Parades and political speeches this Memorial Day weekend remind us of the price of war. Unmentioned is the hidden cost: the socioeconomic inequality in who makes the ultimate sacrifice in defense of the nation – more of the dead are from poorer communities. Political science Professor Douglas Kriner, co-author of “The Casualty Gap: The Causes and Consequences of American Wartime Inequalities,” writes in a Los Angeles Timescommentary about how this casualty gap is not part of our national dialogue.
“The reason is clear: Casualty inequalities challenge our fundamental American values. Bringing a frank and honest discussion of the casualty gap into the public sphere could significantly alter the tenor of political discourse in Washington.”
Bank of America and Citigroupbrushed off reports that they incorrectly hid from investors billions in debt -- similar to what Lehman Brothers did -- to obscure its true level of risk. Company documents filed with regulators show the two Wall Street banks classified some short-term repurchase agreements ("repos") as sales, which they should have shows as borrowings. Law Professor Elizabeth Nowicki, a former SEC and Wall Street attorney, says such "repo" transactions should have been disclosed -- even if they were legal.
“Isn't it material to one poker player to know that all the other poker players at the table regularly cheat in other games, even if none of the players actually cheats in the game then being played? Bank of America, Citi, and other banks using repos can count on being sued promptly by investors.”
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is visiting with his European counterparts to say that the U.S. and Europe broadly agree on the need to reform the financial system but that global cooperation is needed. Law Professor Cornelius Hurley, director of the Morin Center for Banking and Financial Law and a former counsel to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, says Geithner should be doing less lecturing and more listening in Europe in that the U.S. right now has only a "deeply flawed" legislative proposal to show as its response to the financial crisis.
“The better posture for the U.S. to strike on the international stage would be a willingness to cooperate with ongoing reform initiatives by the G-20, the Financial Stability Board, and others.”
The Justice Departmentreportedly is in the early stages of an antitrust investigation against Apple Inc., the largest seller of music online, looking into allegations that it used its dominant market position to try to keep music labels from granting exclusive access to content to Amazon.com. Law Professor Keith Hylton, an authority on antitrust law, says it makes sense for Apple to trim market support for certain songs when gets a smaller share of the profits from their sale -- but they're gotten aggressive about it lately.
"There are details that might indicate that they have gone too far in some instances; that remains to be seen. Still, in the long run, consumers generally gain from this activity.”
Though it's never been tried before in such deep waters, BPstarted its "top kill" operation in an effort to plug the mile-deep leak that has been spewing oil into the Gulf of Mexico in U.S. waters for five weeks since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded. Professor Cutler Cleveland, director of the BU Center for Energy and Environmental Studies, says the whole incident points a damning finger at Washington.
“The magnitude of failure of the federal government to protect the nation and the people of Louisiana grows with each passing day. From patronage between government regulators and the oil industry to shoddy environmental impact assessment, we have been supremely let down.”
For more on the oil spill, see the entry in the Encyclopedia of Earth, developed by BU researchers as a peer-reviewed Wikipedia-like source for authoritative environmental content.
With military and political tensions increasing daily on the Korean Peninsula, Secretary of State Clinton says America will stand by South Korea as it seeks UN action to redress North Korea's apparent sinking of South Korean warship. International relations Professor Thomas Berger, a specialist on government and political culture in East Asia, says today's situation has "disturbing parallels" to the 1930s when economic turmoil and political weakness let to events that resulted in World War II.
“The international community is faced with a series of unfortunate events, any one of which by themselves could be managed, but which taken together could prove catastrophic ... We can only hope that the international community – including the United States - shows greater wisdom this time around.”
In an effort to avoid a repeat of the May 6th "flash crash" when computerized trading markets tumbled out of control, the Securities and Exchange Commission has voted unanimously to require audit trails to cover all trading orders from start to finish. Visiting Law Professor Elizabeth Nowicki, a former SEC and Wall Street attorney, says the proposal to allow the SEC constant, real-time access to that information to better monitor the markets is a great idea in support of investor protection -- but it won't fix everything.
"The reality is that this sort of information aggregation system is not a panacea, and, given how fast and sophisticated today's trading markets are, it is unrealistic to expect that the SEC can ever truly be a real-time market regulator. Investors simply cannot expect that of the SEC.”
“There are many other effective ways to nip corruption in the bud. The main point is to recognize that it is waiting in the shadows and to eliminate it before it starts festering and rotting the system.”
speeches this Memorial Day weekend remind us of the price of war. Unmentioned is the hidden cost: the socioeconomic inequality in who makes the ultimate sacrifice in defense of the nation – more of the dead are from poorer communities. Political science Professor Douglas Kriner, co-author of “The Casualty Gap: The Causes and Consequences of American Wartime Inequalities,” writes in a Los Angeles Times commentary about how this casualty gap is not part of our national dialogue.
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Though it's never been tried before in such deep waters, 
With military and political tensions increasing daily on the Korean Peninsula,
In an effort to avoid a repeat of the May 6th 
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