WWGD?

Another half point today? After a three quarters point cut less than a month ago? 125 basis points in less than a month makes it sound like somebody hit the panic button. It almost seems as if the Fed was asleep at the switch when the economic train thundered by with the words "Recession Express" stamped on the side. Seriously, did the FOMC wake up and just realize this? And just how does one "fix" an economy perceived to be ailing because of credit problems? Allow consumers to borrow more? As I remarked to Kalvin today:

"As a dog returns to its vomit...so will a fool return to sub-prime, securitized mortgages."

The signals are mixed right now, GDP grew a bit last quarter, not much, but it was still growing--despite expectations of worse for high energy prices and a slumping housing market. But is there enough there to justify such an adjustment?

Part of me wonders what would Greenspan have done (WWGD!), his reign as Fed chair seemed to be more measured, more thoughtful. Greenspan led. Bernanke (so far) has come across as a market appeaser at best, un-observant at the worst. He follows. One has to believe there is a better way to influence markets than this; in fact, one might make the case economies must contract every so often and macroeconomic factors are just out of our influence. We might be able to ease the pain, but the pain must be felt.

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Democracy in action

Or as the Stones song goes "You can't always get what you want".

Norma Heyser is an activist. She has been her whole life. She helped organize her neighborhood of single family homes to oppose a library which was too large.

Now she wants to tear down her single family home and put six condos on it for senior housing and the neighborhood is saying NO. And she is not happy that the people she encouraged to become involved and active in the neighborhood oppose her plan strongly.

Democracy is the will of the people, even when the people oppose your ideas as Heyser is finding out.

News roundup

Lot of news to share today and so without further ado . . .

In Austria, a gorilla still isn't considered a person. The lawsuit has now been thrown out of three courts but the group says they will appeal. I'm glad Austria is still showing common sense, a gorilla isn't a person, but its scary that they only need one judge to change the basic definition of what a person is.

British Airways is buying a lot of airplanes and decided to split the order between the Boeing 787 and Airbus 380. Personally I think BA will quietly cancel or sideline the 380s when their true operating costs are known.

Now we can see if yanks care where things are made. Toy stores are starting to set up areas in their stores where all toys are made in the US or Europe so shoppers can avoid toys made in China. Be interesting to see how long that will last.

Israel, Syria, the US and the rest of the Middle East are still not talking about the Israeli air attack on Syria last week. Here are some suggestions on why that may be.

John McCain is a smart man, but in a serious article on energy independence he makes a stupid premise. We need to become oil independent so lets increase the use of nuclear power for generating electricity. Ok, first, increasing the use of nuclear power is not a bad idea. But we DO NOT use much oil to make electricity. We use natural gas and coal for the majority of our electrical generation. Oil accounts for less then 5% of our electricity generation needs. We use oil for TRANSPORTATION. So building a lot of nuclear plants won't solve our oil use unless you think we will all drive electric cars.

And speaking of cars, here is an interesting article on the future transportation modes.

The new Iraqi Army and why it has taken so much time to get them up to speed.

The sub-prime bailout and costs to landlords and the tax nightmare being envisioned.

Have a good day.

Bad Lender

Now that the government has started talking about government assistance to the people who have taken out bad mortgages, it is only a matter of time before some Senator or Representative puts forth the idea to bailout bad loans.

My question is this: Where do I get MY government assistance? How come I don't get a handout? This could just reek. Already, because of corporate and individual irresponsibility towards debt, I will have to pay more in fees or higher interest rates.

Face it, folks. This is the morning after the cheap and easy days of virtually free money. It had to happen; maybe next time we'll be a little bit smarter when signing a 30 page document involving $300,000.

Sheesh, some days you wish you were a Helmsley dog.