The Liberal Order

A Parent Catches Teachers Abusing His Son

This is a very disturbing situation. The father of an autistic boy is informed that his son is acting out in school, including hitting. He goes to the school to find out why his son is behaving. School officials and teacher deny any wrongdoing on their part, so father wires his son to record what goes on in his son's classroom during a typical day. He discovers that his son was being abused.

Here's the video the father made following his discovery.

 

I'm behind the father 100% and fully understand his ire. However, New Jersey has a one-party consent statute covering individuals recording conversations, which means at least one party to a conversation has to consent to having their conversation(s) recorded. I wonder if he can legally claim that his son consented?

Is High Point University A Bubble Waiting to Burst?

According to this Business Week story, yes.

John Nelson, head of the higher education ratings group at Moody’s Investors Service (MCO), says that in 20 years as an analyst he’s never seen an institution like High Point. “It looks more like a growth company,” he says. Moody’s downgraded the university’s debt rating to junk status in 2009 as it ran up some $165 million in debt to become one of the most highly leveraged schools in the country. “The rate at which they borrowed and the aggressiveness of investment in facilities and marketing of the campus,” Nelson says, all set High Point apart.

HT: Daniel C.

Rethinking the way we teach economics

What have we learned since and from the most recent recession? An interesting forum in today's New York Times. Some good insight:

Nicholas Taleb:

But the broad principles of economics survive such expurgation. We should just ignore much of what has happened in the past half-century of trying to be too sophisticated with quantitative and probability-based models, ending up in dangerous pseudo-science.

Mona Chalabi:

The financial crisis offered a golden opportunity for university economists to question the utility of supposedly scientific models that failed to predict an economic earthquake. For most professors, however, a fervent attachment to their discipline and the mathematical models within it mean that the financial crisis is still perceived as just another inconvenient anomaly.

Jeff Miron:

The principal reason for our imperfect understanding is that macroeconomists and policy makers do not get to “run experiments” with the economy, and that is the only way to learn its true structure and determine how policies affect its performance. Stated differently, we never get to observe the counterfactual in which Fannie and Freddie do not expand mortgage lending, the fiscal stimulus does not take place, the Treasury does not undertake TARP, or the Fed does not engage in quantitative easing. So, maybe these policies helped, maybe they hurt, or maybe they did some of both; we will never know with great confidence.