Summer Reading

Whenever I find something on the internet that interests me--about which I, correctly or not, presume myself to have something novel to say, or that I, (again) correctly or not, presume one or some or all of you might be interested in--I open up a tab and leave it there for later. Later, because I conduct most of my serious weekly internet scowering in those narrow bands of time between consciousness, work, and the weekend. And in those bands of waking, unoccupied or inebriated freedom that flicker by my each week, I am usually in a hurry (before work) or exhausted (after). So the grand masterstroke of biting analysis I had first envisioned only rarely becomes more than a stale tab of news past eventually deleted.

I have a few tabs open now. These tabs have been held open for too long now. My browser is getting sore. So, instead of deleting them, I thought I'd just post all the links here in a barrage of lazy, incoherence on my part. These links are not particularly thematically consistent (most of the news referenced therein is bad, so there's that). I just found them interesting, thought they were worth sharing, and figured at least a few of them might have slipped under a radar or two.

On Fossil Fuels:

• A Recent History of BP Being BP (Propublica)

• A Recent History of the Obama Administration Being Just Fine With BP Being BP (Rolling Store)
• Plus: Part Two
• Frakking Hell
  

I'll only add here that as maddening as the consistently lax regulatory oversight featured in all four of these stories may be, I couldn't help but think back to the Lisa Margonelli piece I linked to in a post back in May. Her basic premise was that if we aren't mining it from our own backyards, the oil and gas we consume is coming from someone else's. The disaster in the gulf is only exactly what the Niger Delta has been going through ever year since the 1960s. And on the issue of gas, this excerpt from the Propublica fracking piece speaks for itself:

Last month President Dmitri Medvedev of Russia said he would curtail natural gas production by the state company Gazprom until the study is completed. In part that’s because Medvedev isn’t sure there will be a viable market for Russian gas if the U.S. develops its domestic reserves, and because he believes that the regulations that could result from the EPA study could determine whether the U.S. drills its own gas, or imports it from overseas.

So, on our fossil fuel problem: It's demand, stupid!

On economic development:

• Ersatz Development (an LSE lecture series podcast)
  
• Dani Rodrik saying a similar thing in three paragraphs

I wanted to write something about the first link, the recorded lecture of Ha-Joon Chang, when it first came out months ago. I eventually gave up on the idea believing, probably accurately, that I wouldn't have much to say about it and that nobody would bother to listen to the whole thing anyway. But whether or not you bother to check out either of these, Chang and Rodrik hit on a pretty interesting (and obviously relevant) point. Development, they both believe, is not achieved by addressing adhoc and after-the-fact the symptoms of its absence (corruption, lack of access to health-care, poor education, etc). The definition of development they ascribe to is, instead, a process of macroeconomic structural change, in which the society as a whole moves from low productivity work to higher productivity work. And if those are the set of assumptions you carry around with you, the potential role of government you envision within that process is much, much broader.

On Financial Crises and How to Fix Them:

• Marxism Illustrated (11 minutes long, totally worth it, and regardless of your views on the overall ideology, hard to argue with.
• "Not Good Enough," says Feingold (Ezra Klein)
  

Back in March, I linked to Paul Krugman's article and posted the following:

There are times when even a highly imperfect reform is much better than nothing; this is very much the case for health care. But financial reform is different. An imperfect health care bill can be revised in the light of experience, and if Democrats pass the current plan there will be steady pressure to make it better. A weak financial reform, by contrast, wouldn’t be tested until the next big crisis. All it would do is create a false sense of security and a fig leaf for politicians opposed to any serious action — then fail in the clinch.

As to how things stand now, I've yet to read a comprehensive run-down of the entire bill (or at least, what's likely to be in the final-est of final versions). So, though I'd like to agree with Russ Feingold as a matter of mancrush, and though I'd like to seek comfort in my original cynicism, I honestly can't judge here. I just don't know very much about the bill itself. I don't know how strong the strong derivatives language is. I don't know how protective the consumer protection will be. I don't know how tough the tougher proprietary trading rules are. Anyone?

So that's that. And, just saying and everything, I would totally welcome similar suggested reading posts from all of you.