to force us to talk about and address the huge structural problems that we’ve been ignoring – sustainability of growth, consumption, income inequality, etc. Here’s a video of Robert Reich discussing some of this:
While I’m disappointed that neither the MSM nor the Stimulus Plan backers have done something like this, it’s occurred to that this is the perfect sort of project some good designers to tackle in conjunction w/ either some of the economist bloggers that have covering this stuff or some of the civic groups out there. (Just saying.)
(FWIW, I recently started reading Krugman‘s The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008 which has been pretty interesting so far. For those looking for a better idea of how our money and our economy works, Chris Martenson’s Crash Course is good (and depressing) start. The Wikipedia entry on the Economy of the United States is also a good place to start surfing.)
I’ve long been a fan of Andrew Leonard’s blog (my favorite on Salon by far) but lately I’ve been especially enjoying his posts (it’s a shame there isn’t a public feed reader that really takes into account the ebb and flow of post-level reading patterns), which have focused on the economic meltdown. Here’s a list for example of the posts I particularly dug from this past week:
And that’s just the standouts since last Wednesday.
For those of you who have even a passing interest in the economipocalypse, PBS’s Business Desk w/ Paul Solman has also been quite interesting. Here’s a great piece on how the collapse has affected trade (via):
While I’m not the biggest fan of the Fed (and their infinite money printing machine), Brad DeLong’s description of monetary circulation is a clear and simple rebuttal for anyone who might be nodding along to John Cochrane‘s recent paper, Fiscal Stimulus, Fiscal Inflation, or Fiscal Fallacies?
Actually, Brad DeLong’s post is worth reading if you have any interest in why stimulus works. To sum up, Cochrane argues that stimulus creates public debt that offsets private spending, but DeLong describes exactly how this flow will create the same amount of debt, but gets people that would otherwise be sitting around doing nothing to do something (the definition of recession basically being underutilized capacity).
What surprised me this morning was reading Krugman’s followup this morning. Not that he agrees with DeLong, but rather I hadn’t known that Eugene Fama (yes, the Fama-French Fama) apparently also voiced the same thoughts as Cochrane did.
Now, I’m not a business genius, so it puzzles me how Fama and Cochrane can believe what they’re saying when it’s so obviously (and easily proven) wrong, even to a layperson like myself (and even without Krugman’s mathy deconstruction).
New information on targets for domestic surveillance on tonight’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann:
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
Interestingly, so far, Google News is showing only 3 stories following up on this, which is surprisingly since the implications… are disturbing to say the least.
From Russell Tice’s Wikipedia entry:
In a press release issued by the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition on December 22, 2005, Tice explained the public aspect of his charges, stating that:
…
In a letter dated January 10, 2006, Renee Seymour, Director of the NSA Special Access Programs Central Office, warned Tice that members of neither the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, nor of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence had clearance to receive the classified information about the SAP’s that Tice was prepared to provide.
…
On February 14, 2006, UPI reports Tice testified to the House Government Reform Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations that the Special Access Program might have violated millions of Americans’ Constitutional rights, but that neither the committee members nor the NSA inspector general had clearance to review the program.
There’s some more background at SourceWatch. I’ve got to simultaneously admire Tice’s patriotism and bravery, and also, well, hope for the best for him. Heck, I wonder if he’s been able to get another job since? Also, just thinking about the ramifications of how he, or really any citizen’s communications being completely monitored… just reflecting on that sort of information asymmetry is corrosive to any idea of how a democracy could function.
A powerful speech, well delivered. Too many too pick out just one.. well, OK, here’s one:
Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience’s sake.
The full transcript w/ video (single page).
The formatting got a little messed up (no paragraphs!) for my posting, but I’ve left my 2-cents for the Obama Administration for my thoughts on implementing and improving future participatory online tools.
If you’re so inclined, give the posting a look (and vote or comment on what you think). The Citizen’s Briefing Book project closes at 6PM today, so if you want to put anything up, now’s probably the time to do it. (there are almost 50K entries so far – that’s a lot of internet rantings to sort through 🙂
Also, a copy of what I posted (w/ paragraphs):
Open Sourcing and Improving the Citizen’s Briefing Book
The Citizen’s Briefing Book was a great project and I’d like to commend everyone involved. I’m looking forward to seeing these experiments with participatory tools continue with the Administration at WhiteHouse.gov.
This is an area I’m particularly interested in, so my suggestions pertain to the meta-discussions that have popped up around improving the Briefing Book (voting bias, aggregating and surfacing related ideas and discussions probably being at the top of that list). While the suggestions themselves point to specific weaknesses in the current implementation, I believe that they more importantly highlight the larger opportunities of generating useful discussion, analysis and direct involvement in improving future participatory online tools.
I’m aware that most government IT is contracted out, but the development of these online tools should perhaps be an exception, both because of their strategic importance to the government and the people, but also for the more pragmatic reasons of their development intensiveness and the deep, fast-changing, and often esoteric expertise required. As talented as agencies like Reside, or Blue State Digital are, many of the most difficult challenges exceed the capabilities of any single group and would benefit from tapping into a much larger pool of motivated technologists.
While, MyBO (which, full disclosure, I worked on last year) and Change.gov were campaign or pseudo-governmental projects, as “government works,” the new WH.gov projects would provide a great, high-profile opportunity for the new Administration to embrace an open process, not just in publishing the source code, but by actively encouraging participation and engagement with distributed source control, open APIs and bulk data access, and dedicated discussion and feedback loops. Furthermore, it’s my belief (based on my observations and experiences within the high technology and the Internet) that creating a transparent and level playing field would also serve to encourage the best and brightest in industry when it comes to contributing infrastructure and other resources that would be required for any sort of serious online undertaking.
There are many talented people working on political tools, and many great third-party non-profits (Sunlight, Maplight, MySociety, to name a few) working on data transparency and other aspects of digital government, but when I look at the challenges facing the development and scaling (in both technical and social interaction terms) of what may eventually be the most transformative of new online democratic tools–those for radically distributed policy deliberation, agenda setting, and direct involvement–it seems to me that fostering an open approach would do much to spur development with tremendous benefits (and almost no additional cost) for all parties, not least of which would be the American people.
Notes on the development of the Citizen’s Briefing Book app:
The SF Chronicle had an interesting article, Venture capitalist says U.S. losing green race, on a policy briefing held in Congress today. Here’s the paragraph that jumped out at me (emphasis mine):
Doerr was invited to speak by California Sen. Barbara Boxer, who chairs the committee, along with Friedman, the author of a new book, “Hot, Flat and Crowded,” which calls for a green tech revolution to solve the country’s climate, energy and foreign policy challenges. They spoke at a policy briefing, not a formal hearing, but most of the committee’s Democrats stopped by. None of the panel’s Republicans attended, a sign of the continuing partisan split on Capitol Hill over how to address global warming.
Now, I’m far too jaded to say that I’m honestly surprised, but read that again, and reflect that the context of this discussion was not climate change per se, but rather, a policy briefing on the country’s lack of competitiveness within the new global order:
Doerr, a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, which is betting billions on clean energy technologies, told senators that two of his firm’s biggest investments were with foreign firms because U.S. companies did not have the most advanced technology. Of the top 30 companies in solar, wind and advanced batteries, just six are U.S. firms.
“Notice the trend here,” Doerr told members of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. “We won the space race with the Soviet Union. Now as (New York Times columnist) Tom Friedman says, we’re in an Earth race with other nations to see who can invent the technology so that men and women can stay on Earth. And we are not winning today.”