Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
La Jolla Now Has Nation's Most Expensive Homes, According to New Study
This information should be sent to the UT real-estate news spinners: they may find a way to use this to confirm that SD real estate is "undervalued". On a more serious note: I have nothing against some real estate being astronomically high, but if it becomes the norm, as it is in California, then that indicates a concentration of wealth and holdings into the upper echelons of society. Add to that the fact that the economy has gone "hourglass" (though the two parts of the hourglass may not even be connected anymore) and you are approaching the economical models of Latin American countries between the 1920's and the 1990's. Such economies are characterized by boom and bust cycles: during the boom the rich get richer and the rest gets poorer, during the bust the rich still get richer and the poor become destitute.— September 10, 2008 9:24 a.m.
It's Official: Federal Government Seizes Fannie and Freddie. Will Reform Come Next?
Response to #25: JohnnyVegas - it's not a verbatim quote, but a concept elaborated throughout some of the chapters. I remember that Smith's book was summarized that way by one of my professors during accounting class (which I did not exactly do stellar on during finals). I'll dig up my copy and try to find how it was phrased exactly (Smith's sentences can be laboriously long in sometimes).— September 8, 2008 7:12 p.m.
It's Official: Federal Government Seizes Fannie and Freddie. Will Reform Come Next?
The euphoria on Wall Street today is probably going to be shortlived (at least in my humble opinion): the FDIC says there are 117 banks on the "set to fail" list (up from 61 a year ago), but I would not be surprised there will be a lot more banks than that failing. The question will be how many, how big, and how quickly in succession of each other? Lehman is already in trouble, WaMu is not doing stellar either and those are just the tip of the iceberg. The FDIC can take some over, but its pockets are not bottomless either. Quite a number of banks are also ready for a shock when they realize that their shares in the GSE's may be worthless by now. I'm sure a lot of economists, government officials and bankers will talk about free market enterprise and liberally slap Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations" (who would have read that stuff anyways?) around. If they had read the book, they would realize it deals with "enterprise to the benefit of both trading partners" (the only way to get an economy to grow equitably) and not the zero-sum economics that Wall Street and the Fed seem to be involved in.— September 8, 2008 6:09 p.m.
It's Official: Federal Government Seizes Fannie and Freddie. Will Reform Come Next?
Well, I guess this was to be expected, even if has been dreaded for a while now. If I understand correctly, banks that have a large stake in either GSE will also be taken care of by the Fed and Treasury. It gives a new perspective to the old adage "if you owe the bank a thousand bucks, the bank owns you; if you owe the bank a million bucks, you own the bank": we can add to that now "if the bank owes a billion bucks, it owns the government". The banking crooks must already be taking numbers on those lounging chairs at exotic beaches in far-off tax havens.— September 7, 2008 5:25 p.m.
If Common Shareholders Are Wiped Out in Fannie/Freddie Bailout, Brandes Could Take Another Hit
One of the rudest awakenings I ever got was when I realized how corporate executives were continually raiding corporate coffers, with impunity first of all and second, with hordes of other company employees trying to jump on the bandwagon and get their cuts too. Obviously this was not enough and corporate welfare became the standard. Hey, if we can raid corporate funds, why not get a bonus from the government. And it worked. Now the Feds are reporting that not only do they have to put Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in conservatorship, but they find out that their capitalization has been overstated through the use of deferred tax-assets (sounds like San Diego a few years ago), and refusing to "mark-to-market" their securities. The companies' top executives will of course waltz out of there with bonuses that a normal person can't even earn over a life-time. That this affects homeowners needs to be powdered over since home-values will continue to decline as a result of these deceptive accounting shenanigans. Locally, as a proactive strike, the UT had nothing better to do on Friday September 5th, than to publish an article stating the SD homes are currently "undervalued" by as much as 17% (graphics added for emphasis). Obviously, both regionally and nationally corporate greed stops at nothing, even after their deceptive practices have been published over and over. I guess they think that the public is more interested in who will win some "real-life" TV show than in what is being cooked up around them to fleece them further. Sometimes I'm afraid though that they may be right in that assessment. At least a flicker of hope is that the UT is collapsing under its own lies. (stepping of my soapbox now)— September 6, 2008 4:38 p.m.