Pande(Panda?)monium
8/18/08
Well I only have one more week left here at Brilliont, and the summer has just flown by. I live in an interesting part of Brooklyn, where quasi-hipsters have inhabited the previously dangerous areas of Williamsburg (an area of Brooklyn). On Saturday there was an organized event known as Pandamonium, where people dressed up in panda outfits and partied in the streets from Union Square in Manhattan to Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg. I only witnessed the events at Bedford Avenue, and that was Pandamonium and the NYPD started to clash, and you can see videos on the website. The apparent goal of the organizers was to “take back” Williamsburg, in a show of disapproval for the new high rise condos and other wealth in the area. From what I could tell, the people in the demonstration were rioting against what they had created, and it was all very confusing.
My eyes were immediately drawn to the title of an article on Bloomberg entitled “Bernanke Tries To Define What Institutions Fed Could Let Fail”. Is our financial future so delicate and the Fed so powerful that they can decide the path that our economy is headed? One passage in particular caught my eye:
Under Bernanke’s predecessor Alan Greenspan, the Fed drew a clear line against using its portfolio to influence specific markets. An internal study published in 2002 warned that “the favoring of specific entities” might “invite pressure from special-interest groups.”
I could not agree more. With the credit markets tightening up big time in the past year, shouldn’t distressed institutions who did not accurately prepare (or have a diversified enough portfolio) be allowed to suffer? Why is it that Bear Stearns, Freddie Mac, and Fannie Mae are allowed to continue on or be saved?
Finally, according to Popular Science, over 1/3 of the amphibian population is dying out. This sounds similar to the story of the honeybee population starting to dwindle. I am not going to make any unfounded claims here about the reasons, but I’m sure the overwhelming claim is that global warming and destruction of habitats has something do with these phenomenons.
- Amit
akooner@brilliont.com
