Saturday, May 9, 2009

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Obama wants Fed to be finance supercop: AP Top
WASHINGTON — The Federal Reserve could become the supercop for "too big to fail" companies capable of causing another financial meltdown under a proposal being seriously considered by the White House. The Obama administration told industry officials on Friday that it was leaning toward making such a recommendation, according to officials who attended a private one-hour meeting between President Barack Obama's economic advisers and representatives from about a dozen banks, hedge funds and other financial groups. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and other officials made it clear they were not inclined to divide the job among various regulators as has been suggested by industry and some federal regulators. Geithner told the group that one organization needs to be held responsible for monitoring systemwide risk. "Committees don't make decisions," said Geithner, according to one participant. Officials from the Treasury Department and National Economic Council, which hosted the meeting, told participants that the Fed was considered the most likely candidate for the job, according to several officials who attended or were briefed on the discussions. The administration officials said a legislative proposal would likely be sent to Capitol Hill in June with the expectation the House Financial Services Committee, led by Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., would consider the measure before the Independence Day recess. The officials requested anonymity because the meeting had not been publicly announced and they were not authorized to discuss it. A Treasury Department statement provided to The Associated Press on Friday confirmed Geithner's position that he wants a "single independent regulator with responsibility for systemically important firms and critical payment and settlement systems." A spokesman said Geithner also is open to creating a council to "coordinate among the various regulators, including the systemic risk regulator." The Fed itself hasn't taken a position on whether it should have the job, although Chairman Ben Bernanke has said the Fed would have to be involved in any effort to identify and resolve systemwide risk. More on Barack Obama
 
White House Correspondents Dinner Video: WATCH LIVE Top
Tune in here beginning at 9:40PM ET for live streaming video of the 2009 White House Correspondents Dinner at the Washington Hilton, featuring remarks by President Barack Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama, NBC News' Brian Williams, and comedian Wanda Sykes. Check out HuffPolitics on Twitter to see the most noteworthy tweets from the dinner. Watch below: More on Video
 
Carol Hoenig: What's an Unpublished Writer To Do? Top
In spite of self-publishing gaining more respectability, there are still those who feel it is a waste of money for authors to go that route. Just this week alone I have come across a couple of cynics who believe that struggling writers are foolish and being taken advantage of by this type of publishing. I've stated in past articles that I was once one of these critics, but times have changed and so has my opinion. The thing is, I wonder why there isn't much protest for the musician who pays to record his or her music because they cannot get a record deal. They, too, have to compromise in order to try to make it in the business and spend their own money to try to get any sort of recognition. Not every musician, though, takes the risk that Montreal's Bernard Lachance did when he spent thousands of dollars, which was his life savings, and rented out the Chicago Theater and then made a You Tube video inviting Oprah to come see him. Risky, indeed, and Oprah was unable to attend his concert. But don't feel too sad for this dreamer because instead Oprah hosted this young man on her show where he sang The Impossible Dream . What if Lachance listened to reason, though, and decided to use his money for something more sensible? Well, he'd probably be like so many others who die without trying and that, in my opinion, is tragic. Author Jason A. Spencer Edwards did not want to die without trying. In today's New York Times there is an article about how he self-published his novels and is reaching his audience using viral marketing. Edwards has been so successful that he was able to quit his job as a paralegal and is publishing other authors--this after he and a fellow paralegal invested $25,000 of their own money to found JASP Publishing in order to publish his first novel, Jiggy . This is one person who didn't let traditional publishing keep him from realizing his dream. Of course, not everyone has $25,000 to invest, but not every writer needs that kind of money to get their book in print. Granted, there are some shady printing companies that take advantage of the unsuspecting writer while making promises of fame and fortune, which makes it bad for self-publishers. But it's the writer who educates him or herself and has realistic expectations who can actually accomplish what they set out to do, thanks to this relatively new publishing paradigm that is gaining speed and respectability. As I stated earlier, I had been one of those who initially thought self-publishers took advantage of those desperate to see their writing in print, but iUniverse gave me an opportunity that would have been lost otherwise. Originally, I was fortunate enough to acquire a literary agent, a high-profile literary agent, for my novel Without Grace , but unfortunate that this agent turned out to be less than aggressive in shopping it around. When another high-profile agent stepped in and wanted a chance with it, this first agent suddenly came up with a long list of publishers where she'd ostensibly sent it, even though there were no letters of rejection as proof. The second agent then couldn't take the chance professionally of resubmitting the same novel; therefore, Without Grace was left to sit on a shelf unread...until Susan Driscoll, former iUniverse CEO, had her editor read it and asked if they could publish it gratis. Due to the novel's success, she then hired me to write The Author's Guide to Planning Book Events . True, money didn't come out of my pocket for this venture, but I see what self-publishing can do and I'm now one of its biggest advocates. Yet, there are still those who don't realize that without this opportunity, writers would not have the joy of seeing their book in print. Without a doubt, some of these books are in sad shape and do compromise self-publishing's reputation. Yet, we must remember that many authors started out self-published, authors like Henry David Thoreau, Ernest Hemingway and Deepak Chopra, and that's pretty good company to be in. So if an author who cannot acquire a traditional publishing deal decides to invest in their writing career by self-publishing instead of giving up, let's celebrate their passion and entrepreneurial spirit and appreciate that self-publishing has allowed them to realize their dream before it's too late. More on Oprah
 
Iraq Insurgents Paying Children To Conduct Attacks On US Troops Top
American soldiers opened fire and killed a 12-year old boy after a grenade hit their convoy in Mosul on Thursday. The boy was found with ten thousand Iraqi dinars in his hand - worth less than $9. U.S. officials said the money is evidence of a disturbing new trend. More on War Wire
 
David Wild: RIP Stephen Bruton Top
There are musicians who grab headlines for the controversy they can kick up or the drugs they can do. We love some of these musicians. But then there is another breed of player who rather quietly but consistently make our world a more beautiful and better sounding place, one song at a time. Stephen Bruton -- who died today -- was never much of a household name -- unless your house was in Austin, Texas. Yet somehow along the way his genius as a guitarist, a producer, a singer, a songwriter and a recording artist probably touched many millions of American music lovers. A buddy of T-Bone Burnett going back to their days growing up in Fort Worth, Texas, Bruton played with the likes of Kris Kristofferson, Bonnie Raitt, Elvis Costello, Christine McVie, the Wallflowers, Carly Simon, Sonny Landreth and Peter Case. He produced other great recordings artists like Alejandro Escovedo, Jimmie Dale Gilmore. And after appearing with Kristofferson in A Star Is Born, Bruton also worked in film numerous times. Indeed, he may have been the only man to be seen in both Heaven's Gate and Miss Congeniality. Whether or not you knew his name, he will be missed.
 
James Love: Obama and Free Software Top
One of the more interesting aspects of the modern knowledge society is the free software movement . The most famous and influential leader of this movement is Richard M. Stallman (RMS). Richard recognized the value of a new model for software development and the various risks to that model. He also created a philosophical and ideological framework, and a new set of slogans, legal strategies and ideas to protect and promote the environment that would make free software more common and powerful. If Richard had not began his work in the 1980s, the Internet today would be less open, less innovative, and less useful. In recent years the free software movement has grown in many different dimensions, and become much more diverse in terms of its leadership and approach. Playing an important role are Stallman critics like Eric Raymond or Bruce Perens[2], gifted software development leaders like Linus Torvalds, thousands of independently managed software development communities, corporate supported ventures like OpenOffice, MySql, Redhat or Ubuntu, and a host of influential academics like Eben Moglen or Yoachi Benkler. Today Google Scholar has 53,900 hits for the term "free software."[3] [Clockwise: Obama ( Marc Nozell) and free software leaders Richard Stallman (Leonid Dmitriev), Eben Moglen (Andrew McMillan), Linus Torvalds (t3rmin4t0r), Bruce Perens (Manon Ress) and Michell Baker (Dead Squid). All photos available under licenses from Author, Wikimedia or Flickr] While free software was once considered by some as a fringe movement, it is now mainstream. Fortune 500 companies are embracing free software programs like R to analyse data. Linux, Apache, MySql and PhP (LAMP) servers power much of the Internet. Many cell phones, Kindle 2, and other devices run Linux. There is enormous interest in the development of every aspect of free software tools and applications. Some of the most profitable software companies today are those that are providing services over free software platforms. Free software also is important for empowering and protecting other social movements that routinely rely upon free software for a wide range of services. The "free" part of the free software movement is an important element of this. The ability to innovate, and specifically to create innovations that serve social needs, is well served by platforms, like the Internet, that are based upon openness and freedom. What does all this have to do with Obama? Actually, quite a bit. As important as free software has become economically and socially, it gets almost no respect among U.S. political leaders. People should insist that elected and appointed government officials be more explicit about policies. I would start by asking the Obama Administration to answer the following initial questions: Is free software important? 1. To what extent is free software used today? 2. What are the efficiency benefits of free software, in terms of allowing code to be freely reused and re-purposed? 3. What are the benefits of having software code transparent? 4. What are the benefits of users having the freedom to modify software to meet their needs? 5. Does free software play an important role in avoiding harm from the monopoly control over software products and platforms? 6. How much money do users save by using free software solutions? 7. Does free software make it easier for young people to learn about and contribute to the development of software? Next, I would ask the Obama Administration to address certain policy questions relevant to procurement and government services: 8. Does government procurement policy recognize the benefits of free software solutions? 9. If so, do procurement policies encourage or discourage the supply and use of free software? 10. Does the Obama Administration recognize the strategic importance and value of interoperability and open standards in the software field? 11. Does the Obama Administration recognize the strategic importance of open standards for data formats? 12. Does the Administration have a strategy to support and promote interoperability and open standards, including open data formats? If so, what is this strategy? 13. To what extent can someone who uses free software fully interact with government agencies, such as by editing collaborative documents, using web based services, viewing multimedia content, or using government funded databases and services? Does the administration have a policy that e-government services should not compel citizens to use proprietary software?" Grant Related Issues: 14. Does the federal Bayh-Dole Act provide the flexibility for the US government to insert appropriate conditions in grants that would increase public access to the software code developed under a government grant? 15. Should federal grants require recipients, when publishing or sharing data, to use open formats? Competition Issues. 16. Is the impact of a merger of the free software sector relevant to a proposed merger? For example, will the Obama Administration examine the impact of the Oracle acquisition of Sun on the future viability of MySQL, Java or OpenOffice? 17. Would an agreement among the owners of the two leading proprietary operating systems to not distribute software on the Linux platform be considered a violation of competition laws? If competition law is not a good tool to address such issues, what is? 18. Would an aggressive effort to break an open standard for data formats be considered a violation of competition law? 19. Should the dominant personal computing OS be required to offer a fair choice for Internet browsers? Patent issues. 20. Should there be a zone of fair use for software patents when used in free software projects? A lot of these issues are technical, but the issues are quite important economically and socially. The trick is to make these geeky issues political enough that politicians engage. --Notes [1]Yoachi Benkler, Coase's Penguin, or Linux and the Nature of the Firm, 112 Yale L.J (2002); Yoachi Benkler, The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom (Yale University Press 2006). Eben Moglen, "Anarchism Triumphant: Free Software and the Death of Copyright," First Monday (August, 1999) [2] Eric S Raymond, The cathedral and the bazaar: Musings on Linux and open source by an accidental revolutionary, 2001, O'Reilly & Associates. http://perens.com/policy/open-source/ [3]http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&lr=&q=%22free+software%22&btnG=Search
 

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