This and That

This morning we did the walk-through of the house we rented. I then had to go to work, when all I really wanted to do was start moving in. Regrettably we have to wait until next week to do so. Oh well.

I can't get into any specifics about my present project at work, but let's just say I'm always surprised at how much influence lowly peons like myself have over major policy initiatives. I'm the one drafting the language for the policy, and you can't imagine how much room I have to shade things in one direction or another. Wacky.

I've been planning on writing more about this subject for a few days, but let me just point you to blog posts here, here, and here. I think that regulating banks but leaving these behemoths intact is probably a big mistake. They're so large that if one goes down they drag the whole economy down with them, and their sheer size gives them the political influence to avoid or pervert meaningful regulations. I don't think we should break up EVERY big company, but finance is a uniquely important economic sector, since it so strongly influences everything else. I could be wrong about this, but from my perspective we'd be better off having a bunch of medium-sized banks so that idiot managerial decisions by a dozen people couldn't set off a major crisis.