The big 5 investement bankers asked for a rule change at the SEC — that this article said created a situation where the information that might have predicted the current crisis became invisible.
The man representing Goldman Sachs at the table, then became Treasury Secretary Paulson.
Markets do not operate well when information is obscured.
An example of where market failure is precipitated by public value failure
Filed under Market Failure, Policy
An opinion piece hypthosizes how an assumption on the isolation of risks in the Wall Street risk models was wrong…
Filed under Market Failure, Policy
This article in the New York Times recounts Bernanke’s theory of information capital (and the deficit thereof) leading to the great depression.
The failure to provide adequate information to the market — is that a market failure? If so, does such a failure require a public intervention?
Filed under Market Failure
Here are two articles and one editorial with Goldman Sachs as a common element.
Georgians were first casualties of market crisis
Wonder how many other common elements may be found?
Filed under Policy
A blog just waits patiently til the muse appears.
Filed under Uncategorized
Research Question
Ravtosh Bal
Jim Flowers
Fang Xiao
Rough Draft
In the past 5 years, two separate efforts to improve the performance of Georgia students in STEM subjects have been executed by the Georgia Department of Education and the University System of Georgia with minimal cooperation or collaboration. This apparent conflict between two separately administered programs attempting to improve performance of k12 students in stem subjects gives rise to the question: can national STEM goals be realized at the local school system level? In other words, does STEM policy matter at the local level? If not, can the policy ever be successful?
Procedures
Our data sources regarding the USG project would include interviews of the primary investigator, k12 participants, students, and data from educational outcome measures such as educational scorecards. Data regarding the State DOE effort would include interviews of the state school superintendent, program managers for math and science curriculum reform, members of the state school board association, and sample of teachers and students. Performance data is available from the State DOE on normal scorecard measures.
Cases focusing on two counties: one which participated in the NSF funded USG project and one that did not will be conducted as part of a comparative strategy.
Further description of programs to be analyzed
Units of the University System of Georgia have been engaged in a multi-year, multi-disciplinary, multi-million dollar NSF funded initiative designed to improve STEM outcomes in K12 students. One goal was to increase the responsiveness of higher education to K12 needs including, but not limited to, appropriate education and support of teachers and teacher candidates, reform of science and math curricula, promotion of STEM subjects among parents and students, and so forth. The program is now nearing the end of its funding (6 years) so now is the time to ask the question by analyzing data from the perspective of the higher ed institutions, the k12 systems, k12 teachers, and k12 students. However, K12 administrators were busy reforming science and math curricula without direct participation of higher education institutions. Circumstances in Georgia offer an opportunity to assess this intervention as a natural experiment given that not all k12 systems were chosen to participate in the NSF funded intervention. Thus state effects will be constant between the systems that participated in the program and those that did not.
Filed under Uncategorized
Seems Georgia is in line for federal healthcare dollars. $1.4 million will go to the Georgia Association of Primary Health Care to help regional health centers convert to systems facilitating electronic medical records (EMR). If you want to learn more about EMR, TAG has a meeting on Aug 30 to discuss the topic.
Georgia has struggled to embrace this topic. A group was formed to create an exchange association (RHIO) but ran into resistance from the state Department of Community Health which announced its own steering group to manage the effort. Georgia’s struggle is ironic given that Georgia son Newt Gingrich has created a national center to champion EMR. He even wrote a book on the topic (imagine that). The opportunity for cost savings and improved quality of healthcare is so much more significant than tort reform, safe harbor from damage suits, and health savings accounts — why are we so slow to adopt?
Filed under Health, Innovation
A prayer from the Episcopal prayer book:
Lord Jesus, for our sake you were condemned as a criminal: Visit our jails and prisons with your pity and judgment. Remember all prisoners, and bring the guilty to repentance and amendment of life according to your will, and give them hope for their future. When any are held unjustly, bring them release; forgive us, and teach us to improve our justice. Remember those who work in these institutions; keep them humane and compassionate; and save them from becoming brutal or callous. And since what we do for those in prison, O Lord, we do for you, constrain us to improve their lot. All this we ask for your mercy’s sake. Amen.
Filed under faith based
Doing some reading this morning, Pascal was a pretty smart fellow:
Men never do evil so completely or cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.
Filed under faith based
That’s right. Information is the “plastic” of this century. Those that have information, control information, understand information and distribute information will be the masters of the 21st century economy. An examination of the policy debates in Congress concerning intellectual property, the policy discussions at the FCC concerning spectrum and who controls it, the debate over electronic health records, and the debate over who controls information relating to your identity, credit, and personal history point to the conclusion that information, and all the goods derived from information (knowledge, innovation, wealth, etc), is the key to economic success.
Today, for instance, NYT carries a story about Google and Microsoft investing in health information companies. A local Fox news station carries a story how a local city tried to ban cameras and recorders from capturing information discussed at meetings. The federal government is trying to quash a lawsuit alleging the government has illegally siphoned emails from the 4th largest Internet hub located in San Francisco. The government won’t divulge any information about the activity as it is a ‘state secret’.
There is a good essay or two here. We’ll re-visit this topic when time permits a more thoughtful repose.
Filed under Economies, Government Information
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