(Published at Counterpunch.com) Judging from the violence of Rudy Guiliani’s collapse as a presidential candidate, Republicans are in big trouble. The American voter, who whistled to work while the foundation of the national economy eroded, is awake.
Entries from January 2008
January 29, 2008
Florida, the candidates, and the Latin Builders Association: Buyer beware
(Published at Counterpunch.com) For decades, from the time Hispanic builders began to profit from construction of low cost housing in Miami Dade farmland, the Latin Builders Association has been the de facto political arm of south Florida construction and development interests. They gained hundreds of millions in profit by manipulating zoning codes and permitting; using [...]
January 23, 2008
The view from ground zero in the credit crisis: Where did all the good times go?
(Published at Counterpunch.com) ”Were the good times a mirage?” is the front page, above the fold headline in today’s New York Times. The article summarizes the point of view we buff to a shine in our blog (eyeonmiami.blogspot.com): that overdevelopment in Florida was grounded in greed and fraud stretching all the way from local zoning [...]
January 17, 2008
The Stimulus and the Meltdown: from sound to slush
(Published at Counterpunch.com) It is astounding: if you only read the mainstream media (with a few notable exceptions like the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal) you would wake up to this morning’s headline in The Miami Herald, “How would an economic stimulus package help South Florida”, and wonder: since when did we need [...]
January 14, 2008
A subprime wake-up call to curb sprawl
(Published by The Orlando Sentinel) If there is a silver lining in the sharp contraction of housing markets across the natino, it is the impetus to reform a model for economic growth–suburban sprawl–that is fundamentally flawed.
The state investment pool — repository for taxpayer funds of municipalities in the state of Florida — sunk billions [...]
January 9, 2008
As Florida sinks: the view from the Titanic
(Published at Counterpunch.com) Today’s Miami Herald’s “Foreclosures haunt condos” (January 9, 200 outlines the macabre turn of the condo real estate market and ends with a good news spin, even if it does make the quoted sound like a madman. The Club at Brickell Bay condo owner says, “This is Manhattan, it’s the future [...]
