by Mike Kimel Reagan and Rios Montt: The Company You Keep Former Guatemalan dictator Efrain Rios Montt is on trial for genocide. I was born in the US, but my formative years were spent in South America in the 1980s. That the right wing Guatamelan military dictatorship was massacring unarmed civilians on a large scale […]
Lifted from comments comes a beginning thought on the term ‘sustainability’ for programs…Sustainability Rusty asks: Is there an accepted definition for “sustainability?”I tend to think of it in an environmental context, but apparently it is used more broadly. Your thoughts? Bruce Webb’s quick reply: STR, well in Social Security lingo ‘sustainable’ is mostly used in […]
by Linda Beale Senator Warren prods bank regulators Somehow, more Senators need to start doing what Senator Warren does. Review the facts. Ask questions that force regulators to admit to what they are doing. Point out the lopsided nature of the regulators’ activities that demonstrate that they are acting more to protect the Big Banks […]
A while back Nick Rowe challenged amateur internet econocranks (my word, not Nick’s) like me to actually go read an intro econ textbook. (He was specifically targeting the author of Unlearning Economics — who I, at least, don’t consider to be an econocrank, he’s far better-versed than I am, though Nick might.) I took him […]
I’m just sayin’. (Emphasis mine, words Solow’s): [Bernanke’s] preferred answer is better and more system-oriented regulation. One has to ask then why regulation failed to see the crisis of 2007–2008 coming and take action to head it off. Bernanke suggests that regulators were lulled into inattention by the so-called Great Moderation. Our masters are all […]
Mark Thoma once claimed to be pleased that I was shrilly criticizing him. I sure hope he meant it, because here I go again. HeUpdate: I have trouble with reading comprehension. A one syllable name was too hard. I am commenting on Tim Duy who posted at Mark Thoma’s site. I apologize for the mistake. […]
Simon Wren-Lewis wrote I think there were three important contributory factors to what happened in the 1970s that are just not present today. First, our knowledge of inflation output trade-offs, although hardly complete now, was much weaker back then. Second, the Fed and other monetary policy makers did not have clear inflation targets that they were […]
With constant delays due to significant engineering issues and design flaws, the cost of the F-35 has risen to $395.7 billion. But that’s just to build the planes. When you add in the cost of testing, operations and support, it will cost an additional $1.1 trillion — bringing the overall price tag to an incomprehensible […]
Delivering water quality to the tap I’m now in Kiev (looking into their water utility regulation), and a typical problem has popped up, i.e., the difficulty in delivering water quality to the tap. The physical layout of water systems — taking raw water from ground or surface sources, treating it, pumping it through large pipes […]
http://www.aguanomics.com/2013/04/to-centralize-or-not-to-centralize.html Tcentralize or not to centralize? o I’ve run into many instances of a struggle between small- and large-scale governance, e.g., local vs. regional or national water management. These struggles occur over money, regulations, water allocations, and so on. I can see why they happen — someone in power decides to take over responsibilities […]