article thumbnail

State of the Nation - a UK Perspective on Covid-19

Disaster Planning and Emergency Management

The scenario for this pandemic (excluding the recovery) was fully formulated over the period 2003-2009. Plans were made in the UK in 2006, 2008, 2011 and 2014. Civil protection, when it works, is a form of participatory democracy, in which the citizen has an active stake in his or her own safety and security.

2008 52
article thumbnail

The GSE Public-Private Hybrid Model Flunks Again: This Time It’s the Federal Home Loan Bank System (Part 1)

The Stoop (NYU Furman Center)

The F&F core business of securitizing and guaranteeing loans essentially takes the below-market cost of the funds raised by issuing mortgage-backed securities (MBS), which reflects the implied guarantee, and passes that subsidized cost through to primary market lenders. Growing profits by exploiting the implied guarantee. 81 trillion.

2008 80
article thumbnail

Social Media for Social Good: What role does social media play in creation of and sustainability of social movements? A Social Movement Case Study Examining Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party.

Public Policy Blog

Social media tends to be decentralized, nonmarket, peer-produced, nonproprietary, open-sourced, commons-based, and provide free or inexpensive access and distribution (Benkler, 2006). He went on to suggest that he would organize a Chicago Tea Party in July, where capitalists would dump “some derivative securities into Lake Michigan.”