While I love being in Ithaca, I have found there is a tendency to fall prey to the “Ithaca Bubble” when it comes to reality. What troubles do we have except for getting up for those 1:25 classes and thinking the economy is a Tuesday/ Thursday class?

Vladimir Putin’s remarks at the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland were a reality check.

He stated, “There is no reason to believe that we can achieve better results by shifting responsibility onto the state.” The former head of the KGB elaborated, “Nor should we turn a blind eye to the fact that the spirit of free enterprise, including the principle of personal responsibility of businesspeople, investors, and shareholders for their decisions, is being eroded in the last few months.”

Putin pleaded for others to learn from Russia’s past and warned against “excessive intervention in economic activity and blind faith in the state’s omnipotence [. . .] the time for enlightenment has come. We must calmly, and without gloating, assess the root causes of this situation and try to peek into the future.”

Now if Putin is giving the US advice about strong economic practices, I think we are all in some serious trouble.

Although my family did end its subscription last year due to the magazine’s increasingly visible slants, Newsweek still has some interesting articles. This piece discusses changing persona and economic positions of Obama’s top economic advisor, former Harvard President and Clinton Treasury Secretary Larry Summers. The article points out that Summers has moved out of his free market mold to support more interventionist policies because of the changing circumstances of the financial crisis; on the other hand, he may eventually move back towards the middle and endorse more moderate regulation policies. 

I don’t buy any talk of economic revelations in light of the financial crisis. It seems apparent to me that there is little consensus among economists, both among free-marketers and those who are traditionally more supportive of government intervention, and that many Obama advisers and cabinet members are “going along with the flow” of the massive government stimulus. I certainly hope they guess right on this one.