Posts Tagged “obama”

21 Apr: Hrmmmm.…

Travelling for work, my roller car­ryon died. Looking for places which have cheap lug­gage turned up this:
I won­der how old this entry for “Target” is…

6 Jan: Cooler, Wiser

Clearly, any spe­cific assis­tance [to ail­ing finan­cial insti­tu­tions] will have to include penal­ties for those man­agers who have left their insti­tu­tions over­ex­posed. Central bank cred­i­bil­ity in enforc­ing these penal­ties will go a long way in lim­it­ing moral haz­ard. Raghuram Rajan in 2005, explain­ing how to pick up the pieces after the 2008 finan­cial col­lapse (via […]

25 Nov: Completely Unaware

“I hope the best and the bright­est who will be join­ing the new pres­i­dent will at least enter­tain the pos­si­bil­ity that a lot of what they think they know is wrong,” [Serial Errorist William] Kristol added. Theresa Cook and Kate Barrett, An Economic Transition, A Political Dance, ABC News
My ques­tion: why is any­one pre­tend­ing Bill Kristol […]

24 Nov: Just… Wow

By select­ing Tim Geithner as his Treasury sec­re­tary, Barack Obama has opted for a fig­ure who plau­si­bly rep­re­sents change while also offer­ing a high degree of con­ti­nu­ity with both the Paulson Treasury and its Clinton admin­is­tra­tion pre-decessors. Krishna Guha, Geithner ready for top job as Treasury chief, Financial Times, 2009-11-23
How can you read that and […]

9 Nov: Vision

Obama is ask­ing for ideas, and while I have no faith that they will go any­where, I sent one in any­ways.
Namely, I’d like to see a sov­er­eign wealth fund ulti­mately respon­si­ble to the Treasury, under advise­ment of Commerce and Labor. The man­date for the orga­ni­za­tion would include:

Ensuring restored mar­ket liq­uid­ity by sheer force of gravity […]

7 Nov: Different Answers

A rel­a­tive of mine once con­fided that he voted for Ronald Reagan barely more than a decade after he asked that copies of The Daily Worker be mailed to him in Vietnam. I asked him why he did so, and his answer was that he “was tired of feel­ing ashamed of being an American.”
28 years later, […]

7 Nov: Didn’t Take Long

48 hours later, and I’m already com­pos­ing an apolo­gia for Obama. Well, let’s get into it on Rahm Emanuel:

I live in Chicago
I con­tributed money to Obama’s cam­paign
Emanuel is the rep­re­sen­ta­tive for my district

To be hon­est, the main rea­son I had for both­er­ing to vote in the elec­tion before the bailout was to vote against Rep. Emanuel. […]

15 Oct: The Last Debate

Some ran­dom thoughts from the debate:

I’ve twit­tered about this before, but I hon­estly am glad that Obama got a new pro­jec­tor for the Adler Planetarium. The plan­e­tar­ium is a mon­u­ment in it’s own right, along­side the Museum of Science and Industry, the Shedd Aquarium, and the Field Museum; the longer it oper­ates the bet­ter. Also, […]

14 Oct: Pick A Side

Compare:
In the years of its rise, the move­ment lit­tle by lit­tle brought the community’s atti­tude toward the teacher around from respect and envy to resent­ment, from trust to fear and sus­pi­cion. […] By 1933 at least five of my ten [Nazi] friends (and I think six or seven) looked upon “intel­lec­tu­als” as unre­li­able, and among […]

26 Sep: Notes on the Debate

[Disclosure: I live in Chicago, and have finan­cially sup­ported Obama already.]
The first note is about the orga­ni­za­tion that McCain cited at the begin­ning of his speech, Citizens Against Government Waste. The one he was using as his cita­tion for the 900-million-dollar fig­ure he was hang­ing around Obama’s neck. They’ve are a lob­by­ing orga­ni­za­tion, which has […]