Peer Review to Solve Credit Crunch?

Over time, and through much argument, a rough consensus emerged that recapitalizing the banks was ultimately the most likely approach to work. And sure enough, that's what ended up happening. Now, there is no clear paper trail linking the econoblogosphere to Hank Paulson's change of heart, but it would be foolish to argue that his or Ben Bernanke's economic pronouncements did not receive withering peer review.

From Salon.

Gloomy

North Circular, London
October
Robin Hunt

As we are living in a world where Goldman Sachs has been part-nationalised by George Bush and Iceland went bankrupt in a weekend, I can't think why anyone would be particularly shocked by the idea that in a declining market of 19 national news titles, it would be unthinkable that a significant number might disappear, given the apparent scale of economic failure. It's not to be welcomed, or encouraged, but you cannot pretend that somehow it won't happen.

Emily Bell goes grim on newspapers.

Web optimists and pessimists

At the Technology Liberation Front Adam Thierer suggests a way of categorizing some of the books that shape the current internet debate: those that see it as a force of good, and those that don't.

Many Net optimists have a tendency to paint an excessively rosy picture of the transformative nature of the Net. In the extreme, the optimists seem to imply that the Net is somehow remaking man, altering human nature, and changing the economy only for the better. Among the Net optimists, there’s often a lot of romanticized talk of collective action / intelligence overcoming all barriers to knowledge or progress, and so on.

Check out the full details here.


It's a great primer to the debate.