What really has brought us to the economic state we're in? The hypotheses abound, and fingers are pointing everywhere--perhaps rightfully so, as blame is everywhere to be encountered. Greed on Wall Street, greed in boardrooms, greed in banker's suites, greed behind loan-office desks, greed among homeowners, and irrationality everywhere, especially among mostly (but not entirely) conservative policymakers who assumed, with a religious certainty, that growth could and should go on forever, and values rise eternally and infinitely.

Many of us saw this as delusional, but as long as you could buy a house at an outrageous price (for what you got: a wooden box, often of low quality, usually in an undesirable and inconvenient location), and flip it a few years later for an even more outrageous price, everyone was happy. It was a steady diet of cocaine and ice cream.

And it made no sense.

Because at the same time as house prices and stock values were rocketing skyward, real income was dropping steadily, year by year. Unions were suppressed, minimum wage increases opposed, labor outsourced to slave-wage countries, to the point that productive workers in the 2000s were making less per hour than their parents had in the 1950s, while being more productive. Where did the money from this productivity go? To CEOs and boards, who voted themselves gigantic salaries and bonuses, which they justified by pointing to increased share prices--and to shareholders, who pushed for the wage/pay distortions that supported those prices. But these increased share prices came at the expense of productive workers--the ones who actually power the economic machine.

So they couldn't buy much, and if the majority of the people loses purchasing power, economic activity must fall. How do you prop it up?

Apparently not by paying people what they're worth. No, in this world of right-wing economic anarchy, you do it by giving them easy credit. Voila! They keep spending!

But how do they pay back the easy credit? Why with more easy credit! All based on housing prices as the supposedly rock-solid fundamental value.

Only it's not. Work is the fundamental value. Not work juggling other people's money (real or imaginary) from hand to hand and slipping some into your pocket on every round. Work making things, fixing things, or doing things that people really need done.

But that kind of work didn't pay anymore. Yet that's what most people do.

So the cost of the wooden box on the rectangle of dirt went up, and up, and up, and people kept borrowing on that increased valuation (not real value, in terms of how much you got for how much you worked for it, but "valuation") to buy other things they wanted or needed.

Couple this with astoundingly lax reserve requirements for banks, where money loaned from your deposits to your neighbor goes on the books as "different" money, and is loaned to his neighbor, and goes back on the books as "different" money, and is loaned again, up to ten times--often to people who have no chance of paying it back except by counting on the already inflated valuation of the box and the dirt becoming even more inflated--and you have the fundamental cause of our distress.

Our system is based on a doctrine of imaginary value--in stocks, in housing costs, in share valuation, in everything--everything, that is, except your labor and mine.

But we live in a real world.

What does this mean for cities?

It means trouble. Housing valuations have to drop further, or wages have to rise further, until a realistic balance is achieved. Average income looks better than it is in the US, but that's because a small number of hyper-wealthy skew the curve. It is the middle-class, however, that supports a real economy. The poor can't buy what they need; the rich can't want enough to spend all they hold, making much of their wealth dead money. The middle class citizen supports the economy. And, in the interest of inflating share valuations for investors, we have been pushing workers out of the middle class and towards the borderline of poverty. So housing and share prices must continue to fall, or wages must rise to a proportion of corporate income commensurate with that achieved in the union-dominated 1950s.

Until this happens we will continue to face disruption.

Cities and states must lead, because the Federal government is evidently now owned by the investor/speculator community. Cities and states must return to their role of protecting workers against exploitation, must support unions, and must lobby for effective and sharp-toothed legislation against criminal speculation and corporate malfeasance.

Forcing housing prices still higher, with yet more credit, without recognizing the real fundamental value of the US worker's labor, will only bring us to a harder downfall later.

Because you can't buy the real necessities of life with imaginary money. At least, not for too long.

Richard Risemberg on 09.27.08 @ 07:53 AM PST [link]  

New York agent Kathy Sloan may not have been popular when she said it, but some New York real estate values are on the decline. Sloane told ABC 20/20 that Manhattan's finest co-op apartment units may have lost a fourth of their value, and "the worst is yet to come."

This can be demonstrated by looking at some sales tracking provided by the New York Post. The Upper East Side seems to be a good example. Price slides aren't confined to the homes of the affluent, however as this page shows sales prices in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Leffert's Garden have been cut in half.

Is it time to get into the market? You might check out this article first.

Eric Miller on 09.21.08 @ 03:59 PM PST [link]  

I lived car-free for many years in San Francisco, and even a few months in Pittsburgh. Today I am re-learning the car-free life in Brooklyn, where it's very easy, even more convenient to live without a car. Car-free life is fraught with insurance-related conundrums, however. Friday I received a document from my insurance company that had been sent to the wrong address. I made a call which set off a series of events. It turns out now that I am living car-free, I can't have my personal umbrella policy unless I purchase a non-car owner auto policy at a cost approaching $1,000 a year. There's one way to avoid this, however- turn in my driver's license. Giving up a car is one thing, but turning in a drivers license somehow moves to a new level. It's a right-of-passage in the United States, and car or no car, it would be a big change to know that we "can't" drive. Yet it seems like the next logical step, especially since the cost of other insurance also comes down when you don't have a drivers license. I'm leaning toward surrendering this sacred card that allows me at at least rent a car and hit the road. From an economic standpoint, should I pay $1,000 a year or more just to keep this easy ticket to go back to the car world? No, probably not. Turning it in may be an insurance policy against the temptation.

Eric Miller on 09.21.08 @ 05:50 AM PST [link]  

Cities rethink wisdom of 50s-era parking standards; More condoms, fewer homicides; Two Buck Chuck Coming Soon; Two Subways to the Sea for Los Angeles; Brooklyn Biker Killed by Bus

Get these and other headlines by following the New Colonist on Twitter Click here

Eric Miller on 09.20.08 @ 01:46 PM PST [link]  

Several British studies confirm that living on busy streets not only degrades physical health but interferes with one's social life. According to the Guardian:

New research, based on interviews with households on three Bristol streets, has found that people who live with high levels of motor traffic are far more likely to be socially disconnected and even ill than people who live in quiet, clean streets.

It confirms a study done by a British academic in San Francisco in 1969. This found the weight of traffic in urban areas largely determined people's quality of life and also identified a major erosion of community on busy streets. The Bristol study is the first time that research has been conducted in Britain.

Researcher Joshua Hart goes on to conclude: "Growing car dependence is creating an epidemic of deteriorated mental and physical health associated with air and noise pollution, inactivity and road deaths and injuries."

Read the entire article at The Guardian.

Richard Risemberg on 09.19.08 @ 02:29 PM PST [link]  

A display went up this week in a pedestrian island surrounded by a sea of auto traffic. Today I thought it may not be such a good idea to have it there, as this, Grand Army Plaza has been rated as one of the worst public areas for pedestrians. The idea is to improve it, however. When I first encountered the Plaza, I had posted some photos to a local message board suggesting the area needed more crosswalks. It is a beautiful Plaza, designed by Olmsted and Vaux with a magnificent arch designed by McKim, Mead and White. The problem is the traffic.

To catalyze Grand Army Plaza’s rebirth, the Design Trust for Public Space, in partnership with the Grand Army Plaza Coalition, has launched an international ideas competition, Reinventing Grand Army Plaza, to generate new visions for every aspect of the plaza’s design.

I wasn't completely enthralled by any of the designs, however, and some of them were just bad. I really don't think that much needs to be done outside of general clean-up and replanting and altering traffic patterns, adding crosswalks, etc. I suppose we live in a post-modern age, but it seems clear this Plaza calls out for some sense of symetry, something that seems to be lacking from most of the plans.

I don't sense there is actual money to implement this, so I'm not going to fret too much, but I do hope that when a design is implemented it embraces the classical beauty of the original design.

Here's a short video of Grand Army Plaza taken from the gym on Eastern Parway.

Link to design ideas

Eric Miller on 09.13.08 @ 07:04 AM PST [link]  

Tech jobs are increasing at a faster rate in several cities far from San Jose and Boston. According to Dice.com, the top city for growth over the past year is Hartford, Conn., which had a 30 percent jump in tech job listings. The second is Cincinatti with a 28 percent growth rate, Miami follows with 24 percent, Pittsburgh at 22 percent, Charlotte at 21 percent and Cleveland at 14 percent. MORE

Eric Miller on 09.10.08 @ 03:12 PM PST [link]  

A verdict in a British court today acquitted Greenpeace activists who had been accused of causing "criminal damage" by scaling the smokestack of a coal-fired powerplant in Kent and painting the name of the current PM along the stack, in protest of the immense volume of GHG emitted by the facility.

According to the Guardian:

The jury of nine men and three women at Maidstone crown court cleared the six, five of whom had scaled a 200m tall chimney at Kingsnorth power station at Hoo, Kent, in October 2007.

The activists admitted trying to shut down the station by occupying the smokestack and painting the world 'Gordon' down the chimney, but argued that they were legally justified because they were trying to prevent climate change causing greater damage to property around the world.

After testimony by global warming experts, Inuit leaders, and others, the jury accepted the activists' justification as an acceptable "lawful excuse," given the severity of global warming effects at present.

The article further notes that the "Kingsnorth [plant] emits the same amount of CO2 as the 30 least polluting countries in the world combined--and that there are advanced plans to build a new coal-fired power station next to the existing site on the Hoo Peninsula in Kent."

Though the decision has no power in the US, it will certainly inspire similar defenses in cases brought to court there, where specious charges of "terrorism" are often leveled against activists--while the real terrorists continue destroying the atmosphere.

To read the entire article, go to the Guardian web site.

With plans afoot to direct huge subsidies to the coal industry in the US, while naturally starving climate-friendly sectors such as public transportation, one can hope that Americans will begin to act more vigorously against the real threats to their country, the greatest of which is global climate change, which respects no borders.

Richard Risemberg on 09.10.08 @ 12:26 PM PST [link]  

It's always quite a pain getting cabs in Pittsburgh and the "temporary" station made the bad cab situation seem permanent. Good news that the new station is now open downtown.
Greyhound Station Opens

Eric Miller on 09.09.08 @ 04:53 PM PST [link]  

Search for newcolonist and choose follow.

Eric Miller on 09.01.08 @ 03:56 PM PST [link]