Day 1- Heading to Harvard

I awoke this morning with the frightening realization that I had publicly committed to doing something very different with my day. What could I do to start my learning expedition off on the right foot? I took a deep breath as I remembered there was a lecture at the Harvard Kennedy School this afternoon called, Will Obama's Recovery Plan Work, a part of the school of government's library speaker series. After treating myself to a chai tea and conversation with a friend at Dado Tea this afternoon, I wandered over to the Kennedy School.
The session's talk was led by Richard Parker, an economist and current lecturer in Public Policy and Senior Fellow of the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy. Mr. Parker began his lecture by setting the stage for a conversation on the current global economic crisis by giving his interpretation of the major historical events in the financial markets since the 1930's. While I must admit, that much of his lecture went over my head, two things resonated very strongly with me. The first is that, as Mr. Parker so aptly put it, nothing is ever new in financial markets-- just the same things in a different form. Today's financial crisis started almost exactly the same way as the savings and loans scandals in the 1980s, from lending too much money to people who couldn't afford to pay it back. Second, we are now at a point in time where the US government and the citizenry at large have both the responsibility and the opportunity to decide what kind of financial regulation we want. Although the picture is complex, it is clear that a good deal of public discourse will be necessary to create a system that will be in the best interest of all Americans.