If you are going to the Denver ASSA meeting next week, and if you would like to meet me for a discussion of the challenges facing economic policy, you might be interested to know that my publisher is arranging a couple of events. Click here to sign up.
I look forward to seeing you!
Friday, December 31, 2010
How to meet me in Denver
If you are going to the Denver ASSA meeting next week, and if you would like to meet me for a discussion of the challenges facing economic policy, you might be interested to know that my publisher is arranging a couple of events. Click here to sign up.
I look forward to seeing you!
I look forward to seeing you!
Sewell Chan: Economists consider ethics code
It's about time. I do think it is a good thing when economists participate in both business and policy--such things inform both teaching and research. But disclosure is important. We may all think of ourselves as forthright and objective, but we are in fact shaped by experiences (and as economists never cease to remind us, by our paychecks). Gary Becker's line in Chan's piece about replicability curing all ethical problems doesn't really hold up, because lots of economic theory has never been or has been inadequately tested against data (George Akerlof does a very good job demonstrating this in his AEA Presidential Address from 2007).
We seem as a profession to have a difficult time dealing with ethics--it makes us squeamish, because mainstream economics often celebrates avarice. But one of Adam Smith's earth shattering works was called The Theory of Moral Sentiments, so he wasn't squeamish about thinking about such things as all.
I have within this blog from time-to-time disclosed my relationships when such things might matter to what I am writing. The two most important are with Realtors (when I was a graduate student I worked for the Wisconsin Realtors Association, and I was a consultant on Existing Home Sales in the late 1990s and early 2000s) and with Freddie Mac (where I worked for less than a year and a half in 2002-03). My center at USC has a large number of donor members. I have also consulted for the World Bank. These relationships have been rewarding to me financially and intellectually, and while I like to think I play things straight, I would be foolish to pretend that these experiences have had no influence on my outlook. I leave it to readers to determine the impact of such influence on the validity of what I write.
We seem as a profession to have a difficult time dealing with ethics--it makes us squeamish, because mainstream economics often celebrates avarice. But one of Adam Smith's earth shattering works was called The Theory of Moral Sentiments, so he wasn't squeamish about thinking about such things as all.
I have within this blog from time-to-time disclosed my relationships when such things might matter to what I am writing. The two most important are with Realtors (when I was a graduate student I worked for the Wisconsin Realtors Association, and I was a consultant on Existing Home Sales in the late 1990s and early 2000s) and with Freddie Mac (where I worked for less than a year and a half in 2002-03). My center at USC has a large number of donor members. I have also consulted for the World Bank. These relationships have been rewarding to me financially and intellectually, and while I like to think I play things straight, I would be foolish to pretend that these experiences have had no influence on my outlook. I leave it to readers to determine the impact of such influence on the validity of what I write.
Thursday, December 30, 2010
How much time do American kids spend doing homework?
The American Time Use Survey is valuable dataset operated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Each year it asks a large, representative sample of Americans to keep time-diaries, writing down exactly what they do during the day.
I am going to rely on time survey data to give us hints about PISA test-scores. PISA is taken only by those aged 15-year, but let's examine all kids aged 15-18, both to increase the sample size and because high-school is more important. I will only include 15-18 year olds who are enrolled full time in high-school.
I think the graph and the implications for educational outcomes are pretty self-explanatory, even though I will admit that I was (again) surprised by just how large the differences are.
The only thing I would like to caution is not to assume a 1-1 causal relationship between input and output: kids who are better at school anyway may also study more, getting a double-advantage so to speak.
This graph is worth keeping in mind next time you read that the Asian school system rather than Asian culture explains Asian educational outcomes. These are Asian-Americans under (largely) the same American public school system that the media has decided is the cause of Americas problems. With American teachers, American teacher unions, with typical American levels of education funding, and facing the same American lack of school choice.
The Asian school system was if I understand the history correctly originally a carbon-copy of western school systems. They may have retained more class-room discipline, and more memorization, but other than that there appears nothing magic about the schools themselves.
We have to look at the society outside the classroom if we want to explain the differences in outcome. Instead of mindlessly assuming all variation in output is due to education policy, one single input of the human capital production function.
I am going to rely on time survey data to give us hints about PISA test-scores. PISA is taken only by those aged 15-year, but let's examine all kids aged 15-18, both to increase the sample size and because high-school is more important. I will only include 15-18 year olds who are enrolled full time in high-school.
I think the graph and the implications for educational outcomes are pretty self-explanatory, even though I will admit that I was (again) surprised by just how large the differences are.
The only thing I would like to caution is not to assume a 1-1 causal relationship between input and output: kids who are better at school anyway may also study more, getting a double-advantage so to speak.
This graph is worth keeping in mind next time you read that the Asian school system rather than Asian culture explains Asian educational outcomes. These are Asian-Americans under (largely) the same American public school system that the media has decided is the cause of Americas problems. With American teachers, American teacher unions, with typical American levels of education funding, and facing the same American lack of school choice.
The Asian school system was if I understand the history correctly originally a carbon-copy of western school systems. They may have retained more class-room discipline, and more memorization, but other than that there appears nothing magic about the schools themselves.
We have to look at the society outside the classroom if we want to explain the differences in outcome. Instead of mindlessly assuming all variation in output is due to education policy, one single input of the human capital production function.
Don't Tell Me Won't Have Any Money!
Surely you didn't think the politicians were serious about cutting back their spending did you? Remember that promise Obama made during the campaign?
So what has he "missed"?
BTW they have to raise taxes again because they don't have enough money for the "necessary" programs they have set up.
Say 'hello' to 75% income tax!
when I am President I will go line-by-line to make sure we are not spending money unwiselyand as President
we are going to go through the federal budget page-by-page line-by-lineit's just too bad that he turned out to be more interested in his vacation time than keeping an eye on the budget
So what has he "missed"?
never confuse reality with politics ....$3million studying World of Warcraft as a form of communication $1million to post poetry at zoos -supposedly it was to deepen people's general feeling about the environment $600,000 to archive Grateful Dead Memorabilia such as fliers & used concert tickets (seriously?)
150,000 to build a tunnel to keep salamanders from being ran over by cars $175million so airlines could have air pickup in small towns where it would cost too much to fly for the return on ticket sales $2million for a single 30second census ad for television $500,000 to send DOCTORS to an AIDS conference in Austria (even though it was judged a waste of money)
BTW they have to raise taxes again because they don't have enough money for the "necessary" programs they have set up.
Say 'hello' to 75% income tax!
Economics in Fiction: Two Post-Christmas Book Reviews
Anyone who has studied a little economics knows that popular fiction usually avoids economic themes, and if it does not, butchers them. Yet this year, two novels landed under our Christmas tree that place economic themes front and center and treat them well. The books are Nineteenth Street Northwest by Rex Gosh (Greenleaf Book Group) and Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart (Random House).
Rex Gosh, better known to econ wonks as IMF economist Atish R. Gosh, sets his tale of terror and high finance at the fictional International Monetary and Financial Organization (IMFO), whose address and functions are oddly close to those of the real-world IMF and World Bank. The central character is the brilliant and beautiful Sophia Gemaye. Sophia, the daughter of a martyred third-world freedom fighter, has a big grudge against the developed world. At the same time, her upbringing in England has made her squeamish about blowing up planeloads of holiday-bound mothers and children. She reconciles her conflicting values by infiltrating the IMFO's young economists program, where her goal is to draw attention to her homeland's plight by engineering a bloodless crash of the world financial system. Once inside the IMFO, she steals central bank intervention data, which she plugs into a fiendish neural-network model (described by the author in lovingly accurate detail) that is designed to execute the mother of all bear raids. What happens next you will have to read for yourself.
I will confess that I sat down to read this little thriller with very low expectations regarding its likely merits as literature. The first couple chapters did seem predictably clunky, but pretty soon Gosh gets into the rhythm of things, and the text starts to read more like a novel and less like an IMF working paper. Passion, greed, revenge, and suspense interplay nicely with econometrics and exchange rate dynamics. Gosh avoids some of the most obvious stereotypes, for example, by giving his terrorist plotters a wide variety of backgrounds and motivations that make them, while not exactly sympathetic, at least credible as characters.
Where Gosh's thriller is grimly serious, Shteyngart follows the Russian literary tradition of laughter through tears. Super Sad True Love Story depicts a near-future dystopian United States in which economic and social trends already at work today have plunged us deep into a tunnel that has no obvious light at the end.
The world monetary system has undergone several changes in Shteyngart's near future. Debt, inflation, and repeated devaluation have turned the poor greenback into a parody of its present proud status as a reserve currency. The dollar continues to circulate as a medium of exchange, but it can no longer serves as a reliable unit of account. Instead, prices and contracts are indexed to the yuan, so that they adjust automatically to changes in the exchange rate. If you are a HNWI (high net-worth individual), your income and assets are pegged the the yuan but your expenses and debts are not. If you are a LWNI, it is the other way around. Anyone who remembers Russia in the 1990s would immediately understand the system. The European monetary system is not described in as much detail, but there are references to a monetary unit called the "Northern euro" that suggest that much the same has happened there.
Meanwhile, the U.S. political scene has evolved into a single-party system under the aegis of the Bipartisan Party--an entity that bears uncomfortable resemblance to Vladimir Putin's party, United Russia. The Bipartisans are intent on pursuing a losing war in Venezuela, despite the fact that they can't pay their returning veterans. Their economic policy consists of begging the Chinese central bank for more loans and exhorting fellow Americans with slogans like "Spend More! Together We Will Surprise the World!"
Everyone carries around an iPhone-like apparat that includes a handy face-recognition feature. Point your apparat at any stranger, and you can immediately download all kinds of personal data, including the person's all-important credit rating and several other personal indexes that I would perhaps best not describe here. Texting is the dominant mode of communication, although when in close proximity, people occasionally still engage in "verbaling". Reading is out, scanning text streams for data is in, except for Shteyngart's super-nerd hero, who has hidden away a smelly two-volume copy of War and Peace for his private enjoyment.
Rest assured, beneath all the economic and social satire, there is a real love story between a real boy and girl, but the "Super Sad" part of the title seems to refer not so much to their fate as to that of the country. At one point Love Story's hero, who, like its author, comes from a family of Russian immigrants, laments "the looks on the faces of my countrymen--passive heads bent, arms at their trousers, everyone guilty of not being their best, of not earning their daily bread, the kind of docility I had never expected from Americans, even after the many years of our decline. Here was the tiredness of failure imposed on a country that believed only in its opposite."
In short, these are two nice winter reads, and when you finish them, you can put them down with the comforting thought that they are, after all, only fiction. Right?
Rex Gosh, better known to econ wonks as IMF economist Atish R. Gosh, sets his tale of terror and high finance at the fictional International Monetary and Financial Organization (IMFO), whose address and functions are oddly close to those of the real-world IMF and World Bank. The central character is the brilliant and beautiful Sophia Gemaye. Sophia, the daughter of a martyred third-world freedom fighter, has a big grudge against the developed world. At the same time, her upbringing in England has made her squeamish about blowing up planeloads of holiday-bound mothers and children. She reconciles her conflicting values by infiltrating the IMFO's young economists program, where her goal is to draw attention to her homeland's plight by engineering a bloodless crash of the world financial system. Once inside the IMFO, she steals central bank intervention data, which she plugs into a fiendish neural-network model (described by the author in lovingly accurate detail) that is designed to execute the mother of all bear raids. What happens next you will have to read for yourself.
I will confess that I sat down to read this little thriller with very low expectations regarding its likely merits as literature. The first couple chapters did seem predictably clunky, but pretty soon Gosh gets into the rhythm of things, and the text starts to read more like a novel and less like an IMF working paper. Passion, greed, revenge, and suspense interplay nicely with econometrics and exchange rate dynamics. Gosh avoids some of the most obvious stereotypes, for example, by giving his terrorist plotters a wide variety of backgrounds and motivations that make them, while not exactly sympathetic, at least credible as characters.
Where Gosh's thriller is grimly serious, Shteyngart follows the Russian literary tradition of laughter through tears. Super Sad True Love Story depicts a near-future dystopian United States in which economic and social trends already at work today have plunged us deep into a tunnel that has no obvious light at the end.
The world monetary system has undergone several changes in Shteyngart's near future. Debt, inflation, and repeated devaluation have turned the poor greenback into a parody of its present proud status as a reserve currency. The dollar continues to circulate as a medium of exchange, but it can no longer serves as a reliable unit of account. Instead, prices and contracts are indexed to the yuan, so that they adjust automatically to changes in the exchange rate. If you are a HNWI (high net-worth individual), your income and assets are pegged the the yuan but your expenses and debts are not. If you are a LWNI, it is the other way around. Anyone who remembers Russia in the 1990s would immediately understand the system. The European monetary system is not described in as much detail, but there are references to a monetary unit called the "Northern euro" that suggest that much the same has happened there.
Meanwhile, the U.S. political scene has evolved into a single-party system under the aegis of the Bipartisan Party--an entity that bears uncomfortable resemblance to Vladimir Putin's party, United Russia. The Bipartisans are intent on pursuing a losing war in Venezuela, despite the fact that they can't pay their returning veterans. Their economic policy consists of begging the Chinese central bank for more loans and exhorting fellow Americans with slogans like "Spend More! Together We Will Surprise the World!"
Everyone carries around an iPhone-like apparat that includes a handy face-recognition feature. Point your apparat at any stranger, and you can immediately download all kinds of personal data, including the person's all-important credit rating and several other personal indexes that I would perhaps best not describe here. Texting is the dominant mode of communication, although when in close proximity, people occasionally still engage in "verbaling". Reading is out, scanning text streams for data is in, except for Shteyngart's super-nerd hero, who has hidden away a smelly two-volume copy of War and Peace for his private enjoyment.
Rest assured, beneath all the economic and social satire, there is a real love story between a real boy and girl, but the "Super Sad" part of the title seems to refer not so much to their fate as to that of the country. At one point Love Story's hero, who, like its author, comes from a family of Russian immigrants, laments "the looks on the faces of my countrymen--passive heads bent, arms at their trousers, everyone guilty of not being their best, of not earning their daily bread, the kind of docility I had never expected from Americans, even after the many years of our decline. Here was the tiredness of failure imposed on a country that believed only in its opposite."
In short, these are two nice winter reads, and when you finish them, you can put them down with the comforting thought that they are, after all, only fiction. Right?
Economics in Fiction: Two Post-Christmas Book Reviews
Anyone who has studied a little economics knows that popular fiction usually avoids economic themes, and if it does not, butchers them. Yet this year, two novels landed under our Christmas tree that place economic themes front and center and treat them well. The books are Nineteenth Street Northwest by Rex Gosh (Greenleaf Book Group) and Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart (Random House).
Rex Gosh, better known to econ wonks as IMF economist Atish R. Gosh, sets his tale of terror and high finance at the fictional International Monetary and Financial Organization (IMFO), whose address and functions are oddly close to those of the real-world IMF and World Bank. The central character is the brilliant and beautiful Sophia Gemaye. Sophia, the daughter of a martyred third-world freedom fighter, has a big grudge against the developed world. At the same time, her upbringing in England has made her squeamish about blowing up planeloads of holiday-bound mothers and children. She reconciles her conflicting values by infiltrating the IMFO's young economists program, where her goal is to draw attention to her homeland's plight by engineering a bloodless crash of the world financial system. Once inside the IMFO, she steals central bank intervention data, which she plugs into a fiendish neural-network model (described by the author in lovingly accurate detail) that is designed to execute the mother of all bear raids. What happens next you will have to read for yourself.
I will confess that I sat down to read this little thriller with very low expectations regarding its likely merits as literature. The first couple chapters did seem predictably clunky, but pretty soon Gosh gets into the rhythm of things, and the text starts to read more like a novel and less like an IMF working paper. Passion, greed, revenge, and suspense interplay nicely with econometrics and exchange rate dynamics. Gosh avoids some of the most obvious stereotypes, for example, by giving his terrorist plotters a wide variety of backgrounds and motivations that make them, while not exactly sympathetic, at least credible as characters.
Where Gosh's thriller is grimly serious, Shteyngart follows the Russian literary tradition of laughter through tears. Super Sad True Love Story depicts a near-future dystopian United States in which economic and social trends already at work today have plunged us deep into a tunnel that has no obvious light at the end.
The world monetary system has undergone several changes in Shteyngart's near future. Debt, inflation, and repeated devaluation have turned the poor greenback into a parody of its present proud status as a reserve currency. The dollar continues to circulate as a medium of exchange, but it can no longer serves as a reliable unit of account. Instead, prices and contracts are indexed to the yuan, so that they adjust automatically to changes in the exchange rate. If you are a HNWI (high net-worth individual), your income and assets are pegged the the yuan but your expenses and debts are not. If you are a LWNI, it is the other way around. Anyone who remembers Russia in the 1990s would immediately understand the system. The European monetary system is not described in as much detail, but there are references to a monetary unit called the "Northern euro" that suggest that much the same has happened there.
Meanwhile, the U.S. political scene has evolved into a single-party system under the aegis of the Bipartisan Party--an entity that bears uncomfortable resemblance to Vladimir Putin's party, United Russia. The Bipartisans are intent on pursuing a losing war in Venezuela, despite the fact that they can't pay their returning veterans. Their economic policy consists of begging the Chinese central bank for more loans and exhorting fellow Americans with slogans like "Spend More! Together We Will Surprise the World!"
Everyone carries around an iPhone-like apparat that includes a handy face-recognition feature. Point your apparat at any stranger, and you can immediately download all kinds of personal data, including the person's all-important credit rating and several other personal indexes that I would perhaps best not describe here. Texting is the dominant mode of communication, although when in close proximity, people occasionally still engage in "verbaling". Reading is out, scanning text streams for data is in, except for Shteyngart's super-nerd hero, who has hidden away a smelly two-volume copy of War and Peace for his private enjoyment.
Rest assured, beneath all the economic and social satire, there is a real love story between a real boy and girl, but the "Super Sad" part of the title seems to refer not so much to their fate as to that of the country. At one point Love Story's hero, who, like its author, comes from a family of Russian immigrants, laments "the looks on the faces of my countrymen--passive heads bent, arms at their trousers, everyone guilty of not being their best, of not earning their daily bread, the kind of docility I had never expected from Americans, even after the many years of our decline. Here was the tiredness of failure imposed on a country that believed only in its opposite."
In short, these are two nice winter reads, and when you finish them, you can put them down with the comforting thought that they are, after all, only fiction. Right?
Rex Gosh, better known to econ wonks as IMF economist Atish R. Gosh, sets his tale of terror and high finance at the fictional International Monetary and Financial Organization (IMFO), whose address and functions are oddly close to those of the real-world IMF and World Bank. The central character is the brilliant and beautiful Sophia Gemaye. Sophia, the daughter of a martyred third-world freedom fighter, has a big grudge against the developed world. At the same time, her upbringing in England has made her squeamish about blowing up planeloads of holiday-bound mothers and children. She reconciles her conflicting values by infiltrating the IMFO's young economists program, where her goal is to draw attention to her homeland's plight by engineering a bloodless crash of the world financial system. Once inside the IMFO, she steals central bank intervention data, which she plugs into a fiendish neural-network model (described by the author in lovingly accurate detail) that is designed to execute the mother of all bear raids. What happens next you will have to read for yourself.
I will confess that I sat down to read this little thriller with very low expectations regarding its likely merits as literature. The first couple chapters did seem predictably clunky, but pretty soon Gosh gets into the rhythm of things, and the text starts to read more like a novel and less like an IMF working paper. Passion, greed, revenge, and suspense interplay nicely with econometrics and exchange rate dynamics. Gosh avoids some of the most obvious stereotypes, for example, by giving his terrorist plotters a wide variety of backgrounds and motivations that make them, while not exactly sympathetic, at least credible as characters.
Where Gosh's thriller is grimly serious, Shteyngart follows the Russian literary tradition of laughter through tears. Super Sad True Love Story depicts a near-future dystopian United States in which economic and social trends already at work today have plunged us deep into a tunnel that has no obvious light at the end.
The world monetary system has undergone several changes in Shteyngart's near future. Debt, inflation, and repeated devaluation have turned the poor greenback into a parody of its present proud status as a reserve currency. The dollar continues to circulate as a medium of exchange, but it can no longer serves as a reliable unit of account. Instead, prices and contracts are indexed to the yuan, so that they adjust automatically to changes in the exchange rate. If you are a HNWI (high net-worth individual), your income and assets are pegged the the yuan but your expenses and debts are not. If you are a LWNI, it is the other way around. Anyone who remembers Russia in the 1990s would immediately understand the system. The European monetary system is not described in as much detail, but there are references to a monetary unit called the "Northern euro" that suggest that much the same has happened there.
Meanwhile, the U.S. political scene has evolved into a single-party system under the aegis of the Bipartisan Party--an entity that bears uncomfortable resemblance to Vladimir Putin's party, United Russia. The Bipartisans are intent on pursuing a losing war in Venezuela, despite the fact that they can't pay their returning veterans. Their economic policy consists of begging the Chinese central bank for more loans and exhorting fellow Americans with slogans like "Spend More! Together We Will Surprise the World!"
Everyone carries around an iPhone-like apparat that includes a handy face-recognition feature. Point your apparat at any stranger, and you can immediately download all kinds of personal data, including the person's all-important credit rating and several other personal indexes that I would perhaps best not describe here. Texting is the dominant mode of communication, although when in close proximity, people occasionally still engage in "verbaling". Reading is out, scanning text streams for data is in, except for Shteyngart's super-nerd hero, who has hidden away a smelly two-volume copy of War and Peace for his private enjoyment.
Rest assured, beneath all the economic and social satire, there is a real love story between a real boy and girl, but the "Super Sad" part of the title seems to refer not so much to their fate as to that of the country. At one point Love Story's hero, who, like its author, comes from a family of Russian immigrants, laments "the looks on the faces of my countrymen--passive heads bent, arms at their trousers, everyone guilty of not being their best, of not earning their daily bread, the kind of docility I had never expected from Americans, even after the many years of our decline. Here was the tiredness of failure imposed on a country that believed only in its opposite."
In short, these are two nice winter reads, and when you finish them, you can put them down with the comforting thought that they are, after all, only fiction. Right?
How the NCAA undermines the academic enterprise
I love major college sports; I have enjoyed having athletes in class--they actually tend to run the gamut in terms of how well they do, and I appreciate the time management skills required to be a varsity athlete while performing well in class.
But part of the academic enterprise is instilling in students the importance of not bullshitting. The NCAA undermines this when it states things like:
But part of the academic enterprise is instilling in students the importance of not bullshitting. The NCAA undermines this when it states things like:
Money is not a motivator or factor as to why one school would get a particular decision versus another. Any insinuation that revenue from bowl games in particular would influence NCAA decisions is absurd, because schools and conferences receive that revenue, not the NCAA.But who are the members of the NCAA? The schools! This statement meets Harry Frankfurt's criteria for bullshit, and is an example of why bullshit is harmful. Frankfurt:
Someone who lies and someone who tells the truth are playing on opposite sides, so to speak, in the same game. Each responds to the facts as he understands them, although the response of the one is guided by the authority of the truth, while the response of the other defies that authority and refuses to meet its demands. The bullshitter ignores these demands altogether. He does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it. He pays no attention to it all. By virtue of this, bullshit is the greater enemy of the truth than lies are.It seems to me that those of us who have anything to do with colleges and universities have an obligation to avoid bullshit.
Numerology Class
There is a new poll out that looked at all the possible candidates for the upcoming FL senate race in 2012: (hopefully my HTML coding will work - still trying to get used to doing it all manually)
I think some would have preferred it - actually it wouldn't have mattered ... Americans would have voted either one in just so they could say they were a part if history ... Case-in-point, OBAMA ... You've got to wonder if the same people would vote for him if the election was held today with what they know about his "effectivness" ... I really don't think he'd be in ...
Actually I think it should be the primary because you know Hillary Clinton would have gotten the nomination if people had known how wishy-washy he was and what a glory-hound he was ... How self-centered self-important ... I mean a certain amount of that comes with the personality that seeks that office but he goes so beyond that ... He is even worse than President Johnson -and that's saying something!
WOW - I know it's not what Dems want to see but that is clear cut a win for Jeb Bush ... But then everyone thought that he was going to run for President instead of GW ...Jeb Bush 72% Bill McCollum 6% George Lemieux 3% Connie Mack, the 4th 3% Vern Buchanan 3% Jennifer Carroll 3% Mike Haridopolis 1% Adam Hasner 0% Someone Else/Not Sure 10%
I think some would have preferred it - actually it wouldn't have mattered ... Americans would have voted either one in just so they could say they were a part if history ... Case-in-point, OBAMA ... You've got to wonder if the same people would vote for him if the election was held today with what they know about his "effectivness" ... I really don't think he'd be in ...
Actually I think it should be the primary because you know Hillary Clinton would have gotten the nomination if people had known how wishy-washy he was and what a glory-hound he was ... How self-centered self-important ... I mean a certain amount of that comes with the personality that seeks that office but he goes so beyond that ... He is even worse than President Johnson -and that's saying something!
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
True cost of modern medicine
Now I have often said that I thought America's kids were being treated for the "latest" craze in the medical world ... Case in point, when my oldest daughter was about 2 she had bronchitis -I knew that was what it was but had to take her I for the prescript ... Our regular dr was out for the day so we got the pediatrician (I hate specialists for kids when the aren't needed) ... She tried to tell me that my child had asthma - she DIDNOT and to this day does not ... But the dr had just been to a seminar, she said so, where they talked about the under diagnosis of childhood asthma.
So it seemed that she was now seeing it in every child.
Well here we go with the numbers of meds pres ribbed to kids in the USA by ranking:
Asthma 45,388,000
ADHD 24,367,000
Antidepressants 8,614,000
Antipsychotics 8,548,000
Sleep aids 307,000
They even have seen a rise in the number of kids taking blood pressure meds.
about 1/4 of America's kids are now taking medications on a regular basis ...
You also have to remember that ADHD is one the only medical conditions out there that can be diagnosed by someone who has absolutely no medical training! Most people do not realize that if your child's teacher thinks your kids has ADHD they just have to. Fill out the form and the dr's will fill out the prescript ... Most won't even do a followup exam because they figure the teacher is more likely to have seen the symptoms.
The other condition I've seen. Where this is true is autism ... I saw children get labelled autistic" simply because they did not follow a series of instructions, wouldn't loo& someone in the eye, or march to the beat of their own drum.
It is almost as if American's have come to desire a label for their child.
Dr's are worried about the number of antibiotics they prescribe - I think they should worry more about the amount of permanent medications they are pouring into our youths blood streams.
So it seemed that she was now seeing it in every child.
Well here we go with the numbers of meds pres ribbed to kids in the USA by ranking:
Asthma 45,388,000
ADHD 24,367,000
Antidepressants 8,614,000
Antipsychotics 8,548,000
Sleep aids 307,000
They even have seen a rise in the number of kids taking blood pressure meds.
about 1/4 of America's kids are now taking medications on a regular basis ...
You also have to remember that ADHD is one the only medical conditions out there that can be diagnosed by someone who has absolutely no medical training! Most people do not realize that if your child's teacher thinks your kids has ADHD they just have to. Fill out the form and the dr's will fill out the prescript ... Most won't even do a followup exam because they figure the teacher is more likely to have seen the symptoms.
The other condition I've seen. Where this is true is autism ... I saw children get labelled autistic" simply because they did not follow a series of instructions, wouldn't loo& someone in the eye, or march to the beat of their own drum.
It is almost as if American's have come to desire a label for their child.
Dr's are worried about the number of antibiotics they prescribe - I think they should worry more about the amount of permanent medications they are pouring into our youths blood streams.
Econ Education at the ASSA Meeting
If you teach economics and are going to the upcoming ASSA meeting in Denver, you might find this list of the pedagogical sessions helpful.
One of the sessions includes an analysis of the leading economics textbooks.
One of the sessions includes an analysis of the leading economics textbooks.
Econ Education at the ASSA Meeting
If you teach economics and are going to the upcoming ASSA meeting in Denver, you might find this list of the pedagogical sessions helpful.
One of the sessions includes an analysis of the leading economics textbooks.
One of the sessions includes an analysis of the leading economics textbooks.
My colleague Lisa Schweitzer gently scolds me, and then teaches me something about LA Metro project management
In response to my post, she starts by writing:
First off, it’s a bad idea to conclude anything about work effort based on what you observe by walking by. That’s like the people who judge professors by saying we “only teach two hours a week.” It’s not a valid sample, and it’s very had to evaluate other people’s work effort when you have never done the job yourself— and that’s particularly true of white collar workers passing judgment on blue collar workers engaged in dangerous and often tiring work–during a recession, no less, where anything that extends their work hours has direct implications for their family’s ability to eat and pay rent (unlike salaried work).It is worth reading the whole thing.
More to the point, Richard is mistaken when he concludes that people are not upset. The LA Weekly recently published a story called L.A.’s Light-Rail Fiasco which eviscerates the CEO of the Exposition Metro Line Construction Authority, Rick Thorpe, for salary and his conduct. Rick Thorpe is exactly the sort of transit guy who becomes a free agent and CEO: relentlessly self-promotional and confident, any previous successes get attributed to his leadership. So he picks up stakes, gets recruited away, commands an enormous salary, and builds a brand for himself that he delivers projects on time and on budget.
Suddenly, some members of the GOP realize they actually will be part of the government
Alan Zibel writes in the Wall Street Journal:
The conservative complaint about Fannie and Freddie is that they privatized profit while socializing risk. This is doubtless true. I just don't see how it is any less true for banks.
[update: just to be clear, I am all for FDIC, and I think on net TARP left the country better off. The point is that we will always rely on the public sector to some extent, whether some people like it or not].
Earlier this year, leading House Republicans proposed to privatize mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac or place them in receivership starting in two years.I actually don't think the mortgage market will ever be truly a private sector enterprise. Suppose Fannie and Freddie were to go away: the most likley entities to step into the residential finance market would be banks. Would this be privitization? Not really. Banks receive explicit guarantees (FDIC) and, as we know from recent events, implicit guarantees as well (TARP was nothing if not the execution of an implicit Federal guarantee).
Now, as Republicans prepare to assume control of the House next week, they aren't in as big a rush, cautioning that withdrawing government support in the housing market should be gradual.
"We recognize that some things can be done overnight and other things can't be," said Rep. Scott Garrett (R., N.J.), incoming chairman of the House Financial Services subcommittee, which oversees Fannie and Freddie. "You have to recognize what the impact would be on the fragile housing market as it stands right now."
The conservative complaint about Fannie and Freddie is that they privatized profit while socializing risk. This is doubtless true. I just don't see how it is any less true for banks.
[update: just to be clear, I am all for FDIC, and I think on net TARP left the country better off. The point is that we will always rely on the public sector to some extent, whether some people like it or not].
Let It Snow!
Hello everyone - my computer bit the dust just before Christmas so it's just the basics while it is being fixed as the iPad I've been lucky enough to borrow doesn't support the HTML side of blogging ... At least not the quick side of things. it's a good thing the children had exposed me to the "art" of testing, it had prepared me for the hunt-and-peck style of typing that is used on this type of keyboard.
So I've been watching the news and shaking my head at what is going on in New York state ... As many of you may know they had a huge blizzard out along the coast from New England all the way to the Carolina's ... Atlanta GA saw it's first White Christmas in something like 130 years!
In New York City buses, cars, trains, subways were all stuck in place - the roads and tracks can't be cleared because vehicles are in the way of clearing crews ... And there is a video on YouTube that shows a front loader trying to clear snow from along a curb and accidentally taking-out the cars he is trying to help.
I mean it's not like he did it on purpose, he really had little choice ... There just wasn't enough room there and it was probably the smallest mass-snow removal the city had.
This reminds me of the Chicago blizzard of 1969 ... I think that was when it was ... Where people were just so unforgiving --I even heard a quote from a NY man that sounded just like one from back then ...
Mayor Daly was accused of clearing the rich neighborhoods while the less-influent areas seemed to get cleared first ... But really it had more to do with Off Street parking ... Places where there weren't cars clogging the streets were easier to clear ...
So what was the quote?
you don't care about the other Burroughs - it's all about the money - you know in Manhattan, the most money, there you go - it's already clean.
I think it is just that people aren't understanding why it is taking so long to get it all done ... People have gotten so used to the lighter winters of the last many years that they don't know how to handle a normal winter ... Actually this storm is about 15 years later than it should have been - these big storms are about every 21 years or so ... And the last big one should have been in the 90's.
My father says that this winter is reminding him of 1934 ... Between the massive amount of snow and the economy. He has warned all us kids to hold on tight to our money because he can see black-times on the horizon no matter what you are hearing from. The government.
Starting with a huge jump in fueling prices - not just for your car but for your home heating/lighting as well.
Voting with Your Feet II
Ed Glaeser on regional population trends:
The future shape of America is being driven not by quality of life or economic success but by the obscure rules regulating local land use. In a sense, the anti-regulation crowd is right that the laissez-faire attitude of the South and West explains their recent growth. But the usual argument focuses on the wrong regulations. Housing regulations, more than those that bind standard businesses, explain the Sun Belt’s population growth. If New York and Massachusetts want to stop losing Congressional seats, then they must revisit the rules that make it so difficult to build.
Voting with Your Feet II
Ed Glaeser on regional population trends:
The future shape of America is being driven not by quality of life or economic success but by the obscure rules regulating local land use. In a sense, the anti-regulation crowd is right that the laissez-faire attitude of the South and West explains their recent growth. But the usual argument focuses on the wrong regulations. Housing regulations, more than those that bind standard businesses, explain the Sun Belt’s population growth. If New York and Massachusetts want to stop losing Congressional seats, then they must revisit the rules that make it so difficult to build.
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Mr. Gbagbo, Mr. Lukashenko, Mr. Putin, etc., etc.,
As people from all around the planet open up more to eachother across borders via social media etc., there will be a tendency over time to appreciate, incorporate and employ ideas from those other areas of the world into our local society and culture. Our ability to instantly communicate without regard to borders in effect weakens those physical borders and causes other ideas and ideals to become operative over a broad spectrum of the planet - making each of us, in all our diversity, and without threatening that diversity, similar over time. So complacency in one place about the political system will experience change as the people connect with the rest of the world. The idea then is to aggressively and actively expand our mutual connections via all means possible so that states and leaders must become more and more transparent and open to public debate and scrutiny locally and globally.
This is the future of our world. Uniquely and beautifully different, but ultimately united, whether some want to admit it or not. That is the inescapable future toward which we are headed. So the challenge becomes, "Do we participate together in shaping our much more connected world, or do we let things happen randomly hoping that it will be a good and just place where all people of all races, nationalities, systems of belief, and gender identification have their human rights protected and defended?"
The situation in Russia, in Belarus, in Nigeria, and Kenya, and in Cote d'Ivoire, and concerning some issues in the US and China, becomes more difficult to sustain in the light of day as people from all around the planet begin to require leaders and states to uphold international law and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. All leaders, states, and organizations that operate across borders, must be held accountable to international law - if they are not held first accountable within their respective states. This applies to Mr. Putin, Mr. Gbagbo, Mr. Lukashenko, etc., etc., etc..
Case-Shiller October Numbers Show Continued Weakness in Housing
Including Portland and Seattle. Here is the Wall Street Journal's table.
Home Prices, by Metro Area
| Metro Area | October 2010 | Change from September | Year-over-year change |
| Atlanta | 103.30 | -2.9% | -6.2% |
| Boston | 154.35 | -1.2% | -0.2% |
| Charlotte | 114.06 | -1.1% | -4.2% |
| Chicago | 122.28 | -2.0% | -6.5% |
| Cleveland | 102.20 | -1.5% | -2.6% |
| Dallas | 116.16 | -1.1% | -3.1% |
| Denver | 126.59 | -0.6% | -1.8% |
| Detroit | 68.86 | -2.5% | -5.5% |
| Las Vegas | 100.97 | -0.2% | -3.6% |
| Los Angeles | 174.05 | -0.7% | 3.3% |
| Miami | 144.03 | -1.1% | -3.4% |
| Minneapolis | 121.30 | -1.9% | -2.8% |
| New York | 171.50 | -1.6% | -1.7% |
| Phoenix | 105.97 | -1.1% | -4.3% |
| Portland | 142.16 | -1.5% | -5.2% |
| San Diego | 159.99 | -1.5% | 3.0% |
| San Francisco | 138.84 | -1.9% | 2.2% |
| Seattle | 143.13 | -1.3% | -4.1% |
| Tampa | 135.21 | -0.9% | -3.6% |
| Washington | 186.67 | -0.2% | 3.7% |
Source: Standard & Poor’s and FiservData
Monday, December 27, 2010
Keynes on the "Psychology of Society"
My wife gave me a Kindle for Christmas. The first thing I should say is that it is really great: my eyesight isn't what it once was, and I find it very easy to read.. The second is that I will continue to buy books at Vroman's (a Pasadena bookstore), because I want them to stay in business. Third, I downloaded the Economic Consequences of the Peace, which I hadn't read in four or five years. It has a section early on that really struck me:
Europe was so organized socially and economically as to secure the maximum accumulation of capital. While there were some continuous improvements in the daily conditions of life of the mass of the population, Society was so framed to to throw a great part of the increased income into the control of the class least likely to consume it. The new rich of the 19th century were not brought up to large expenditures, and preferred the power which investment gave them to the pleasures of immediate consumption. In fact, it was precisely the inequality of the distribution of wealth which made possible those vast accumulations of fixed wealth and of capital improvements which distinguished that age from all others. Herein lay, in fact, the main justification of the Capitalist System. If the rich had spent their new wealth on their own enjoyments, the world long ago would have found such a regime intolerable. But like bees they saved and accumulated, not less to the advantage of the whole community because they themselves held narrower ends in prospect.
The immense accumulations of fixed capital which, to the great benefit of mankind, were built up during the half century before the war [WWI], could never have come about in a Society where wealth was divided equitably. The railways of the world, which that age built as a monument to posterity, were, not less than the Pyramids of Eqypt, the work of labor which was not free to consume in immediate enjoyment the full equivalent of its efforts.
Thus this remarkable system depended for its growth on a double bluff or deception. On the one hand the laboring classes accepted from ignorance or powerlessness, or were compelled, perusade or cajoled by custom, convention, authority, and the well-established order of Society into accepting a situation in which they could call their own very little of the cake that they and Nature and the capitalists were co-operating to produce. And on the other hand the capitalist classes were allowed to call the best part of the cake theirs and were theoretically free to consume it, on the tacit underlying condition that they consumed very little of it in practice.
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Fareed on CNN tonight - 'How to Lead"
This should be a great program. The earlier show on "Restoring America" was great as well. As usual, Fareed's comments, and those of the contributors, are as applicable to America as they are to the entire world. Now comes the show on leadership. This will be great.
I my opinion, leadership has three essential elements - vision, planning, and action. Vision is by far the greater of the three elements and is generally the least understood, appreciated or applied. Planning is knowing and communicating how you're going to get there from here, and action gets the job done.
An old sage once said that 'my people die for lack of vision'. These aren't simplistic things like 'I think I'll fix two steaks tomorrow at 3pm', but rather grandiose awe-inspiring breath-taking things that are just outside your current reach. Vision has passion. Vision grabs the heart and mind and soul, and propels you and others forward, to a better place. It is a goal and purpose full of heart. Think of it as a purpose and goal with attitude. That is vision, and that is the first step toward a better more secure future for us and for the world - if we let it be true. Are we going to die for lack of vision, or do we set ourselves a vision to which we, as a global people can aspire?
Is there a vision to which the entire world can aspire? Is there something that can drive innovation and creativity and energize local and global economies? Something that is so big and visionary and awe-inspiring that no single nation or regional group of nations can do in isolation from or independently of the rest of the world? Yes! I believe there is such a vision, such a goal and purpose that it will drive economic growth worldwide, encourage strengthening of connections with other states on the planet, and give all of us a more secure and prosperous future, while encouraging innovation, creativity, enterprise, on a global scale.
I have an idea. Do you?
If we're going to lead the nation and our world into the future, and out of a past into which we can never return, then we must boldly set a course then go there. Plan, then act on that plan - that is the key. Words alone will not do it, but decisively knowledge based leadership will bring the future to us.
We can do this, but it requires vision. It also requires a foundation for the advancement of knowledge.
Every business, every home, every state needs to start training programs in engineering, in the sciences and math. We need to teach our employees, our children, and our grandchildren in new technologies and in the foundation for those technologies. We need to move into the future boldly, rather than hoping to go back to a past way or method or ideology that no longer works. We should honestly appraise our situation, aggressively pursue society-wide innovations in sciences and math, recognizing that we are not going to get back those industries that have already left our state or nation. So where then does our future lay?
Recognizing that knowledge and education in the sciences, in new technologies, engineering and in math is the central key to our success over time, and acknowledging the paramount need to re-train all our people from the ground up so that the US remains the pre-eminent innovator in the world, means that we must focus on building the right foundation for that success.
Where do we start? We need to emphasize teaching the metric system exclusively so that we do have the proper foundation for sciences, engineering and math. To do other wise is to overly burden our innovators of the future with cumbersome conversions between those systems in the US verses those in the rest of the world. With the foundation of a easy to use, base ten measuring system, then we can build up our sciences. Until we convert to the metric system exclusively in the US, we will continue to be second rate in sciences, engineering and math.
And, that is leadership - vision, planning, action.
Tim Williamson
Brookwood, Alabama
globaleconomy101@gmail.com
I my opinion, leadership has three essential elements - vision, planning, and action. Vision is by far the greater of the three elements and is generally the least understood, appreciated or applied. Planning is knowing and communicating how you're going to get there from here, and action gets the job done.
An old sage once said that 'my people die for lack of vision'. These aren't simplistic things like 'I think I'll fix two steaks tomorrow at 3pm', but rather grandiose awe-inspiring breath-taking things that are just outside your current reach. Vision has passion. Vision grabs the heart and mind and soul, and propels you and others forward, to a better place. It is a goal and purpose full of heart. Think of it as a purpose and goal with attitude. That is vision, and that is the first step toward a better more secure future for us and for the world - if we let it be true. Are we going to die for lack of vision, or do we set ourselves a vision to which we, as a global people can aspire?
Is there a vision to which the entire world can aspire? Is there something that can drive innovation and creativity and energize local and global economies? Something that is so big and visionary and awe-inspiring that no single nation or regional group of nations can do in isolation from or independently of the rest of the world? Yes! I believe there is such a vision, such a goal and purpose that it will drive economic growth worldwide, encourage strengthening of connections with other states on the planet, and give all of us a more secure and prosperous future, while encouraging innovation, creativity, enterprise, on a global scale.
I have an idea. Do you?
If we're going to lead the nation and our world into the future, and out of a past into which we can never return, then we must boldly set a course then go there. Plan, then act on that plan - that is the key. Words alone will not do it, but decisively knowledge based leadership will bring the future to us.
We can do this, but it requires vision. It also requires a foundation for the advancement of knowledge.
Every business, every home, every state needs to start training programs in engineering, in the sciences and math. We need to teach our employees, our children, and our grandchildren in new technologies and in the foundation for those technologies. We need to move into the future boldly, rather than hoping to go back to a past way or method or ideology that no longer works. We should honestly appraise our situation, aggressively pursue society-wide innovations in sciences and math, recognizing that we are not going to get back those industries that have already left our state or nation. So where then does our future lay?
Recognizing that knowledge and education in the sciences, in new technologies, engineering and in math is the central key to our success over time, and acknowledging the paramount need to re-train all our people from the ground up so that the US remains the pre-eminent innovator in the world, means that we must focus on building the right foundation for that success.
Where do we start? We need to emphasize teaching the metric system exclusively so that we do have the proper foundation for sciences, engineering and math. To do other wise is to overly burden our innovators of the future with cumbersome conversions between those systems in the US verses those in the rest of the world. With the foundation of a easy to use, base ten measuring system, then we can build up our sciences. Until we convert to the metric system exclusively in the US, we will continue to be second rate in sciences, engineering and math.
And, that is leadership - vision, planning, action.
Tim Williamson
Brookwood, Alabama
globaleconomy101@gmail.com
Ivory Coast, and other nations flaunting international laws
This proposed UN Security Council Resolution has been posted to leaders in Ivory Coast, the UN Police Forces and UN delegation in Ivory Coast, to the UN Security Council members, the International Criminal Court at the Hague, and to the Human Rights Council at the Hague.
The actions of Mr. Gbagbo necessitate his immediate arrest for the issues outlines in this resolution. It is not the responsibility of any single state or association of states to carry out enforcement of the globally recognized conditions specified in Ivorian national law, or international law, or obvious violations of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The solution is for the UN to enforce applicable international laws decisively and quickly by strengthening the UN Police mandate to accomplish this obvious goal.
Excellency:
Acknowledging that as you are fully aware, the situation in Ivory Coast is in violation of national law, international law and of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, all of which have been acceded to by all the member states.
Recognizing that Mr. Gbagbo lost the national election, but refuses to cede power to the rightful winner of that election and is now using intimidation and force to try to maintain his unjust authority.
Knowing with certainty that the actions presently taken by Mr. Gbagbo are violations of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, other international laws, and the laws of Ivory Coast.
Admitting that the situation with Mr. Gbagbo, acting as President of Ivory Coast, having rightfully and legally lost the election to that office, is unjust, illegal, untenable and unsustainable for the rule of law to hold legitimate importance over time, for the people of Ivory Coast, for the African region and for the world.
Thus for the international community to allow Mr. Gbagbo to continue to flaunt the rule of national and international law is an affront, threat and challenge to the people of Ivory Coast, to Africa, and to the world.
Further stating that UN police action is warranted, just, required and demanded against the illegitimate actions of Mr. Larent Gbagbo.
Further stating that this degree of police action rightfully falls under the purview and authority of the UN,and that this degree of decisive action is not an action that needs to be taken by individual nations, or even regional associations of nations, but is rather a just international issue demanding quick and immediate resolution by the UN.
Requires that the permanent and temporary members of the UN Security Council and the members of the UN General Assembly (if needed) give the UN Police Force presently on the ground in Ivory Coast, with re-enforcements in personnel and materiel as appropriate, the active and decisive authority necessary to detain and or arrest Mr. Larent Gbagbo on violations of national law, international law and the Universal Declaration of Human rights.
Tim Williamson
tl# 1-205-765-6090
Brookwood, Alabama, USA
The actions of Mr. Gbagbo necessitate his immediate arrest for the issues outlines in this resolution. It is not the responsibility of any single state or association of states to carry out enforcement of the globally recognized conditions specified in Ivorian national law, or international law, or obvious violations of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The solution is for the UN to enforce applicable international laws decisively and quickly by strengthening the UN Police mandate to accomplish this obvious goal.
Excellency:
Acknowledging that as you are fully aware, the situation in Ivory Coast is in violation of national law, international law and of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, all of which have been acceded to by all the member states.
Recognizing that Mr. Gbagbo lost the national election, but refuses to cede power to the rightful winner of that election and is now using intimidation and force to try to maintain his unjust authority.
Knowing with certainty that the actions presently taken by Mr. Gbagbo are violations of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, other international laws, and the laws of Ivory Coast.
Admitting that the situation with Mr. Gbagbo, acting as President of Ivory Coast, having rightfully and legally lost the election to that office, is unjust, illegal, untenable and unsustainable for the rule of law to hold legitimate importance over time, for the people of Ivory Coast, for the African region and for the world.
Thus for the international community to allow Mr. Gbagbo to continue to flaunt the rule of national and international law is an affront, threat and challenge to the people of Ivory Coast, to Africa, and to the world.
Further stating that UN police action is warranted, just, required and demanded against the illegitimate actions of Mr. Larent Gbagbo.
Further stating that this degree of police action rightfully falls under the purview and authority of the UN,and that this degree of decisive action is not an action that needs to be taken by individual nations, or even regional associations of nations, but is rather a just international issue demanding quick and immediate resolution by the UN.
Requires that the permanent and temporary members of the UN Security Council and the members of the UN General Assembly (if needed) give the UN Police Force presently on the ground in Ivory Coast, with re-enforcements in personnel and materiel as appropriate, the active and decisive authority necessary to detain and or arrest Mr. Larent Gbagbo on violations of national law, international law and the Universal Declaration of Human rights.
Tim Williamson
tl# 1-205-765-6090
Brookwood, Alabama, USA
Friday, December 24, 2010
Special Session of the Human Rights Council on the Situation in Cote d'Ivoire
Special Session of the Human Rights Council on the Situation in Cote d'Ivoire
Hillary Rodham Clinton
Secretary of State
Secretary of State
Washington, DC
December 23, 2010
Today’s special session of the Human Rights Council concerning the ongoing crisis in Cote d’Ivoire underscored the international community’s commitment to ensure respect for human rights and to address serious abuses. We applaud the African Group for leading this session.
The United States joins the international community in condemning the growing violence, the grave human rights violations, and the deterioration of security in Cote d’Ivoire. We stand with the Council in calling for the immediate end to the violence and other abuses, and we will work to hold those responsible for these human rights violations accountable.
When the United States joined the Human Rights Council, we promised to work from within to improve its effectiveness as we strive to achieve our common goals. Today’s special session exemplifies this new approach and reaffirms that the Council has an important role to play on all issues where human rights are in question.
President Alassane Dramane Ouattara is the legitimately elected and internationally recognized leader of Cote d’Ivoire. We reiterate our call for former President Laurent Gbagbo to step down immediately. The rights of the Ivoirian people can only be fully realized when democracy is respected and the rule of law restored in Cote d’Ivoire.
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