Will It Work? How Will We Know? Video and Presentations Now Online

The “Will It Work? How Will We Know?” video and presentations are now online.

Click through there to get all the PDFs of chapters by author along with a short video, as well as the entire volume in one PDF.

It’s all worth your time.  I enjoyed the opening remarks by Congressman Brad Miller and Senator Jeff Merkley.

Miller in particular talked about being a Congressman in the lead-up to the financial crisis and mentions how the blogosphere was one of the counter-measures to the lobbyists. Miller: “One of the most striking, perhaps the most striking aspect….about working on this issue…is the lack of a policy infrastructure for any point of view other than the point of view of the banks. There simply was no expertise available to us.” This is something I noticed from a distance after the crisis, and something we work on here at the Roosevelt Institute.

(Miller’s joke about John Edwards after the first minute is also really funny.)

After the four minute mark, Miller talks about cramdown, which gives a good overview of 2007. He also talks about his realizations relating to hidden losses in the books on properties from the S&L days. Miller had a Daily Kos diary where he talked about cramdown at length back in 2007 that got a lot of it right in retrospect.

Jennifer Taub’s talk about the Office of Financial Research struck the right tone between the possibilities of what can be accomplished, for better or for worse, depending on how well it is managed and whether or not a Republican Congress smashes it to pieces in funding and harassment a few years from now.

We’ll be returning to this in the next few weeks as we cover each of the topics. But for now check out the page. Or if you want a high-level overview, check out this one page summary of several of the goals suggested by conference participants for determining whether or not financial reform is working. What would you add to the list?