You must watch the HBO movie “Too Big to Fail” and if you don’t have HBO, find a way to get it just so you can see this movie. The movie is compelling for anyone interested in public affairs, and terrifying in the clarity that it brings to the 2008 financial collapse that consumed our financial markets and came a hair from ruining our economy.
The jury is still out on the ramifications of the choices made in those days.
Some of the fallout has, over time, shown the actions paid-off: the economy didn’t completely implode (note I said “completely”); banks paid back almost all of the money “loaned” them; GM has repaid their “loan”; and AIG has also had an offering that repaid their bailout.
Still, it is unclear if those actions created a philosophical web that can’t be undone: saddling us with ever-larger financial institutions that are now “too big to fail”; compromising the ideals we hold dear (that you should be rewarded or punished for your actions); and saddling us with a national debt that has become untenable.
The questions raised by the film still haunt us, and will continue to do so for years to come. But, for those who watched as America looked to be crashing before us, "Too Big to Fail" is a rudimentary education in just how serious those times were. Even the people who had the most-dire prognostications at that time may not have seen all of the dangers we faced.
You should watch it.
25 May 2011
18 May 2011
I voted for it before I voted against it before I voted for it, maybe
“Stunning” is an overused word in the news. But in this case, I think stunning is an appropriate descriptor for what happened in the SC General Assembly today.
So I begin … In a pretty stunning reversal, the SC House voted overwhelmingly today to extend massive tax breaks to Internet retailer Amazon for a facility in Lexington County, and other rumored facilities around South Carolina at a later date. It was stunning for several reasons including, but not limited to the following:
• the House had just overwhelmingly voted against the same tax package just three weeks ago;
• the Tea Party was watching for flip-floppers closely;
• it was a business investment that benefitted the Midlands which almost never happens (the Midlands has traditionally been left out of economic development by the political power-centers of the Greenville and Charleston areas);
• the Governor trotted out a dog-and-pony show after the last House vote to say the package for Amazon was a bad idea (though she’d originally refused to take a position on the issue)
For several weeks, I was working on several items at the Statehouse and heard the Senate debate the Amazon deal. Though they had to contort themselves to make the logic work, it seemed Senators were overwhelmingly ready to approve the tax package for the Internet giant – and I predict they will, now.
There are only two dramas left to watch – wait, there is one drama and one thing that will never happen to watch now.
The first and only real drama is the bill arriving on the desk of Governor Nikki Haley. Will she or won’t she live up to her promise that she won’t take sides on the Amazon deal, and that she’ll pass whatever comes to her desk? After the House voted several weeks ago to kill the incentives, Haley was saying that was what she had wanted all along. Though she’d voted for an almost identical tax package for TV retailer QVC in 2005, she was happy that the deal hadn’t been approved for Lexington County. Now, she’s given herself some cover on both sides of the issue, but she’ll look disingenuous now no matter what her final decision is.
The second drama that will never play out is fixing the tax code so that South Carolina can be more-than-competitive for future economic development without having to strain common-sense every time jobs are dangled in front of us. South Carolina sales taxes and property taxes have become mush over the last ten years as the General Assembly keeps playing favorites and making our tax code an indefensible mess of ever-larger winners at the expense of losers (the vast majority of South Carolinians).
The drama is what Governor Haley will do - fixing our tax code is a drama that will never play out with the crew in the statehouse.
So I begin … In a pretty stunning reversal, the SC House voted overwhelmingly today to extend massive tax breaks to Internet retailer Amazon for a facility in Lexington County, and other rumored facilities around South Carolina at a later date. It was stunning for several reasons including, but not limited to the following:
• the House had just overwhelmingly voted against the same tax package just three weeks ago;
• the Tea Party was watching for flip-floppers closely;
• it was a business investment that benefitted the Midlands which almost never happens (the Midlands has traditionally been left out of economic development by the political power-centers of the Greenville and Charleston areas);
• the Governor trotted out a dog-and-pony show after the last House vote to say the package for Amazon was a bad idea (though she’d originally refused to take a position on the issue)
For several weeks, I was working on several items at the Statehouse and heard the Senate debate the Amazon deal. Though they had to contort themselves to make the logic work, it seemed Senators were overwhelmingly ready to approve the tax package for the Internet giant – and I predict they will, now.
There are only two dramas left to watch – wait, there is one drama and one thing that will never happen to watch now.
The first and only real drama is the bill arriving on the desk of Governor Nikki Haley. Will she or won’t she live up to her promise that she won’t take sides on the Amazon deal, and that she’ll pass whatever comes to her desk? After the House voted several weeks ago to kill the incentives, Haley was saying that was what she had wanted all along. Though she’d voted for an almost identical tax package for TV retailer QVC in 2005, she was happy that the deal hadn’t been approved for Lexington County. Now, she’s given herself some cover on both sides of the issue, but she’ll look disingenuous now no matter what her final decision is.
The second drama that will never play out is fixing the tax code so that South Carolina can be more-than-competitive for future economic development without having to strain common-sense every time jobs are dangled in front of us. South Carolina sales taxes and property taxes have become mush over the last ten years as the General Assembly keeps playing favorites and making our tax code an indefensible mess of ever-larger winners at the expense of losers (the vast majority of South Carolinians).
The drama is what Governor Haley will do - fixing our tax code is a drama that will never play out with the crew in the statehouse.
17 May 2011
Moral Evolution
David Brooks today is one you have to think about. Below are some excerpts ... read it all here.
"Human beings, Haidt argues, are “the giraffes of altruism.” Just as giraffes got long necks to help them survive, humans developed moral minds that help them and their groups succeed. Humans build moral communities out of shared norms, habits, emotions and gods, and then will fight and even sometimes die to defend their communities. …
"But the big upshot is this: For decades, people tried to devise a rigorous “scientific” system to analyze behavior that would be divorced from morality. But if cooperation permeates our nature, then so does morality, and there is no escaping ethics, emotion and religion in our quest to understand who we are and how we got this way."
"Human beings, Haidt argues, are “the giraffes of altruism.” Just as giraffes got long necks to help them survive, humans developed moral minds that help them and their groups succeed. Humans build moral communities out of shared norms, habits, emotions and gods, and then will fight and even sometimes die to defend their communities. …
"But the big upshot is this: For decades, people tried to devise a rigorous “scientific” system to analyze behavior that would be divorced from morality. But if cooperation permeates our nature, then so does morality, and there is no escaping ethics, emotion and religion in our quest to understand who we are and how we got this way."
04 May 2011
Still a dangerous world, but now it is a better one
I am not smart enough to know if the world is now safer than it was on Sunday.
I do remember how I felt that cloudless blue morning as I watched the second plane crash into the World Trade Center while the other building burned beside it from the first impact. I remember the next two days of shell-shocked horror as more and more news rolled-on trying to decipher what had happened. I remember hearing the first plane fly over Columbia days later as I sat at the Statehouse, and I shuddered. I remember wanting payment exacted for the attack on my innocent American brothers and sisters of all races and creeds.
It has been a long ten years. During that time my own religious faith has grown, still I am not very conflicted by the news that Osama Bin Laden has been killed. I am relieved. Maybe I should be conflicted, but I still have a deep-down feeling that his end was better than he deserved.
I do believe in the afterlife, and those who kill unsuspecting children and women and men (i.e. evil cowards) and corrupt others to do the same, have an especially gruesome torment when they are gone. Bin Laden spent at least the last two decades as the cowardly killer of innocent people around the globe.
He is dead. Long live peace and respect for human life, and may America continue to prosecute those who endanger the world’s safety vigorously forever.
I do remember how I felt that cloudless blue morning as I watched the second plane crash into the World Trade Center while the other building burned beside it from the first impact. I remember the next two days of shell-shocked horror as more and more news rolled-on trying to decipher what had happened. I remember hearing the first plane fly over Columbia days later as I sat at the Statehouse, and I shuddered. I remember wanting payment exacted for the attack on my innocent American brothers and sisters of all races and creeds.
It has been a long ten years. During that time my own religious faith has grown, still I am not very conflicted by the news that Osama Bin Laden has been killed. I am relieved. Maybe I should be conflicted, but I still have a deep-down feeling that his end was better than he deserved.
I do believe in the afterlife, and those who kill unsuspecting children and women and men (i.e. evil cowards) and corrupt others to do the same, have an especially gruesome torment when they are gone. Bin Laden spent at least the last two decades as the cowardly killer of innocent people around the globe.
He is dead. Long live peace and respect for human life, and may America continue to prosecute those who endanger the world’s safety vigorously forever.
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