Reuters.com will be streaming the first-ever press conference from a Federal Reserve president, starting at 2:15 pm EDT. Various Reuters contributors will be providing comment and analysis as Ben Bernanke takes questions. Watch and comment here: http://live.reuters.com/Event/Federal_Reserve_meeting_and_press_conference.

By James Ledbetter
The opinions expressed are his own. The piece first appeared in The Washington Post.

Memoirs from technology executives are almost universally bad. Loaded down by jargon, they are typically more self-serving than self-aware. Paul Allen’s “Idea Man” is broader and more engaging than most, yet it is still hampered by its own quirks and blind spots.

In this excerpt from this morning’s Newsmaker interview, PIMCO CEO Mohamed El-Erian explains where he does and does not see risk in the municipal bond market:

In this excerpt from this morning’s Newsmaker interview, PIMCO CEO Mohamed El-Erian admits that he did not foresee the uprisings in Egypt and the Middle East:

In this excerpt from this morning’s Newsmaker interview, PIMCO CEO Mohamed El-Erian explains why his firm has purged U.S. Treasuries from its holdings:

In this excerpt from this morning’s Newsmaker interview, PIMCO CEO Mohamed El-Erian says that further quantitative easing from the Federal Reserve seems unlikely:

In this excerpt from this morning’s Newsmaker interview, PIMCO CEO Mohamed El-Erian expresses hope that the nuclear crisis in Japan will spur technological innovation:

In this excerpt from this morning’s Newsmaker interview, PIMCO CEO Mohamed El-Erian discusses how his firm invests in emerging market currencies:

Here is an excerpt from this morning’s Newsmaker interview with PIMCO CEO Mohamed El-Erian, in which he discusses the economic impact of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami:

Here we go again. In February, the Republican-led House of Representatives passed a budget that would eliminate federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. That event tells you everything you need to know about the resignation this morning of NPR president and chief executive office Vivian Schiller. Yes, her underling Robert Schiller (no relation) embarrassed the organization by making some politically inexpedient remarks about the Tea Party, Republicans,and some more arcane issues, all captured on tape by conservative activists.

But at the average media organization, the “gotcha” video moment would likely have passed without the CEO’s resignation. Public radio is not the average media organization. It is held to an almost certainly unobtainable standard of objectivity, while commercial radio has thrived in recent decades by cultivating the most extreme political voices. It has a significantly larger audience than public television, yet receives a much smaller amount of public funding. And in order to further survival in its current form, it’s forced to regularly appeal to a relatively small number of legislators whose animosity toward it is deep and very public.