Krugman on Fannie and Freddie

The case against Fannie and Freddie begins with their peculiar status: although they’re private companies with stockholders and profits, they’re “government-sponsored enterprises” established by federal law, which means that they receive special privileges.

The most important of these privileges is implicit: it’s the belief of investors that if Fannie and Freddie are threatened with failure, the federal government will come to their rescue.

This implicit guarantee means that profits are privatized but losses are socialized. If Fannie and Freddie do well, their stockholders reap the benefits, but if things go badly, Washington picks up the tab. Heads they win, tails we lose.

14. July 2008 by Shlok Vaidya
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Robb Knocks One Out Of The Park

Brilliant analysis of the US economic system.

09. July 2008 by Shlok Vaidya
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Congressional Walled Garden?

The democratization of web technology is supposed to enable more, rich, meaningful connections between individuals and allow flat groups to emerge based on commonalities. In the case of Congress, tech allows individual representatives to meet with and engage much larger percentages of their constituencies than ever before.

Phone records, PDA calendars, email – all are public domain and can be updated in real time. "Leaders" should be pushing for more accountability and transparency through this tech – built entirely without their help. Instead, the ultra elite inside are focused on making Congress as fundamentally unrepresentative as possible by shutting down members’ ability to engage their constituencies. (They see the writing on the wall. Power diffusion renders them useless.)

Someone should take the ability to legislate tech away from everyone involved in this debacle.

08. July 2008 by Shlok Vaidya
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Hiring Bear Remnants

LOL. You’d think these guys were qualified given the rotating door.

08. July 2008 by Shlok Vaidya
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Boyd Conference Site

Rob’s put together a great site. I’ll be signing up soon. You should too.

Here’s the Ning site as well.

08. July 2008 by Shlok Vaidya
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