Lawrence Lessig at Netroots Nation 2008
The lunch for Lessig’s keynote at the Austin Convention Center yesterday (NN08) was the standard sandwich box. Each choice had a fancy name. I chose the Wellington. It was pretty good. I’m eating the apple as I blog.
Lessig spent most of the keynote describing the motivation for Change-Congress. On one of his early slides, Lessig noted the problem of socialized risk and privatized profit. In fact, on the day before at the subprime mortgage session, I asked the panel the question I submitted for Nancy Pelosi. Panelist Hale Stewart, who seems like a straight shooter, answered that there’s nothing Congress can do about the conflict of interest of the CEO of JP Morgan Chase making decisions on the Federal Reserve Board to make the public take the risk of the Bear Stearns acquisition.*
Here’s two video clips from the keynote. In the first video, Lessig says “trust is built in many contexts by keeping money off the table.”
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrCmxLpobbU&hl=en&fs=1]
* Article 31 of the Federal Reserve Act: “The right to amend, alter, or repeal this Act is hereby expressly reserved.”