one of the best! big fan of phillip-well informed & topical - however, it gets harder & harder to listen to all the "ahs" & "uh" - at times multiples in one thought - you are so pro - please listen to yourself & clean up the unnecessary stops & hesitations - want to hear more of your intelligence-believe me, it was difficult to criticize you 'cause you are basically wonderful...........

Good show , I read Baker's book and especially liked his reference to corporate governance arguing that Rod Blogoyovich's scandal was "child's play" compared to what most corporations do , with CEO's getting outrageous salaries made possible by a board that rubber stamps the high pay in exchange for plum board positions that pay several hundred thousand for meeting a half dozen times a year!Quid pro doe. That in itself could be a book or research project or documentary or Occupy issue, in my opinion

I'm not a Kaku fan although he might be an inspiring teacher for elementary school students.

Just to try to clarify my on-air question on this mornings show. When I said there is ananlytic frame in terms of work hours that is a different type of analylsis than the standard framing being offered by Mr Baker, I am refering to an estimate of work hours or production hours to to produce and economic product and not Mr Bakers interpretation that it was regarding the sharing of the hours that the finacial system alows for us. Clearly the types of estimates I am referirng to are occasionally done on things such as car production in terms of how many hours did it take to make a car. However such estimates become quite involved when done on an industry wide basis where addirional factors such as education, resource extraction, transportation ,etc must be taken into account before coming up with estimates of work hours in bringing any good or categories of goods to market. The soviet system of production quotas is perhaps an easier way to get a handle on what I am talking about. The amount of production hours necessary could perhaps be estimated more clearly since they had something along the lines of a ledger for production alone and such statistics were not hidden under the pretense of private industry information.

The salient point being that we can get an idea of what kind of time and use of physical resources would be necessary for economic production on local and regional levels. Once we have an idea of what it takes to produce then we can consider what type of financial system most equitable suits such production.

Mr Baker and most of the rest of the economic experts discussions revolves around the existing financial system and try to find ways to allow for job opportunity given the constraints of that system. Such an anylysis seems quite bacvkwards and i am always puzzeled why folks cannot see the other side of the coin

I will admitt I did not give a very thourough explanation as I thought the idea was familiar since I had given a more detailed explanation of the idea when I had queried Mr Baker on this a few months ago. Nonetheless, my bad

mattnapa@aol.com

thanks Philip,

(I wish this were a nuclear-Issue) you call taking risks and then raking-off “risks”... is this similar to that of “farms are good for Housing” like houses are supposed to-grow-on flatlands of eight-feet top-soil! Soooo where is the logic missing that is not necessary in the Federal Reserve --which maintains this bubble of Housing or auto-Industry or “derivatives-Purchasing” or the banks? Dean Baker’s [answer was much to my solicitation-of-need for “what is the question”] accountability and being rid of insider-Trading; having people inside the process maintaining the needs thru lawful ways ... (next) the downturn should have encouraged people more to keep persons on-the-Payroll... wirk-hours, or wurk-share where wirking shorter hours... propping-UP w.o. being accused of ‘propping-UP’ (Muldari suggests)! (next caller) banks and insurance-Companies should have ‘failed’... Baker’s answer financial-INdustry is ‘too big to fail.

the peace-Warrior, "R" Addison