Yesterday’s story on the “Cry Wolf” project has exposed a dangerous pretense that has been prevalent, yet well disguised, for some time in our institutions of higher learning. It’s an important post.  A small committee of professors and academic professionals, normally held in high regard, have blatantly betrayed the trust of the public and quite possibly smeared the reputations of all colleges and universities nationwide.  By soliciting “paid activists” to create research papers that are intentionally designed to silence opposing viewpoints, they have undermined the political system and manipulated the governmental policy making process.  And in the meantime, they’ve also implicated all of academia in the manufacturing of their propaganda.

It is an abuse of their power, and an abuse of the institutions they represent.  It is appalling and repellent.  Perhaps even against their employers’ rules or the industry’s ethical code. Consider it an ominous warning — this will have a dire impact on our political and economic system in the future, if we remain apathetic in the face of such a rhetorical and intellectual assault.

In fact, both the rhetoric and the intentions demonstrated in Peter Dreier’s email are a classic example of much of what is wrong with today’s educational institutions: hypocrisy, bias, recklessness, and a blatant disregard for differing beliefs and viewpoints.

As Americans, we place an enormous amount of pride in the quality of our nation’s system of higher education.  In our country, colleges and universities have long been the bastions of research, the sources to which we turn for information that is expertly developed; for data that is honestly mined, analyzed, reviewed and responsibly published by noted researchers so that individuals, business people and policy makers can make well-informed decisions.

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No, Gary Rivlin, the Payday Lenders and Other Fringe Lenders Are Not To Blame

I’m puzzled by Gary Rivlin.  Here’s a guy who spent two years profiling the subprime consumer loan industry for a forthcoming book and who, unlike most critics of the industry, actually has journalistic credentials.  Yet in a puzzling article in the Huffington Post, he inexplicably blames this industry for causing the country’s economic crisis.

Let’s remind everyone that the reasons for this crisis come from the following cause-and-effects:  cheap debt made it easy for borrowers to get money to purchase houses they had no business buying.  Banks and mortgage providers lent money to these people out of greed.  The toxic loans were bundled into packages and sold by Goldman Sachs and other entities.  The buyers of these packages failed to do their due diligence (out of greed).  Derivatives called collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps were set in place to “insure” against defaults.   When the housing market collapsed, anyone holding these mortgages got wiped out.

Do you see anything about payday lenders, pawnbrokers, auto title lenders, or check cashers in there?  Of course not.  Yet Mr. Rivlin proposes a bizarre piece of logic as to why these alternative financiers should be regulated by the forthcoming CFPA: “If you’re not directly to blame for the current crisis, then you get a free pass until you cause a national recession of your own?” (more…)