Local Organizing in a Global World: The Marginalization of Bright-eyed Idealists
(Post-industrialization has largely worked itself through the developed world, this means more and more problems are driven by external forces fundamentally outside the control of communities or would be activists. An organizer in the Rust Belt today might do better to work in New Delhi. But what does this mean for the identity or prospects of the individual who wants to affect positive change?)
The Evolution of Real versus Derived Profits on Wall Street from 1970-2010
(This information is so proprietary- but I imagine the shift from primary to derived assets would be interesting. There is no normative judgment that derived or synthetic profits are bad, but it's a macro analysis I don't know that's been done. Additionally, a larger real asset base only potentially provides a broader base for structured income products. At some point though, productivity necessitates actually making something in the first place.)
Prisoners Just Want Community: Lessons in the Green Prisons Movement
(This idea of hardened criminals wanting to cut the pesticides out of the prison yard, or compost their food or install solar cells is very interesting. What motivates this? Boredom? Manipulation? Atonement? I assert that if prisoners had access to these programs in the first place they might never have committed crimes, as the green movement connects people profoundly not just with a broader purpose, but an entire community. Parole programs could incorporate these services into their programs as both service and therapy.)
Speed of Thought as Speed Bumps for Information Transmital
As the vectors of information delivery expand and accelerate now on a seemingly annual basis, the rate limiting step of our ability to celebrate or appreciate, yet alone digest, information may increasingly be our innate capacity to process such exposure. In 2005, the email checking and AOL searching of 2000 seemed pedestrian, and in 2010, the blogging and i-tuning of 2005 seems pedestrian compared to our tweeting and i-padding, and there's little to suggest it won't be the same in 2015- my guess would be in the direction of integrated devices reaching out to us, rather than passively responding to our requests, based on the many known preferences it has compiled from our routine requests, a sort of Amazon suggested purchases feature for all media across all platforms. Yet I find myself sometimes simply unable to make sense of everything I see before me, the children's book Where the Wild Things Are turned into a major motion picture turned into a digital dowload turned into an instant App on my i-pad, to watch on the side as I work an excel sheet and check my blog-feed. There is more that I want to watch and do, and am now capable of, than I could ever complete. In these moments the brain almost freezes akin to a hardrive. Which one to open? Which to prioritize? In other words, there may be a limit to how useful such devices may be, the rate limiting step being our thoughts patterns themselves.
P.s. - As Goldman Sachs testifies today, I have a hard time understanding the allegations and think the SEC's case is going to have a hard time (it was only voted out by 3-2). Goldman was selling income streams from insurance on mortgage debt (synthetic CDOs) to two global institutions that engaged in this all the time. Any transaction necessitates a buyer and a seller, the idea that these funds would go long by buying in assumes there is a counterparty that would go short. It's immaterial what Goldman thought of the deal, they are the market maker. The funds requested assets of a certain type to buy, Goldman obliged, and in the process consulted with individuals of varying perspectives. For someone to make money on long positions, there has to be another party willing to cover the positive spread if they are proven wrong, which would be the shorts. Our regulatory system is about 30 years behind the curve and needs to be upgraded, but this vilification of the bankers society collectively depends on for basic finance as well as investment finance can at times look like a modern day witch hunt, or the populist version of McCarthyism. I am no deep sympathizer with speculators, particularly in the non-deliverable commodities sector, but last time I checked people are innocent until proven guilty. Also, derivatives need to be regulated, but this can be done through registries, clearinghouses, or exchanges, or some type of self reporting. Why the fixation on exchanges? Most of these contracts don't even involve public entities, they should just report their balance sheet to the SEC/CFTC and be done with it, John Q. Public doesn't need to be able to Google their proprietary deals so we can hear a bunch of mindless quipping and potentially damaging adjustments to market confidence.)
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