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Thu, 04 Dec 2008 20:45:03 GMT http://www.furl.net/item/39986340/forward http://www.furl.net/item/39986340 Thu, 20 Nov 2008 16:08:24 GMT Food 3 http://www.furl.net/item/39986318/forward http://www.furl.net/item/39986318 Thu, 20 Nov 2008 16:07:28 GMT Food 3 http://www.furl.net/item/39986241/forward http://www.furl.net/item/39986241 Thu, 20 Nov 2008 16:04:30 GMT Health 3 http://www.furl.net/item/39213452/forward http://www.furl.net/item/39213452 Fri, 31 Oct 2008 19:50:35 GMT Health 3 http://www.furl.net/item/38918565/forward http://www.furl.net/item/38918565 Fri, 24 Oct 2008 22:39:10 GMT CJSOffending 3 http://www.furl.net/item/38675377/forward http://www.furl.net/item/38675377 Fri, 17 Oct 2008 20:12:51 GMT Business 3 http://www.furl.net/item/38190232/forward http://www.furl.net/item/38190232 Sat, 04 Oct 2008 03:44:56 GMT Entertainment CJ EBP 3 http://www.furl.net/item/38190186/forward http://www.furl.net/item/38190186 Sat, 04 Oct 2008 03:42:17 GMT Business Politics CJ EBP 3 http://www.furl.net/item/37711827/forward http://www.furl.net/item/37711827 Fri, 19 Sep 2008 02:12:13 GMT Business CJ EBP # 25. September 18th, 2008 11:28 am This is all fine and well but only discusses the most proximate causes of the crisis at these firms. Completely missing is any discussion of the deregulation that took place in 1999. The Gramm-Leach-Bliley act made all of this possible by allowing consolidation of lending, insurance, and securities firms and allowed insurance companies to get into the mortgage lending business. The ridiculously low interest rates a few years back made everyone and their brother get into the mortgage lending business. Included in this was the drive to push as many loans as possible and ease standard qualifying restrictions. Firms were willing to do this because they were turning around and selling those mortgages to investors. Result housing bubble propped up on interest only, adjustable rate, and subprime loans. This also allowed these firms to bundle their risky subprime mortgages with less risky conventional mortgages and sell them as securities to investors. However, investors where usually unaware of this thinking they were buying conventional loans. When interest rates went up and the housing bubble burst investors found themselves holding billions of dollars in securities backed by bad supprime mortgages. All of this was brought to you by the republican congress in 1999 (aided and abetted by Bill Clinton). The architect of his deregulation was Phil Gramm. Yes the same Phil Gramm who is McCain’s chief economic advisor (and likely treasury secretary). The same Phil Gramm who now thinks we are all just a nation of whiners. McCain voted in favor of this deregulation. Joe Biden and every other democratic senator voted against it. How convenient is it that now that the proverbial dung is hitting the fan McCain now wants to talk about new regulations of this industry. — Posted by Steven 3 http://www.furl.net/item/37542249/forward http://www.furl.net/item/37542249 Sat, 13 Sep 2008 21:16:21 GMT Health CJ EBP CJSOffending Troubled children hurt their classmates' math and reading scores and worsen their behavior, according to new research by economists at the University of California, Davis, and University of Pittsburgh. The study, "Externalities in the Classroom: How Children Exposed to Domestic Violence Affect Everyone's Kids," was published in August by the National Bureau of Economic Research and is available online at http://papers.nber.org/papers/w14246. Scott Carrell, an assistant professor of economics at UC Davis, and co-author Mark Hoekstra, an assistant professor of economics at the University of Pittsburgh, cross-referenced standardized test results and school disciplinary records with court restraining order petitions filed in domestic violence cases for more than 40,000 students enrolled in Alachua County, Florida, public elementary schools for the years 1995 through 2003. The researchers linked domestic violence cases to 4.6 percent of the elementary school students in their sample. These children scored nearly 4 percentile points lower on standardized reading and math scores than their peers whose parents were not involved in domestic violence cases. (A percentile score reflects the percentage of scores that fall below it; a student who scores in the 51st percentile on a test, for example, has scored higher than 51 percent of all students who took that test.) In addition, the children from households linked to domestic violence were 44 percent more likely to have been suspended from school and 28 percent more likely to have bee disciplined for bad behavior. School performance and behavior of these children suffered across genders, races and income levels. Not only did the children from troubled homes suffer, however: Test scores fell and behavior problems increased for their classmates as well. Troubled boys caused the bulk of the disruption, and the largest effects were on other boys. Indeed, Carrell and Hoekstra estimate that adding just one troubled boy to a class of 20 children reduces the standardized reading and math scores of other boys in the room by nearly two percentile points. And adding just one troubled boy to a class of 20 students increases the likelihood that another boy in the class will commit a disciplinary infraction by 17 percent. Across all students, having a troubled student in a class reduced classmates' combined test scores by nearly 1 percentile point and increased their likelihood of getting into disciplinary trouble at school by 6 percent. The researchers conducted sophisticated statistical tests to ensure that they were observing only the impacts of a troubled child on classrooms, not the impact of broader socioeconomic issues in the community. They compared classes from the same grade in the same school over time; some years the classes had troubled students, some years they did not. They also compared how siblings performed when one student was in a class with troubled classmates and another student from the same family was in a class with fewer troubled students. "Our findings have important implications for both education and social policy," Carrell and Hoekstra write in their study. "First, they suggest that policies that change a child's exposure to classmates from troubled families will have important consequences for his or her education outcomes. In addition, the results also help provide a more complete measure of the social costs of family conflict." The research does not suggest that all disruptive school children come from families that experience domestic violence, nor are all children from domestic violence disruptive, Carrell emphasized. "There are many reasons for disruptive classroom behavior; domestic violence is one particularly good indicator of a troubled child," Carrell said. Source: University of California - Davis 3