Conor Clarke

Two lawyers named Bruce (what are the odds?) had an op-ed in the Washington Post over the weekend that tossed out a bunch of legislative ideas for protecting journalism. Some of the ideas -- antitrust exemptions, tax benefits, easing ownership restrictions and so on -- have been trotted around the showroom plenty of times before and aren't going to turn any heads. And some -- changing the laws governing how search engines can index pages -- involve technical issues… More »

I've never really thought of Suze Orman as a gay rights crusader, but this New York Times magazine profile of her had an interesting little tidbit about the financial adviser's relationship with the FDIC: More »

They're not as dangerous as we thought. More »

Boy, lots of healthcare and deficit news today. David Brooks says healthcare costs are the administration's big fiscal issue and Obama had better get serious. Peter Orszag says healthcare costs are the administration's big issue and Obama is getting serious. Obama himself says healthcare costs are his big issues and he's about to get serious. And the healthcare industry says maybe he's getting a little too serious. To this I can add nothing, except a graph of what… More »

That's the conclusion of this new story from Fox News: Antoniette Santopadre of Valley Stream was expecting a $250 stimulus check. But when her son finally opened it, they saw that the check was made out to her father, Romolo Romonini, who died in Italy 34 years ago. He'd been a U.S. citizen when he left for Italy in 1933, but only returned to the United States for a seven-month visit in 1969.The Santopadres are not alone. The Social Security Administration, which… More »

That's the question that New York Times economics reporter Edmund L. Andrews tries to answer about himself in a new piece for the Times Magazine, which is being previewed on the website this week. And it must be some species of triumph that Andrews manages to make a story about refinancing a complicated mortgage a gripping read. Really!And while I kept thinking he couldn't have done a good job covering the mortgage crisis while being spanked by it, I read back… More »

Not for the reason you think. More »

I don't know if it's a huge problem for public policy, but it certainly seems like some kind of problem that, as Matt Yglesias says, most everyone has trouble processing differences between large numbers. That handicap is why the Obama administration can propose $100 million in cuts from a budget of trillions and expect something other than to be laughed out of Washington. It would be kind of funny if Dr. Evil hadn't already made this joke a while ago.That said, I… More »

If there was anybody who should have avoided the mortgage catastrophe, it was I. As an economics reporter for The New York Times, I have been the paper's chief eyes and ears on the Federal Reserve for the past six years. I watched Alan Greenspan and his successor, Ben S. Bernanke, at close range. I wrote several early-warning articles in 2004 about the spike in go-go mortgages. Before that, I had a hand in covering the Asian financial crisis of 1997, the Russia… More »

I was having some trouble with Google this morning, but it's kind of reassuring to know that several million people were having some trouble too. And yet this explanation from Google is not altogether reassuring: More »

I am all for the sanctity of contract, but I thought this analogy from George Will, on Obama and the rule of law ("Tincture of Lawlessness"), was a bit much:This is not gross, unambiguous lawlessness of the Nixonian sort -- burglaries, abuse of the IRS and FBI, etc. -- but it is uncomfortably close to an abuse of power that perhaps gave Nixon ideas: When in 1962 the steel industry raised prices, President John F. Kennedy had a tantrum and his administration leaked… More »

Simon Johnson says Obama's stimulus package worked. It hasn't. More »

The mayor of Providence, Rhode Island, seems to be under the impression that the presence of several large colleges and universities is a drain on the "resources" of the city, instead of a gigantic boon to its economic and cultural well being. Thus does he reason himself to one of the stupidest public policy proposals ever. More »

Why did hints of the financial crisis come through the hired help? More »

I agree with Henry Blodget that it's hard to imagine a way in which industry-wide wage controls "could be implemented that wouldn't be an absolutely terrible idea." Sure, wage controls would probably be a terrible idea. But I read the Wall Street Journal's big piece on this subject and didn't really see a whole lot of evidence that "wage controls" were what Obama was after. Instead I saw a whole lot of vague and vacillatory hints that didn't really indicate Obama… More »

The European Commission fined Intel a record 1.06 billion euros on Wednesday for abusing its dominance in the computer chip market to exclude its only serious rival, Advanced Micro Devices.The European Union's competition commissioner, Neelie Kroes, said the penalty against Intel, the equivalent of $1.45 billion, was justified because the company had skewed competition and denied consumers a choice for chips.Ms. Kroes said Intel had "used illegal anticompetitive… More »

One surprising consequence of the financial crisis is that not many CEOs have been fired. A new report from Booz & Company says that 14.4% of the 2,500 biggest publicly traded companies replaced their CEOs in 2008, up from 13.8% in 2007. And in the US and Europe, the rate of CEO turnover actually fell. What gives? Well, the thinking is this: Scapegoats are a nice thing to have when asset markets implode. But so is certainty. And firing your CEO in the middle of… More »

Work isn't the secret to happiness. In fact, neither is economic growth. More »

Does anyone still care about AIG? Probably not. But on the offchance someone out there is still sharpening a pitchfork: CEO Edward Liddy will be back on the hill later today to testify before the House committee on Oversight and Government Reform. I've put his full testimony is at the end of this post. It's been just about universally reported that Liddy will say AIG doesn't need any more government money (AP, AIG's Liddy: We don't need more government money; ABC,… More »

Does anyone still care about AIG? Probably not. But on the offchance someone out there is still sharpening a pitchfork: CEO Edward Liddy will be back on the hill later today to testify before the House committee on Oversight and Government Reform. I've put his full testimony is at the end of this post. It's been just about universally reported that Liddy will say AIG doesn't need any more government money (AP, AIG's Liddy: We don't need more government money; ABC,… More »