Krugman:

And the problem now becomes obvious. This is now the third time Ben & co. have tried slapping the market in the face — and panic keeps coming back. So maybe the markets aren’t hysterical — maybe they’re just facing reality. And in that case the markets don’t need a slap in the face, they need more fundamental treatment — and maybe triage.

What's Ben doing?

The waning of the office phone call is one of those cultural declines that few people are likely to lament.

But the fact that a generation has grown up unaware of pulse dialing and seven-digit numbers seems meaningless when everyone still talks on the phone, constantly — on sidewalks, while riding the bus, in line at the store. That we’ve transferred a lot of office business to e-mail — well, who cares?

Ultimately, resorting to e-mail rather than picking up the phone results in not merely a quieter workplace but also a feebler one. Until we can convince senior employees to do a better job of sharing what they know about business and how they know it, we’re all better off making phone calls — and eavesdropping on those of others.

From the archive:

To be sure, time marches on.

Yet for many Californians, the looming demise of the "time lady," as she's come to be known, marks the end of a more genteel era, when we all had time to share.

See also, The Big Bing [2]:

You have to walk before you can run. Then later, when you're running, you need more sophisticated guidance, because doing a bunch of important things while running isn't all that easy.

In the beginning, as opposed to now, I really didn't know what I was doing. So the first things I looked at were overall strategies to very simple things that turned out to be a lot harder than they looked. Giving good phone. Taking lunch with distinction. Considering how to tackle the everyday tactical challenges that, taken together, could help define a career.

The Office Phone Call Was Music to the Ears

One night, we were all sitting around at three in the morning on exercise balls. Everyone had finished coding for the day, and we were talking about what Google could do. A bunch of us had read that day about the Library of Congress possibly wanting to digitize. Should we pursue that? How would that help Web search? Would that be a good thing for the world? How would you do it? We brainstormed about projects that we wouldn’t get a chance to explore for years, such as Google Book Search. There was an immense sense of hope and innovation.

I remember George Harik, who’s one of the smartest people I’ve ever met, jumped into the middle of the circle and said, ‘Stop! I want everybody to savor this moment, because no matter what happens from here on out, it’ll never be as good as it is right now.’

George, who is almost never wrong, couldn’t have been more wrong. If you listen to that conversation and you listen to the conversations that inevitably will happen tonight around the pool table or the foosball table here, they sound the same.”

Marissa Mayer | Fast Company

The existence of the informal organization, argued the Hawthorne researchers, meant that shaping human behavior was much more complicated than the then-dominant paradigm of scientific management had led managers to believe. The social system, which defined a worker’s relation to her work and to her companions, was not the product of rational engineering but of actual, deep-rooted human associations and sentiments. For example, on the question of the link between financial incentives and output, the Hawthorne researchers found that a worker might feel rewarded if she had pleasant associations with her co-workers and that this might mean more to her than a little extra money. Indeed, the researchers found that many workers resisted incentive plans because they felt they would be competing against people whose good will and companionship they valued.

The Human Relations Movement: A New Vision

40% of the finding that people do is actually re-finding.

INFO 141 Search Engines: Technology, Society, and Business

All aboard!

The renewable energy industry is stepping up its meteoric rise into the mainstream of the energy sector, according to the REN21 Renewables 2007 Global Status Report. Renewable energy production capacities are growing rapidly as a result of more countries enacting far-reaching policies.

"Soy! Soy! Soy! Soy! Soy!"

Renewable Energy Accelerates Meteoric Rise

As the rich world knows all too well, credit cards are as dangerous as they are convenient. With millions of consumers from China to Mexico filling their wallets with plastic, the risks are mounting as fast as people can say, “Charge it!”

Prime Numbers: The Plastic Revolution

So far, the only thing standing between me and my own Gulfstream is any kind of offer from Exxon Mobil. Or even Microsoft.

My problem could be networking. Or more specifically, a lack of it. I work in a basement where my only business contacts are my dogs, which appear unimpressed by my résumé. And on rare occasions when I venture aboveground to attend an event with the sort of people who should be only too willing to offer stock options in return for my grandmother’s chocolate cake recipe, I get tongue-tied. I blush.

On the Internet, however, no one can tell you’re self-conscious.

Building a Web of Influence

New, from editors Joseph Stiglitz, J. Bradford DeLong, and Aaron S. Edlin:

What's really going on with social security and the price of real estate?

How much does it really cost to go to war, and how much would it cost to reduce global warming?

This book answers those questions and more, from the world's most respected economists.

Praise:

Exceptionally insightful ... very accessible ... relevant and timely ... valuable ... fascinating.

The Economists' Voice: Top Economists Take On Today's Problems

Deindustrialization is not simply an economic process, but a social and cultural one as well. The rusting detritus of our industrial past--the wrecked hulks of factories, abandoned machinery too large to remove, and now-useless infrastructures--has for decades been a part of the North American landscape. In recent years, however, these modern ruins have become cultural attractions, drawing increasing numbers of adventurers, artists, and those curious about a forgotten heritage. Through a unique blend of oral history, photographs, and interpretive essays, Corporate Wasteland investigates this fascinating terrain and the phenomenon of its loss and rediscovery.

Steven High and David W. Lewis begin by exploring an emerging aesthetic they term the deindustrial sublime, explaining how the ritualized demolition of landmark industrial structures served as dramatic punctuations between changing eras. They then follow the narrative path blazed by urban spelunkers, explorers who infiltrate former industrial sites and then share accounts and images of their exploits in a vibrant online community. And to understand the ways in which geographic and emotional proximity affects how deindustrialization is remembered and represented, High and Lewis focus on Youngstown, Ohio, where residents and former steelworkers still live amid the reminders of more prosperous times.

Corporate Wasteland concludes with photo essays of sites in Michigan, Ontario, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania that pair haunting images with the poignant testimonies of those who remember industrial sites as workplaces rather than monuments. Forcing readers to look beyond nostalgia, High and Lewis reinterpret our deindustrialized landscape as a historical and imaginative challenge to the ways in which we comprehend and respond to the profound disruptions wrought by globalization.

Have you seen Manufactured Landscapes?

Corporate Wasteland: The Landscape and Memory of Deindustrialization