September 1st, 2010 by Paul
A brilliant classmate at Northwestern University on his way to medical school used to break into “On the Sunny Side of the Street” every once in a while. I don’t remember exactly why, but it’s a wonderful memory.
And I’m not sure why that comes to mind now, but there’s probably a cognitive relation among the ideas I’m pondering about transparency and understanding. The hackneyed metaphor of sunlight as a disinfectant and my time at the SEC are probably related.
Ever since deciding to study journalism at NU nearly three decades ago, a big idea in my life has been that transparency is a good thing. By transparency, I mean the availability of reasonably useful and accurate information to decision makers.
Transparency is vital whether the decision maker is a consumer making a buying decision, a voter making a voting decision, an entrepreneur making a business decision, an investor making an investment decision, a lawyer making a decision about what advice to provide, a church making a decision about where to focus its service, a judge making a judgment, a policy maker making a policy decision, or any of an infinite number of examples.
Tomorrow, I take a step toward understanding transparency from the other side of the street.
Transparency, for all of its power, depends on our ability to use the information available to us to make decisions. Many of my Facebook friends and I were extraordinarily fortunate to have teachers in our lives like Gary Geivet, Jan Palmer, Bill Roberts, Chuck Jurisch, and scores more who helped us use the information available to us to make decisions in our lives.
My latest big decision has me reporting to Hoover High School in San Diego tomorrow morning as a student teacher to prepare for the school year that starts Tuesday. What that means for me is that instead of focusing more on how information is disseminated, which was a big part of my career as a reporter, on the Hill, at the EEOC, and at the SEC, I’ll be focusing more on how information is consumed.
I’ve completed the prerequisites for San Diego State University’s School of Teacher Education credential program. I’ve started classes in teaching theory and learning technology the past few days. (Or is it learning theory and teaching technology?) This afternoon is my first class in English teaching methods. I was fortunate to pass California’s tests to teach English and Social Science, which includes history, economics, and geography. Eventually, I hope to teach several subjects.
In a world where technology is changing things faster than many of us prefer, but where it also holds the promise of revolutionizing education for the better, I’ve been fortunate to stay in touch with people from all stages of my career. Thank you to everyone for their support as I contemplated this transition!
To the extent possible, I hope to continue to kibitz and advise and consult on things like CLOUD and XBRL and providing transparency. However, the limited number of hours in the day will necessitate a considerable reduction in my availability. So far, everyone understands that my students must come first. As I make the transition from focusing on the availability of information to focusing on the understanding of information, I expect to gain more insight into what happens on both sides of the street. So far, both are getting sunnier!
May 18th, 2010 by Paul
UPDATE: CROP Walk web donations are closed but you can designate gifts (or make general donations) via the DonateNow or JustGive buttons on the RUMC home page.
First, go to the Ramona United Methodist Church CROP Hunger Walk page. Donate a few dollars. A half dozen of the folks with whom I go to church and I are participating in this event; with a few mouse clicks so can you. You’ll get more satisfaction than from anything else you could do on the Internet right now.
Second, if you’re interested in how technology like that page might help make things better for more people, go to the Texas Review of Law and Politics (TROLP) table of contents for the most recent issue and read the third article, Continue reading ‘Technology, Social Justice, and Making Things Better’
March 6th, 2010 by Paul
New Fortune.com managing editor (and ’95 Medill grad) Daniel Roth (@danroth) gave me a chance the other day to write a guest column on transparency and financial recovery and XBRL. It’s now here.
Thanks to another Fortune.com editor, I’m reminded of a lesson Continue reading ‘My Fortune.com Piece: California Sunshine for Shadow Banking’
February 20th, 2010 by Paul
I’ve been the strongest possible advocate for global free trade ever since my Soviet Economic Institutions professor diverged from the syllabus to draw Ricardo’s theory on the board and prove unequivocally and concisely that it makes everyone better off. I still am. Dennis Santiago, however, makes strong arguments for local investing for California and Los Angeles — and good news: they don’t contradict the case for global free trade. Continue reading ‘Local Investing Can Build Global Markets’
February 14th, 2010 by Paul
I watched a C-SPAN replay tonight of a Jan. 29 panel at Davos in which five industry leaders pontificate about the future of the world. This was after tonight’s 60 Minutes lead report on the exclusive Davos gathering. The 60 Minutes report was as good as ever, but a failure of vision makes itself apparent in the Davos C-SPAN tape.
First, the CEO of a global bank, in response to an all-too-polite question about why the financial sector isn’t moving toward XBRL technology to support transparent securitization, dismissed the question with a statement to the effect that it failed to consider the “quality of the assets” — implying that only the most revered debt securities can hope to return to marketability.
Paternalistic balderdash. Continue reading ‘Davos Mistakes about Securitization’
January 28th, 2010 by Paul
BRUSSELS–As I’m enjoying outstanding Belgian cuisine with the family of a CLOUD, Inc. colleague after a day of meetings about how computer standards can improve the clarity and efficient use of information and provide for more accurate evaluation of the trust that one might place in information, a 500-mile drive south of here the world’s financial leaders are contemplating the future of finance.
My hope is that my modest contribution (Chapter 2.1, page 68) to a book published at the World Economic Forum in Davos entitled “Trust Meltdown: The Financial Industry Needs a Fundamental Restart” finds its way into enough reading stacks of enough of those in attendance to make a difference. Continue reading ‘My Davos Contribution: How Finance and XBRL Can Restart Sustainable Growth’
January 10th, 2010 by Paul
The Dragon App for the iPhone works pretty well too — it seems faster and almost as accurate as V10 of the full program on my PC, although as someone who was trained to write on a keyboard, I’m more comfortable typing — even though I think my writing may sometimes be better when it’s dictated first and then manually edited. Continue reading ‘Commented on “A VC”’
