Badlands Journal

There is only one reason to read economists. After your eye has been caught by an article that seems to reflect a current situation (Dean Baker in 2004 on the speculative housing boom is a good example), you keep reading them in the hope of learning more. Their terminology is often pure Greek to the general reader. Still, if they predict something that comes to pass, you continue to read them because they are telling the truth.

Through time, as we earnestly searched for some insight into the madness that swallowed our community -- the speculative real estate boom and bust and the financial fandango surrounding it -- we came to recognize a certain kinship among the accurate economists: their ability to predict appears to be dependent on a sense of history. The staid idea that the only way we can see the future is by knowing the past was officially thrown on the dustheap of history along with Das Kapital and the Soviet Union in the middle of an era of American history that went from voodoo economics to zombie banks. The economics profession bravely announced that up in the air, unseen but omnipresent, was the self-balancing free market (known by the uneducated Badlands Journal editorial board as the "invisible middle finger"). The self-balancing free market is the Big Idea beyond time and space that was supposed to make everything work out.

There is only one reason to read economists. After your eye has been caught by an article that seems to reflect a current situation (Dean Baker in 2004 on the speculative housing boom is a good example), you keep reading them in the hope of learning more. Their terminology is often pure Greek to the general reader. Still, if they predict something that comes to pass, you continue to read them because they are telling the truth.

Through time, as we earnestly searched for some insight into the madness that swallowed our community -- the speculative real estate boom and bust and the financial fandango surrounding it -- we came to recognize a certain kinship among the accurate economists: their ability to predict appears to be dependent on a sense of history. The staid idea that the only way we can see the future is by knowing the past was officially thrown on the dustheap of history along with Das Kapital and the Soviet Union in the middle of an era of American history that went from voodoo economics to zombie banks. The economics profession bravely announced that up in the air, unseen but omnipresent, was the self-balancing free market (known by the uneducated Badlands Journal editorial board as the "invisible middle finger"). The self-balancing free market is the Big Idea beyond time and space that was supposed to make everything work out.

National Resource Defense Council

Historic Lands Bill Will Restore Water Flow and Salmon to San Joaquin River
Congress Passes Package That Will Protect America's Land, Water and Rivers
http://www.nrdc.org/media/2009/090325.asp

WASHINGTON (March 25, 2009) – The U.S. House of Representatives today passed an omnibus public lands package, which includes a landmark settlement to restore water and salmon populations to California’s San Joaquin River. This vote will send a bill to the president’s desk that provides the additional authority and funding needed to restore runs of thousands of salmon each year. It will also launch projects to improve flood protection and water supply in the Central Valley.

"After so many years of effort, today's historic action by Congress will revitalize California's second longest river,” said Monty Schmitt, project manager and senior scientist in the water program at the Natural Resources Defense Council. "After recent dry years and a collapsing salmon fishery, passage of this bill is good news for fisherman, farmers, and the more than 22 million Californians who rely on the Sacramento – San Joaquin Delta for their water supply."

One of the Badlands Journal editors mentioned this article months ago but we failed to post it. We're sure, however, that readers that haven't already seen it will recognize Pollan's fine essay as a policy statement worth studying, particularly here in the Valley, where farm and land-use policy are the sacred precincts of the Zombies. (random bolded sections added by BLJ editors)

Badlands Journal editorial board

10-9-08
New York Times
Farmer in Chief ... MICHAEL POLLAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/magazine/12policy-t.html

Dear Mr. President-Elect,

2-23-09
CounterPunch.com
The Cooperative Model
How Credit Unions Survived the Crash...RALPH NADER
http://www.counterpunch.org/nader02232009.html

While the reckless giant banks are shattering like an over-heated glacier day by day, the nation?s credit unions are a relative island of calm largely apart from the vortex of casino capitalism.

Eighty five million Americans belong to credit unions which are not-for-profit cooperatives owned by their members who are depositors and borrowers. Your neighborhood or workplace credit union did not invest in these notorious speculative derivatives nor did they offer people ?teaser rates? to sign on for a home mortgage they could not afford.

Ninety one percent of the 8,000 credit unions are reporting greater overall growth in mortgage lending than any other kinds of consumer loans they are extending. They are federally insured by the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) for up to $250,000 per account, such as the FDIC does for depositors in commercial banks.

They are well-capitalized because of regulation and because they do not have an incentive to go for high-risk, highly leveraged speculation to increase stock values and the value of the bosses? stock options as do the commercial banks.

Credit Unions have no shareholders nor stock nor stock options; they are responsible to their owner-members who are their customers.

The unprecedented "State of the Birds" Report 2009 caused a small stir in some circles during a week otherwise devoted to stories of unprecedented extortion by finance, insurance and real estate representatives in and out of the Obama administration.

The Wall Street Journal, in an apparent lapse of syntactical clarity, offered this line:

Among the more than 800 bird species in the U.S., 67 are listed as endangered or threatened by the federal government, the report says.

Certainly under the Bush administration, including the former president's parting shot at gutting the Endangered Species Administration (see last posting by Badlands), a wide variety of wildlife species in the US have been endangered or threatened by the actions and especially the non-actions of federal government agencies charged with their protection. As the collected works of former Department of Interior Inspector General, Earl E. Devaney, documented, these agencies were frequently in the pockets of the extortionists now destroying the national human habitat and economy. The most outrageous case Devaney investigated, involved oil and gas leases in Colorado, home state of Obama's Secretary of Interior, Ken Salazar.

The Wall Street Journal continues:

The unprecedented "State of the Birds" Report 2009 caused a small stir in some circles during a week otherwise devoted to stories of unprecedented extortion by finance, insurance and real estate representatives in and out of the Obama administration.

The Wall Street Journal, in an apparent lapse of syntactical clarity, offered this line:

Among the more than 800 bird species in the U.S., 67 are listed as endangered or threatened by the federal government, the report says.

Certainly under the Bush administration, including the former president's parting shot at gutting the Endangered Species Administration (see last posting by Badlands), a wide variety of wildlife species in the US have been endangered or threatened by the actions and especially the non-actions of federal government agencies charged with their protection. As the collected works of former Department of Interior Inspector General, Earl E. Devaney, documented, these agencies were frequently in the pockets of the extortionists now destroying the national human habitat and economy. The most outrageous case Devaney investigated, involved oil and gas leases in Colorado, home state of Obama's Secretary of Interior, Ken Salazar.

The Wall Street Journal continues:

This item below courtesy of the Center for Biodiversity, brings us up-to-date on Bush's lame-duck anti-Endangered Species Act regulations, what Obama has done about them, what he hasn't don't about them, and what remains to be done to get rid of them in the next several weeks.

3-18-09

Center for Biological Diversity

(415) 632-5319 for more information

Secretary of Interior Should Rescind Bush Endangered Species Act Rules —

Congressional Authorization Expires in 53 Days

Shortly before leaving office, the Bush administration issued three regulations that (1) remove the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as an independent, scientific watchdog over potentially damaging federal projects such as timber sales, mines, and dams; (2) exempt all greenhouse gas-emitting projects, including coal-fired power plants and federal fuel efficiency standards, from Endangered Species Act review; and (3) specifically ban federal agencies from protecting the imperiled polar bear from greenhouse gas emissions. These policies eviscerate the central Endangered Species Act process — U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service oversight — that has protected endangered species for 35 years, and they exclude the greatest future threat to endangered species — global warming — from consideration under the Act.

"Capitalists forget the masses. Socialists forget the money." -- Mike Tharp, executive editor, Merced Sun-Star.

"Capitalists and newspaper editors work without aid of memory." Badlands Journal editoral board.

In the stirring, hairy-chested whine beneath, written on a weekend when, long after every newspaper in the region has seen all its finance, insurance and real estate flak predictions of the easing of foreclosures and the bottom of real estate prices buried by reality, Sonny Star's top editor calls for a Big public works project for Merced to provide work and restore civic confidence.

In general, Californians believe that the history of everything from the state to their subdivision began when they arrived. This appears to be doubly true of the manly Tharp, recently returned from the Green Zone in Baghdad, who calls in vigorous prose for the government to build something around Merced. Right now, if you please.

The government continues to sink hundreds of millions of weakening dollars into a win-win, public-private partnership project adjoining Merced. The project is called UC Merced. It was repeatedly presented by several generations of UC administrators, UC Merced boosters, politicians and business leaders -- and incessantly by UC Merced Bobcatflaksters -- to be a publicly funded "high-tech, bio-tech engine of growth." But we don't hear so much as a backfire, let alone a Great Purring Sound. 

2-26-09
The National Law Journal
Something Rotten in Drywall, Say Homeowners
Sulphur emissions suspected from drywall of undetermined origin
Daily Business Review
John Pacenti
http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNLJ.jsp?id=1202428594677

George and Brenda Brincku knew they only wanted to use the best products for the third house they built together. She said they learned the hard way by scrimping in the past.

When it came to drywall, they insisted their subcontractors use an American-made product.

But the couple started experiencing unusual problems along with a number of owners whose homes were built in 2005 and 2006 when construction materials were scarce. The coils in their high-end air conditioner failed repeatedly. There was a strong odor in a downstairs bathroom.

"We knew something was wrong,"said Brenda Brincku.

They then read news accounts about houses with similar problems blamed on flawed toxic drywall manufactured in China by Knauff Plasterboard Tianjin and other Asian companies. But the Brinckus' home near Fort Myers didn't have Chinese drywall. Their drywall came from U.S. companies including National Gypsum in Charlotte, N.C.

We received this morning a quote from Margaret Thatcher:

The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.

It is an extremely well-crafted statement, a veritable capitalist proverb.

However, the problem with a speculative real estate boom is that you also eventually run out of other people's money, whereupon, having privatized the profits, you socialize the debt.

However, another problem with socialism Thatcher did not mention is that, depending on the year, sometimes California agribusiness runs out of the public's water.