Changing Places

Bernanke: economic woes nothing like Depression | Reuters

The current economic slowdown is nothing like the Great Depression of the 1930s, in part because the U.S. Federal Reserve is far more proactive, Chairman Ben Bernanke said on Thursday.

Bernanke, whose academic studies have focused on the Great Depression, said during that era the central bank allowed banks to fail, prices to fall and the money supply to contract, which contributed to the protracted slump.

“We now know the lessons from that,” Bernanke told the World Affairs Council. “We are certainly going to make sure that the financial system remains in good functioning order.”

My husband and I were talking about this, and noting that during the depression, three generations typically already lived together in one home, and usually only one or two of the men were working outside the home, or everyone worked the farm.

Today, we have typically three houses between three generations, and both husbands and wives working. Or we did. The collapse into one house has started — my husband’s parents already live with his sister, for health reasons and economic reasons. My good friend in L.A. is about to be forced to move back in with family if he cannot find a job soon.

In my own family, by the time I was 22 I had graduated college and had my own apartment, and worked all the way through college as well. Now, My 22 year old son is in community college, as is my 18 year old son, and only the 18 year old works, at a job with a friend of mine, at minimum wage. It is difficult for them to find jobs that mesh well with their school schedules, which are limited by class availability. Plus, there are seniors working minimum wage jobs to have health benefits, which limits job availability for the youngest in the work force. Right now we have the lowest level of teen employment since — you guessed it, the great depression.

As families collapse back into a single home, it won’t be like the great depression, but it certainly won’t be like the good times of the 90s, either. Most families now are making slightly less in terms of real dollars than they were in the 70s — and that’s with both parents working.

When I was 26, my husband and I bought our home, our “starter” home, which we still live in. Today, most of our 20 something friends and son’s friends can’t afford a home, and many of our 30 something friends still rent rather than own a home. We chose to stay in our home as we got older, since it is way more affordable than buying a larger home. Today, the Senate is choosing to bail out homeowners who bought more house than they could afford, and the home builders who built too many homes with a large tax break. And we wonder why people haven’t been more fiscally responsible, after years of cheap interest rates and “teaser” rate loans. We watch the big banks and CEOs get their bailouts, and wonder if we were stupid to actually only buy what we could afford.

So Ben, you might not think things are so bad, and comparatively, they are not — my parents’ families both had kids farmed out during the summers during the depression, quite literally, to work the farms and so they would be fed. We aren’t there and will probably not get to that point. But the economic costs of the mistakes of the last seven years are being felt by most Americans. I only hope this time they are smart enough not to be taken in by those who serve the rich and well off, and elect leaders who will truly support the well being of all Americans.

You think you are being responsible in your actions Ben, but you’re not. You’re just taking us further down the rabbit hole of the lack of personal, corporate and governmental responsibility. We need to end this socialism for the rich, and get back to taking care of ALL Americans.

We can’t afford to do less.

In other words: we were conned.

FT.com | Willem Buiter’s Maverecon | The Greenspan Fed: a tragedy of errors

During his years as Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, Alan Greenspan’s statements reflected a partial (in every sense of the world) understanding of how free competitive markets based on private ownership work. This partial understanding also guided his actions as monetary policy maker and financial regulator.

Mr Greenspan consistently saw but half the picture when it came to what makes competitive market capitalism work. He recognised the central roles of greed, self-interest and competition. He failed to appreciate the complementary roles of non-strategic/non-opportunistic forms of altruism, solidarity and cooperation. Both competition and cooperation must be monitored and regulated, lest they become predation and collusion respectively.

Chairman Greenspan emphasized self-regulation, spontaneous order and the disciplining effect of reputation. He failed to appreciate the essential role external or third-party (i.e. state) enforcement of laws, rules and regulations. He did not understand the weakness of reputational concerns as an enforcement or self-discipline mechanism ensuring good behaviour, when credible commitment is limited at best in a world with short horizons and easy exits.

He failed to appreciate the essential role external/third-party (i.e. state) enforcement of laws, rules and regulations, and the indispensability of collective action when faced with the threat of the breakdown of trust and confidence.

Alan Greenspan’s period as Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System represents to me the nadir of central banking in advanced economic-financial systems during modern times. While monetary policy was only mildly incompetent, the regulatory failures were horrendous. The US and the world economy will pay the price for Mr Greenspan’s misjudgements and errors for years, perhaps decades, to come.

By overselling, at home and all over the world, the virtues of American-style transactions-based financial capitalism and light-touch regulation, Mr. Greenspan has done more to harm the cause of decentralised, competitive market-based financial systems based on private ownership, than even Charles Ponzi.

The spectacular failures, first in 1997/98 and then in 2007/08, of the global tests of Mr Greenspan’s theory that global financial markets do not require global regulators and that even national regulators should use only the lightest of touches, did more to discredit financial globalisation and competitive market systems based on private ownership generally than any event since the 1930s.

Or, as my kids would say, “The cake is a LIE!”

Let them eat cake. | The Agonist

Iraq is the attempt to use the capital advantage of the US military to acquire the bottleneck resource of oil. It is bottleneck resources, those things which it is more expensive to shift the supply curve downward, than others. The capital advantage is not essentially American, but is the result of the leaving to the US the monopoly of global super power status. As such, it is an asset which is intrinsically linked to the position of the dollar.

The economic theory of the Bush was that the US would sell mortgage backed paper, and acquire the oil to expand the supply of this mortgage backed paper by invading Iraq and keeping the supply of oil at the point where expansion of mortgage backed paper, an exportable form of capital, was sufficient to pay the continuing trade deficit. It was not a good idea, but it was the best idea that stupid people could execute on. The coalition of the stupid was just large enough to dominate government, and since they knew that they would not do well in a smart economy, they were willing to break any law, destroy any principle, and make others pay any cost to make the Dumbconomy going. The linkage between cheap money, cheap oil and cheap land, on one hand, and invasion of Iraq on the other hand cannot be clearer. The invasion allowed both a huge spigot of government money to be poured into very specific sectors, and allowed setting interest rates far below what they could have been. These combined to prop up demand for sprawling outwards.

However, stupid people die stupid deaths. Iraq has been run by very stupid people. While not at the level of World War I bad generalship, an essential economic reality eluded them. That reality is that since the fight was over oil, the cost of that oil in military conflict would rise, inevitably, to the cost of buying the oil in the first place. Instead of seeking real military victory, the coalition sought a fake one, and used bribes to present a better face on the progress of occupation of Iraq than was the case. As we have seen from the recent Basra uprising, the shia militias understand that their acceptance of the current state of affairs is a very valuable thing, and they can, and will, at any time those bribes ebb in value, be able to attack critical points of the government. The United States, has, in effect, surrendered to the rebel forces, and pays them tribute to keep the situation in Iraq politically viable here at home – billions for tribute, but not one cent for victory. Since the children of the people who made Vietnam a disaster are now in charge of the US government, for however long it lasts, they are willing to do whatever it takes to remain in denial about their own catastrophic incompetence. Since it is more important for the current opposition party to be able to eat small greasy hors d’œvres than to govern the country – the believe if they back into power they can do less for everyone and have more freedom to just hand money to their friends – this current status will not be challenged. A few hundred dead soldiers, two hundred billion dollars of direct expenses and half a trillion in bail out costs are all to be paid by someone else.

The failure of Iraq was inevitable then, because it was a no brainer theory, and that meant it had to be run by people without brains. And so it was.

And not just water lines. All our infrastructure is starting to crumble around us. For what the stupid war is costing, we could fix our infrastructure AND fund alternative energy programs, and reboot our economy at the same time.

But no, we have idiots still in charge of the country…. sigh.

US Water Pipelines Are Breaking – New York Times

Two hours north of New York City, a mile-long stream and a marsh the size of a football field have mysteriously formed along a country road. They are such a marvel that people come from miles around to drink the crystal-clear water, believing it is bubbling up from a hidden natural spring.

The truth is far less romantic: The water is coming from a cracked 70-year-old tunnel hundreds of feet below ground, scientists say.

The tunnel is leaking up to 36 million gallons a day as it carries drinking water from a reservoir to the big city. It is a powerful warning sign of a larger problem around the country: The infrastructure that delivers water to the nation’s cities is badly aging and in need of repairs.

The Environmental Protection Agency says utilities will need to invest more than $277 billion over the next two decades on repairs and improvements to drinking water systems. Water industry engineers put the figure drastically higher, at about $480 billion.

Water utilities, largely managed by city governments, have never faced improvements of this magnitude before. And customers will have to bear the majority of the cost through rate increases, according to the American Water Works Association, an industry group.

Engineers say this is a crucial era for the nation’s water systems, especially in older cities like New York, where some pipes and tunnels were built in the 1800s and are now nearing the end of their life expectancies.

”Our generation hasn’t experienced anything like this. We weren’t around when the infrastructure was being built,” said Greg Kail, spokesman for the water industry group. ”We didn’t pay for the pipes to be put in the ground, but we sure benefited from the improvements to public health that came from it.”

He said the situation has not reached crisis stage, but without a serious investment, ”it can become a crisis. Each year the problem is put on the back burner, the price tag is going to go up.”

From my good friend John Pierce:

So, Fed Reserve Board Chair Ben Bernanke calmly
reassures the Joint Congressional folks yesterday and
the Senate today that there’s only a weak possibility
we could suffer a recession here in a couple of
months, but we’re not in such now…

Uh-huh. Here’s an idea, Benny. Both you and Treasury
Secretary Henry Paulson get your lardy rumps laid off,
right frickin’ now, and instead of receiving any
severance you both have to find brand new jobs. Then,
we’ll see just how rosy your vision is, and how brave
you are. And maybe we could lay off our fabled Decider
and his Shotgun, too.

I’ve said it tiresomely. We’ve been in a recession
since at least JULY 2007. I’m living proof of this
economic slump.

Resilient economy my desperate for work ass!

Johnny

Best hopes for a new, wonderful job for you very, very soon, my friend…..

Dear City of Poway,

Since I’ve customized my home to my own personal needs and added many features other people might not enjoy, I think my home is just as functionally obsolete as Larry Ellison’s. Please reduce my property taxes immediately!

Thanks,

Donna

Good grief, what a tard this man is.

$3 million tax cut on Larry Ellison’s estate

Larry Ellison, ranked 12th on the Forbes 500 list with a net worth of $25 billion, has bagged a $3 million tax break after arguing that his flamboyant Japanese-style estate in Woodside is functionally obsolete.
The chief executive officer of software giant Oracle Corp. will be paid from San Mateo County property taxes collected this year, which otherwise would have gone to schools, the county general fund and cities, among other things, Deputy Controller Kanchan Charan said. The hit to schools alone will be nearly $1.4 million.
Ellison’s Octopus Holdings LP acquired the 23-acre site in May 1995 for $12 million and spent nine years constructing the lavish property, modeled on a Japanese emperor’s 16th century country residence, according to the San Mateo assessment appeals board.
It consists of a nearly 8,000-square-foot main house with two wings, a guest home, three cottages and a gymnasium as well as a 5-acre man-made lake, two waterfalls and two bridges. Hundreds of mature cherry, maple and other trees were planted among nearly 1,000 redwoods, pines and oaks.

Or whatever you would like to donate to Heifer – the Gates Foundation is matching donations:

Go here and click on the donation button to give:

Heifer International has received a $2.5 Million Matching Grant Challenge from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to support the new East Africa Dairy Development Project. The project aims to help 179,000 families – one million people – lift themselves out of poverty by giving them a more profitable way to produce and market milk from small farms.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will double your gift to the East Africa Dairy Development Project. Help lift 1 million from poverty – make the most generous gift you can today.

Don’t forget many employers will match charity donations, too. You could triple your gift!

Stirling states the economic case for regime change….

Party Like It’s 1926 | The Agonist

Bernanke has now allowed brokers to borrow directly from the Federal Reserve, and created a series of instruments which, in effect, allow the creation of money based on speculatively held money. Bernanke’s moves in the last few days have, in effect, created a new basis for the US currency. It is one that has been building for some time. That basis is the value of stocks held. This was visible by the “Poor Pound” thesis: that priced in independently generated currencies, the American stock market has been remarkably flat.

This change was inevitable, and predictable. Sooner or later the American Dollar must be based, in a global economy, on the global evaluation of our production. However, the question, as with every previous monetary order, is whether the pieces fit together. Presently, they do not.

The reason they don’t is because there is no narrow channel which keeps the powers that be from leaning too far in one direction. There is no consequence for those temporarily in power from simply spewing dollars in every direction, and letting those that they do not like pay the costs. That is what is happening now, the coalition of farmers and oil men that held Bush in power, are doing very well. The defense contractors have made out very well, and those that loan money to the government are doing well. Those that are being bailed out have seen their share of national wealth and income skyrocket.

The key is not re-regulation, but a Nash equilibrium, a state where no group can unilaterally improve its position at the expense of others. This state is the challenge for the next administration. It will require a fundamentally different political order, as the great overturns of monetary basis in the past have been based on different constitutional orders to both create, and navigate, the narrow channel which their monetary system rests upon.

The pieces must interlock to the regulation of the financial system, and they must end the disequilibrium where the wealthy can dump risk on others, and take the profits for themselves.

Talking Points Memo | Unfit for Duty

Josh Marshall:

The idea that fighting jihadists in Iraq or policing the country’s sectarian and ethnic disputes is the calling of this century is one that is belied in virtually everything we see in flux in today’s world and which seems certain to affect us through the rest of our lifetimes and our children’s.

It is very difficult to draw practical lessons from history. But one of the closest things to a law is that military power is almost always built on economic might. And the former seldom long outlasts the latter. Indeed, countries with sound finances have routinely been able to punch over their weight — great Britain and the Netherlands during different periods are key examples. So fiscal soundness even over the medium term is much more important than any particular weapon system or basing right.

Then you step back and see the huge number of dollars we’re pouring into Iraq, the vast mountains of capital being piled up in China, the oil-fueled resurgence of Russia, the weakness of the dollar (not only in exchange rate but in its future as a reserve currency), the rising tide of anti-Americanism around the world. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything from John McCain that suggests he’s given serious consideration to any of these issues, except as possible near term military challenges — i.e., is China building a blue water navy to challenge the US, Russian weapons systems, etc.

Candidly, I do not think I’ve heard sufficient discussions or solutions to these challenges from my preferred candidates. But neither has the myopia that McCain has about Iraq. Or the willingness to spend — how else to put it — like a drunken sailor in that country at the expense of everything else now going on in the world.

Hillary Clinton has stipulated to McCain’s qualifications as Commander-in-Chief; and Obama, implicitly, does the same. But his record actually shows he’s one of the most dangerous people we could have in the Oval Office in coming years — not just because he’s a hothead in using the military, but more because he seems genuinely clueless about the real challenges and dangers the country is facing. He’s too busy living in the fantasy world where our future as a great power and our very safety are all bound up in Iraq.

And the rich are still not paying for this war. Our young men and women in the services are paying their all for it, though.

Lies and more lies, almost 4000 young American lives gone, tens of thousands of young Americans injured, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis dead and injured, millions of Iraqis who have fled their homes. And Bush calls this “worth it”. Worth what? The neocon dream of empire, the ridiculous oil profits, the billions to war contractors? Worth it. To whom, Mr. Bush — not to the American people or the Iraqi public, that’s for sure.

Economics Blog : The Double Dissent: Dallas’s Fisher and Philadelphia’s Plosser

It seems if your a business you just drive up to the FED ATM without a card and take your money – no problem. If you have a home and ask for 60 days to try and come up with a solution to save it, they want three hundred pages of information and then tell you no way. I’m an Iraq veteran whose unit was activated 4 times for there and keeping a regular job was not an option as my employers wouldn’t tolerate the abscences despite laws to the contrary. I have a number of medals for bravery but no home for my family, Ironically JP Morgan Chase has it now and they are just agents for Deutsche Bank. Now, it looks like I may be called up again to go to Iraq. Before all this I was as stable as iron. Not anymore, health problems and homelessness is my reality, with a family on the streets. and a projected return to Iraq. I guess I fought for nothing! America’s not my dream anymore, it’s someone else’s and I just don’t understand it. I’ve done everything by the book with honor and yet it’s been a diaster. I’m pretty well done at 21.
Comment by Fred Martinez – March 18, 2008 at 7:20 pm

The Two Economies | The Economic Populist

Guess what? Now there are two economies, one for the investors, super elites and the real one for the rest of us. We should not pay attention to the paper economy according to financial advisers, it’s just the place where the super elites create investment vehicles, derivatives, hedge funds, bonds…and all of that stuff which is simply the trading of paper. Nope, the real economy is just fine. The trouble is this paper economy.

I’d say so. Corporations get $200B. Americans, of which over 2 million homeowners are facing foreclosure, get…$600 dollars.

Corporations trading bad debt to the point of insolvency and guaranteed bankruptcy get bought out with Fed intervention….Americans get their jobs offshore outsourced and bankruptcy bills that don’t allow them to get out of their debt despite being dirt poor.

Even worse, it seems there is an entire economy just for the super rich that consists of new investment vehicles which when discovered to be pure fiction, get a bail out.

(sssh! you’re not supposed to call it all a bail out!)

Finally, don’t forget for the small investor, those financial journalists must be prudent, after all they cannot accurately report on this other economy because after all, that might cause a run on the banks….

Neo-conservative thought has been shown to be a failure at everything else it has attempted – now it is destroying our financial system. Long, hard ride down is ahead, people. The market is now into a dangerous game of Liar’s Poker.

Rattling Apart: Captain Carnage and the Bear | The Agonist

In 2001, as soon as he was made the economic advisor to Bush, I stated repeatedly that Ben Bernanke would be made the Federal Reserve Chairman after Greenspan, and that he would be a disaster. This was based on a reading of his academic work, which was, essentially, a series of attempts to prove that such a neo-conservative system could avoid the collapse that lead to the Great Depression. No Great Depression, no FDR. No FDR, no situation where the rich would have to accept regulation and restriction in return for bailing out. In essence the first problem is the “Great Contraction.” The United States and other nations, to attempt to re-impose the Gold Standard after allowing it to lapse for the First World War, had to at a certain point accept prices at the new levels, or had to dramatically reduce the money supply. They chose the later, creating a massive contraction of the money supply. This was done in the face of a downturn, because it was feared that a downturn would lead to easy money, and this to hyper-inflation of the kind witnessed in Germany, or very high inflation, as seen after the First World War. For them, coming after a two generation period where deflation was the norm during the classical gold standard and the consolidation of the first Conservative Era, globally, inflation was a horror.

Bernanke and others, argued that the Great Depression was not in any way a structural event, but strictly a macroeconomic monetary event. That strictly macroëconomic policy measures could have been used to effect the bailout. There were two major intellectual problems. One of them is the point where monetary policy is “pushing on a string.” Or what Bernanke called “the zero point”. The “bold” steps turn out to be the same sort of maneuvers used in the first decade of this century: finding deep pockets and hiding the losses.

Bernanke’s failures begin as economic advisor to the President and continue in his time on the Federal Reserve. The culminate with his failure to either deal with the liquidity crisis, or to face inflation head on. By allowing the housing bubble, and the financial bubble built on it, to explode he set up the very circumstances. By dragging his feet on raising interest rates, and then by ignoring the expanding monetary crisis, Bernanke has set the stage where neither he, nor anyone else, is in a position to act. With a President who is content to give imaginary orders to imaginary armies, there is no center of power that can move. It also indicates that the opposition party has made a series of gross miscalculations about the situation, believing the rhetoric that things were going well, and that they were getting the best deal they could. They were facing people who were bluffing all the way, and are now realizing that there is no rush to give way on anything.

The “slow” rate raising campaign was a double disaster, it neither headed off inflation nor did it keep credit easy enough. This is because the problem was not the level of interest rates, per se, but what we were spending the money on. As many, many, many commentators, many, many times have pointed out, the US was consuming too much, and exporting too little. The Neo-Conservative happy monsters said that this could go on for ever, giving other people our paper for their oil and goods.

While it is possible that we will emerge from this functional, the likelihood is that we are going to see a continued fall for the next 9 months, as the crisis deepens, a die hard illegitimate executive burns his last brands on our skin, and a feckless opposition folds its cards over and over and over again, allowing ordinary people to bear the brunt of the continued contraction.

We are riding this bucket down a ways farther, because there is nothing to right the equilibrium, and without the stimulus from war spending, on which we are so dependent, there will be no pick up in business activity soon. There will be some increased exports, but not sufficient to take the place of the cratering of housing.

What needs to be done? Re-regulation is obvious. Making the Fed serve elected policy makers is a no brainer. Restating numbers to prevent the white washing of bubbles is essential, a public sense of ownership of the financial system as part of the “high ground of the economy” seems essential. Firing Ben Bernanke is a pink do this to day post it note.

But most essentially there needs to be a change in the basis of money, simply because the obvious stability of real estate assets in the United States will no longer be enough.

Over the Hedge

In case you’re looking for a safer investment considering the state of the financial market right now….

So, Republicans can’t even handle their own money, and taxpayers are supposed to trust them with their money?

I don’t think so.

Not even a second sign-off. I’ve NEVER worked for an organization that didn’t require at least two signatures to transfer money. Ever. This is not just fraud – it’s organizational stupidity.

NRCC Treasurer Accused of Campaign Fraud

The former treasurer for the National Republican Congressional Committee transferred as much as $1 million in committee funds into his personal and business accounts, officials announced today, describing a scheme that could prove to be one of the largest campaign frauds in recent history.

For at least four years, Christopher J. Ward, who is under investigation by the FBI, used wire transfers to funnel money out of the NRCC and into other political committees he controlled, then shifted the funds into his own personal accounts, the committee said.

“The evidence we have today indicated we have been deceived and betrayed for a number of years by a highly respected and trusted individual,” said Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), NRCC chairman.

The committee also announced that it had submitted to banks five years of audits and financial documents allegedly forged by Ward, some of which were used to secure multimillion-dollar loans. It is a violation of federal bank fraud laws to obtain loans through false statements; such crimes are punishable by up to $1 million in fines and 30 years in prison.

Prior to today, the committee had not acknowledged that any money was missing. It announced Feb. 1 that it had discovered “irregularities” and had called in federal investigators to pursue a fraud case.

Robert K. Kelner, a lawyer with Covington & Burling, which has been hired by the committee to oversee a forensic audit, told reporters that at this point he could say for certain only that Ward had diverted “several hundred thousand dollars” in unauthorized payments dating to 2004. However, he said that the year-end report filed with the Federal Election Commission in 2006 overstated the NRCC’s actual cash on hand by $990,000.

That might be the upper level of how much money Ward allegedly skimmed from NRCC coffers, but Kelner said forensic auditors need to keep “drilling down” to determine how much was inappropriately taken and how much might have been the result of sloppy bookkeeping.

Kelner said that Ward had the sole power at the NRCC to use wire transfers to shift money into any accounts he wanted. “He was able to get a wire transfer without getting a second sign-off,” Kelner said.

My good friend John in L.A. is getting a mite desperate to pay his rent – if you know of any graphic design jobs in L.A., please let me know. Or hey, just send him some good wishes.

Of course, Arnie is busy shutting down teachers’ jobs and cutting college and university school budgets here in CA – I wonder what he expects all our 20-something kids, who will have no jobs in a recession, to do if they can’t get the classes they need?

UPDATE:
From an email from a teacher friend at UC San Marcos this afternoon:

! i just got some good news about my job today – i dodged a bullet – out of the 10 people who were in the conference room today – 5 walked out without jobs…

But hey, we can bail out all of the “too big to fail” banks. I say sure, right after we repossess all of THEIR houses and cars and yachts, and take away the lovely California yacht loophole, or the sloophole, as they call it.

No money for schools, but heaven forbid the rich lose their tax break for yachts. And we wonder what is wrong with our society. The problem is the rich only like socialism when it benefits THEM!

Well, this is ironic.

And sad, in a way.

But I feel a lot more for all the families that will end up losing their homes that don’t have rich daddies.

Florida Taking Its Toll (Brothers) On Daughter’s Condo – Realty Check with Diana Olick – CNBC.com

You just can’t make this stuff up. Apparently even a big builder’s daughter can’t seem to keep faith in the Florida housing market. According to an SEC filing, Wendy Topkis, daughter of Toll Brothers co-founder and Vice-Chairman Bruce Toll, is walking away from a Florida condo, just like everyone else. A Toll Bros. condo!! The Palm Beach Post says it best: Et Tu Wendy?

According to the home builder’s proxy statement:

Prior to fiscal 2007, the Company entered into an agreement of sale to build and sell a condominium to Wendy Topkis, Bruce E. Toll’s daughter, and her husband for a purchase price of $2,468,075. In January 2008, the buyers informed the Company that they did not intend to make settlement on the condominium. The Company intends to pursue its rights under the agreement of sale.

Does that mean they’ll sue darling daughter? The company’s general counsel says they are pursuing normal procedures.

Daddy is quoted as saying she just changed her mind because she had another child and the place would be too small, but I’m guessing the 13 percent drop in Florida prices was screaming at her a little louder than the baby. So Wendy just adds to the company’s 61 percent cancellation rate in the Sunshine State.

Now, if Wendy was required to put down the same 7 percent deposit on the new home as everybody else, then she could be out $172,765. Of course, daddy owns almost five percent of the company (market cap around $3.5 billion) so maybe he could help out, or perhaps he wants her to learn about fiscal responsibility the hard way. None of my business of course; just family business…or lack thereof.

More than happy to be a part of it myself…. ;^)

the choice of a nude generation | The Agonist

there is a conspiracy, of which i am a professed member, to dismantle the petroleum society. the petroleum society introduced a host of concepts, including the nuclear family, in its drive to make labor mobile to the convenient places of production.

the conspiracy is to move production into forms that people can do where and when they want, even stark naked in their own bedroom.

the social forms and norms which came with the mechanized world have not been successes by and large. the divorce rate is high, it has torn apart the african american community entirely – moynihan had it exactly wrong, it wasn’t that african-americans were failing at marriage, it is that nuclear marriage was failing them. one major reason that immigrant communities do better than indigenous african-american ones, is that the immigrants keep the nuclear norm. the parents come over when needed, or the children are shipped back.

the nuclear norm is also one that is lividly more bigotted than the extended one. this is because each partner is the sole source of emotional support for the other. it has lead, directly, to a rise in the consumption of video pornography and use of sex aids, including bondage-discipline and sado-masochism, as ways of keeping the sexual passion alive in the the nuclear couple. it is also why “defense of marriage” becomes more an obsession of the right wing. the nuclear marriage, as more fragile and stressed, needs it.

at the same time, the economic realities which allowed and encouraged the nuclear family are being crushed from both sides – young people are failing to launch, and old people are collapsing back into the home to be cared for. often both at once.

the nude generation enters this reality without an attachment to the nuclear family, without a job picture that encourages the nuclear family, that is moving to someplace and having a long residence there in the employ of one company. the nude generation therefore, neither respects the norms of that system, nor do they have any force impelling them too.

instead, as people who find people by craigslist, facebook, linkedin, friendster, myspace, and even more exotic tools, they are impelled to build networks that are polymorphous, polyamorous in many cases, and polyvalent. multi is the word of the past, poly the word that the nude generation falls upon. the polytropic has become polyagenous, a society made out of things which are indefinite in their form and structure. we don’t buy things as much as we buy things that make things. computers, smartphones, internet service, sites that link us to new content we didn’t know about, websites and so on.

this conspiracy to overturn the past is driven my many things, it make sense because the past really has robbed the nude generation blind. in the last 30 years the end of the GI generation, and the beginning of the baby boom, has spent the money that the second half of the baby boom, the baby bust and the echo boom assumed would be there. they have eaten the air, fouled the economy, spent the credit, burned the oil, used up the land to build, largely, parking lots.

From one of our local papers:

Forclosure mess emptying Oceanside neighborhoods, hurting those who’ve stayed North County Times – North San Diego and Southwest Riverside County News

Last year, one out of every 17 homes in Oceanside’s 92057 ZIP code entered foreclosure in this northeast corner of the city, according to data from RealtyTrac, a foreclosure tracking service, and the San Diego Association of Governments. Those numbers do not include December foreclosures.

The resulting effects, shown in a North County Times analysis of foreclosure and sale listing data, in that ZIP code illustrate the pandemic nature of the county’s, and the nation’s, housing crisis:

– For every nonforeclosed home for sale, there are about four to five homes in, or in serious danger of, foreclosure.

– Half of the area’s 36 December home sales were foreclosures.

– Just less than half of the month’s sales, 44 percent, sold for more than 10 percent below the original listing price. One home sold for 37 percent lower than the original listing, a $142,400 freefall.

– Of homes for sale in the beginning of January, 65 percent of 362 listings are either in some stage of foreclosure or on sale for less than the previous sale price or total loan amount.

“I think there’s more people that have lost their homes than actually still live here,” said Courtney Jones.

Many of the foreclosed families here said they were sent into foreclosure when their subprime loans graduated from the initial “teaser” rate — a low interest rate generally offered for only the first two or three years of a 30-year mortgage — to a higher adjustable interest rate.

But 30 miles northeast and across the Riverside County line, it is clear the spike in regional foreclosures knows no credit score. There, the city of Murrieta saw one of every nine homes enter foreclosure last year.

I’ve been following the housing mess pretty closely, mostly on Calculated Risk. I really feel for the people that are suffering from this bubble bursting, especially the families getting hurt.

I hope all those who profited from creating this mess are happy. I often wonder how some of them can sleep at night. It must be a lot easier to live without a conscience.

Daily Kos: Annie Leonard’s The Story of Stuff

While the problems of consumer culture have spread worldwide, America holds a unique place in the scheme that Annie dates back to decisions that we made at the outset of the Industrial Revolution. In some countries, people chose to take advantage of increasing productivity to reduce the work week, to take more vacations, and enjoy more time with family and friends. But in America, every gain was turned into a material gain, into more stuff. Rather than gathering in more happiness and freedom from advancing technology, we buried ourselves in an ever accelerating quest for the latest goodies. Generation by generation, year by year, we’ve accumulated more goods and consumed more of the world’s resources (and made ourselves more miserable).

It’s a problem that’s perpetuated today by everything from the way we’re entertained to the way we’re educated. Where once we practiced “keeping up with the Joneses” by comparing ourselves to our neighbors, television has provided a window on consumer paradise where part-time baristas own huge Manhattan apartments and office workers dress in the latest designer duds. We’re no longer happy to compare our possessions with the couple down the street, we have to compete with Brad and Angelina. We don’t want what our friends have, or what our parents had, we want what Oprah has. This “vertical expansion of the reference group” means we can never reach our goals and are always left feeling as if we’ve failed. The only solution to our inadequacy? Go shopping for more stuff!

Shopping has become the key to how we view ourselves to such an extent that not only did George W. Bush urge us to shop ourselves out of the peril of 9/11, even environmental activists often turn to the mall. What’s the most frequent advice dispensed to people trying to behave more responsibly? Buy green. It’s advice that not only encourages still more consumption as means to address the problem of over-consumption, but it all too often ignores the market forces that have delivered “green” products to the local mall — forces that rarely have any concern for the resources or people damaged along the way.

As we worry about the current economic downturn, even the way we attempt to measure our problems reflects this distorted shopaholic culture. Take a primal forest, kick out the people who have lived there for generations, cut down the trees, slice them into pieces, soak them in toxic chemicals, turn them into disposable products, and ship the discarded remains off to a landfill. On the business page of your local paper or the glitzy stock channel on your television, each of those steps has the same name: growth. What’s a recession? Lack of growth. How do we end a recession? Stimulate spending on more disposable items, so we can buy more disposable goods, so we can cut down more forests, so we can have more… growth.

But if the first part of Annie’s film is devoted to describing the problems of our current unsustainable culture of disposable goods, it’s the final part that deserves special attention. Rather than stopping with the bad news, Annie shoots straight on into the good — we can change. The most engaging part of her description of our society is that everyone can find their place in the flow, and the same dynamic means that everyone is positioned to help change how things work. Environmental issues, social justice, and economics all play into making the change toward a fair, sustainable society. There are as many ways to insert yourself into the process as there are products on the shelves of the local big box store.

Go see the Story of Stuff here.

My favorite tip from the site:

Buy Green, Buy Fair, Buy Local, Buy Used, and most importantly, Buy Less. Shopping is not the solution to the environmental problems we currently face because the real changes we need just aren’t for sale in even the greenest shop. But, when we do shop, we should ensure our dollars support businesses that protect the environment and worker rights. Look beyond vague claims on packages like “all natural” to find hard facts. Is it organic? Is it free of super-toxic PVC plastic? When you can, buy local products from local stores, which keeps more of our hard earned money in the community. Buying used items keeps them out of the trash and avoids the upstream waste created during extraction and production. But, buying less may be the best option of all. Less pollution. Less Waste. Less time working to pay for the stuff. Sometimes, less really is more.

Soros lays it all out on the table…. go read the whole piece, it’s good.

FT.com / In depth – The worst market crisis in 60 years

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Credit expansion must now be followed by a period of contraction, because some of the new credit instruments and practices are unsound and unsustainable. The ability of the financial authorities to stimulate the economy is constrained by the unwillingness of the rest of the world to accumulate additional dollar reserves. Until recently, investors were hoping that the US Federal Reserve would do whatever it takes to avoid a recession, because that is what it did on previous occasions. Now they will have to realise that the Fed may no longer be in a position to do so. With oil, food and other commodities firm, and the renminbi appreciating somewhat faster, the Fed also has to worry about inflation. If federal funds were lowered beyond a certain point, the dollar would come under renewed pressure and long-term bonds would actually go up in yield. Where that point is, is impossible to determine. When it is reached, the ability of the Fed to stimulate the economy comes to an end.

Although a recession in the developed world is now more or less inevitable, China, India and some of the oil-producing countries are in a very strong countertrend. So, the current financial crisis is less likely to cause a global recession than a radical realignment of the global economy, with a relative decline of the US and the rise of China and other countries in the developing world.

The danger is that the resulting political tensions, including US protectionism, may disrupt the global economy and plunge the world into recession or worse.