1
Health
5 Disorders Share Genetic Risk Factors, Study Finds
A large genetic study has identified common glitches involved in schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, autism, major depression and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
2
Your Money
College Admission Roulette: Ask for Financial Aid, or Not?
Parents of children trying to get into college have long used their wealth to try to sway admissions officers. But that doesn’t always work.
3
Your Money
Fighting the Insurer Over Hurricane Sandy Damage
A Brooklyn couple say their insurance company will pay $49,000 for home repairs, while an adjuster they hired put the figure needed at $200,000.
4
Business Day
Peugeot Bets on a Different Kind of Hybrid
The carmaker's experimental Hybrid Air has a reversible hydraulic pump that uses braking energy to compress nitrogen gas for greater fuel efficiency.
5
World
From Elephants’ Mouths, an Illicit Trail to China
Trade in elephant tusks continues to thrive in China, even as conservation groups call on Beijing to do more to crack down on the slaughter of African elephants.
6
Science
Space Station Astronauts Will Get Their Fruit, After a Bit of a Scare
The cargo ship’s rendezvous with the International Space Station will now occur on Sunday at the earliest.
7
Technology
Samsung Armors Android to Take On BlackBerry
The South Korean electronics giant is adding security enhancements to Android software to make its phones more attractive to big corporations.
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N.Y. / Region
Former Dot-com Millionaire Guilty of Selling Drugs
Thirteen years ago, Jennifer Sultan and her colleagues sold a technology company for $70 million; on Friday, she got a four-year sentence for selling oxycodone and conspiring to sell a gun.
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Technology
Samsung Takes Low-Key Approach on Cellphones After Reaching the Top
At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the industry’s largest convention in Europe, Samsung appears to be borrowing a page from Apple.
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N.Y. / Region
Outside Box, U.S. Judges Offer Addicts New Path
In federal courts in eight states including New York, “drug courts” for some defendants in nonviolent crimes are embraced by a judiciary bristling at rigid sentencing guidelines.
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Opinion
Capitalists for Preschool
The connections from preschool to reading proficiency to high school completion — a bare-minimum requirement in today’s economy — could not be clearer.
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Business Day
Late Night with Ben Bernanke
Mr. Bernanke, speaking at a conference in San Francisco, said the Federal Reserve’s stimulus was working and he warned of the risk of raising interest rates too soon."Op-Ed Columnist
Ben Bernanke, Hippie
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: February 28, 2013 642 Comments
We’re just a few weeks away from a milestone I suspect most of
Washington would like to forget: the start of the Iraq war. What I
remember from that time is the utter impenetrability of the elite prowar
consensus. If you tried to point out that the Bush administration was
obviously cooking up a bogus case for war, one that didn’t bear even
casual scrutiny; if you pointed out that the risks and likely costs of
war were huge; well, you were dismissed as ignorant and irresponsible.It didn’t seem to matter what evidence critics of the rush to war
presented: Anyone who opposed the war was, by definition, a foolish
hippie. Remarkably, that judgment didn’t change even after everything
the war’s critics predicted came true. Those who cheered on this
disastrous venture continued to be regarded as “credible” on national
security (why is John McCain still a fixture of the Sunday talk shows?),
while those who opposed it remained suspect.
And, even more remarkably, a very similar story has played out over the
past three years, this time about economic policy. Back then, all the
important people decided that an unrelated war was an appropriate
response to a terrorist attack; three years ago, they all decided that
fiscal austerity was the appropriate response to an economic crisis
caused by runaway bankers, with the supposedly imminent danger from
budget deficits playing the role once played by Saddam’s alleged weapons
of mass destruction.
Now, as then, this consensus has seemed impenetrable to
counterarguments, no matter how well grounded in evidence. And now, as
then, leaders of the consensus continue to be regarded as credible even
though they’ve been wrong about everything (why do people keep treating
Alan Simpson as a wise man?), while critics of the consensus are
regarded as foolish hippies even though all their predictions — about
interest rates, about inflation, about the dire effects of austerity —
have come true.
So here’s my question: Will it make any difference that Ben Bernanke has now joined the ranks of the hippies?
Earlier this week, Mr. Bernanke delivered testimony
that should have made everyone in Washington sit up and take notice.
True, it wasn’t really a break with what he has said in the past or, for
that matter, with what other Federal Reserve officials have been
saying, but the Fed chairman spoke more clearly and forcefully on fiscal
policy than ever before — and what he said, translated from Fedspeak
into plain English, was that the Beltway obsession with deficits is a
terrible mistake.
First of all, he pointed out that the budget picture just isn’t very
scary, even over the medium run: “The federal debt held by the public
(including that held by the Federal Reserve) is projected to remain
roughly 75 percent of G.D.P. through much of the current decade.”
He then argued that given the state of the economy, we’re currently
spending too little, not too much: “A substantial portion of the recent
progress in lowering the deficit has been concentrated in near-term
budget changes, which, taken together, could create a significant
headwind for the economic recovery.”
Finally, he suggested that austerity in a depressed economy may well be
self-defeating even in purely fiscal terms: “Besides having adverse
effects on jobs and incomes, a slower recovery would lead to less actual
deficit reduction in the short run for any given set of fiscal
actions.”
So the deficit is not a clear and present danger, spending cuts in a
depressed economy are a terrible idea and premature austerity doesn’t
make sense even in budgetary terms. Regular readers may find these
propositions familiar, since they’re pretty much what I and other
progressive economists have been saying all along. But we’re
irresponsible hippies. Is Ben Bernanke? (Well, he has a beard.)
The point is not that Mr. Bernanke is an unimpeachable source of wisdom;
one hopes that the collapse of Alan Greenspan’s reputation has put an
end to the practice of deifying Fed chairmen. Mr. Bernanke is a fine
economist, but no more so than, say, Columbia’s Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel
laureate and legendary economic theorist whose vocal criticism of our
deficit obsession has nonetheless been ignored. No, the point is that
Mr. Bernanke’s apostasy may help undermine the argument from authority —
nobody who matters disagrees! — that has made the elite obsession with
deficits so hard to dislodge.
And an end to deficit obsession can’t come a moment too soon. Right now
Washington is focused on the idiocy of the sequester, but this is only the latest episode in an unprecedented run of declines
in public employment and government purchases that have crippled our
economy’s recovery. A misguided elite consensus has led us into an
economic quagmire, and it’s time for us to get out."
13
Style
Americans Support Breast-Feeding, as Long as It's 'Free'
The real costs of breast milk can be measured in economic terms, and right now, individual families are the ones who bear them.
14
Business Day
Private Equity's Tax-Advantaged Rivals
Master limited partnerships received a tax break decades ago when United States oil production was declining. Now, with oil output booming, is this a wasteful subsidy?
15
Business Day
Court Approves Dewey Bankruptcy Plan, Officially Dissolving Firm
At the heart of the proposal is a deal under which about 450 former partners agreed to return a portion of their pay, raising about $72 million for creditors.
16
Opinion
Home Care Rules in the Home Stretch
It will be a great injustice if minimum-wage and overtime protections for home care workers are not approved by the Obama administration.
17
Health
Dismissing Her Critics, Mrs. Obama Forges Ahead
Michelle Obama said she kept her perspective on a life in the spotlight as she promoted a physical education initiative for children.
18
U.S.
Many Steps to Be Taken When ‘Sequester’ Is Law
The specific effects beginning Friday of across-the-board budget cuts on government agencies and programs are less clear than the aggregate ones.
19
20
Business Day
Refusing to Be Late on Gay Marriage
Corporate America has historically been slow to take up civil rights issues, but companies have rushed to show support for same-sex marriage.
19
20
N.Y. / Region
Rabbi Who Served Prisoners Is Sentenced to Spend 45 Days as One
Rabbi Leib Glanz, who pleaded guilty in September to lying to the federal government in order to defraud it of thousands of dollars of Section 8 housing subsidies, was sentenced in Manhattan.
20
Dining & Wine
Home, Where the Fizz Is
Soda-making machines are being hacked to produce sparkling wine, potent cocktails and artful pop.
17
U.S.
Massachusetts Primary Battles Heat Up
Republicans and Democrats are bracing for bruising primaries as five candidates begin to campaign in earnest to fill the United States Senate seat left vacant by John Kerry.
18
Opinion
Will Journalism Go the Way of Whaling?
Brooks and Collins ask how much new media mangle the message.
19
Business Day
U.S.D.A. May Approve Horse Slaughtering
If the U.S.D.A. approves a New Mexico horse slaughtering plant, it would be the first time since 2007 that equine meat for human consumption would be produced in the United States.
20
World
No Move Yet by U.N. Body After Test by Koreans
Diplomats said the process had bogged down mainly over bridging differences between China and the United States about how forcefully to respond.
19
Health
Use of Electronic Cigarettes Grows
About one in five adult cigarette smokers had used electronic cigarettes by 2011, up from about one in 10 in 2010, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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