Outlook: The subprime lending crisis: Focus on the problem: Subprime borrowers in trouble

Abstract

Public policy should be directed at serving the large number of borrowers who have recently taken out subprime loans and who are at serious risk of losing their homes when their mortgages reset. Practicing forbearance and providing counseling for defaulting homeowners, as well as allowing them to refinance into a Federal Housing Administration loan, can be particularly helpful. Broad changes in housing programs and in the structure of the mortgage market should be considered on their merits as good or bad public policy for the long term, not simply as solutions to the subprime problem.     

REVIEW ARTICLE: MILITARY SPACE POLICY: DEBATING THE FUTURE

Colonel Bruce M. DeBlois, USAF (ed), Beyond the Paths of Heaven: The Emergence of Space Power Thought (Maxwell AFB, AL: Air University Press, 1999). Benjamin S. Lambeth, Mastering the Ultimate High Ground: Next Steps in the Military Uses of Space (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2003). Major M.V. Smith, USAF, Ten Propositions Regarding Spacepower (Maxwell AFB, AL: Air University Press, 2002). Brigadier General Simon P. Worden, USAF and Major John E. Shaw, USAF, Whither Space Power? Forging a Strategy for the New Century (Maxwell AFB, AL: Air University Press, 2002).     

BOOK NOTES:

Books Reviewed in this article:
Governing Big Cities: The Management of Decentralization. By GRAHAM BUSH.
Corporate Remuneration in the 1990s: Strategies for Decision Makers. Edited by GRAHAM L. O'NEILL.
Public Sector Related Courses in Australian Tertiary Institutions. By PUBLIC SERVICE BOARD OF VICTORIA/ROYAL AUSTRALIAN INSTITUTE OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION.
Public Management Developments: Survey 1990. By ORGANISATION FOR ECONOMIC COOPERATION AND DEVELOPMENT.     

Symposium: Part I: Public Intellectuals Then and Now

The French political thinker Raymond Aron (1905–1983) provides the imitable model of the political philosopher as civic educator. Writing in an age of extreme ideological polarization, he aimed at a truly balanced approach to historical and political understanding. In a series of writings from the late 1930’s onward, Aron defended a principled middle way between Machiavellian cynicism and the “abstract moralism” so evident in the public engagement of modern intellectuals. Aron argued for the renewal of liberalism on the foundation of a broad-based “democratic conservatism” and displayed remarkable lucidity regarding the totalitarian temptation. This paper explores this distinctive notion of “democratic conservatism”—equally distant from revolutionary romanticism and reactionary nostalgia—that guided Aron’s public engagement over a fifty-year period and that was central to his idea of the political responsibility of intellectuals.