r. carey gersten » Communication

THE BIG SHORT – HOW WALL STREET DESTROYED MAIN STREET

Carey — Wed, 12 May 2010 05:47:44 +0000

Post by JimQ | TheBurningPlatform.com in Economy | Posted on 10th May 2010

Day after day, bankers have been paraded before Congressional committees regarding their role in the financial crisis which brought the financial system to the edge of the abyss on September 18,2008. Every one has claimed that they were not responsible in any way for the disaster. They blame once in a lifetime circumstances that no one could have anticipated. It was a perfect storm and they had no way of knowing. These Harvard MBA Wall Street geniuses, who collected compensation in excess of $100 million each before the collapse, had no idea what was going on within their own firms. Ignorance and stupidity is no excuse for losing a trillion dollars. The truth is that the CEO’s of all the Wall Street banks encouraged a casino culture of greed and gambling. The generation of fees became the sole driving incentive for every firm. It started with collateralizing subprime mortgages into packages of mortgage backed securities. Then they created Credit Default Swaps as insurance on these mortgages. When they ran out of chumps to put into houses, they created side bets with Credit Default Obligations that didn’t require an actual homeowner.

Read on: http://theburningplatform.com/blog/2010/05/10/the-big-short-how-wall-street-destroyed-main-street/

Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity

Carey — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 16:22:58 +0000

TED2006 | Filmed February 2006 | Posted June 2006

Sir Ken Robinson makes an entertaining and profoundly moving case for creating an education system that nurtures (rather than undermines) creativity.

Source: http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html

Those Bricks Barrick Gold Dropped on Publishers

Carey — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 04:53:11 +0000

The huge mining corporation’s legal actions against two small book presses — what do they say about our democracy?

By Philip Resnick | TheTyee.ca | April 21, 2010

The gold goliath demanded to see manuscript before printing.

Barrick Gold is a giant in the world of Canadian mining corporations, and its founder and chair, Peter Munk, has revelled in media attention for his philanthropy. For example, on April 13, the Globe and Mail reported a $35 million contribution from the gold magnate (with a matching $25 million from the Ontario government) for a new Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto, “to join an elite cadre of international academic institutions such as the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, the London School of Economics and Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies in Washington.”

How could one look such a gift horse in the mouth, or quarrel with Peter Munk’s professed beliefs? According to him, “Canada has a unique opportunity to step into the shoes that America has vacated, and I think that requires an elite group of highly educated, globalized Canadians who can be the spokespersons of every aspect of globalization. I don’t mean just trade, or democracy, or multiculturalism. . . but all the things Canada stands for, from health care down to the fundamental rejection of any kind of corruption.”

Perhaps the portrait is a little too perfect. How many readers of The Tyee or Canadians outside Quebec are aware that the same Barrick Corp., on whose board sit such eminences as Brian Mulroney, has been engaged in using SLAPPs — Strategic Lawsuits against Public Participation — against two small presses, one in Quebec, one based in Vancouver, that have published or announced an intention to publish books that this august corporation finds offensive to its image? It took a March 25 op-ed article in Le Devoir, the independent Montreal daily (not beholden to the powerful media interests that control so many of Canada’s leading newspapers) to alert me to the situation.

Read on: http://thetyee.ca/Mediacheck/2010/04/21/BarrickBricks/?utm_source=daily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=210410

A Weak Constitution?

Carey — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 17:12:29 +0000

POSTED BY ROGER VALDEZ | Sightline Daily – SPECIAL SERIES: GAME CHANGERS #07 | April 05, 2010

Solving big problems might mean giving up some cherished myths.

(Image of US Constitution from the National Archives of the United States)

Now that the health care proposal has been approved by Congress and signed into law, some people are feeling pretty happy I suppose. Much of the angst and anger about the procedures impeding reform—reconciliation, procedural delays, etc—has receded. But the basic problems that stirred everyone up in the first place haven’t disappeared. As Alan has suggested in the Game Changers Series, the problems might be structural rather than political. The fundamental flaw in our system is not the absence of a big political majority. Democrats have that right now. Instead, the problem is the underlying document—our written constitution—that frames the debate and our deep, almost pathological, attachment to the halo of myths surrounding it. Changing the structure of our system—our constitution—is difficult and only made more so because of our flawed understanding of our own history, especially the origins of our founding document.

Read on: http://daily.sightline.org/daily_score/archive/2010/04/05/a-weak-consitution

Building a Green Economy

Carey — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 06:33:02 +0000

By PAUL KRUGMAN | The New York Times Magazine | April 05, 2010

Smog in Shenyang in northeast China’s Liaoning Province. (Hei Yubai/European Pressphoto Agency)

If you listen to climate scientists — and despite the relentless campaign to discredit their work, you should — it is long past time to do something about emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. If we continue with business as usual, they say, we are facing a rise in global temperatures that will be little short of apocalyptic. And to avoid that apocalypse, we have to wean our economy from the use of fossil fuels, coal above all.

But is it possible to make drastic cuts in greenhouse-gas emissions without destroying our economy?

Like the debate over climate change itself, the debate over climate economics looks very different from the inside than it often does in popular media. The casual reader might have the impression that there are real doubts about whether emissions can be reduced without inflicting severe damage on the economy. In fact, once you filter out the noise generated by special-interest groups, you discover that there is widespread agreement among environmental economists that a market-based program to deal with the threat of climate change — one that limits carbon emissions by putting a price on them — can achieve large results at modest, though not trivial, cost. There is, however, much less agreement on how fast we should move, whether major conservation efforts should start almost immediately or be gradually increased over the course of many decades.

In what follows, I will offer a brief survey of the economics of climate change or, more precisely, the economics of lessening climate change. I’ll try to lay out the areas of broad agreement as well as those that remain in major dispute. First, though, a primer in the basic economics of environmental protection.

Read on: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/11/magazine/11Economy-t.html?pagewanted=1&partner=rss&emc=rss

How Green Is My iPad?

Carey — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 17:15:31 +0000

By DANIEL GOLEMAN and GREGORY NORRIS | Opinion – The New York Times | April 04, 2010

(Illustration by Jenny Mörtsell)

With e-readers like Apple’s new iPad and Amazon’s Kindle touting their vast libraries of digital titles, some bookworms are bound to wonder if tomes-on-paper will one day become quaint relics. But the question also arises, which is more environmentally friendly: an e-reader or an old-fashioned book?

Read on: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/04/04/opinion/04opchart.html

Smarten Up or Die

Carey — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 19:23:19 +0000

‘Ecological Intelligence’: Do humans have what it takes to survive?

Only a shift in collective awareness will save us.

By Daniel Goleman | TheTyee.ca | March 11, 2010

[Editor's note: The following is excerpted from the new book Ecological Intelligence by Daniel Goleman, published by Broadway Business, an imprint of The Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc. Reprinted with permission. Copyright © 2010 by Daniel Goleman.]

For over a thousand years Sher, a tiny village in Tibet, has clung to its existence despite its dire location, perched on a narrow shelf along a steep mountainside. This site on the dry Tibetan plateau gets just three inches of precipitation a year. But every drop is gathered into an ancient irrigation system. Annual temperatures average near freezing and from December through February the mercury can hover below that mark by 10 to 20 degrees Fahrenheit.

The region’s sheep have extra-thick wool that holds heat remarkably well; locally spun and woven wool makes clothes and blankets that help villagers endure the excruciatingly cold winters with little heating other than a fire in the hearth.

The stone-and-wattle houses need to be reroofed every 10 years, and willow trees planted along the irrigation canals provide the roofing. Whenever a branch is cut for roofing, a new one is grafted to the tree. A willow tree lasts around four hundred years, and when one dies a new one is planted. Human waste is recycled as fertilizer for herbs, vegetables, and fields of barley — the source of the local staple, tsampa — and for root vegetables to store for the winter.

For centuries Sher’s population has stayed the same, around 300 people. Jonathan Rose, a founder of the movement for housing that is both green and affordable and a builder himself, finds instructive lessons in the clever ways native peoples have found to survive in perilous niches like Sher. Says Rose, “That is true sustainability, when a village can survive in its ecosystem for a thousand years.”

Read on: http://thetyee.ca/Books/2010/03/11/SmartenUpOrDie/?utm_source=daily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=110310

Credible information sources: One man’s guide

Carey — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 16:19:27 +0000

The Newstand in Bellingham. (Photo: Bob Simmons)

Struggling print and online media often skip the substance. That leaves information consumers struggling to assemble our own sources of reliable reporting and analysis.

By Ted Van Dyk | Crosscut.com | March 03, 2010

President Obama is disclosing his end-game strategy for his health-care legislative proposals. Like so many political events, his announcement is provoking a flood of analysis and commentary by media and think-tank types who both know and don’t know what they are talking about.

This raises questions about the information sources to which we refer and trust.

Read on: http://crosscut.com/2010/03/03/media/19636/?utm_source=Crosscut+Daily+Newsletter&utm_campaign=5310889433-Crosscut_E_mail_3_3_20103_3_2010&utm_medium=email

The O.J. tactic: Climate change skeptics sound like Simpson’s lawyers: If the winter glove won’t fit, you must acquit

Carey — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 04:19:45 +0000

By Bill McKibben – Guest Columnist | OregonLive.com | March 02, 2010, 5:00AM

Image: 2009 (c) Nancy Battaglia

In recent years, every major scientific body in the world has produced reports confirming the peril of climate change. All 15 of the warmest years on record have come in the last two decades. And Earth’s major natural systems are all showing undeniable signs of rapid flux: melting Arctic and glacial ice, rapidly acidifying seawater and so on.

Yet because of a recent onslaught of attacks on the science of climate change, fewer Americans now believe humans are warming the planet than did just a few years ago.

The doubters of climate science have launched an enormously clever — and effective — campaign, and it’s worth trying to understand how they’ve done it. The best analogy is perhaps the O.J. Simpson trial.

Read on: http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2010/03/the_oj_tactic_climate_change_s.html

[Bill McKibben is an author, environmentalist, and activist. In 1988, he wrote The End of Nature, the first book for a common audience about global warming. He is the co-founder of 350.org, an international climate campaign that organized the most widespread day of action on global warming in history.]

What’s in a name? When the issue is “climate change,” plenty, linguist says

Carey — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 04:21:33 +0000

by Robert McClure | Dateline Earth as reported on Investigate WEST | February 22nd, 2010

It’s been apparent for some time that the public is not understanding the potential magnitude of the threat of climate change. The percentage of Americans saying it’s even taking place was recently measured at 57 percent, down 14 points since October 2008, according to what appears to be a series of climate stories running this week on National Public Radio. (Recall that we’ve described before how even expert “skeptics” admit the warming is taking place; that big chunks of the public misses that is remarkable.)

So would calling climate change “the climate crisis” make a difference? That’s the contention of cognitive linguist George Lakoff, who was featured on one NPR segment. Lakoff says people think of the “climate” as something positive. And “change” is not bad. “Global warming?” Maybe that’s an even worse term, Lakoff tells host Guy Raz…

Read on: http://invw.org/2010/02/whats-in-a-name-when-the-issue-is-climate-change-plenty-linguist-says/