The US Financial Meltdown.

In his op-ed column titled All Fall Down, Thomas Friedman provides a rather succinct account of the chain of financial missteps that the US financial environment was able to permit in recent years. This is a good reminder, and an analysis, that some form of regulatory oversight is required to prevent such meltdowns from occurring. Thus, the ideological "hands-off" approach of some politicians regarding the economy is very flawed. 

What is always required is some sort of oversight to ensure that the resources in a system are deployed properly. Why else do we have operating systems overseeing resources in a computer system?

College Education in a Barack Obama Administration

In an increasingly competitive global and knowledge-intensive world, it is extremely important for a government to provide mechanisms to ease the burden of college education among today's college-bound students. While Barack Obama's proposed campaign promise is 100 hours of community service in exchange for a $4,000 tuition credit, it is the approach that is to be commended. 

100 hours translates to about 12 days (of 8 hours each), or about 3 months of elapsed time if a student uses only weekends to perform the community service.

Let us hope some effective educational program on these lines will indeed be implemented by the Barack Obama administration.