The Blow-It-Up Decade

Guest post by Dr. Manhattan, a lawyer in New York City who represents, among others, clients in the investment management industry.

Guest post by Dr. Manhattan, a lawyer in New York City who represents, among others, clients in the investment management industry.

Institutions are brittle. This is one of the big lessons of 2011. The News of the World and the presidencies of Hosni Mubarak and Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali have in common the fact that they looked strong, but suddenly collapsed when they came under strain. This brittleness has implications for public sector reform. Take as the starting point Tim’s questions:

By Simon Johnson.  Tim Geithner and Larry Summers are talking a good game on fiscal policy to the G20.  But they are struggling with to establish traction for their “spend now, consolidate later” message.  Fortunately, there is an easy and obvious opportunity to establish credibility on this issue: Bring Paul Krugman into government.

A lot goes in to determining how to develop a product, from deciding which features to include to figuring out the right way to market it. 

I'm still thinking about this topic and I will refer you to a response by Frank Pasquale.  He knows a lot about the topic but I'm still not sure how to translate his points into econspeak. 

I enjoyed this headline, from earlier in the week, on the BuzzFeed website: "Obama Looks To Saddle Republicans With Blame For Debt Limit Fight".