Politics and Pork Chops

[ase]

Dear summer: thank you for giving me peaches and fresh corn. Also, thank you for going away. Sincerely, the loyal opposition.

Tonight's cooking experiment: baked pork chops with crushed garlic, rosemary and thyme in olive oil. 350 F, 15 minutes, flipped at 10 minutes. I used a regrettably heavy hand with the spices, so it may be salvage-or-toss time. K. recommended making pork chops into pork-pasta salad, which might actually work. The side dishes - couscous and tomato-ish salad - came out nicely. The couscous just got olive oil and basil. The salad was one cucumber, seeds removed; a green pepper, a red pepper, half a vidalia onion, and several heirloom tomatoes, with a little olive oil and basil and a lemon squeezed over everything. I think I will have a light lunch tomorrow (couscous and salad), or maybe I will declare Culinary Oops Day and see who I can sweet-talk into a sushi run.

September is apparently my month for good intentions. I'm trying to cook, I'm trying to exercise (not 90 degrees every day! I can bike more than five minutes without dying! Awesome!) and I'm trying be mindful of that whole lactose intolerance thing*. Fortunately, Nabisco has removed every remnant of unprocessed ingredients from Oreos, so now they're milk free, hah! That's one junk food snack back on the list.

*Lactase: there are limits, and I still get dehydrated even when the pills are in the right bag and I remember to look for them. Finally, they're kind of expensive on the per diem.

I finally ate my pork chop of dubious character while listening to C-SPAN radio (what's the difference between NPR and C-SPAN? Not that much, when the boombox is on top of the fridge), and decided it's a good day to be me: not in a hurricane recovery zone, secure job, income exceeding expenditures. Health care! If the banks don't collapse under me and my fellow Americans, because some of my fellow Americans are thoughtless people who vote sub-par hooting primates underqualified individuals into national office, I'm going to hang on until the upturn. There's a lot of people who don't have that confidence right now. I was going somewhere with that, but it's, um, really late, so I'll just plug the Red Cross and your local food bank and remind people that when you vote for out of touch and underqualified people, you're voting for recessions.

Yeah, no rage there. Cough.

Comments

[ase.livejournal.com]

Re: greed: yes. Isn't that the sort of thing that resulted in lots of laws regarding economic regulation after the Great Depression? I may be wrong - my American history was seven years ago - but I thought people had a fit of "never again!" in the '30s.

Because "house prices always go up."

Ha ha ha. If it makes you feel any better, my father is buying a retirement house in Tuscon at the moment. The short sale will cost him something like 20% less than the initial list price. Tuscon isn't SoCal, but houses are coming down. One of my coworkers just this week is signing the final papers on another short sale; I'm 2 for 2 on anecdotal evidence that speculators really want to ditch their real estate. The bubble is still bursting!

That being said, stupid politicians (e.g., our deficit, bailout thingies)

The deficit has been angering me since I was a teenager. It's the first rule of credit! Thou Shalt Not Spend More Than Thou Hast. I am super unimpressed by the entire federal government at the moment, and voting non-Republicans into the executive branch isn't going to do that much when budget powers are in the legislative branch. I am not pleased!

And if any individuals are somewhat responsible, it's the Fed Reserve folks, who have been appointed by, well.

Yeah.

Seriously, I should not be listening to the economic and political news late at night. It just makes me disgusted with entire political philosophies.

[charlie-ego.livejournal.com]

My American history is I expect even shadier than yours, but... I don't know that this particular thing (mortgage shadiness going completely overboard) was an issue in the 20s or at any other time before now. Mortgages are, you know, so... solid! So grown-up! Or something. But I do thank the Depression for FDIC insurance, considering how much money we have in WaMu. Sigh.

Ohhhh yeah. My apocalyptic assumptions are that house prices will continue to fall in real terms for at least three more years, probably five. (Have you seen the graphs of ARM resets? Ouch!)

Yes, I am unimpressed and cynical with the entire federal government and both parties. Unfortunately, the other parties are made up of dingbats, though because of this the Libertarian party, at least in CA, does make for amusing reading (http://smartvoter.org/2002/11/05/ca/state/vote/wright_p/paper1.html). (No, this was not actually relevant to anything. I just think this guy's really funny, and I'm feeling kind of punchy right now.)

[ase.livejournal.com]

I don't know that mortgages played a significant role in the Great Depression, but IIRC speculation and overextension of credit were major factors. Which would be nothing like the real estate industry c.2000-2007, cough.

Sorry to hear you're in the WaMu boat - hang in there! Everyone's 401(k) funds are going to take a beating, but with the FDIC (hopefully) standing by to make good on insured deposits, actual money should be safe. The 21st C will not be a return to the 19th: no one will have heart attacks when checking their savings balance.

I haven't seen the ARM reset graphs, but I can imagine they're nasty. I really hope the even shakier mortgage packages, like interest-only loans, were mostly sold to speculators who can afford to lose the house.

(No, this was not actually relevant to anything. I just think this guy's really funny, and I'm feeling kind of punchy right now.)

That is freaking hysterical, and thank you for sharing. I wish the LaRouche supporters that used to show up oncampus were anything like that funny.

[charlie-ego.livejournal.com]

speculation and overextension of credit were major factors.

Yeah. And we've got regulations and the SEC and stuff about that now, which I think prevents those things happening to a certain degree on Wall Street. But I think it's hard to make sweeping regulations covering everything (and I wouldn't want the government to do that, anyway, as when it tries it gets hopelessly confused)... and I don't think real estate wasn't involved in speculation then (I don't think that really happened until 2000) so didn't get hit with super regulatory stuff.

That guy runs for Lt. Governor every time we have an election for it, and is the one bright spot in our usually extremely annoying (brazenly corrupt Dems vs certifiably insane Reps) state elections.

[nwl.livejournal.com]

You know, you could cure your vague ideas about American history by reading. There are plenty of books and articles about the Depression. There are currently articles in newspapers and magazines comparing then and now.

The impression is that while things are bad, the Depression was way worst than today, mainly because of steps the Federal government took because of the lessons learned in the Depression. For example, the FDIC insures various bank accounts (if you are unaware of which ones, it's easy to find at their website) up to $100,000 per account. In the 30s, this was not the case, causing runs on the bank. When the bank in CA failed earlier this year, people panicked and took their money out. Totally knee jerk. Unless someone had more than $100K, they had noting to worry about. If you currently have more than $100K in ONE account, it would be smart to take some out and open a second account.

The 30s also had other problems, such as massive dust storms (due to poor land management) that cut food production, and a world wide depression after World War I.

The economics of the 30s, as well as the terms to end WWI, lead directly to the Second World War. History is interesting and there are plenty of good books out there as well as people writing articles on it. If you really want to get a handle on where we are now, you have to learn about the past.

Countries going though boom and bust times has happened through out history. I'm reading Colleen McCullough's books on ancient Rome and in the last chapter I read Rome is having problems after the war with the Italians. To help with debts, Sulla proposed (and it became part of the leges Corneliae) that all debtors were to pay simple interest only on the loans at the rate both parties agreed to when the loan was made. This was in 88 B.C. So this is hardly the only time when people have been in debt.

[charlie-ego.livejournal.com]

Oh, sure. Although there is always too much history, unfortunately. But yes, it looks like I was incorrect in what I said above regarding the history of regulation (sorry!) -- it looks like the Depression did result in some regulation in this area, which was chipped away during the succeeding years... however, I wasn't completely incorrect, in the sense that the modern mortgage system seems to date from that time.

And as I said above, I'm really happy about FDIC insurance, especially seeing the way WaMu has been going lately.