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

[charlie-ego.livejournal.com]

Okay, I'm going to disagree slightly, if I may-- I think the current financial difficulties are not primarily the fault of the government-- I frankly don't believe that the government has nearly as much to do with economic cycles as people think it does, either the good times or the bad. The current banks-collapsing-things-going-all-to-heck was caused primarily by both banks and individuals, being greedy, and no one-- no politician of either party, no academic for that matter, and precious few sensible people, stepping back and saying "Wait... what?!" (I'm really bitter about this, and also fairly knowledgeable on this subject, because I have been trying to buy a house for the last four years and have been unable to, because of people who kept driving the price up. Often people who could not afford it and were buying on crappy ARMs which no sane bank ought to have backed. Because "house prices always go up." I'm sorry, but no politician told them that; they were thoughtless all by themselves.)

That being said, stupid politicians (e.g., our deficit, bailout thingies) are not helping in the slightest! And if any individuals are somewhat responsible, it's the Fed Reserve folks, who have been appointed by, well. So I don't really disagree with you.

Also, pork chops, yum. I'll have to try that. I'm trying to cook more this month too. I tried shrimp the other night for the first time (fry in lots of olive oil, cumin, paprika, and salt) and it was awesome.

[norabombay.livejournal.com]

fun fun fun.

phone died.

Will chat in chicago

[norabombay.livejournal.com]

I used to work for the main lobbying body of the mortgage industry.

Trust me. There could damn well have been, and should have been some regulation in place. Well in advance of this.

E

[nwl.livejournal.com]

If you think that the banking problems are just because of the Prez, you have not been paying attention for the last few years

The U.S. banking system is run by the Federal Reserve. The members of the Fed are not elected, but appointed. You may have heard of Alan Greenspan, who was chairman of the Fed from 1987 to 2006, but who retired and was replaced by Ben Bernanke. Many of the financial people who analyze the economy either place most or all of the current problems on Greenspan's running of the Fed, as he was a big free market kind of guy.

In an SF connection, he was part of Ayn Rand's inner circle and his economic policies reflected that. Wikipedia has an extensive article on him, which is by no means the only one. He is a very interesting person and has been and still is a major player in the U.S. banking system.

Don's forget that Wall Street has also played a significant part in its downfall due to its greed and short sighted view of the economy. As far as I know, nobody elected them either.

[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.

[ase.livejournal.com]

Sure. Are you going back tomorrow, or the 17th?

[ase.livejournal.com]

I don't think the President directly played a role, but I'm really disappointed in the timing wrt the Presidential campaign, and I'm upset when I think of the many people this will negatively effect.

[charlie-ego.livejournal.com]

Heh. I certainly don't disagree with that. Though no one does seem to want to regulate when things look like they're looking good... so maybe what I meant was, "Government? Like they do anything useful?" :)

[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.)

[charlie-ego.livejournal.com]

Huh, interesting, I didn't know that about Greenspan and Rand. I agree that his keeping interest rates down, somewhat artificially, significantly contributed to the problem... though why does this follow from free-market principles? Just the general idea that money ought to be easy to borrow? Also, agree completely about Wall Street.

[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.

[nwl.livejournal.com]

Well, economic problems can't be timed - they happen when they happen. I've seen articles for years about how the housing balloon was going to burst and it finally did. After all, who buys those wildly expensive McMansions - people who probably can't afford them, if they had any common sense. But they didn't, they just wanted instant gratification.

There was a front page article in USA Today a few months ago about a guy whose huge house was in foreclosure. He said his parents drilled into him all the common sense things about buying a house - have 30% of the down payment, never have a house payment more than 1/3 of your monthly income, and buy only as much house as you need. BUT he wanted a house and could get one with nothing down and monthly payments he could just make, so he ignored all that. He also thought he could "flip" the house before he was scheduled to make bigger payments. It didn't happen and he lost the house.

And this is not uncommon. People lied about what they made to get that "nothing down, low introductory interest rates" on a house that, when it came down to it, they couldn't afford. They expected to have unlimited credit that they didn't need to pay, but it caught up with them.

The people who really deserve some sort of help are not those who wanted instant gratification, but had a catastrophic event that put their life in a spin. One example is a couple who live within their means, every payment on time, and something happens - generally a medical catastrophe. Due to huge medical bills, they can't make payments on the house or their other bills. Those are the people who need/deserve some entity that steps in to help with bills and get their lives back on track. I don't see that as a national government role - it has to be more local to know when to step in and be able to deal with local issues. But it could draw from a national agency.

But that's blue sky.

Realistically, there is nothing you can do, unless you decide to make a change in your career to "do something". Seriously. There are people who see or read about a problem and decide that is really what they want to do with their life. If you feel strongly about this issue, start researching it and gathering background on it. There are companies and non-profits that work on housing issues. You live in a good area to get involved.

[nwl.livejournal.com]

I would suggest you do some independent reading on the various economic and business models if you want to get a handle on much of this. Getting info from blog comments is less than optimum. They should act as a stimulus for you to increase your knowledge.

I got into economics when I took accounting and statistics classes. Totally fascinating. I then had a job in the 401(k) field, which is connected with banking. I never realized there were regular people who kept track of every penny on a daily basis and talked about stocks and bonds. Again, totally fascinating. So I researched to get up to speed on 401(k)s (buying and selling stocks) and banking. I've got stories, but only off line.

I've also been following the various columnists in The Washington Post for years. I highly recommend Michelle Singletary - her The Color of Money column should be required reading, period. Go to the paper's website and read all her past columns and buy all the books she recommends - well, maybe not all the books if they don't apply to your situation.

Then check out some of the other columnists. I can't recall who, but someone in the first section of the paper had a list of missteps by Greenspan. I think it was around a month - month and a half- ago.

For insight in the stock market, I recommend Jane Bryant Quinn. Well written and informative.

The info is out there.

[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.

[charlie-ego.livejournal.com]

Hmm, sorry, I think I wasn't being clear because I jumped to conclusions -- I thought you were linking Greenspan's interest-rate behavior to objectivism, but on second thought I reckon you were talking in general about his de-regulatory views (which are clearly free-market/Rand-ish). I'm not a total stranger to economics, though it is true that as you can see, nowadays I tend to look at things through a residential-housing-shaped lens, as that's been the focus of most of my obsessive economics-related reading lately, and sometimes that colors my responses to things. I agree, it's pretty fascinating stuff.