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San Diego, like U.S., sees 2 percent growth
One of the reasons that virtually nobody expects 2010 to be a banner stock market year is because nobody can see anything worth investing in. Right now, everything about government and industry is about reaction, not action. Nobody is actively engaged in thinking about what America could be like at the end of this next decade, much less the end of this century. The industrialists of the 19th century had their own dream, to build America from the ground up. This meant iron and coal mines, railroads from sea to sea, skyscrapers, and the like. It was the kind of America that was able to absorb the new technologies of the early 20th century: electric lights, phonographs, primitive airplanes and the Model T. Because we were fairly self-reliant and adaptive, we withstood the worst of the Great Depression after aiding Europe in World War I, and then became the world's leading superpower with nuclear weapons by the end of World War II. Surely, there was greed in 19th century industrialism and afterward, but it was the kind of greed understanding that if you had to screw everyone else over all the time, pretty soon there would be no market left to exist in, and that's definitely not a conservative value. I'm not saying the hippie movement of the 1960s destroyed the ideal of America, but there have been significant and not altogether positive sociological consequences to things that we did in that decade and later, mostly without thought as to unintended and undesirable consequences. So far, nobody has been able to replace Scouting as a socializing influence in modern society, sacrificed on the altar of Political Correctness without thought as to how to integrate teenagers as young men and women in society. The result? We now are nationally known for the Bird Rock Bandits AKA the La Jolla Wet Bandits. What this country desperately needs is leadership from the top that is not reactive to crises but actively moving this country into a safer and more prosperous future for ourselves and our posterity. It won't happen as long as the only thing our posterity can count on tomorrow is picking up the rather substantial tab for our short-sighted market and government-program foolishness of today. Greed by fiscal quarters embodied in corporate arrogance either gives way to Americans in service to other Americans to improve ourselves over time, or we end up losing it all. End of story.— January 10, 2010 2:45 p.m.
San Diegans Leading Push for AIG Full Disclosure
I've been reading Sun Tzu's Art of War and it's commentaries over and over for decades. Mr. Aguirre's firm stands to gain a lot more by taking its case to trial for final judgment rather than settling before opening statements. I am sure that lawyers may argue otherwise (I'm not one by a long shot), but evidence of felonious behavior on the part of AIG appears to be worth far more politically than its weight in gold, even at $1.1K+ per ounce.— January 10, 2010 11:30 a.m.
Cocksure Cops?
On another note, we now know that people can get paid for writing stories about themselves. It is interesting to see journalists who are the story that is being paid for.— January 10, 2010 11:19 a.m.
Taxpayer-Financed Stadiums Bring "Municipal Woes," says NY Times
RE #48 - Now that the hangover is history... We are fortunate enough to live in what can be a democracy in the ideal sense. Our form of government falls short of that ideal at any time that we forget what the law actually says and we merely trust that our elected leaders actually know what it says while we don't. Knowledge is power, and the ones with the power standing in the shadows behind our politicians really don't want the rest of us to know. We will have that power when we become familiar with the law, starting with our own city ordinances. Thar's cash in them thar ordinances... just gotta know how to squeeze it out! My challenge to our civic leaders: http://www.sandiegoreader.com/weblogs/encanto-gas…— January 9, 2010 11:47 a.m.
Who's Flying This Thing?
Thank you for the info on today's San Diego Unified School District meeting RE being leaderless as a school district. You do a service for all of us who can possibly make it: if we don't know, we can't go.— January 5, 2010 10:27 a.m.
Blackwater One of 15 Most Hated U.S. Companies
On another comment I made last year, I said that I was highly suspicious of Blackwater by any name. Recent media revelations about that company's employees serving as paid CIA mercenaries in combat zones do not inspire confidence. Most likely, the entire gamut of their covert program involvement at taxpayer expense has yet to be revealed. Right now, the entire firm is about as credible as Tiger's caddy admitting to no knowledge of anything involving young female fans...— January 5, 2010 9:28 a.m.
Taxpayer-Financed Stadiums Bring "Municipal Woes," says NY Times
RE #36: My response to your invitation needs to wait a day or two... after the holiday hangover wears off! Surely, alcohol consumption should never be my personal excuse for spouting off like a total *******...— December 31, 2009 2:54 p.m.
Local Home Values Down 37.9% from Peak
RE #15: "...the essence of financial fraud is contrived complexity." I like it: simply stated, logically complete, and empirically tested. From now on in my book, this is now Bauder's Axiom of Fraudulent Complexity, under the more general umbrella of Bauderian Politico-Economic Theory. Happy New Year!— December 31, 2009 1:53 p.m.
Local Home Values Down 37.9% from Peak
... and going a little deeper about that math theory stuff goes directly to the level of education that most business majors get before graduating. Business majors take a semester or two of what us math tutors called "baby calc", which deliberately skips the trigonometry and pre-calculus courses that science major calculus students have to take. Sure, the business students get the flavor of derivatives as measures of change, but without the extra year of trig & pre-calc, the typical business student is generally incapable of thinking about anything that can't be visually expressed in 2D or maybe 3D. Empirically, it was merely mathematical ignorance exhibited by Wall Street to take exotic financial products of extremely limited utility and turn them into everyday items used by everyone for every purpose. As Barbarella might've said it in "Pinky Swear" as an example, "Otnay ootay ightbray." I was just warned tonight that there are dimwits out there now trying to create new species of derivatives based on insurance contracts, as if getting a legitimate claim paid wasn't difficult enough already. Imagine bailed-out AIG going negative... That could be chaotic AND catastrophic.— December 30, 2009 11:38 p.m.
Local Home Values Down 37.9% from Peak
I personally feel fairly rotten from the inside out about it all. As an English and math tutor for decades at City College as well as a student body president, I was doing my level best to convince younger students than I (many of them minority, more than a few of the same nationalities that people are now discussing as up for racial profiling after the Christmas airline bombing attempt) that getting a useful education, joining the labor market, and doing the ordinary things like buying a home were the right things to do. I know that among my alumni friends and former clients around 2005, most of them were well employed but scared s***less that they'd never afford to ever buy a home in San Diego county unless they had millionaire relatives. As first-generation college students, there was no real chance of that. The people I know who got suckered into ARM financing with little or no documentation were working people with decent middle class jobs. Some of them went into foreclosure early in 2008 as things were beginning to crumble, but more foreclosed as their jobs simply disappeared... For them as they were still getting their educations as college students, I tried to do good but misunderstood: none of us has the power of a Wall Street Master of the Universe who happens to be deficient in the mathematics of statistical probabilities relating to derivatives and credit default swaps, financial things that the Masters were assured would never go bad but did in the Crash of 2008. There's a reason that a certain mathematical sub-field is called Catastrophe Theory. http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=catastrophe+theo…— December 30, 2009 7:58 p.m.