Indonesia earthquake

"The latest reports put the death toll from the Java quake at over 5,800 and sources estimate that some 647,000 people have been displaced and are in need of basic food and shelter." -- Indonesia Help blog

What's distressing to me and my colleagues at GlobalGiving is that somehow this disaster has not attracted the kind of attention or generosity that other disasters have recently. Perhaps we're all struggling with the relentless sequencing of disasters following one upon another; perhaps there hasn't been as much dramatic footage on the news.

But the encouraging part for us is that the response on the ground has been both immediate, and selfless. Project leaders are leading community efforts to help the displaced and injured, even as they have suffered their own personal losses. Project leaders have lost their own homes and had to evacuate relatives, but are able and willing to pitch into helping the community.

I feel a little odd using this blog to write asking people to give, but you can see this has hit a nerve, so here goes.

Until July 5th, all donations to Indonesia earthquake projects posted on GlobalGiving will be MATCHED!! A GlobalGiving community member has generously offered $5,000 in matching funds to double all donations going to these projects. Important earthquake recovery efforts are still in need of funding to provide food, clean water, medical care, and education and trauma recovery for children, so please donate and provide support to earthquake survivors: Donations will be matched up to $250 through July 5th or when the $5,000 limit is reached. If you have any questions, please contact Dana Messick for more information.

Identity mashup conference: an assessment

So a couple of final comments about the conference. I expected before I went that I would find it interesting, but I wasn't sure it would be particularly relevant. I think in hindsight it was both interesting and relevant, in part because of the following.

People you don't know usually can teach you more things you don't know than people you already know. Mark Granovetter pointed this out back in 1973 through his insights about the strength of weak ties, but it always goes against my introvert's grain, and I have to be reminded of it. I got to Cambridge, listened to a lot of smart people talk about things I didn't really know anything about, and although I didn't learn anywhere enough to be able to hang in many of the conversations, I got a good feel for the disciplines and the fields of inquiry people were drawing on to sort out the issues in the identity space, and got a couple of insights that I think will be key to figuring out how I can frame our thinking around identify, reputation, and community on GlobalGiving.

I was also struck--really struck--by the fact that to a person, attendees of this conference believed (and acted on the belief) that technology is not a constraint. And I mean that in 2 ways. One, that technology can pretty much solve any technical problem anyone could have. Two, that technology solutions can be implemented by anybody--by this I mean that even if the whole solution requires an interaction between people and a technology, the behavioral changes that need to accompany the technology will pretty much happen. I can see how this could happen if the problem being addressed is really really huge--and a lot of the things being discussed at the conference were, in my view, really really huge--but I wasn't sure if anyone outside of the conference would share that view. On the one hand, the optimism about technology was really freeing. But on the other hand, it felt removed from reality.

Smartocracy -- Eureka! (Identity Mashup Conference Day 3)

So I have to make an online confession. And in particular this is for Brad DeGraf, whom Dennis and I have now known for years, who has been a real fellow traveller on our adventures with GlobalGiving. The confession is that I was invited to join Smartocracy in its beta phase a couple of months ago, and I could not make head or tails out of it. And I was interested in understanding it--stuff that has to do with wisdom of crowds, etc. is of intense interest to me, both professionally and personally.

And when Brad announced at our Identify Mashup conference that Smartocracy would be used to figure out what the next question was, I groaned internally because there were so many things going on, and I had little faith I would be able to sort this out in the midst of all the hubbub. And I think of myself as being a relatively good lay person with technology and figuring out how stuff works.

But it worked--for me, I mean. [And there's another post I want to make about "things working for me" where I'll go into this, since it also has something to do with the conference. Will post link as I publish the next post.] And maybe it was because the implementation was different than the beta test, but here's how it worked for me, and what was neat about it.

Brad created identities for everyone at the conference, so they were preloaded into the system. He put up some random (and some not so random) questions to vote on, and explained that we had 10 proxies to hand out. The proxy was where I got stuck the first time--I couldn't figure out whether by giving my vote away, I was losing my one vote (which I think I was reluctant to give up because I'm a Japanese national and absentee voting in Japan is very difficult [and I don't follow Japanese politics closely enough to cast a responsible vote even if it was easy], I've grown up never having voted in any government elections anywhere). This time, the list of people to whom I could give proxies to was clear, and the fact that I could enhance their vote by giving them proxies was also clear. Suddenly, this became like "awards" I could give out.

And if it had not been in the context of a conference, if it had been strictly virtual, I would have ended up giving proxies to people I knew. Which would have been fine, but kind of boring. Because this was a conference, I could give proxies to people I thought had said thoughtful things at the conference. It was a bit like kudos, and fun at that. I got to let them know I thought their vote was worth more, and in some cases I got to reconnect with people I hadn't met in a long time, like Jan Hauser.

And how this links back to GlobalGiving. We've been thinking of different ways we could decentralize the vetting of organizations and project leaders. Currently we do that ourselves, and through project sponsor partners, with whom we have signed legal agreements covering how this is done. How could we broaden that without compromising quality? Well, maybe Smartocracy is a way for us to organically develop a network of trusted partners who can be given specific proxy weights by people who know them well who in turn, could nominate worthwhile organizations. Or another such group could undertake to review the credentials of project orgs that want in. Either way, the smart crowd will be a lot "deeper" and "broader" than any of our direct contacts.

Very cool idea.

Why am I not warming up to My Virtual Model? Identity Mashup conference Day 2

So I'm trying to figure out why I've been having such a negative reaction to My Virtual Model, which was introduced to us yesterday. There are very many cool aspects about it:

• the reliance on visuals is intuitively really appealing, and maybe it removes inhibitions about buying things like clothes online
  
• you can imagine a world of seamless media--you see a dress on an actress in Sex and the City, and you go from the show site to a place where you can get the dress online, and "try it on" your own virtual model to make sure that's what you want
• people can use their avatars to imagine what you would look like after losing weight--great motivation

But I had a negative reaction when I went to their site and figured out that you can't "just" create a virtual model, you can only do so by committing to a particular vendor that they have partnered with. Had there been a vendor that I actually buy products from, I might actually have gone ahead and seen what it could do. But I was turned off at that point--I really didn't like the idea that I had to commit to a vendor to use this.

And today they made the point that the Virtual Model has allowed for information to travel back to clothing manufacturers about what people want to see on themselves, etc. and how you can go from 2D to 3D, etc. And my reaction today is: what is My Virtual Model adding that Threadless isn't doing already, in a much less hi-tech, but equally satisfying in the real interactions you can see between T-shirt designers and consumers of T-shirts?

Still not getting it--will have to keep thinking about it some more ...

Information: public good and private good (Identity mashup Day 2)

So I just got an insight from the Trust, Fairness and Sanctions in Digital Communities session that I think we need to think through in creating a reputation system on GlobalGiving. (Our first experiments around that are around the feedback systems we created for progress reports by project leaders.)

There was a short back and forth amongst the panelists about the value of information that is widely available vs. known only to a few. Judith suggested that information widely known is not as valuable--and Bill suggested that actually the opposite was true. I think it actually comes down to the type of information we're talking about. Judith was probably thinking about the point she made yesterday, about fashion being a signal of access to information--in this context, it's really clear that the more people have access to this type of information, the less valuable it becomes. ("Oh that was so yesterday, everyone is wearing/listening to/watching it now.")

But some information, e.g., the knowledge that washing hands can prevent cholera, has public and private dimensions that actually change over time depending on how widely the information is shared. So to play out this exapmple further, here's what happens to the information about handwashing and cholera. When cholera is running rampant, there is huge private value in knowing that handwashing helps to prevent your catching cholera--you benefit personally from this information. And in addition to the absolute good of not catching cholera, you could also get additional satisfaction of surviving when others do not (there's a lot of literature in economics recently about a phenomenon that us ex-Sovietologists pondered for a long time, which is that people are happy when they are relatively better off than others).

As the information about handwashing and cholera becomes more widely shared, though, you get the public good emerging, which is that cholera becomes less prevalent, and the odds of your catching cholera (and that your obsessive handwashing helps keep cholera at bay) comes down. The public good has increased, the private good goes down.

Now not all information is like that, but I think Judith had a good thought that there probably is a taxonomy of information that can help us sort through the different implications of the private vs. public value of information ...

And that ties nicely into the conversation that Eli(zabeth) and I were having last night about whether project leaders should have control over what they reveal about themselves, and the reliability of self-reported information. I think the bottom line question for this is whether the information has any public good aspect that might override the private good of the project leader.

3 aspects of markets: Identity mashup conference Day 1

I always have such mixed feelings showing up at Harvard. On the one hand it's very familiar, having spent 6 years here--I learned to drive on Storrow Drive, for instance. On the other hand some of that time I was here I was rather unhappy, so it's always a bit startling to walk past familiar landmarks and feel the sensations of those years wash over me. But more on that later.

The biggest takeaway I got yesterday, not surprisingly, was from Doc Searls. He reminded us that markets have 3 complementary aspects (which he in turn attributes to Eric Raymond and Sayo Ajiboye):

• transactions
• conversations
• community

I think this captures exactly what we've been groping towards at GlobalGiving as we keep talking about community tools and Web 2.0 on how to make sense of where to go next.

First, in my mind the 3 aspects, laid out in that order, sort of represent a Maslowian hierarchy of markets. At a basic level, markets have to support and facilitate transactions. I think we've nailed that at GlobalGiving if you think of the basic transaction on GlobalGiving as the transfer of funds to support projects and social enterprises worldwide. Going beyond transaactions to conversations and community begins to meet our higher order of needs for connection and identification--and is immeasurably richer.

Second, the 3 aspects also feel to me like a great "fit" with the whole proposition of giving. Giving is by its nature really suited to go beyond a transaction when done well, and I think it will help us stay out some of the problematic power dynamics that can emerge from the big asymmetries that exist in our space. (More on asymmetries later)

Third, I need to come back to the fact that Doc Searls cited Sayo Ajiboye in his presentation of the 3 aspects of markets. The fact is that the developing world is actually more in touch with the 3 dimensions of markets than the developed world is. So this opens up the possibility that because so many of the project leaders operate in the developing world, they can in fact play a huge role in teaching and leading us to understand the integration of these 3 aspects.

A really thought-provoking presentation about media

I heard Jim Brady of the washingtonpost.com give a presentation the other day about media convergence (a topic that is so hip/twee nowadays that there is a site devoted to tracking its incidence) that I thought really clarified the stakes a bit. He distinguished between:

• Technical convergence: how devices were all combining/substituting for each other, listening to music on your cell phone, taking pictures with your PDA, tracking your calendar on your iPod
• Audience convergence: being able to discover and connect easily with likeminded people, whether through MySpace or Facebook [in real life, I just lost about an hour while I went and messed around in Facebook--young people have been telling me what a time-suck it is, and I can now testify to it--see results here]
  
• Competitive convergence: here I think the key driver is the web, and the fact that it can accomodate so many media, from video to podcasts to text to photojournalism. The result is that CNN competes with the Washington Post to deliver video images of tsunami even though one is a cable network and the other is a print newspaper
• Information convergence: This is best summarized by mashups like Chicago crime stats displayed geographically.
  

The most charming thing, though, about Brady's presentation, was his energy and enthusiasm for all the possibilities this opened up. The WP started a year long program of coverage around "What it means to be a Black Man," and to kick it off brought a diverse group of men for a photo to be featured above the fold. What media convergence meant in this context, was that not only they could create a specialized site around this program, but that they could shoot a video of the photo shoot that brought these men together--a surprisingly intimate, touching 3+ minute slice of life. This beats conventional media any day.

Another very cool thing he pointed out was that the WP had for years maintained a congressional voting record DB. The journalists used it for their news analysis, but no one ever thought to do anything else with it ... until the washingtonpost.com hired the guy responsible for the Chicago crime stats above, and he discovered the journalists using it. A month later, it was up and running as a resource and incredibly rich content on washingtonpost.com. A great lesson on repurposing content and looking at everything we do through another lens.

So here at GlobalGiving, we track statistics around projects and project organizations. It would take a bit of work, but we could start cleaning up the data and making it available to anyone who's interested. It would be interesting to see who is interested, given all the press lately about due diligence (or its absence) in the philanthropic world. Maybe it's because we don't present the data in interesting ways ...

Am really behind on my posts. Will see how confusing it is to people to start posting these posts backwards in time, like Time's Arrow.

Why I find it hard to read The End of Faith

I’ve just started reading this book The End of Faith, by Sam Harris. I haven’t gotten far into the book at all, but there’s a story around that. Some very good friends gave Dennis the book for his birthday some months ago, and recommended it highly. These are people whose opinions I really respect, so I fully intended to start the book when Dennis finished it, which he did pretty quickly. But I found actually that the book was a hard one for me to embark on, because I found its main thesis hard to take—that the major religions have been the cause of most of the world’s ills from persecution to war, and that the fault lay as much with religious moderates as with fundamentalists because the moderates had, through their tolerance for inter-religious differences, in fact made it possible for the fundamentalists to prevail.

The story of why I found it a hard book to even begin reading, starts with my growing up with no religious faith of my own. Not that I was born into an atheist household, but Japanese religious faith is really about cultural habits, and since I spent a good part of my childhood outside of Japan that had a minimal influence on me. And while I loved the ritual and cadence of the Catholic faith that surrounded me in Italy when I was growing up, it was not really a religion to me, just a collection of founding myths with great cultural resonance (as far as I could tell there was no art in Italy that could not be traced back to Christianity or Roman mythology in one way or another, and there was a lot of it). It was only in high school that I decided I needed to become more familiar with the details on Christianity, after developing a mild affinity for the protestant urges that had driven Martin Luther (it just sounded so much more enlightened), especially for literary purposes, and I started reading the Bible. I started of course at the beginning with the Old Testament, and although Genesis was clearly not particularly consistent with evolution, I found it harmless, and kept on reading thinking it made some sort of symbolic sense in the overall corpus. Then I got to some of the other stories of the Old Testament, and the ethics of the Old Testament struck me as being ridiculous. I think, although I know can’t remember clearly, that it was the story of Sarah and Abraham pretending they were siblings and leading Pharaoh on, and God’s eventual punishment of Pharaoh that finally struck me as being more about proving that these people were chosen above all reason and compassion. (There is a great commentary on exactly these wild leaps in ethical logic by David Plotz right now on Slate) So I stopped my Bible study there, having lost any contingent faith I might have placed in the foundational Christian document.

That started me off on my “religion is an opiate of the masses” phase. It coincided nicely with a phase in my life where I got really judgmental about a lot of things anyway (I broke up with a long-standing boyfriend with whom I had spent all of the school year corresponding (I will date myself by admitting it was by snail mail, but I impress my older self with my youthful dedication) every day—over Thatcher’s position on the miners’ strike), so I lived with that for a while. Some years into this I decided that being as judgmental as all that was hard—hard on me and hard on my friends. In fact I lost touch with a lot of my friends during that phase, not only that boyfriend, and I count myself lucky to have been able to reclaim them now. (They, you see, were more forgiving than I was.) So I find Sam Harris’s main thesis hard to disentangle from my own intolerance and the personal costs I paid for it.

Now for what is interesting about Sam Harris’s book. I recently heard of an old study by Schelling that showed, through statistical modeling, of how residential segregation can come about with even a mild preference among people in a given community to live in a community that does not include more than 33% of people of another race. So the main take away from this study is you don’t need a whole community of Archie Bunkers to create segregated neighborhoods. My question then as I go into The End of Faith is, can some analogy of this dynamic be operating in the religious communities—if so, the fact that Harris may be overreaching on the thesis that religion has caused most of the world’s woes isn't that important. If this dynamic can somehow be proved to hold in this case, it raises the real possibility that radical religions of all stripes will be on the increase. It's as if we've passed some saturation point and everything will begin crystallizing into brittle shards ...

Finance4Change session

So final day, final session of the Skoll Forum. We're in the middle of a discussion of the development of a social capital market, and Tim Freundlich of the Calvert Foundation has previewed a really interesting tool for the sector. He started out by introducing an interesting service provided by a company called Venture One. Venture One gets VCs to come and provide details of closed deals, valuation, who's backing the deal, who's on the board, etc.--and Venture One (part of DowJones) takes the data, makes sense of it and sells it back to the VCs. Calvert's interpretation for the social sector is Xigi. Most of Xigi seems to be in beta phase behind a log-in right now, but the sneak peek looks really promising. One of the things that has disheartened me in the past is how we talk about collaborating and sharing information, but so far it's been in rather expensive face-to-face discussions in Geneva, London, or California a couple of times a year. This is the first time someone has taken the very logical step of creating a virtual platform where people can post news, information -- specifically about deals in this sector. Bravo Tim -- very cool.

Christy Chinn provided interesting context -- VentureOne started out as a DB that collected information about closed VC deals -- not a marketplace.

Interesting probing around the issue of whether this issue of social capital markets is possibly monopolized by Anglo-Saxons, which led to a question about whether attempts to make an emerging social capital market global will ultimately undermine interesting initiatives like Celso Grecco's Brazilian social stock exchange [warning: site will not launch on Mac :(].

Something that has struck me here at the conference. Almost to a person, everyone here talks of supply as the supply of capital , or funders, and of demand as the demand for capital, or social entrepreneurs/project leaders. Which is 180 from the way we think of it at GlobalGiving, where supply is the supply of giving opportunities, or projects, and demand is the demand of donors for appropriate projects to give to. I think we need to do this so that we can stay focused on trying to understand donors and what they want -- but it's one more way that makes me feel like I'm swimming upstream.

Social stock exchanges discussion here at Oxford

So in the discussion today at the Skoll Forum between Peter Wheeler, Mohammed Yunus, Ron Grzywinski and Celso Grecco about developing a social stock exchange -- Peter drew attention to a possible emerging schism about whether a social stock exchange needed to be as much like the regular stock exchange as possible, or whether it's a different culture, different context, a different beast etc. And in light of Peter raising us (GlobalGiving) as a potential social stock exchange, I've been pressed to reflect where we fall on this issue -- and I think we fall somewhere in between. Mohammed is clearly in the camp that if you go to a fish market looking for oranges, you're bound to be disappointed, and I have a great deal of sympathy for that point. I do think the reasons why people are moved to give v. the reasons why people are moved to invest are different. As to why I think we fall in between, I don't believe we need to "invent" a brand new model to serve the social stock exchange. I do believe that the eBay model comes really really close. The idea that people carry out commerce within the context of a community would have sounded crazy as a pitch before eBay, but it draws on a rather deep insight about why people purchase things like collectables (as opposed to, say, groceries or toiletries). To the extent that eBay was based on the collectables market, I think it draws on people's desire to express their identity and declare their allegiance and community among likeminded people. And I think the same is possibly true of philanthropy.

I had a personal insight about this when I was listening to the presentation two days ago about MDLF and realized how moved I was to buy one of their investment notes because I wanted to actually declare my allegiance and solidarity with their cause. I rarely feel that way about my stock or mutual fund purchases. And I actually wanted to find out who else felt that way. I could do that on eBay. And I'd like to be able to do that on GlobalGiving.

Colliding worlds

When I left my work in Russia I wondered if that world would close for ever to me. There were other things I really wanted to do but it was with deep sadness that I thought about losing those connections. Now here I am at Oxford at the Skoll Forum in my GlobalGiving identity, and for some reason Russia keeps coming back -- whether in the panel on social entrepreneurship in transition countries, press freedom in the world, and now on a panel on the rule of law in China. (By no less than Karen Tse, who has a project on GlobalGiving.) And it was bested only when I ran into an old friend -- Volodya Mau and his son Anton -- in the lobby of the conference hall. Volodya was here just to meet a conference attendee for lunch, so it was only the slimmest of chances that had me run into him. And as I reflect on the rush of gratitude I felt on seeing the work of an organization like MDLF -- and felt moved to support them especially given what they are doing in places like Russia to stop the reimposition of state control -- not to speak of my delight in seeing Volodya, I realize there's a part of me that's still back there. Or maybe more to the point, still a little bit of Russia in me. Some loyalties die hard.

Investment banking and eBay

The talk here at the Skoll Forum today and yesterday has been centered around bringing investment banking approaches into funding social entrepreneurship -- starting with Al Gore talking about his private equity firm and followed up by a series of sessions today around mobilizing masses of funds from the regular financial markets (e.g. by securitizing streams of income from microloan repayments). It crystallized for me when Jan-Olaf Willums introduced Jacqueline Novogratz from Acumen as one of the people actually getting funds for venture philanthropy from the common people -- and she had to demur by saying that Acumen probably didn't get funds from the common people, and in fact that the elite had a responsibility to help out the masses of people who live under $4 a day. And Jed Emerson noted that he had had to go back and brush up on his understanding of finance to be able to "hang" with the people he thought were key to solving the social capital market conundrum (i.e., bankers).

This makes me, of course, feel like a fish out of water. Or at least swimming upstream. The issues this panel has raised -- whether using grant funds to prime the pump to encourage private sector willingness to lend to sectors, areas, and income groups that the private sector would not otherwise lend to or invest in -- is exactly the kind of thing that the World Bank Group can and does do, and I lose heart listening to them for several reasons. First, organizations that have been officially tapped to do this sort of thing have been in this business for 50+ years and not yet made a real difference (cf Bill Easterly). So new organizations doing exactly the same thing will work only if the organizations that have been tapped to do this are structurally unsuited to the purpose or the new orgs are a lot more efficient. Second, it's demoralizing to think that the people who are notionally "in charge" (which makes me feel oddly leftist) are the only people who can make a difference. It's just a downer to think that the people with money and access are the ones who will come into save the day. Third, it perpetuates the power imbalance that has always ruled this space, and I have a hunch--which I can't prove--that somewhere, somehow, this power imbalance has a pernicious effect.

Recycling world bank reports

Years and years ago, one of my first bosses at the World Bank told me that he once published an economic report for Bangladesh after months and months of drafting, editing, and negotiations with the government. He was really relieved when the report was finally published, and arranged for half the reports in his office to be delivered to the government. It was only a week later when his wife bought some fish from the market, and he realized that the paper in which they were wrapped ... were pages form the country economic report that he had just gotten published. Today at the Skoll World Forum for social entrepreneurship, Bunker Roy (fast becoming a triple crown winner) noted that the hand puppets they use at the Barefoot College to communicate with illiterate villagers are also made from World Bank reports. I guess nothing goes to waste.

New legal entity for social enterprise in UK

Just learned about a really interesting new development in UK regulation of social enterprises. Community interest companies are brand new, have only been around for 6-8 months . They are like for profit companies in that there can be shareholders, dividends (capped), but they are like non profits in that if they are sold they have to be sold to another community interest company. Need to do a lot more research, but if we had something like this in the US, it would be perfect for GlobalGiving.

The article in question

So back to the original reason I signed up for this blog, which was to sort out what I thought about the II article about the HIID scandal.

First of all, full disclosure: I know Jonathan Hay, Dima Vasiliev, Ruslan Orekhov, and even Jonathan's crazy lawyer Sokin. And most of them are exactly as described in the article. David McClintick has done a masterful job of reporting their foibles, mannerisms, and essence. And although I haven't read the depositions, every single word of his article is not only incredibly plausible, but rings true. But you can be right on all the facts and still miss the real history that was played out. Usually only nerds care about historiographical missteps--and I admit I'm a nerd. But first Vasiliev's fall, and now Summers's resignation has actually made the misreading of history a lot more obvious. Jonathan and Shleifer have a lot to answer for.

So I have every reason to believe that the facts of the article didn't lie. Jonathan certainly never evinced any uncertainty as to whether it was inappropriate, not to say wrong, for Elizabeth Hebert to be leading the first registered mutual fund in Russia. As the article clearly describes, Vasiliev was incredibly relieved to have a personal connection to Elizabeth through Jonathan--it was a chain of trust that gave him som assurance that the first mutual fund would not go up in flames of some sort of financial or legal scandal. The article cannot quite convey how every single Russian or Russian-associated business entity at the time was at the very least perfectly willing to engage in bribery to achieve its ends, and at the very worst involved in casual murder and every other felony in between. In that environment, Dima was not only pleased, he was overjoyed to register Pallada first.

Vasiliv, ever the incorruptible (one of the perhaps as many as 3 Russian officials I personally would have been willing to vouch were not on the take) was not and would never have contemplated benefiting from any of this himself. But Jonathan, as nested in the inner circle of the highest ranking Russian policymakers as he was, would not, in Dima's eyes, have been subject to that discipline. And in fact that is precisely WHY Jonathan was so valuable to Dima. Jonathan could spend AID dollars getting a decent office with modern furnishings and competent staff--one of the very legitimate uses of American assistance. Vasiliev couldn't. He had to work in the drafty (but extremely prestigious) offices right around the corner from Red Square, and minutes from the President's administration where his friend Orekhov worked, with staff whom he either could not retain if they were competent because he couldn't pay them more than a civil service pittance, or staff who could not be fired who were simply too incompetent to do anything more than get visitors tea. So Dima kept sending Jonathan the real work that needed to get done, first in privatization, then in the setting up of the securities market. And Jonathan could arrange for conveniences like a mutual fund led by his girlfriend, whom Dima trusted simply on the grounds that if Jonathan was hanging out with her, well, she must be be a revolutionary of the Russian transition as well.

This is what the author left out. It wasn't in his remit, I guess, to really understand what was going on in the policy circles of the Russian government, and how precarious it all seemed. How the whole transition seemed to hang by a hair, and if they didn't hit the milestones like slalom skiers slamming into the gates as they come down the slope, well, they were going to lose the race. And how people like Jonathan, who earned their trust, and could understand what needed to be done politically as well as policy-wise--were far more valuable than the millions of dollars foreign governments and multilateral agencies were willing to hand over to him. For there were assistance dollars that were being spent on studies and technical assistance to people who could never change regardless of how many workshops and conferences they attended, and it used to really infuriate the reformers. Perhaps less Dima than most, because I got the sense he was a real ascetic, but there were plenty of good men and women of the Russian transition who felt more than a little jealous and resentful of the fact that there were literally hundreds of foreign consultants tooling around Moscow, ostensibly helping Russian reform, who could afford to go to the emerging decent restaurants while they had to down yet another russkiy salat in the government cafeteria as they tried to keep the retrograde forces at bay.

And Jonathan? Well, I always thought he was envious of the way all these Russian businessmen were raking in the money, riding expensive cars and throwing their money about. To be honest I couldn't see him actually spending the money on anything like clothes or food, but I think he envied the evidence that they were "winning" in the larger game. So the possibility that Elizabeth would profit from it all didn't, I'm sure, bother him. And it should have. And I wish it had, because then it would not have led to Dima Vasiliev ultimately losing the fight with the Central Bank, and perhaps not to Summers's resignation. Although probably Summers's resignation was one of those overdetermined events.

One last thing. I admire Summers's loyalty. This isn't the first time he's stood by a protege and taken the fall himself rather than let his protege down. He did the same thing when he was Chief Economist at the World Bank and he took responsibility for the exporting pollution memo. He's a standup guy, and he was also a breath of fresh air at Harvard. His leaving takes away the hope I had that Harvard could become more honest with itself and more brave. And although I am as lacking in school spirit as you can get, I still care about my alma mater.

Well, my musings are answered: Time Magazine confirms that it was the Institutional Investor article that broke the camel's back. The saddest part is that the people who have lost the most in terms of their power to do good -- Dima V when he lost his fight with the Central Bank, and now Larry Summers losing the presidency of one of the most powerful private institutions in the world -- are not the people who actually tried to profit from anything ...

Summers resigns ...

As I've explained to anyone who will listen to me, I'm just so sorry Larry Summers has resigned as President of Harvard. So I'm casting about for answers. Heard that he didn't get along with the Fellows of the College, but looking at the list, that doesn't quite ring true. The list includes a Houghton (traditional Harvard name, libraries named after this family), a Keohane and a Reischauer (both faculty related, but neither of them names you'd associate with the politicization of issues around grade inflation, African-American studies, or feminism. And to top it off, Robert Rubin is one of the Fellows. So go figure. I'm sure the answer's probably somewhere else entirely.

This is just me casting about for clues because I think Larry was one of the most dynamic presidents the university has had in my memory of presidents (Bok, Rudenstine, and Summers) ... notwithstanding that I had to field a question from a young woman I was interviewing for admission into Harvard about what I thought about his comments about women in the sciences, I really admired his energy and drive. Yes, he could have been more diplomatic, but there are plenty of diplomatic presidents that don't actually DO anything beyond reinforcing existing trends and platitudes.

Well, I was going to start with some musings about the Insititutional Investor article about HIID, but this sort of blew it out of the water. Actually, the energy I had around that article did translate to this, because I was worried that the whole HIID scandal had sabotaged more than the careers of Jonathan Hay and Andrei Shleifer, Dima Vasiliev ... and now Larry Summers. I'm surmising of course, the II article may have had nothing to do with it. I guess I'm just fulminating about how hard it is to do good.

And I didn't intend to start out this blog by being all about Harvard, either. Well, time enough to fix it all later.