0 notes &

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke last week warned that a default could have “catastrophic” effects on financial markets.

Plosser, a former dean of the Simon School of Business at Rochester University, was more circumspect.

“It could be very bad. At some level we don’t really know what the consequences could be. It could be very serious. It could be less serious. Do we really want to run that experiment?”

6 notes &

I have introduced the full ‘start-over’ ERA in each Congress since I arrived because the rights of women deserve to be constitutional.

4 notes &

Among the most deliberate and abhorrent mass violations of privacy committed in recent memory did not come as a result of technology, social services, databases, hackers, thieves, leakers, or governments. It was an act of a news organization, News Corp., which hacked into the phones of a reported 4,000 people, including not just celebrities but dead children and the families of the victims of terrorism and war.

Power corrupts.

The oh-so-rich irony is that this comes from the same company that, through its Wall Street Journal, fancies itself the protector of our privacy. The Journal would have us believe that web sites, technology companies, advertisers, and retailers are the enemies of privacy. No, it was their own corporate colleagues, their fellow journalists.

The solution to this threat to privacy is not to change technology or even the law. It is to enforce the laws, norms, and mores that already exist and hold to account the criminals and those responsible for their actions. That is, the managers of News Corp. That is, the Murdoch family.

This is not a matter of technology but of corruption.