South By North Strategies, Ltd.

Midweek Humor

The Daily Show wonders why “perfect storms” seem to happen “every two weeks.”

Around The Dial – May 18

Economic policy reports, blog postings, and media stories of interest:

• The New York Times Magazine traces “the rise and fall of the GDP.”
• Mark Thoma asks which policies should be used during a recovery.
• The Wall Street Journal reports on state revenue collections.
• Naked Capitalism outlines a way of thinking about the Eurozone crisis.

Policing The Financial System

In the current issue, Time magazine profiles three of the federal officials responsible for reforming the financial system: Shelia Bair of the FDIC, Mary Schapiro of the SEC, and Elizabeth Warren of the TARP oversight panel. From the cover story:

Unlike many of the men they oversee, the new sheriffs of Wall Street never aspired to eight-figure compensation packages or corporate suites. Bair, Schapiro and Warren all made their careers far from Manhattan, taking on new jobs during pregnancies and outhustling the men around them. But it is their willingness to break ranks and challenge the status quo that makes these increasingly powerful women different from their predecessors. As Washington gets down to the hard work of putting laws into place that are designed to prevent another crisis, they are shaping the way government will protect investors and consumers for the next generation. Under financial regulatory reform, which all three women support, both the SEC and the FDIC stand to win powerful new authority to limit and dismantle offenders. The Consumer Financial Protection Agency, a proposed body now working its way through the Senate, is the brainchild of Warren and is envisioned as a bulwark against what she calls the “tricks and traps” that banks hide in credit-card agreements and mortgages.

The Politics of Health Insurance Reform

Writing in The Huffington Post, Sam Stein reports on the role that the Obama White House played in the passage of health reform. Notes Stein:

Removed from the heat of the battle, the question is easier to answer. Obama, at his core, saw and continues to see legislating as a distinctly political process: one in which goals are imparted, building blocks are set, and compromises are fair game on everything but success itself. His legislative doctrine is not static. As Dunn acknowledged, it became a “more aggressive operation” over time. But it is firmly rooted in the ethos that guided the presidential campaign — an ethos that one administration official described as “The Art of the Possible.”

Meanwhile, the PBS series Frontline recently devoted 60 minutes to explaining the bill’s passage.

Around The Dial – May 17

Economic policy reports, blog postings, and media stories of interest:

• “Dr. Doom” worries that we’ve returned to the “abyss.”
• Economix asks what companies are goof for.
• The New York Times profiles Ben Bernanke.
• Both The News and Record and Triangle Business Journal report on NC’s “JobsNow” program.