Joel E Lewis

The government’s argument is that Goldman co-created a pool of investments designed to fail with a notable investor (John Paulson), and then misled their investors as to the quality of the pool.  This argument sounds great in the court of public opinion, but in a real court it will fall flat. Goldman disclosed all of [...]

Policy is about what would make society best (“best” being entirely subjective and open to argument).  Politics is about who is in power and how they share power and the benefits that power brings.  You can argue about policy all you want, but the team that plays better politics makes the policy.  Politics can constrain [...]

Now Thomas Friedman joins the “our government is broken and our our political parties represent the crazies” bandwagon. That is why I want my own Tea Party. I want a Tea Party of the radical center. Say what? I write often about innovation in energy and education. But I’ve come to realize that none of [...]

A historical parallel to the current level of division and outrage over health care: “To find a prototype for the overheated reaction to the health care bill, you have to look a year before Medicare, to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Both laws passed by similar majorities in Congress; the Civil Rights Act received [...]

538 has a great article on the role of moderate politicians in congress. The Bayh’s , Lieberman’s and Snowe’s of the world are moderates, in that they muddle together proposals of each side to make bastardized policy proposals that meet in the middle (legislative man-bear-pigs).   As long as they remain moderates, patching together existing proposals, [...]

Another sign of mainstream recognition of political polarization in the United States – From the Economist: The supermajority rule [60 votes in the Senate] would be no bad thing if it forced the majority party to reach out to the other side. The Democrats themselves have often been glad of it, for example to block [...]

It seems to me that some of the biggest debates we see in government and politics is how much government needs to protect people from themselves. There are sound examples of problems where left to their own devices, people often make less than ideal choices for the group, which are often clear cases for government [...]

I recently stumbled across an illuminating anecdote about regulation, politics, and strange bedfellows. Also, an interview with the popularizer of the idea. It strikes me that these sort of sort of stories are very common, and that the media plays right into the deceivers hands. The mass media usually just reports the surface impacts of [...]