Is GWB The Worst President Of The Past 50 Years?

in Current Affairs | March 19th, 2009

Stay with me con­ser­v­a­tives on this one. It’s not as bad as you think…

NPR’s Intel­li­gence Squared (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) has a rather unique for­mat. It brings Oxford-style debates to Amer­i­ca, and it fea­tures lead­ing thinkers tak­ing dif­fer­ent posi­tions on hot-but­ton issues of our day. (Get more pre­cise details on the debate for­mat here.) Recent debates have cen­tered on the fol­low­ing ques­tions: Is Wash­ing­ton or Wall Street ulti­mate­ly to blame for the finan­cial cri­sis? Should we legal­ize the mar­ket for human organs?  Is the US final­ly win­ning the war in Iraq? And then, is George W. Bush the worst pres­i­dent of the last 50 years?

The GWB debate brings togeth­er a pret­ty sol­id pan­el. Argu­ing against the Bush lega­cy: Jacob Weis­berg (Edi­tor in Chief of Slate) and Simon Jenk­ins (colum­nist for the Guardian and the Sun­day Times). Then, for the Bush lega­cy: Karl Rove (the all impor­tant Bush strate­gist) and Bill Kris­tol (edi­tor of The Week­ly Stan­dard and for­mer colum­nist for The New York Times). As you’ll see, it’s a pret­ty spir­it­ed con­ver­sa­tion. Have a lis­ten and let us know where you come down: iTunes — Feed — Stream.

As a quick note, the Intel­li­gence Squared pod­cast can be per­ma­nent­ly found in our Ideas & Cul­ture Pod­cast Col­lec­tion.

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Stephen Colbert’s History Lesson: Bring Angry Mob to AIG

in Comedy, Current Affairs | March 17th, 2009

Cour­tesy of Stephen Col­bert, we get a lit­tle his­to­ry les­son that reminds us how we fixed prob­lems once upon a time in Amer­i­ca. Get the full episode here.

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Stephen Colbert on Ayn Rand Thinking

in Comedy, Current Affairs | March 15th, 2009

Or watch it here.

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Jon Stewart v. CNBC, or The Failure of the Financial Media

in Comedy, Current Affairs | March 13th, 2009

A pret­ty bril­liant saga played out over the last week on The Dai­ly Show. It start­ed when Jon Stew­art tweaked Rick San­tel­li and his wide­ly-pub­li­cized rant against home­own­er bailouts. Appar­ent­ly San­tel­li’s net­work, CNBC, could­n’t take a lit­tle joke and fought back, which only pro­vid­ed The Dai­ly Show with more com­ic fod­der. (You can watch the fol­low-up seg­ments here and here. Very fun­ny stuff.) Then, it all cul­mi­nat­ed last night when Stew­art brought Jim Cramer, a lead­ing CNBC per­son­al­i­ty and invest­ment advi­sor, on the show. Here, the jokes end and a long and dead­ly seri­ous inter­view begins, and we all get to see how the finan­cial media failed, if not betrayed, us dur­ing the rise and fall of the cred­it bub­ble. Sad that a come­di­an has to make the point. But I’ll take it.

As a quick side note, it should­n’t be said that no one ever warned the Amer­i­can pub­lic about the pro­gram­ming being put out by CNBC and espe­cial­ly Jim Cramer. Last year, David Swensen, who man­ages Yale’s multi­bil­lion dol­lar endow­ment (which has fared quite well dur­ing this decline, at least rel­a­tive to oth­er large endow­ments) took aim at Jim Cramer in the NYTimes, not­ing: “There is noth­ing that Cramer says that can help peo­ple make intel­li­gent deci­sions.” “He takes some­thing that is very seri­ous and turns it into a game. If you want to have fun, go to Dis­ney World.”

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This American Life: The Financial Crisis in 59 Minutes

in Current Affairs, Economics | March 2nd, 2009

Last week, we cre­at­ed a handy list of blogs & pod­casts that reg­u­lar­ly cov­er the finan­cial cri­sis. And so it seemed worth flag­ging the lat­est episode of This Amer­i­can Life. It’s called “Bad Bank” (MP3 — iTunes — Feed). It just came out this week­end. And it takes a close and enter­tain­ing look at what hap­pens when a bank goes bad/insolvent. The show gets into the real nit­ty grit­ty of the cri­sis and, once you’ve lis­tened, you’ll bet­ter under­stand bet­ter the pros and cons of solu­tions being tried out by the gov­ern­ment.

The episode fol­lows two oth­er insight­ful pro­grams by This Amer­i­can Life: The Giant Pool of Mon­ey (May 2008), and Anoth­er Fright­en­ing Show about the Econ­o­my (Novem­ber 2008). All three pro­grams are now added to our list of finan­cial cri­sis blogs and pod­casts.

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Blogs & Podcasts for the Financial Crisis

in Current Affairs, Economics, Most Popular | February 27th, 2009

There’s no doubt about it. We’re liv­ing in inter­est­ing times, as the Chi­nese curse goes, and they won’t be going away any time soon. Most of us can’t afford to ignore what’s hap­pen­ing here. So, below, I have high­light­ed a num­ber of blogs and pod­casts that help make intel­li­gent sense of this eco­nom­ic deba­cle. Here they go…

  • Plan­et Mon­ey: NPR is doing a great job of cov­er­ing the unwind­ing glob­al econ­o­my. The Plan­et Mon­ey blog is a good read, and it includes an essen­tial read­ing list. But the accom­pa­ny­ing pod­cast is one that I fol­low reg­u­lar­ly. It’s a must. And it’s gen­er­al­ly enter­tain­ing. You can access it here:  iTunes — Rss Feed — Web Site. (Note: the last episode is not the best exam­ple of what it’s usu­al­ly about.)
  • Econo­Talk: Econ­Talk was vot­ed “Best Pod­cast” in the 2008 Weblog Awards. Host­ed by Russ Roberts (out of George Mason Uni­ver­si­ty), the show “fea­tures one-on-one dis­cus­sions with an eclec­tic mix of authors, pro­fes­sors, Nobel Lau­re­ates, entre­pre­neurs, lead­ers of char­i­ties and busi­ness­es, and peo­ple on the street.” You can access the show via the fol­low­ing chan­nels: iTunes — RSS Feed — Web Site.
  • The Base­line Sce­nario: Ded­i­cat­ed to “explain­ing some of the key issues in the glob­al econ­o­my and devel­op­ing con­crete pol­i­cy pro­pos­als,” The Base­line Sce­nario is writ­ten, among oth­ers, by Simon John­son, for­mer chief econ­o­mist of the Inter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund, who is now a pro­fes­sor at the MIT Sloan School of Man­age­ment. Although rel­a­tive­ly young, the blog has received a fair amount of acclaim as the finan­cial cri­sis has unfold­ed. You may want to par­tic­u­lar­ly check out their col­lec­tion of con­tent called Finan­cial Cri­sis for Begin­ners.
  • Real­time Eco­nom­ic Issues Watch:  Here, senior fel­lows of the Peter­son Insti­tute for Inter­na­tion­al Eco­nom­ics (a think tank based in Wash­ing­ton) “dis­cuss and debate their respons­es to glob­al eco­nom­ic and finan­cial devel­op­ments as they occur each day and offer insights that oth­ers might over­look.”  You will find some of the folks from the Peter­son Insti­tute also appear­ing on the pod­casts and blogs men­tioned else­where on this list. Find the RSS feed here.
  • Econ­o­mists’ Forum: Run by the Finan­cial Times (UK), this blog brings togeth­er a large num­ber of econ­o­mists who offer a run­ning com­men­tary on the state of the frag­ile econ­o­my. The Wall Street Jour­nal has its own real time blog here.
  • New­sHour with Jim Lehrer: The PBS night­ly news pro­gram almost always includes an infor­ma­tive seg­ment ded­i­cat­ed to the finan­cial news of the day. The cov­er­age, which typ­i­cal­ly includes inter­views with experts, is excel­lent. You can down­load the pod­cast here: iTunes — Feed — Web Site
  • The Beck­er-Pos­ner Blog: While not updat­ed as fre­quent­ly as Krugman’s blog, The Beck­er-Pos­ner blog is a great place to read the thoughts of two Nobel prize win­ning econ­o­mists (Gary Deck­er and Richard Pos­ner) dis­cuss the cur­rent eco­nom­ic cri­sis. Thanks Bryce for the tip.
  • This Amer­i­can Life: One of NPR’s beloved pro­grams has offered some excel­lent cov­er­age of the finan­cial cri­sis. It start­ed with a show called The Giant Pool of Mon­ey (May 2008), and it has since includ­ed a pro­gram called Anoth­er Fright­en­ing Show about the Econ­o­my (Novem­ber 2008). Now there is a new one called Bad Bank, which explains what’s real­ly hap­pen­ing in the train­wrecks that are banks. These pro­grams were put togeth­er part­ly by mem­bers of the Plan­et Mon­ey pod­cast men­tioned above.

Are we miss­ing some­thing good? Please let us know in the com­ments below…

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The American Future

in Current Affairs, History | February 25th, 2009

Through his books and doc­u­men­taries, Simon Schama, a British born his­to­ri­an, has cov­ered a lot of fer­tile ground. The French Rev­o­lu­tion, the slave trade, the pow­er of art, Rem­brandt, ear­ly mod­ern Dutch cul­ture, the his­to­ry of Britain — Schama has cov­ered it all. And now he has pulled a Toc­queville on us. He spent the bet­ter part of a year trav­el­ing across Amer­i­ca, siz­ing it up, and pro­duc­ing a lengthy TV doc­u­men­tary (now avail­able on DVD) and a relat­ed book (not avail­able in the US yet) called The Amer­i­can Future: A His­to­ry. His analy­sis of Amer­i­ca, of its past and its future, takes into account sev­er­al major themes: reli­gion, immi­gra­tion, land and resources, and war. In this recent con­ver­sa­tion with Bill Moy­ers, Schama talks at length about Amer­i­ca and where it finds itself today. The first 15 min­utes focus on Oba­ma and the chal­lenges he faces. The remain­ing part gets into themes dis­cussed in The Amer­i­can Future. You can access it here: iTunes — Feed — Web Site.

P.S. I am real­ly sor­ry about the frus­trat­ing down­time this morn­ing. My host­ing ser­vice — Dreamhost — had some “issues.” Hope­ful­ly this was an excep­tion.

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The Unrepentant Terrorist? A Conversation with Bill Ayers

in Current Affairs | February 21st, 2009

Bill Ayers, founder of the Weath­er Under­ground and favorite whip­ping boy of the failed McCain cam­paign, gives a primer on the sum­mer of ’68, dis­cuss­es his favorite tat­too, and explains how the Chica­go Police Depart­ment now loves him. The inter­view was con­duct­ed by a col­league of mine, Scott Hutchins, and you have to like the iron­ic way it begins:

…our inter­view [start­ed] with a bomb scare. We sat down on the couch in a busy hotel lob­by and a wor­ried secu­ri­ty guard approached. “Is that your bag?” she asked, point­ing to a back­pack and coat that were def­i­nite­ly not ours. “Nope,” we said. “Oh boy,” she said. She asked a few oth­er peo­ple. The own­er was not there. She radioed in. I con­sid­ered the irony of being blown up while inter­view­ing Bill Ayers. I fig­ured it would at least get me a wikipedia entry.

Get the full inter­view over at The Rum­pus.

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