MP expenses continue to dominate the news in the UK, and I have to say it: the House of Commons is a cesspit of medieval privilege. It’s a mess. MP expenses are just one example of the privilege and ‘old boy’ advantage-taking going on. Look at how an MP gets a motion on the floor. It’s difficult to comprehend the privilege, status, committee work, and administrative arrangements that are necessary. [...]

The issue of MP expenses has stormed back into the spotlight in the UK today after the Telegraph revealed explicit details from MP receipts . MPs who have been called out on their expenses (in particular Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, former defense minister Geoff Hoon, and now Gordon Brown and Jack Straw) say they are working within the rules, but the media has portrayed them as taking unfair advantage and using taxpayer funds for their personal use. MPs need to improve the public’s understanding of what they do, and this can only be accomplished through greater transparency. [...]

Let’s take a look at the corporate strategy of the large financial institutions that played an instrumental role in bringing on the financial crisis. The chief executives at these companies tended to favor an aggressive leadership style, which for a long time led them to aggressive growth; as they acquired companies, the largest companies became ‘financial supermarkets’ with a whole range of services. These financial institutions grew and grew, but eventually reached a point around 2004 where their growth stopped. The leadership of many of these companies started to be criticized for not integrating their acquisitions well. And so chief executives responded by making their companies more governance-oriented, with new constraints for things being signed off by teams. These new protocols and procedures made the financial institutions stabilize and stop growing, but they didn’t prevent the financial crisis, and the whole sector is now suffering as banks (and [...]

At the G20 and elsewhere, we’ve heard government leaders like Obama and Brown calling for more regulation to prevent financial institutions from growing too large to fail and obfuscating their responsibilities. These calls are all well and good, but they aren’t a panacea. The problem with too much regulation is that it slows down markets and hampers growth. The ‘greedy bankers’ that have been reported on so often in the press aren’t the problem—they’re only the symbol. They’ve just been following procedures in a marketplace incentivised by short-term thinking and by imbalanced approaches to risk-taking. [...]

Earlier this month as a reaction to the global collapse of the financial sector, the members of Parliament made BBC Business Editor Robert Peston defend his reporting on Northern Rock last year. Peston outlined that he was acting on his duties as a reporter and was not responsible for creating a panic by highlighting the deficiencies of Northern Rock and Bradford & Bingley. He’s quite right. How can a conscientious investigator cause a panic when in fact the system in which we work has such glaring deficiencies?
It is absolutely right that the press and the media should bring to the surface the social issues that we face, particularly one as worrying as the collapse of the financial system. I can see why MPs would wish to take the line of blaming greedy and selfish bankers and an insensitive press and media. The reason we [...]

From a recent article in the FT:
In an analysis entitled Turning the Tide, Deloitte yesterday said central and local government must seize the opportunity “to take radical steps to emerge as leaner, more commercially savvy entities”. In practice, it argued, the downturn “provides a chance for public sector organisations to drive through reforms they could not necessarily achieve in more prosperous times”. [...]

Last month the US government’s National Intelligence Council released a new report on the role of the US in the world in 2025 . The report discussed the nature of superpower strife involving the rise of China, the shift of wealth and power from west to east, the increased likely use of nuclear weapons and the reshaping of America. I believe that all these issues are ‘accurate’ and are likely to have a profound impact on the world over the next 20 years. However, one critical factor was overlooked. [...]

It is little wonder that banks are reluctant to offer credit to the citizen, to businesses or to each other when bearing in mind the level of debt that currently exists. Official estimates of the American debt currently sit at $10.6 Trillion Dollars. A boutique investment analyst in Moscow considers the US debt to be nearer $11 Trillion dollars. However, two well known US investment banks are far less optimistic and unofficially estimate the debt level to be $26 Trillion Dollars, in effect 250% of US GDP.
In the UK, informed sources place UK debt levels nearer £2.5 trillion pounds. By the way, the UK’s GDP stands at about £1.5 trillion pounds.
What debt are we talking about? – Housing debt, credit card debt and debt ridden financial instruments, such as derivatives, all of which undermine the confidence of the market.
What value is better [...]

Those ‘ traditional Washington Politics ‘ that Andrew mentioned in yesterday’s post refer to the way that in the US and UK, well organized and well funded corporate bodies can exert a great deal of influence on the government.
Companies can directly donate to a candidate and expect some sort of quid pro quo , or the influence can be less direct: Karthik Ramanna from Harvard Business School and Sugata Roychowdhury of MIT recently wrote a white paper that suggests that in the 2004 election, outsourcing firms located in political battlegrounds were underreporting their profits to deflect attention from their (likely profitable) outsourcing, so that candidates wouldn’t have to confront the issue.
 To get away from these sorts of direct and indirect influence, political and administrative boundaries need to be redesigned. Greater transparency of the interrelationship between politicians, advisors, civil servants, [...]

By promoting an agenda that put the United States above international law, and by ignoring international agreements (like the Kyoto Treaty), George W. Bush has done little to enamor himself with countries around the world. This is part of the reason that Barack Obama is so hugely popular outside the US-his message of change seems to really strike a chord in the US domestically as well as internationally.
But it’s interesting to note how now that he’s the democratic candidate, he’s moved back towards the center the way American candidates often do to appeal to the greatest percentage of the electorate. One example: in the past Obama made a large issue of campaign finance reform and limiting the amount of public funding a candidate can use-however there isn’t a limit if you only use private funding and Obama has decided to go that way. His supporters say [...]