OECD lashes out at university 'conservatism' 

Published: Tuesday 31 March 2009   

Traditional university faculties are too conservative and are standing in the way of progress, as Europe's education system struggles to become more innovative, according to the head of the OECD's Centre for Educational Research and Innovation.

Justis

We are conducting a trial of an additional portion of the Justis database. In this case, their version of CELEX, the documents of the European Union. To give it a try, simply go to Justis (you can click on the link above) and, once you are in the database, click on the EU and then search. Please let us know what you think. The trial continues until early April.

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As usual, a great Krugman column. this time, though political structures are the stumbling block to effective response. Interesting.

You might expect monetary policy to be more forceful. After all, while there isn’t a European government, there is a European Central Bank. But the E.C.B. isn’t like the Fed, which can afford to be adventurous because it’s backed by a unitary national government — a government that has already moved to share the risks of the Fed’s boldness, and will surely cover the Fed’s losses if its efforts to unfreeze financial markets go bad. The E.C.B., which must answer to 16 often-quarreling governments, can’t count on the same level of support.

Europe, in other words, is turning out to be structurally weak in a time of crisis.

Read the rest of this, but here is the meat of a great take on the AIG (and 0ther Wall Streeters) and a perspective that we never otherwise hear.

This falls for the competency excuse we're hearing so much about.  But there's no reason for us to worry about losing these people and their suppoed ability to work through their contracts.  The plain fact is AIG is staffed by people who were either incompetent or criminal.  Incompetent because they didn't see how what they were doing was unsustainable and destructive in the long run, to their own business and the economy as a whole.  I hardly think we need to spend hundreds of millions of dollars - every few months, it seems - to retain utterly incompetent workers.  If, however, they weren't incompetent, it means they knew that what they were doing was unsustainable and destructive.  They knew their actions would precipitate a huge crisis, and they did it anyway in order to make a fast buck.  That's criminal.  And I don't see the need to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to keep criminals around so they can continue rooting through the contracts of a business they no longer own to see what kinds of fast bucks they can still make.

The last panel made me smile! Medieval Spain "rides" again!!