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1. Registration

Speakers:
William Buster
Greg Nini (Finance)
Dennis Culhane (Social Policy and Practice)
Steven Hahn (History)
Witold Henisz (Management)

This event, hosted by the Wharton Politics and Business Association, will feature a speaker panel consisting of William Buster, a media spokesperson for the Occupy Wall Street Movement (who has appeared on the Charlie Rose Show alongside Paul Krugman and Marshall Ganz), as well as Penn professors from across departments, all of whom will be sharing their diverse opinions on the origins, implications, and future of the Occupy Wall Street movement. It will be a unique opportunity for students to hear in a collective setting both the perspective of someone who has been deeply involved firsthand with the protests, as well as the opinions of professors in departments from Finance to History. Audience members will be able to ask questions and engage in discussion about what is shaping to be a very significant social movement.

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1. Occupy Wall Street Panel

There will be several board and committee positions available.

Thursday, October 21^st
6 pm
Huntsman Hall 250

Food will be provided by Greek Lady

Related posts:

1. Spring General Body Meeting
2. WPBA Introductory Meeting
3. Policy Cup Intro Meeting

Related posts:

1. Spring General Body Meeting
2. Elections and Policy By Richard Johnston, Department of Political Science, Penn

Process:
Students interested in submitting a piece for the competition should contact Cortney Charleston with “Pre-eminent Philadelphia” in the subject heading. The student shall then be forwarded a more detailed prompt. Following this, interested students shall submit a brief abstract or description of the topic they plan to write about. This abstract/description serves as confirmation of participation. All contest participants will then have until April 26th to complete their submissions.

Contest Summation:
Abstracts (Brief Description of Paper Topic) Due: April 16, 2010
Final Paper Due: April 26, 2010
Other Submission Guidelines: Paper should be no more than 10-pages double-spaced, one-inch margins (citations included). Abstract must be submitted before writing can begin.
The best proposals will be published in a document titled after the contest. This publication will be available/distributed during Reading Days across campus.

Contact: Cortney Charleston (cortneyc@wharton.upenn.edu)

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1. Character Trumps Policy in the 2007 Philadelphia Election By Brett Mandel, Executive Director of Philadelphia Forward
2. Aaron Hurst Visits the Wharton School
3. Barriers to Health Care Access in Philadelphia By Marla Gold, Dean, Drexel School of Public Health

Monday, April 19th
JMHH F50
6-8pm

Dr. Deirdre LaPin is currently an Associate in the African Studies Center at the University of Pennsylvania and a consultant for the private sector and international development agencies on best practice social policy and investment. During 2008-2009 she was a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Smithsonian Institution researching the social history of the Niger Delta. Previously a Research Associate and Lecturer at the University of Ife, Nigeria, and has taught at Emory University, the University of Pennsylvania, and as tenured Associate Professor at the University of Arkansas. Subsequent to her academic career, Dr. LaPin joined UNICEF in 1984 as a senior official in Benin Republic and Somalia, where she initiated new strategies for health, water supply, and strategic planning. She later became manager of a worldwide project for the USAID Office of Health and Population. From 1997 she served a major company in the oil industry as a social investment manager, based for five years in the Niger Delta and two years in Oman, leading the design, staffing, implementation, and evaluation of sustainable community development programs.

Dr. Deirdre LaPin is currently an Associate in the African Studies Center at theUniversity of Pennsylvania and a consultant for the private sector and internationaldevelopment agencies on best practice social policy and investment. During 2008-2009she was a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Smithsonian Institution researchingthe social history of the Niger Delta. Previously a Research Associate and Lecturer at theUniversity of Ife, Nigeria, and has taught at Emory University, the University ofPennsylvania, and as tenured Associate Professor at the University of Arkansas.Subsequent to her academic career, Dr. LaPin joined UNICEF in 1984 as a senior officialin Benin Republic and Somalia, where she initiated new strategies for health, watersupply, and strategic planning. She later became manager of a worldwide project for theUSAID Office of Health and Population. From 1997 she served a major company in theoil industry as a social investment manager, based for five years in the Niger Delta andtwo years in Oman, leading the design, staffing, implementation, and evaluation ofsustainable community development programs.

Biography

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We will be discussing plans for the rest of the year, speakers, and new opportunities.

Food and drinks will be provided by New Style Pizzeria.

WPBA Spring 2010 GBM Presentation

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1. Fall General Body Meeting
2. Spring Political Tickers
3. WPBA Introductory Meeting

“In the ‘90s, broke state and city run transportation services, like the Metropolitan Transit Authority (NYC) and SEPTA, needed cash. The economy was good, but they were in constant budget troubles for the same reasons they are today (unions, zero innovation, fiscal carelessness etc.) Since these organizations need cash actively, they looked for it. No takers came, seeing their poor economic state.”

The government came in and said “tax breaks for anyone who does leasebacks.” A leaseback is when I take ownership of assets for some time, collect interest, and then hand the asset back to you after some time. No one wanted to do this with defunct companies like the MTA, because no one wanted their worthless railroad cars and tunnels. They were a sure loss, at least until the government guaranteed profit.

The 90s are sublime because the growing economy covers up problems. The chief financiers of these leasebacks are big, big banks. Banks get guaranteed profit, government transport agencies get their cash flow for nothing (while keeping all needed control of their rail cars), and the growing economy covers the taxpayer’s share. Life is good.

Economic turmoil now enters the scene. The collapse of 2008 is reality and large banks (most prominently AIG) go under the waves, meaning that the people they were supporting go under too.

The correct economic action for a company in such a time is to call back the liabilities in your balance sheet, since all the assets are pretty much up in smoke. As you know, a balance sheet that doesn’t have assets equal its liabilities is a recipe for disaster. It is in fact, impossible. So AIG decides it wants to exercise its right to call back these contracts, as they have all expired, and try to save itself and become free from taxpayer cash. Selling “leasebacks” means that transport agencies pony up the interest cash they owe after getting to use railcars and tunnels for free the past decade (along with nice, subsidized access to international capital markets, courtesy of AIG, which does it courtesy of US Federal Government).

This is really bad news for SEPTA and MTA. They already have no cash, and AIG exercising its legal right to use its contracts would destroy them. Services would get hammered and balance sheets would be in worse shape than they were already.

So what are the options for resolution? Obviously this use of law and fiscal sense is not in our current interest. The government steps in to protect its baby brother, quasi-government. Those like NJ Senator Menendez, whose state owes $150 million, say “Let’s have a 100% tax on all leaseback earnings.” With a Democrat Congress already angry with the AIG monster is created, this call is taken up heartily. 100% taxes can be imposed on behalf on little Johnnie MTA at any time.

Let’s say AIG gets upset and says, “this is ridiculous, our contract is backed by the basic law of this country, and we want our money. Taxes or no taxes, we will pull the trigger, because we are trying to stay alive just as badly.” Government comes in and says “No way. MTA and NJT are my favorites, and I won’t let you hurt them. If you do anything I’ll just pull your TARP money, and then you’ll really be in trouble.” AIG, and hundreds of companies like it who didn’t take TARP, can’t afford this public condemnation by the government and back off.

MTA continues to run broken, eating taxpayer money. AIG, unable to take the needed steps to fix itself, eats taxpayer money. Neither can break out of the lock; they are totally interwoven by government policy, and will head to the grave together. Neither NJT nor AIG can afford to lose the $150 million at stake between them. Both rot, crippled by inability to get money (since both have a credit rating of zero and government promises of “Workers before debtors”) or pay it. Both industries, billions of dollars in value, sink to the sea floor, anchored by government.

Can government stop this? No. No one will want to ever risk the repercussions of letting one or the other fail. While the benefits of letting the economy go to work naturally are great, no one can stomach short-term failure. Every representative is afraid his district will be the one hit. The individual representatives from the districts affected threaten boycott if they are harmed. The larger assembly cannot fight it. Why?

The reason: in a democratic welfare state the power distribution is skewed. 51% of the vote wins you all the marbles, while 45% is a blowout. Roughly 15-20 states suck up all the cash. They each end up giving 5-6%. Interconnected companies like MTA are even more vulnerable. Giving up any one state or district for the obvious good of all 50 is a straight ticket to 45% from 51%. Government is helpless to break anything.

Government traps all three parties. No one can cut off a finger to save an arm so to speak. Billions of dollars are quite literally allowed to go utterly unused, as no one can use the money due to government favoritism and unenforced law.

What are the solutions to this bind? Voting won’t work, because while giving out 100-dollar bills to everyone is bad, you won’t say no if it’s offered to you. Everyone wants more for himself. Since no one can properly solve the financial situation, having the Fed print cash and hand it out to everyone who is owed money might work. However, that is a quick fix, which destroys the economy long-term through false incentives and inflation. Everyone can act knowing Uncle Sam will clean up the mess. An alternative is authoritarianism. No Republicans, no Democrats; just one party and one leader who decides what is right and wrong.

Am I paranoid? Not really. Extend this to banks, autos, traditional government work, and anything else our heart desires on a full economy-wide scale and this happens everywhere. What the free market would have cleaned up instantly the government prolongs and deepens hundreds of times over. Government entities (transport) negotiating with government entities (banks) overseen by government (playing itself) cannot possibly lead to anything other than this.

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Let’s be honest: agricultural subsidies aren’t anybody’s favorite topic.

Farmers don’t like to talk about them; what self-reliant yeoman wants to admit they’re on welfare? Urban people don’t take an interest in them either; a good reading of the Farm Bill will send even the most stubborn insomniac into a slumber. The right dismisses farm programs as government distortions of the free market, and the left sees them as handouts to agribusiness conglomerates. So why are farm subsidies still in full force? Probably because it’s difficult to have anyone engaged enough to reform them.

There are signs that change is on the horizon, though. In the last few years, farm programs have begun attracting attention from unlikely quarters.

Public health experts have drawn a convincing connection between the kind of farming we subsidize and the quality of food we eat. With CDC research predicting that one in three children born in the year 2000 will in time develop Type II diabetes, incentivizing all-out production of high fructose corn syrup, partially hydrogenated soybean oil and fast-food meat may only deepen our healthcare catastrophe.

Leaders in the climate change community have recently taken up the topic, too, pointing to soil as one of the only carbon sinks capable of storing a meaningful amount of atmospheric CO2. Under subsidized row-crop production (itself powered by fossil fuel fertilizer, petroleum-derived pesticides and diesel tractors), environmentalists warn that this climate-stabilizing potential is––quite literally––eroding.

It is the fallout from the 2008 Global Food Crisis, however, that has spurred much of the recent debate over farm subsidies. The riots that erupted in Senegal and Egypt and toppled the government in Haiti forced legislators in subsidy-driven Europe and the United States to acknowledge the international consequences of distorting agricultural markets at home.

So, with our global economy staring down a climate crisis and an obesity epidemic, we have to ask ourselves: what kind of agriculture are we subsidizing?

For much of the last 40 years, American farm subsidies have rewarded the all-out production of a handful of commodities. These policies delivered processors a ready supply of cheap raw materials for processing into snacks and feeding to confined livestock. What food companies couldn’t convince American consumers to eat (though judging from our waistlines, we did our part!) was exported. Often, barges of subsidized corn, soy and wheat reached foreign shores, where their contents could be sold at below the local cost of production.

The ripple effects of these policies have been dramatic, and are nowhere more apparent than in Mexico. There, corn farmers saw the price of corn plummet by half when NAFTA opened the door to subsidized imports. Unable to compete, millions of Mexican farmers left the land, pursuing economic promise in impoverished cities or across the US border. When the Food Crisis began, however, with a spike in imported corn prices related to ethanol, drought, and expensive oil, the price of a tortilla in Mexico shot up more than 400%. For many, the effects of skyrocketing staples were devastating.

This scenario of subsidy-induced dependence has repeated itself across the globe. American exports flood foreign markets with cheap grain; local farmers see their profit margins dwindle and leave the land; without the infrastructure for self-sufficiency in place, a shock felt in one part of the system––US grain production––suddenly leaves everyone vulnerable, and without a safety net in place.

America’s 20^th century production-oriented agricultural policies have––under the banner of abundance and affordability––only made the world’s food systems more fragile. At home, subsidies have enabled an obesity epidemic and ecological degradation. Abroad, they have replaced local production and processing with a reliance on imports.

With any broken system, the tendency is to throw everything out and start from scratch. That’s rarely the best course, however. In the case of agricultural subsidies, there’s little logic to doing away with government incentives altogether. Some fundamentals––water, food, education––are important enough that the government should keep a hand on the tiller. Slashing farm programs tomorrow would leave farmers indebted and in the lurch, add another shock to fragile markets around the world, and likely lead to more corporate consolidation in a food processing industry already stifled by monopolies.

So, what kind of agriculture should we be subsidizing? Unfortunately, the answer isn’t tidy enough to be enacted all at once; nor is it the kind of policy that can be passed in a vacuum. It’s a policy that looks long-term, and across borders and disciplines.

First, 21^st century farm policy will have to be––first and foremost––food policy. If we put good nutrition at the top of our priorities, we will begin promoting fruit and vegetable production at home, instead of fast food. Internationally, we will help developing nations grow their internal agricultural capacity (as the Obama administration has already pledged to do in Africa), and will cease to see foreign markets as a dumping ground for American surplus.

Second, next-generation farm policies will put long-term sustainability ahead of short-term, extraction-dependent yields. Green payments will compensate farmers for their contributions to climate stability, and those who work at the forefront of sustainable agriculture––testing perennial crops instead of soil-depleting annuals and pushing the limits of local and organic production––will be rewarded for their investments in a post-petroleum future.

Weaning ourselves off present agricultural subsidies won’t be an easy process, but it can be an incremental one.

Curt Ellis is a Food and Society Fellow with the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy and the WK Kellogg Foundation. He co-created and starred in the Peabody-winning documentary King Corn, and produced and directed the sequel, Big River.

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This October, WPBA Co-VP of Policy Development Doug Eckhardt gave an introduction for this year’s participants. What he presented was an overview of the questions for the current competition as well as tips on how to research and answer the competition prompts. Mr. Eckhardt himself is a former policy cup participant (he and his partner placed third in the competition last year). Perhaps the most pertinent advice given to 2009-2010 Policy Cup competitors regarded choosing a topic on which to write a proposal. Here is a brief summary of his recommendations:

• The topic should be “controversial,” meaning that it will spark debate and require the audience to question what you are presenting. Being forced to respond to difficult questions will require more meticulously researched proposals.
• The proposal should address an important issue rather than be more obscure. In other words, choose something you believe people will care about.
• Manage the scope of the topic your proposal discusses. If you have a general area of interest try to narrow it down to a specific problem under that umbrella. This will give your research greater focus.
• The topic should be of interest to you. Find an issue that will motivate you to remain committed to the competition and produce a well-polished proposal.
• The chosen topic should be “intellectually approachable” to you, meaning it will generate critical thought for you that will be mirrored in those reviewing your proposal.
• Lastly, be sure there are ample statistical references available to augment the roots of your arguments.

To those participating in the policy cup, I hope the following have helped you in some way. For prospective participants in future competitions feel free to keep these in mind as you mull over your decision. The PowerPoint presentation used by Mr. Eckhardt is available online.

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1. Policy Cup Update
2. Policy Cup Introduction
3. Policy Cup Recap