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.
  • Paul Krug­man: A Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty econ­o­mist, a Nobel Prize Win­ner, a New York Times op-ed writer, Paul Krug­man is blog­ging the glob­al finan­cial and eco­nom­ic cri­sis dai­ly. It’s an opin­ion that you can’t afford to take light­ly. You’ll also want to see his new­ly released book, The Return of Depres­sion Eco­nom­ics and the Cri­sis of 2008.
  • 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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Welcome to the New Age of Upheaval

in Current Affairs | February 18th, 2009

Har­vard his­to­ri­an Niall Fer­gu­son has writ­ten exten­sive­ly about the rise and fall of great empires and finan­cial sys­tems. Writ­ing for For­eign Pol­i­cy, Fer­gu­son now warns that the spi­ral­ing eco­nom­ic cri­sis may soon pose seri­ous threats to inter­na­tion­al peace and Amer­i­can secu­ri­ty. As we saw dur­ing the late 1930s, eco­nom­ic cri­sis often sets the stage for full-blown polit­i­cal and pos­si­bly mil­i­tary cri­sis, and we’re already see­ing the risk of upheaval in nine coun­tries, includ­ing Soma­lia, Rus­sia, and Mex­i­co. Fer­gu­son clos­es by say­ing: “Eco­nom­ic volatil­i­ty, plus eth­nic dis­in­te­gra­tion, plus an empire in decline: That com­bi­na­tion is about the most lethal in geopol­i­tics. We now have all three. The age of upheaval starts now.”

via The Dai­ly Dish

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The Odds on America’s Collapse

in Current Affairs, Economics, History | February 13th, 2009

jdiamond1Jared Dia­mond became a house­hold name with his Pulitzer Prize-win­ning book Guns, Germs & Steel (2003). Lat­er, the UCLA geo­g­ra­ph­er climbed the charts again with Col­lapse: How Soci­eties Choose to Fail or Suc­ceed (2005). Now, based on this last book, he’s putting odds on whether the Unit­ed States will sur­vive this cri­sis, and he’s putting them only at 51–49. Not too great. And he goes on to say that our best chance of sur­viv­ing is if Amer­i­ca’s wealthy elite suf­fers far more than it already has. For more, lis­ten here.

via Big Think’s Twit­ter Feed. Get our Twit­ter Feed here.

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Our Rapidly Changing Digital World

in Current Affairs, Technology | February 11th, 2009

In case you need­ed a reminder, we’re no longer liv­ing in your grand­fa­ther’s world. This video makes that plain­ly clear. Every­thing is chang­ing in a blink, and edu­ca­tion offers you and your kids the best way to nav­i­gate it all. Don’t take it for grant­ed.

via The Dig­i­tal­Blur. Thanks Jil­lian for the tip on this one.

Remem­ber to catch us on Twit­ter.

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Milton Friedman on Greed

in Current Affairs, Economics | February 10th, 2009

The new Trea­sury Sec­re­tary unveiled his plan this morn­ing, and appar­ent­ly the mar­kets hate it, which pret­ty much guar­an­tees that we’ll be liv­ing with our finan­cial mess for a good while longer. As we know, this cri­sis could have been avoid­ed. But greed got the bet­ter of us. So, I won­der what read­ers think when they see Mil­ton Fried­man’s 1979 defense of cap­i­tal­ism and greed. Is it a mod­el, a line of argu­ment, that’s now dis­cred­it­ed? Or do we grudg­ing­ly con­cede his points and say that cap­i­tal­ism is the worst eco­nom­ic mod­el except for all the oth­ers that have been tried (a cheap play here on Churchill), and then fig­ure out how to mop it up?

via Andrew Sul­li­van’s Dai­ly Dish

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The Obama “Hope” Poster & The New Copyright Controversy

in Current Affairs, Law | February 10th, 2009

obamaposter-198x300By now, every­one knows the famous Oba­ma “Hope” poster pro­duced by Shep­ard Fairey. Recent­ly, Fairey has acknowl­edged that the poster was orig­i­nal­ly inspired by a pho­to­graph belong­ing to the AP Press, and now the AP is claim­ing that Fairey has infringed on its copy­right and wants “pay­ment for the use of the pho­to and a por­tion of any mon­ey he makes from it.” (see arti­cle in the New York Times). In response, Fairey has filed a pre­emp­tive law­suit, claim­ing that he used the AP pho­to as a mere start­ing point and then trans­formed it into a “stun­ning, abstract­ed and ide­al­ized visu­al image that cre­at­ed pow­er­ful new mean­ing and con­veys a rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent mes­sage.” If you put the two images side by side (see here), it’s pret­ty instant­ly clear that Fairey took an admit­ted­ly well done news pho­to and did some­thing quite trans­for­ma­tive with it, which makes things fair game. That’s obvi­ous to almost any­one (includ­ing hope­ful­ly judges), and it’s a shame to see the AP, which lives by its First Amend­ment rights, look­ing to use the copy­right clause to lim­it free­dom of expres­sion. Bad move guys.

As a quick side note, Fairey is being rep­re­sent­ed in court by The Fair Use Project at Stan­ford Law School’s Cen­ter for Inter­net and Soci­ety (to which I have zero con­nec­tion.)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sto­ry Behind the Icon­ic Oba­ma Cam­paign Poster

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