Are jobs obsolete? Douglas Rushkoff: U.S.
Postal Service new example of human work replaced by technologyHe says technology affecting jobs market; not enough workers needed to run the technologyHe says we have to alter our ideas: It's not about jobs, it's about productivityRushkoff: Technology lets us bypass corporations, make our own work -- a new model Editor's note: Douglas Rushkoff is a media theorist and the author of "Program or Be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age" and "Life Inc: How Corporatism Conquered the World and How We Can Take it Back. " (CNN) -- The U.S. Postal Service appears to be the latest casualty in digital technology's slow but steady replacement of working humans. Unless an external source of funding comes in, the post office will have to scale back its operations drastically, or simply shut down altogether. We can blame a right wing attempting to undermine labor, or a left wing trying to preserve unions in the face of government and corporate cutbacks.
The American economy: Unmired at last. Jeremy Lin and the political economy of superstars. Cambridge, MA - The biggest news around this city in recent weeks has been Jeremy Lin, the Harvard economics graduate, who has shocked the National Basketball Association by rising seemingly overnight from "nowhere" to become a genuine star, leading a losing New York Knicks team to an unlikely string of victories.
Lin's success is delicious, partly because it contradicts so many cultural prejudices about Asian-American athletes. Flabbergasted experts who overlooked Lin have been saying things like "he just didn't look the part". Lin's obvious integrity and graciousness has won him fans outside the sport as well. The whole world has taken note, with Lin being featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated for two consecutive issues. The NBA, which has been trying to build brand recognition and interest in China, is thrilled. I confess to being a huge Lin fan. As a basketball fan, I would not describe the sport as a zero-sum game, even though one team wins and one team loses.
Tim Geithner: Financial Crisis Amnesia. Four years ago, on an evening in March 2008, I received a call from the CEO of Bear Stearns informing me that they planned to file for bankruptcy in the morning.
Bear Stearns was the smallest of the major Wall Street institutions, but it was deeply entwined in financial markets and had the perfect mix of vulnerabilities. It took on too much risk. It relied on billions of dollars of risky short-term financing. And it held thousands of derivative contracts with thousands of companies. These weaknesses made Bear Stearns the most important initial casualty in what would become the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. In the spring of 2008, more Americans were starting to face higher mortgage payments as teaser interest rates reset and they could no longer refinance out of them because the value of their homes stopped rising—the leading edge of a wave of foreclosures and a terrible fall in house prices. These problems were partly the result of amnesia. Mr. Inflation: Not as low as you think.