World Food Program Director in Dave Letterman thanks to j for the link here:
http://lateshow.cbs.com/latenight/lateshow/video_player/index/php/966082.phtml
and
here
We can do it!
-Sheeran
Chris Blattman's Blog: What could a development economist buy for $700 billion?
This surprised me, It seems that I’m swinging between feelings of how easy and hard achieving the MDGs is.
01 October 2008
What could a development economist buy for $700 billion?
Duncan Green puts the bailout in an international perspective:
To put the proposed Wall Street bailout into perspective. $700bn:
* Would clear the accumulated debt of the 49 poorest countries in the world ($375bn) twice over
* Is almost 5 times the annual amount of extra aid needed to achieve all the Millennium Development Goals on poverty, health, education etc ($150bn a year)
* Is about 7 years of current global aid levels ($104bn in 2007)
* Is enough to eradicate all world poverty for over two years (UNDP calculates it would take $300bn to get the entire world population over the $1 a day poverty line).
On the other hand it’s:
* only a quarter of the cost of the Iraq war ($3 trillion on Joseph Stiglitz’ calculation )
* a half of annual global military spending ($1339 bn)
Chris Blattman’s Blog: What could a development economist buy for $700 billion?.
The Price of Disgust – Freakonomics – Opinion – New York Times Blog
Let’s see. Is this part of the 5B deal with warren buffet, do some lobbying for the bailout.
Adding to the pressure on Congress to act were some of the nation’s biggest corporations, including Verizon Communications Inc., Microsoft Corp., and General Electric Co. GE Chief Executive Jeffrey Immelt is actively lobbying politicians and finance officials in Washington to complete the financial-rescue bill, said a company spokesman. To back up his message, Mr. Immelt directed his staff to compile evidence of the “negative ripple effects” throughout America from the crisis on Wall Street, including information on what is happening to customers and employees in all 50 states.
The Price of Disgust – Freakonomics – Opinion – New York Times Blog.
In the Battle of the Sexes, Partisans Outearn Peacemakers – Freakonomics – Opinion – New York Times Blog
I think I’ve written about this same study before.
That male chauvinism works to the advantage of men in a male-dominatedmarketplace shouldn’t be surprising. But the magnitude of the effect took the study’s authors by surprise: sexist men earned, on average, $11,930 more per year than their egalitarian male counterparts over a 25-year period.
The effect works in reverse for women. While they still earned slightly less than egalitarian-minded men, women who believed in gender equality earned $1,052 more per year than women who held more “traditional” views.
In the Battle of the Sexes, Partisans Outearn Peacemakers – Freakonomics – Opinion – New York Times Blog.
Op-Ed Columnist – Revolt of the Nihilists – Op-Ed – NYTimes.com
The American century was created by American leadership, which is scarcer than credit just about now.
Op-Ed Columnist – Revolt of the Nihilists – Op-Ed – NYTimes.com.
Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
History Repeating itself watch!
A petition was signed by 1028 economists in the United States asking President Hoover to veto the legislation, organized by Paul Douglas, Irving Fisher, James TFG Wood, Frank Graham, Ernest Patterson, Henry Seager, Frank Taussig, and Clair Wilcox.[5] Automobile executive Henry Ford spent an evening at the White House trying to convince Hoover to veto the bill, calling it “an economic stupidity”.[6]J.P.Morgan’s Thomas Lamont said he “almost went down on my knees to beg Herbert Hoover to veto the asinine Hawley-Smoot tariff,”[7]
Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Wake Up Call- Steven Pearlstein – They Just Don't Get It – washingtonpost.com
People get the leaders we deserve. What have they done to deserve such people.
The basic problem here is that too many people don’t understand the seriousness of the situation.
Americans fail to understand that they are facing the real prospect of a decade of little or no economic growth because of the bursting of a credit bubble that they helped create and that now threatens to bring down the global financial system.
Politicians worry less about preventing a financial meltdown than about ideology, partisan posturing and teaching people a lesson. Financiers have yet to own up publicly to their own greed, arrogance and incompetence. And leaders of foreign governments still think that this is an American problem and that they have no need to mount similar rescue efforts in their own countries.
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In the coming weeks and months, all of these people will come to understand how deep the hole really is and how we’re all in it together.
They’ll come to understand that the giant sucking sound they hear is of a massive deleveraging of the global economy and the global financial system as households, governments, businesses and investment funds adjust to living in a world with less debt and more inflation.
And they will come around, reluctantly, to the understanding that the only way to get out of these situations is to have governments all around the world borrow gobs of money and effectively nationalize large swaths of the financial system so it can be restructured, recapitalized, reformed and returned to private ownership once the crisis has passed and the economy has gotten back on its feet.
Steven Pearlstein – They Just Don’t Get It – washingtonpost.com.
Do Good Grades Predict Success? – Freakonomics – Opinion – New York Times Blog
This is something I would also like to know. I’ve always loved my teachers but I’ve always hated the school system. Science is not about memorization. School should be about the joy of learning. As I see how my younger cousins are educated in school, or even younger people about 3-6 years younger than I. It is becoming ever more apparent that what we have is a system that would like to propagate society as it is. and for all the beauty and the joy that the society I am in has brought to me, I cannot but hope that society progresses and for it to progress we must learn to subvert the things that try to propagate this system I have come both to love and hate.
They say crazy is doing something again ang again ang expecting different results. So I say that we are crazy to believe that the world is not changing, and because the world is changing it is crazy to expect that the way that society progressed what starting 150 years ago up to the present is the way for us to progress even more. We need a modern system of educating people. We have sold the arts short by not teaching it well. We have sold science and math short by not showing people how beautiful it is.
I hope that by the time I have a child, I wouldn’t have to put up a herculean effort just to give my child a proper education.!
What interests me is whether the present system actually produces more success or heavily limits it.
Would a different system with less emphasis on conformity produce more of our best and brightest? Or does the annealing effect of being crushed by the system help to produce those best and brightest?
If you look at those who have commonly advanced our thinking, our abilities, our technologies, and our economy (through business sense), many did poorly in schools, yet they persisted. The persistence may have been the critical element, and it would have perhaps been lost had they been encouraged more.
So does this mean we need more of those mediocre middle school and high school teachers acting as the forge to both create the worker bees we need, as well as the best [and most successful] by trying to destroy them?
Thoughts?
Do Good Grades Predict Success? – Freakonomics – Opinion – New York Times Blog.
Be afraid. Be very afraid. – The Bing Blog
Hope the rational parts of the Republican party can at least overcome these idealogues.
I just read a comment from a House Republican who helped to defeat the bailout. It said that passing the bailout would represent “a coffin on top of Ronald Reagan’s coffin.” In one statement, this guy made it clear what his camp’s priorities represent – ideology over the welfare of the public.
Be afraid. Be very afraid. – The Bing Blog.
Alchemy in Arendal at Paulo Coelho’s Blog
This is nice to hear, I know I’ve been transformed by reading the alchemist.
Thanks to my sister. I think I know what I’ll be giving people at the fast approaching holiday season.
In 2003 the city of Arendal was going through a rough time financially, and the motivation among the employees sank dramatically. The city council ordered 3.000 copies of The Alchemist and hoped for a miracle.The unorthodox plan turned out to be a success.
“After reading The Alchemist we all became aware of the importance of our visions, and that it is possible to make them happen.” Kjell Sjursen, leader of the city council
Alchemy in Arendal at Paulo Coelho’s Blog.