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Michael Moynihan
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As an NDN Fellow and director of the Green Project (working title), Michael Moynihan brings to NDN significant policy experience. He is currently a PhD candidate and William Bowen Merit Fellow at The Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University and on the faculty of New York University’s Real Estate Institute. In 1999, he founded the first Internet video sharing community and website, AlwaysonTV, pioneering such innovations as personal video channels and video greetings. From 1996 to 1999, Michael served in the Clinton Administration where he held the Internet portfolio and advised Secretaries Rubin and Summers as Senior Advisor for Electronic Commerce. While in the Clinton Administration, he led successful efforts to pass the Internet Tax Freedom Act, helped negotiate e-commerce agreements on payments, taxation and other issues with the EU and Japan, and oversaw the e-commerce efforts of Treasury’s 140,000 employees. Prior to assuming the Internet portfolio, he advised Secretaries Rubin and Summers on a variety of other issues including managing debt crises, reforming the global financial architecture, balancing the budget and modernizing the IRS.

Michael has also been a fellow of the Center for Strategic and International Studies and was the Robert C. Seamans Fellow in Technology and Public Policy at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. He holds degrees from Columbia and Harvard.

Michael is the author of the critically acclaimed book, The Coming American Renaissance (Simon & Schuster) and other books. His writing has appeared in Harper’s, The New York Times, The Washington Post and other publications.

Blog Entries by Michael Moynihan

The Death and Life of Social Media

(3) Comments | Posted August 22, 2012 | 5:28 PM

The recent drop in Facebook shares to half their IPO price, coupled with falling prices of Zynga and Groupon stock, have prompted a deluge of articles proclaiming the bursting of the social media bubble. From the Wall Street Journal zeroing in on the the exit of Mark Andresson...

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The Cleanweb Takes Off

(2) Comments | Posted January 25, 2012 | 10:01 AM

This past weekend in New York, a group of high tech companies, venture investors, hackers, college students and observers like me held the second Cleanweb Hackathon on the NYU campus. For those not familiar with a hackathon, it is a gathering where software developers and serial entrepreneurs, fueled by coffee...

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What's Next for Clean Energy

(27) Comments | Posted July 31, 2011 | 6:02 PM

This past weekend, I attended the Aspen Institute's Clean Energy Roundtable, an annual gathering of business, political and policy leaders working in clean energy. Inspired by the many insights and ideas presented, here are my thoughts on the state of clean energy today and what lies ahead.

First the...

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End OPEC Now!

(36) Comments | Posted June 8, 2011 | 9:57 AM

The OPEC cartel that meets in Vienna today has thrived in its 50-year history. First ignored, then despised for using the "oil weapon" on the West, and ultimately granted a strange legitimacy due to age, it has assumed all the trappings of an international organization. This week's meeting of Mahmoud...

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Secretary of Commerce Nominee John Bryson

(2) Comments | Posted June 1, 2011 | 8:54 PM

There are many reasons that John Bryson, nominated by President Obama yesterday to be the next Secretary of Commerce, is an ideal pick for the job. Bryson, as many news outlets have reported, is a highly successful CEO who, sitting on the boards of companies like Boeing and Disney, understands...

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Osama and the Islamic Bomb

(1) Comments | Posted May 3, 2011 | 3:20 PM

In the wake of the successful mission to kill Osama Bin Laden and end his career of terror, much attention has focused on possible reprisals by the Al Qaeda organization. Will his followers attempt an attack here? In Israel? Or perhaps in Asia, Africa or the developing world. These are...

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Energy One Year Later

(2) Comments | Posted March 31, 2011 | 3:04 PM

Between President Obama's Energy speech at Andrews Airforce Base at the end of March, 2010 and his speech yesterday at Georgetown, much has changed in energy. Unfortunately, with the exception of the promise of fracked gas, it has not been for the better.

A year ago, there was a real...

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News From the Future

(2) Comments | Posted March 23, 2011 | 10:32 AM

There are times when news is light. There are times when it is off the charts. Over the last few weeks, we have seen populist uprisings sweep the Middle East and China, an earthquake and tsunami level Japan, multiple nuclear meltdowns and over the last few days, the entrance of...

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Black Swan Over Tokyo

(2) Comments | Posted March 14, 2011 | 5:50 PM

The earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan on Friday is a disaster from which Japan may need years to recover. It is a disaster, however, from which the Japanese and by extension world nuclear industry may never recover. The meltdowns at up to six reactors that the Japanese are now...

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The Other CES: Why Community Storage Is a Good Idea

(17) Comments | Posted March 4, 2011 | 12:30 PM

As the clean energy standard idea proposed by President Obama in his State of the Union address works its way through Congress, another CES is also generating buzz in the clean energy world. Its full name: community electricity storage.

CES -- the storage variety -- is about placing storage at...

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The Secret Sauce of Economic Growth

(5) Comments | Posted February 18, 2011 | 1:04 PM

Over the last few decades, the field of economics has made important strides in understanding economic growth. The secret sauce in the new growth theory is something called increasing returns. They are not not supposed to occur in classical economics and don't occur in classic models of the broad economy....

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Winning the Future

(3) Comments | Posted January 27, 2011 | 5:03 PM

The vision President Obama laid out in his State of the Union -- future forward and focused on winning the clean energy race through innovation, freeing business to compete and investing in research and education -- was spot on. So was the parallel he drew to Sputnik. For the United...

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Invasive Searches and the Soul of the Democratic Party

(53) Comments | Posted November 23, 2010 | 2:29 PM

Since the Transportation Security Agency began deep searches of airline passengers, a firestorm of protest has broken out. YouTube videos and news reports have shown TSA agents in the unseemly role of asking pilots--who control the fate of planes and may carry arms--to submit to x-rated searches, women, from teenage...

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Jobs, Healthcare and the Simplicity of Voting One's Conscience

(0) Comments | Posted March 20, 2010 | 1:39 PM

Republicans and Democratics draft a bill to solve the single most pressing issue of the day. Working closely and amically they speed it to the the President's desk, he signs it and the bill becomes law. Amidst the rancor over health care legislation, this might seem like an echo of...

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Climate Skepticism and Clean Technology

(0) Comments | Posted February 19, 2010 | 2:59 PM

When the UN awarded the Nobel prize to the scientists who make up the IPCC and Al Gore in 2008 for their work in documenting climate change from greenhouse gases, in the eyes of most of the world, the science on this issue was solved. In recent months, however, a...

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Putting the Green in Green Shoots

(2) Comments | Posted June 23, 2009 | 4:18 PM

A new wave of pessimism seems to be washing over the economy. Its source is hard to pinpoint but there is no shortage of candidates: rising unemployment (if a declining rate of rise), second thoughts about the recovery of the stock market and even the Administration's rhetoric which in recent...

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Converting on the Smart Grid Opportunity

(3) Comments | Posted June 3, 2009 | 12:08 PM

New York City -- The stock market's relatively easy acceptance of the GM bankruptcy -- vastly improved at the last minute by a deal with bondholders to permit a pre-packaged filing so that the bankruptcy is more likely to move quickly-- provides yet another indication that the economy may finally...

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Acting in Time on Climate Change

(0) Comments | Posted May 20, 2009 | 3:35 PM

One of the things that has struck me more than anything else in directing the NDN Green Project over the last year and a half is how events have so often outstripped policy. Last year when oil prices were spiking, contributing to the economic crisis that erupted in the fall...

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What America Needs is a Fixed 4% Mortgage

(3) Comments | Posted February 3, 2009 | 12:37 PM

New York City - Debt crises, as I have written before, are as old as civilization. And history has shown that when debt exceeds the ability to repay, there is only one solution: debt reduction. This can take the form of a general release as in the Biblical jubilee...

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Building the Electron Superhighway

(10) Comments | Posted November 25, 2008 | 5:58 PM

Should the federal government build or incent others to build a new electron superhighway? In other words, a backbone for a 21st century electrical grid? At NDN's recent event on clean infrastructure, U.S. Rep. Jay Inslee asked precisely that question and it's one more and more energy leaders are asking....

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