Principle over Principal, An Unblinking View From the Rabbit Hole

In a sign of how perilous the national economy is, The New York Times favors broadly reducing principal on underwater residential mortgages (”Not much relief”, July 5, 2009). “Everybody wins” according to the Times by resolving the collateral damage of a speculator-driven economy. Taxpayers win because they will not be required to dole out additional billions when the economy is dragged down further the rabbit hole.

But here is who doesn’t win: responsible homeowners who did not buy a bigger mortgage than they could reasonably afford, or, citizens who could have bought but rented or who otherwise remained on the sidelines during the speculative frenzy that turned home mortgages into gambling chips to enhance their standard of living. Why should these heroes be forced to pay?

The Tears of Mark Sanford: Tripped Up by 35,000 Year Old Flute

In the 1960’s, conservatives were fixated by the threat of the Red Menace and a youthful culture supine with drugs and rock ‘n roll. They set out the foundations of a new Moral Majority to combat these threats. The precepts of the Moral Majority were Christian, mainly, Republican, mainly, and meshed with Chamber of Commerce values, mainly. SC Governor Mark Sanford, who exemplified these conservative values, is only the latest politician who knocked down the limbo stick.

Bailing out the Land Speculators: The transformation of Charlie Crist

(Counterpunch) As Democrats approach a filibuster proof US Senate, every race will be a heated battle. In 2010 one of the key contests will be in Florida where a governor perceived to be moderate, Charlie Crist, is locked in a primary against the former House Speaker in the Florida legislature, Marco Rubio.

No Place Like Home: federal stress test for land use, not just banks

(Counterpunch) Eonomists agree that the collapse in housing markets in the United States plunged world economies into the worst crisis since the 1930’s. A revival of housing markets and new construction is one of the anticipated signs of recovery. In the meantime, the US taxpayer is on the hook for trillions of dollars of debt constituted from the detritus of the housing boom. If value is to be created in service of a new economic order, it is imperative that stimulus money be directed in ways that prevent reigniting a model of growth through construction and development that has demonstrably failed: namely, through the fraudulent wealth creator called suburban sprawl.

The Quicksand Economy: Feeding the status quo

(Counterpunch) When Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner spoke to the Economic Club in Washington yesterday and said the United States bears a substantial share of responsibility for a global economic crisis and its multi-trillion dollar costs, he might have pointedly singled out the epicenter of the housing market crash– the state of Florida– where the absence of regulations governing financial derivatives matched laws designed to fail: in particular, regulations protecting the public from the excesses of suburban sprawl.

The National Ponzi Scheme: trolling the wreckage

It is now clear how the “ownership society” was part of a Ponzi scheme that skimmed the cream from financial derivatives tied to mortgages and used earlier profits to pay off later adopters; spreading wealth through a well organized supply chain to create, through the housing asset bubble, frictionless growth.

The Face of Philanthropy in Florida The Story of Leonard Abess

(Counterpunch) In his first speech to Congress, President Obama briefly bonded with popular outrage at Wall Street’s excess and greed. He picked a counter-note from South Florida: “hope is found in unlikely places,” the president said, “I think Leonard Abess, the bank president from Miami who reportedly cashed out of his company, took a $60 million bonus and gave it out to all 399 people who worked for him, plus another 72 who used to work for him.”

Superbowl Wrap-Up

(Counterpunch) The American version of football proceeds by fits and starts. There is very little foot in it, except after the fourth play by a team on the offense that has “possession” of the ball or when the team that has scored a touchdown gains an additional point for a set play where a kicker propels the bar through crossbars. Compared to “the beautiful game”, a game of two halves and nearly continuous movement of a round ball propelled by anything but arms or hands of the field players, American football is quartered with teams rotating sides of the field like dueling combatants using anything but feet except during the aforementioned prescribed occasions.

GOP Conspiracies on Who Crashed America: Economy without escape routes

(Counterpunch) My Republican friends are all trending toward Conspiracy Theories to explain what happened and what is happening to the US economy. The party of wealth creation and free markets presided over the greatest wealth destruction in a century, and there must be some explanation. It couldn’t happen without some invisible hand. Whose could it be?

The Nail Gun Bailout: Shovel-ready, for what?

(Counterpunch) The Obama administration is hurrying its fiscal stimulus plan. I’ve lost count of the trillions the federal government has already spent to deflect the worst crisis since the Depression. At a recent Miami environmental conference, all the talk was of ‘buckets’ of federal money coming to South Florida. The question on everyone’s lips: how many infrastructure projects are ‘shovel ready’?