Stock Market Shocks

Today, at one point, the Dow Jones dropped almost a thousand points. There are a lot of varying opinions as to why. The reason there are so many opinions is that no one knows. The poseurs who suggest why markets do or do not do certain things have all the insight of someone trying to explain why a coin flip wound up either heads or tails. They don't know.

But, as usual, Robert Reich has a perceptive take:

Giant high-speed computers generate millions of trades based on instructions embedded in computer programs designed to move so fast they beat everyone else. So when there’s a glitch in one of them, it can immediately spread to all the other programs designed to move just as fast. Some say it was an erroneous trade entered by someone at a big Wall Street bank who mistyped an order to sell a large block of stock — and the big drop in that stock’s price (Procter & Gamble?) triggered “sell” orders across the market.

Regardless of why it happened, it’s further evidence that the nation’s and the world’s capital markets have become an out-of-control casino in which fortunes can be made or lost in an instant — which would be fine except for the fact that most of us have put our life savings there. Pension funds, mutual funds, school endowments — the value of all of this depends on a mechanism that can lose a trillion dollars in minutes without anyone having a clear idea why. So much of the market now depends on computer programs and mathematical models that no one fully understands, so much trading is done by people whose momentary carelessness could sink the economy, so much of global wealth now depends on who can move their money quickest at the slightest provocation — that we are toying with financial disaster every day.

Charter Schools

Americans are hard wired to wait for the silver bullet. The magical thing that will save us from ruin.

The first enduring settlement of white people on American shores would have died of starvation in Jamestown were it not for their silver bullet--the tobacco plants that gave them the ability to trade.

Polio seemed unstoppable until Dr. Salk discovered his vaccine.

The needless bloodshed at the end of World War II seemed destined to last forever, until the arrival of the biggest silver bullet ever--the atomic bomb.

So it is little wonder that we, as a nation, are willing to sit back...endure the inequities and the pollution...the deficit and the scourge that is NASCAR. Certainly, when we really need it, someone will come up with the next silver bullet.

In education, no one is happy with the state of our schools. Somehow, the more SUVs and smartphones we give them, the further behind our dear children fall. The endemic 'blame government' psychosis predictably turns its sights on the public schools, where diabolical administrators and terrorist union teachers undermine all that is good in our young people. No reasonable parent would send his darling to a public school if a private option were affordable.

And from that premise we have seen birth of the all-saving charter school. It is free from unneeded government intervention, it has thrown off the shackles of union memberships and annoying laws. The charter schools are free to be who they can be...and now, we're beginning to understand who that is.

Granted, for years different studies have produced different findings. When the survey is underwritten by one side or the other, the results are almost always predictable.

But the most recent and most objective field work, conducted by Stanford University in conjunction with charter school associations, gives the private alternatives a failing grade. Only 17 percent of charter schools have students performing better than their public school counterparts...and 37% are significantly worse.

These grades are posted despite the fact that the charter schools are far less likely to support the national average of special education and ESL programs...and many refuse to reveal how their 'lotteries' for choosing students are conducted. The suspicion, of course, is that these institutions will turn away those who socially or academically seem to threaten their teaching environments and results--an advantage which no public school system enjoys.

It may well be that parents and educators have to wait for another form of magic bullet.

This one seems to be badly missing the mark.

Nashville

When the towers fell on 9/11, the Rev. Jerry Falwell said it was God's way of condemning evil lifestyles and liberal leanings.

After Katrina stuck New Orleans, there was no shortage of wingnuts again claiming they knew it was God's will.

This week Nashville was submerged under a horrendous flood, which even struck the palatial Opryland Hotel. Just weeks earlier that hotel had hosted the national meeting of a high profile political fringe group--the Tea Baggers.

I'm just sayin'...