After the Fall: markets without regulation

(Counterpunch) We have only a little knowledge how the federal government intervenes in financial markets. What we do know is that since the fall, US Treasury and Federal Reserve policy makers have been flying blind, sailing in uncharted waters: pick whatever metaphor you choose to dissolve the fabrication of markets based on supply and demand, and, free.

Economic Shock and Awe: earning billions while losing trillions

(Counterpunch)  It was inevitable that the shock and awe we glimpsed for the past twenty years in the fast growing regions of the United States through an unsustainable boom in housing and construction would come to grief. It was born of hubris, and it continues through this day.

The Audacity of Parkland: Florida’s squandered promise

(Counterpunch) 50 million barrels of oil are being parked in tankers sitting offshore, lacking buyers. Let’s call it: Parkland. But in Miami, Parkland is a name with another meaning. Parkland is a zoning application to move Miami-Dade’s abused Urban Development Boundary closer to the Everglades.

The politics of zoning in Florida: Hacking the development code

“Yale University economist Robert Shiller, pioneer of the widely watched Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller home price index, said there’s a good chance housing prices will fall further than the 30 percent drop in the historic depression of the 1930s.”

Business Week, April 22, 2008

“Some experts are saying that home prices and interest rates have indeed reached their lowest, bottoming out!” Lennar spokesperson in The Miami Herald special advertising section, April 25, 2008, “Homes selling at record pace”

“Seeing rates like 1.95 percent when purchasing a home is something truly extraordinary nowadays!” Century Homebuilders in The Miami Herald special advertising section, April 25, 2008, “Local builder makes history by lowering interest rates to 1948 levels”

“Between the incredible fixed-rate financing starting at 2.88 percent and our prices at historic lows, it’s little wonder why our homes are selling virtually as fast as we can write the contracts!” Lennar spokesperson 

“Initial construction of U.S. homes fell to a 17-year low in March, a much steeper-than-expected drop, according to a government report released Wednesday.”

CNN “Money,” April 16, 2008

The Miami Herald questioned the value of the civics lesson, yesterday, at County Hall where hundreds of young students, residents, taxpayers and the lobbying class spent hours waiting to voice the support they were encouraged to evince, for breaking through the line on a map separating; open space in Miami from suburbia, the Everglades from infrastructure service areas, and the edge of common sense from its antithesis.

Counterpunch: Sprawl, Mortgage Fraud and Political Corruption

Snagged on the Precipice

In the Friday pullout real estate section of The Miami Herald, local Latin Builder Association member Caribe Homes announces it is throwing in a swimming pool and 3 percent off closing costs and “no builder’s fee”, for its stale inventory: Antilles Isles.

But throwing in the kitchen sink or swimming pool won’t be enough to stimulate buyers because there are none-or only a few. The last dregs of the housing boom sucked up the final tranche of possible buyers-culled from frauds, deadbeats, the weak and gullible. For the foreseeable future, it is a waiting game and an unstable one at that.

Counterpunch: Privatization, outsourcing and profits

Ripping Off Miami’s Poor

The outstanding investigative series by The Miami Herald discloses flagrant and rampant abuse of funding meant to benefit the poor–primarily African Americans–through the Miami-Dade Empowerment Trust, a nonprofit founded to help create jobs in Miami-Dade County’s poorest neighborhoods.

Join ‘flash mob’ for solar power in Florida

Let’s talk about your electric bill, and something you can do to start pushing back. Can you say the words “renewable energy” quickly enough?

You ask: What in the world can I do?

Wake up: The environment is a personal issue

You don’t know whether to laugh or cry, reading in newspapers that the public ranks the environment as a low order of concern.

Let me tell you when the environment is the No. 1 concern: When you discover your cancer could have been caused by contaminants in drinking water or that your child’s learning disability was due to overexposure to mercury.

Most public opinion polls don’t ask the question this way: If you had a serious illness and knew your breast or prostate cancer was due to decisions by legislators on the environment, would you be more or less inclined to cast your vote for the environment?

In that case, every single voter in America is an environmentalist.

Florida economy and enviroment in balance?

What has come of the wrecked balance of the economy and environment in the state of Florida—whether it ever existed or not is an entirely separate question—might be commemorated in a gold coin inscribed with the words, “socializing risks and privatizing profits.”

The images of three men would be embossed on the front: President George W. Bush and Gov. Jeb Bush, flanking a man in slightly higher relief: finance chair for the Republican National Committee, past chair of the governor’s re-election campaign, and Florida developer, Al Hoffman.