Al Jazeera English, the Guardian and the NY Times all have live blogs (descending order of quality, IMO). Thanks, Xeni Jardin at BoingBoing!
Google unveiled a plan to allow Egyptians to tweet voicemails: Official Google Blog: Some weekend work that will (hopefully) enable more Egyptians to be heard. If you speak Arabic (all of the messages I listened to were in Arabic), search #egypt on twitter (though that will obviously get you lots more than just the voice tweets from Egypt), or go to speak2tweet.
This is Thomas Masterson's personal blog. I may blog about politics, economics, all things geeky, soccer, food, even. Who knows?
Showing posts with label Revolution. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Revolution. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Monday, October 19, 2009
Bank on indiscretion
The Economist writes a good summary of opinion on the banks profits and bonuses, in the wake of huge taxpayer bailouts. I'd say that the last paragraph is a bit off, though:
Banks are acting just as if they own the government. It's not ineveryone's interest to rein the banks in, though. At least not in the short term. Those who receive large donations from the financial industry do not have a good incentive to rein that industry in. The question is, will legislators be able to convince their wealthy funders that they need to make a show of making them behave to stave off real reform?
One doesn't want to get in the habit of seizing profits wholesale. On the other hand, the banks clearly feel no obligation to help pay for the bail-out that kept them afloat, no obligation toward the economy as a whole, and no need to mask their behaviour with even the barest of public relations fig leaves. It is in the interest of everyone involved for policymakers to do something to rein the banks in and publicly rebuke them for their disregard, lest populist rage grow out of hand, leading to ill-considered measures that may ultimately impair the important economic functions financial markets are supposed to serve. If things continue on as they are now, the situation will not end well.
Banks are acting just as if they own the government. It's not in
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