Oddly, there hasn’t been as much chatter in the blogsphere as I would have expected on the House passage on Friday of what is called the “say on pay” bill. The House legislation would give shareholders a non-binding vote on executive pay and golden parachutes. Initially, the Senate wasn’t expected to take it up, but […]
Read more...I am normally loath to publish someone else’s post more or less in its entirety, but Brad DeLong’s discussion of some of the more persuasive arguments for investing to arrest global warming is first rate. (And candidly, he references an article by Martin Weitzmen on the Stern Review, the UK report that was the first […]
Read more...I have long been annoyed by the Wall Street Journal/Larry Ribstein party line that takes issue with long prison sentences for high profile white collar criminals. The argument boils down to “They weren’t violent.” That has always offended me, because it’s a class argument. As political philosopher Rodney Dangerfield said: If you steal $10,000 from […]
Read more...I don’t know about you, but every time I hear about a book on leadership by an ex-CEO, I cringe. They are almost without exception self congratulatory puff pieces with plenty of macho posturing. And they seldom offer useful advice. For example, one reader gave a capsule review of Jack – Straight from the Gut: […]
Read more...William Greider was early to question whether free trade delivers the benefits its proponents assert it does (we pointed to his 2005 New York Times op-ed piece, “America’s Truth Deficit,” in which he described our prevailing regime as managed trade rather than free trade, and observed that most of our trading partners were playing the […]
Read more...In a seminal 1993 paper in American Scholar, “Defining Deviancy Down,” Daniel Patrick Moynihan reexamined an observation of Emile Durkheim, who helped establish sociology as a discipline, that crime was a “normal” function. By that he meant that the concept of crime helped define and reinforce social standards (“a punishment ceremony creates social solidarity”) and […]
Read more...This comment came from a reader in response to our post “The Private Sector Isn’t Always Cheaper/Better (Student Loan Edition)” which discussed the fact that the student loan program administered through banks costs $7 more per $100 loan than loans provided directly, and what an incredibly rich fee/expense level that was for a debt product.I […]
Read more...Readers may recall that we commented, in “Wal-Mart Behaves Badly, Again,” on an April 4 Wall Street Journal article that described the activities of its Threat Research and Analysis Group. This story came to light because the Bentonville company fired Bruce Gabbard, one of the unit’s members, because he intercepted a reporter’s phone calls while […]
Read more...As we’ve discussed, in the UK there is a move afoot to include the concept of wellbeing in public policy debates. The Brits have recognized that alienation and anomie are on the rise and are willing to discuss whether government can be part of the solution, or at least not part of the problem. While […]
Read more...Anyone who doubts that the top 1% is getting wealthier needs to consider the factoids from this CNN Money story, “Richest hedge fund managers get richer.” John Arnold earned $1.5 to $2 billion for having bet correctly on oil prices. Four other hedge fund managers were estimated to have earned over $1 billion. The average […]
Read more...Not much, it seems. This is from Andrew Sullivan, a card-carrying conservative, via Brad DeLong: Meet Professor Walter F. Murphy, emeritus of Princeton University. He’s a former Marine, with five years of active service and 19 years in the reserve, and a legal critic of Roe vs Wade and supporter of the Alito confirmation. He’s […]
Read more...A post at Free Exchange, the Economist’s blog, which quotes and elaborates on one by Tyler Cowen, posits that Europeans are better at government because they have more homogeneous societies and talent pools, and therefore Europeans choose to consume more government. Americans are better at things like private sector innovation, and therefore its population demands […]
Read more...Wal-Mart just doesn’t get it. It spends considerable time and energy on social responsibility initiatives, like promoting diversity at vendors (after begin named as defendant in the largest class action discrimination suit in history) and becoming environmentally responsible (after having settled an EPA action). Yet the company continues to engage in behavior which, if not […]
Read more...An intriguing piece, “One Person’s Dumpster Is Another’s Diner,” ran yesterday at Alternet.org. For those who aren’t familiar with the term (as I wasn’t prior to reading this piece) Freeganism (a conjunction of “free” and “vegan”) is the philosophy that participation in our capitalist economy makes a person complicit in the exploitative practices that are […]
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