Wall Street seems to have stablized somewhat. We can probably expect more turmoil, especially when we start to notice the interaction between Wall Street and the price of oil.

If you're reassured by the recent reductions in the cost of oil, it might seem at first glance that the world is not, as was previously feared, running out of oil. The average cost of gasoline dropped from 3.151 on October 13 to 2.656 October 27. When the market staged somewhat of a recovery Tuesday, the cost of oil started to go up with it. A quick search brought up the headline "Rally in stock markets also lifting futures of gas, heating oil."

The first question I could ask is "can the stock market recover without the price of oil going up with it?" I'm no expert, but I suspect that the price of oil will continue to go up and down with markets.

It's not likely to be only the stock market that pulls the price of oil up and down, however. It was an oil shock of sorts, combined with the breaking bubble in the housing market, that brought us to where we are now. As the price of oil goes up, it's reasonable to assume that once it returns to unbearable levels, it could again be a drag on the market.

I don't personally think we're in for the great depression some are convinced has arrived, but I do think recovery will be difficult unless it is combined, in the long-term, with a decreased reliance on oil and that means, among other things, a return to domestic-based agricultural and industrial production.

Eric Miller on 10.29.08 @ 05:03 PM PST [link]  

So what's socialism? If McCain's most recent definition is correct, both candidates are socialists: McCain says that Obama would take money from the rich (by raising taxes on those making over $250,000 per year) and give it to the poor--but McCain would, as the Republicans have been doing since Reagan's time, take money from working folks and give it to the rich. And not just by extending Bush's tax cuts for billionaires; the right has consistently sought to prevent labor from exercising any power whatsoever to set its own prices, while giving owners and managers free rein to grant themselves huge salaries, immense bonuses (whether their companies perform well or not), and the notorious Golden Parachutes.

So by McCain's definition, both are "socialists," and McCain is the more extreme one.

But of course, redistribution of wealth is not socialism, but a goal of every practical government; only the extent and direction are in dispute in this race. "Socialism" is government ownership of the means of production, and by that definition, both candidates are socialists, since they voted for the Billionaire's Bailout,which included the provision that the government take an ownership share (albeit non-voting) in the companies it gives money to. This is socialism, and also eminently sensible.

Republicans would prefer to get your tax money free of any obligations to you whatsoever, but they'll vote for actual socialism rather than let the loot slip out of their hands entirely.

Socialism can be good or bad, depending--just like capitalism. Holland, France, and most Scandinavian countries have semi-socialist economies, and they also have productive, healthy citizens, a high rate of innovation, and plenty of personal wealth. They don't have as many billionaires as the US does per capita, but the middle class is bigger and wealthier than here. And they even have time to enjoy their money: they work less, and live longer, than Americans

So socialism isn't so bad, if you do it right and don't pretend you're doing something else.

What is bad is fascism.

What is fascism? According to Benito Mussolini, its inventor, it is best described as "the melding of state and corporate power."

The ownership of government by business.

That, my friends, is really, really bad. In another form, it was called feudalism--something any wage-serf working at Wal-Mart or its ilk would understand.

Feudalism depends on the people having little access to direct communication with each other, so that they receive their world-view from their masters above them. Suburbs, drenched in televised Fox news and drivetime hate radio, support this; cities--where people meet each other on the street, on busses or trains, in squares and parks, in coffeehouses and bars--allow folks to talk with each other in what sociologists call "unmediated discourse."

This is why the right distrusts cities, distrusts transit, distrusts urban diversity, distrusts the mixing of all sorts of folks, distrusts freedom for gays, or immigrants, or artists, and even distrusts librarians, or anyone else who has not proven to be a good follower.

Socialist the candidates may or may not be (and neither one is), but if you love cities and freedom, well, today's Republican party is no longer the party of Lincoln, the Great Emancipator--who was a great Federalist as well.

Richard Risemberg on 10.29.08 @ 03:38 PM PST [link]  

Turner Publishing recently added to it’s line-up of Historic Photos book series a collection of Historic Photos of Salt Lake City. Consisting of some 200 pages of black and white photographs, the book provides some insight into the urban growth of a very unique city. It’s a good coffee-table book for those who are familiar with it, and a good reference for those visiting this still ever-changing metropolis.

From the press release…

"With fact-filled photo captions and chapter introductions by Jeff Burbank, Historic Photos of Salt Lake City rediscovers the fascinating past of the “Crossroads to the West” through nearly 200 rare photographs culled from the Library of Congress, the National Archives, the Utah State Historical Society, and the Special Collections Department of the J. Willard Marriott Library at the University of Utah, showcased with exceptional clarity and beauty."

Eric Miller on 10.19.08 @ 08:25 AM PST [link]  

There didn't seem to be many takers for someone in Grand Central Terminal offering tours based on Ayn Rand's New York. At a time when even business magazines are chattering about an end of Capitalism, this tour guide seemed a bit lonely. It did occur to me that his tour could be based on a chapter I did for a book, Literary Trips. The story of Rand's New York is available here, or pick up a copy of Literary Trips (Volume 1) to get the text and site information.

Eric Miller on 10.19.08 @ 07:16 AM PST [link]  

In a desperate effort to extend their thirty-year experiment in income redistribution from working folks to idle rich, the neo-conmen and their point man McCain have been trying to belabor Obama's tax plan by claiming it is targeting small businesses.

Coming from the champions of Wal-Mart and other megacorporations that have been systematically decimating Main Street for decades, this is disingenuous.

Last night my son Jack emailed me links to an article that simply lays out some of the realities of the situation. As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities notes:

Despite clear data to the contrary, it is often claimed that changes to the top two income tax rates affect large numbers of small-business owners. In particular, some have argued that extending all of the 2001 tax cuts--including the reductions in the top rate (from 39.6 percent to 35 percent) and the next-to-top rate (from 36 percent to 33 percent)--beyond 2010 is vital for small businesses because many small-business owners are in the top two tax brackets. This claim is false.

Estimates by the Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center show that just 1.9 percent of filers with any small-business income (roughly 650,000 filers) will be subject to either of the top two income tax rates in 2009. In other words, 98.1 percent of small-business filers have income too low to be subject to either of the top two tax rates.

Moreover, many of the roughly 650,000 filers with small-business income who face one of the top two tax rates are merely passive investors who have nothing to do with running the business. This is because the Tax Policy Center data cited above use the Treasury Department’s relatively broad definition of "small business." Under the Treasury definition, for example, the $84 of income President Bush received in 2001 from a passive investment in an oil and gas company made him a "small-business owner."

Further, quoth my son:

Salary.com did a survey in 2006 of [small] business owners' and CEOs' salaries. The survey shows that the average income is around $233,000. Note that this salary is in fact under the threshold that Obama would raise taxes on, so Obama will not raise taxes on the average small business owner. Also, this survey defined "small" as having 500 employees or less which is fairly liberal and certainly not what most Americans think of as a small business.

I believe this is incorrect: I believe its $258,400.

"According to the survey, the national average salary for the CEO/Partner/Owner job function is $258,400."

I also believe Obama's threshhold is $250k/$200k (Family/Single).

[Read More]

This is important. Small businesses provide the bulk of employment in the country, yet conservative policy for years has been to favor large businesses and celebrity CEO types at the expense of workers, small business owners, and fair taxation that benefits the commonwealth in areas such as transportation, public health, education, and other realms of American community. The neocons--who have kidnapped conservatism in the US (William F. Buckley's son, Christopher, is voting for Obama!)--are desperately trying to use iconic working-class figures to fool the real working people of our towns and cities to stab themselves in the back yet again, for the benefit of corporate feudalists.

Oliver Wendell Holmes once said, "I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization." We have seen what thirty years of economic anarchy has wrought in our economy; we have seen the shambles ruthless tax-cutting has done to our roads and bridges, our schools, our public health, and our climate.

Let's not be fooled again.

[This just in: "Joe the Plumber" is an unlicensed contractor who never studied plumbing--and whose business, if he did indeed go ahead and buy into it, would receive a tax cut under Obama's plan...and an increase under McCain's! Read about it in the New York Times, complete with Joe's racist allusion at the end.]

Richard Risemberg on 10.16.08 @ 04:49 AM PST [link]  

On the way home tonight as I looked at the city it didn’t seem much different than most any other night. There are the Jewish holidays that seem to change the activity on the streets somewhat, but for the most part things seem to be basically as they have been for as long as I’ve known New York.

It brings cause to wonder what the streets of New York, or any other city, felt like after the 1929 crash. Members of my own family lost a lot then, but I’m not quite sure how fast it happened, or at what point they knew what had happened. These aren’t events that happen suddenly, like a plane crash or even a hurricane.

Of course there have been signs in the news. The murder-suicide of a family in Los Angeles was one, as was the 90-year old woman in Akron, Ohio who shot herself in her foreclosed home. Fortunately she survived, and Fannie-Mae forgave her mortgage. I’m not sure that’s the end of the tragic stories that are to come out of this. The news each day clearly points to a long-road ahead, and I hope there are lessons to be learned.

First, companies should have a clear and evident product, not make money by being bought and sold. The officers in those companies have a responsibility for its survival. Its strength and existence is an achievement far greater than the large salaries and bonuses of its officers. For companies, governments or families, long-term debt should be avoided and fiscally-responsible living should be a goal. Having a large house now and paying for it on a monthly basis is an invitation for a crash that can’t easily be recovered from. Homeownership is a good thing, but choosing a home based on your own realistic financial comfort level instead of the maximum you can be “approved for” should be the goal. A good guide is that your monthly payment should ideally be less than your rent.

Can we blame the 90-year old who, at some point, refinanced? Could that have resulted from a knock on the door and a promise? Everyone’s situation is different, and it’s hard to blame regular people for doing what the countries leaders do, borrow and spend. If the downturn must be long and painful, if we must endure it, I hope that it provides us all with a chance to enjoy more of our lives and interact with the people around us instead of working longer hours to make larger payments. I also hope it brings us back to the basic task we, our companies and governments have long given up, balancing the books and planning for a future that will always, sooner or later, have a bump in it.

Eric Miller on 10.08.08 @ 03:08 PM PST [link]  

Mark Masterson Says No

I have read several articles and opinion pieces by columnists that start or include a phrase like '"The roots of today's mortgage-based financial crisis can be traced back to the Community Reinvestment
Act...'."

I am disgusted by the lack of facts--or the deliberate distortion of the facts--in these columns.

The facts are that CRA was implemented to combat redlining. It was also used to combat racial bias. The Pittsburgh Community Reinvestment Group (PCRG) did a study on mortgage rejections in the mid- 1990s. One thing that was striking from that study was that you were more likely to get a loan if you were a white male, age 21 and making $18,000 a year than if you were a black male age 30 and making $30,000 per year.


READ MORE

Eric Miller on 10.06.08 @ 03:45 PM PST [link]  

What's it like when cars don't dominate the streets? This charming little video montage shows Saturday morning traffic in one of the wealthier cities in the West, with very few cars in sight--just lots and lots of bicycles, being ridden by lots and lots of people, many of them carrying lots and lots of stuff.

No race gear, no helmets, no jaw-clenching athleticism, just relaxed and efficient mobility in a very busy yet never frantic city, supplemented by trams and a very few private motor vehicles--which seem noisy, clumsy, and intrusive in this context.

Please note that you can toggle this video into full-screen mode!

See lots more, including the still photo version of this film, at the Amsterdamize website.

Richard Risemberg on 10.04.08 @ 04:49 AM PST [link]  

A group called TreesNY thinks so, and has come up with a simple and inventive piece of street furniture that protects street trees and provides bicycle parking at the same time!

To quote:

Trees New York conceived a new kind of street furniture. The solution encompasses a way to support nonpolluting cyclists and protect trees: a bike rack that doubles as a tree guard. We sponsored an international student competition in a search for the best possible designs. Available to you are our two winners--the Adonis and the X-Type. Our models will safeguard trees, encourage bikers' clean transportation, and increase the attractiveness of your neighborhood.

See their brochure for more info, or to order one. (Note: file is a PDF.)

Lots of interesting street-tree-related news and activities for New Yorkers here, so check it out.

Richard Risemberg on 10.02.08 @ 02:10 PM PST [link]