Rumors of my death only show you weren't listening

It's been a while since I've been back over here. Sorry if it's gotten a bit dusty. It isn't for lack of things to talk about though; the last two months have been anything but quiet. Between failed bailouts, bailouts that failed to pass (but were implemented anyway), power hungry governors and egocentric wanna-be senators and war this has been a hectic transition period.

And while I have been silent here on my blog, my Twitter followers have suffered from an abundance of opinion. I will still come here and post periodically, most of my attention will be focused by the more concise 140 character limit imposed over there. Those who haven't already, feel free to come over and tell me there what I am getting wrong - http://twitter.com/trianglman

Open Hands

Now that Bush has started handing out money to any corporation that says they are about to fail, lots more companies are looking to spread the wealth from the American tax payer to their personal shareholders. Now it's the car manufacturers putting their hands out. Some questions that should be answered before we do anything are: how did they get there, how will (or just "will") a bail out help them and how should a bailout be structured?

GM has been on the path to this point for years now. At least since 2004 (I don't have data that goes back further) GM has steadily been posting decreasing net profits (2006 being an exception). The sudden spike in oil prices over the past couple years has exasperated the problem, which is reflected in 2007's $42,000,000,000 net loss. Over the same time period, Toyota has moved more strongly into the American market (exceeding GM for net sales this year). Toyota has done this through a reputation of quality (which GM and Ford have both lost over the past couple decades), a wide selection of low priced cars, and especially the past couple years a record of fuel efficiency. Only in the past year have the American automakers refocused their message on fuel efficiency, often still falling short (due to their focus on SUVs, all of the hybrids from GM, et al have been SUVs, which still barely break the 20 mpg mark vs. 40-50 mpg Prius, etc.). Just this month we learned that the automakers are still bleeding millions of dollars a month, even as they attempt to retool their factories and cut their workforce.

This brings us to what the companies are asking for the money for. One of the biggest costs facing automakers is changing their plants from building SUVs and Hummers to more fuel efficient hybrids and Volts. This is key to these companies being viable in the near and long term future, but it is a huge cost. Due to the credit crisis of the past few months, lending that could have financed such changes has dried up. What the automakers believe is that if they can get the money to make the cars people want, people will start buying again and they will return to solvency.

Sadly, I'm not completely sure this will be the case. The credit slow down has affected more than just banks and corporations. Buyers also are unable to get credit. Also, much of the purchasing power of American consumers in the past few years has been due to increasing home values and decreasing costs of borrowing on those houses. Now, with both of those reversing, the consumer just can't afford to buy a new car. This is reflected in the fact that even Toyota's sales are negative this past quarter. Also, because GM, Ford and Chrysler have been so slow to get into the hybrid market, it will take time to convince consumers that they are comparable to the Priuses and Civic hybrids of foreign automakers.

Because of this, I don't think we should or even can do a bail out similar to the one proposed for the bad mortgages. NPR's All Things Considered last night did a segment on the Chrysler bail out from 1979. Then, instead of directly giving Chrysler the nearly $2 billion, the government only insured the loans banks gave to the companies. In return, the government got preferred stock, required detailed plans on Chrysler's restructuring, and ensured that if Chrysler went bankrupt that it would get repaid first. Because of this action, Chrysler returned to profitability quickly and wound up paying off the loans seven years early and the government made money on the deal.

I believe a similar set up would be even easier to achieve now. The government, through the TARP law, has much more leverage over banks that could finance such loans. After the buyout of AIG, the government controls roughly 70% of the country's largest insurer. Through these two entities, we could potentially help both the auto industry and, depending on the success of the automakers, ensure long term solvency to the banking industry. This will also keep the government from being on the line for yet another $50 billion that we just simply can't afford right now.

The biggest problem right now is that the banks still aren't lending though. In the past couple weeks since the TARP package was passed, the rate banks lend to each other has dropped more than 4%, yet the rate banks lend to borrowers and to corporations has still remained high. Loosening that up, with targeted goals in mind, is going to be one of the best ways to get the economy moving again. There are two ways to loosen that up, and I think both should be taken: 1) Get money flowing to the middle class, which is where most of the consumer debt is held. You can do this through tools such as the stimulus checks of earlier this year, increased unemployment benefits during this slow down, and tax incentives for job creation. 2) Get loans moving to corporations again. The best ways of doing this are through insuring loans to targeted industries (green energy, infrastructure, automotive to name a few) and tax incentives for targeted initiatives (hiring and green energy again). The problem all along has been a trust issue, so if we can increase the trust, we may be able to pull out of this tailspin and not leave our children with $20 trillion in bad debts to collect.

Yes We Did

What a day yesterday was.

For my wife and I, it started at 4 AM. My wife was the canvas captain for the Airport Township for the Obama campaign. Meanwhile I was in charge of watching our four year old son until my mother finished voting and running errands so that she could watch him. I took Isaac to vote with me at 8 AM. The line was an hour long, but everyone near me was so excited to be there ready to vote. The couple in front of me were voting for the first time; they had just recently become citizens.

When I cast my vote, I couldn't be prouder. My son helped me by pushing confirm on every screen. Thirty years from now he will be able to tell his children he helped elect our first black president.

Afterward I helped a friend get to the staging location and took Isaac to my mother's. I heard word of a couple voter intimidation incidents and attempts by poll workers to keep people from voting by violating the law and attempting to require multiple forms of ID. These were quickly stopped by the volunteer lawyers and other Obama volunteers. That afternoon I canvased with several other Obama volunteers. Every house I went to the people had already voted. People seeing us on the street honked in encouragement or cheered the Obama tees we had on. There were even victory parties being started at 4PM.

Then came the hardest time. After 6PM it was too late to go out canvasing any more. We all met back up at the staging location and prepared to go out to help with long lines. While there were some long lines closer to St. Louis City (300 people still in line two hours after polls closed), every voting location in our township had almost no lines and we began to worry that not enough people voted.

When Pennsylvania was called for Obama at 6, we began to be hopeful; one of the four legs of McCain's victory path had been knocked out from under him. After polls closed at 7PM we broke up and many of the volunteers went to the watch party downtown while my wife and I, having been sick for the past couple weeks, went to get our son and headed home.

On the way, Ohio was finally called and I knew Obama would be our next president. Barack's message of hope and inclusion won out over McCain's calls for hate and division.

Now, as I said in my last post, the real work begins. After eight years of divisive politics, of trying to call one group more or less patriotic than another, we must unify. "And to those Americans whose support I have yet to earn - I may not have won your vote, but I hear your voices, I need your help, and I will be your President too." We are one country, INDIVISIBLE; we will, we MUST work together to bring our country out of the troubles that face us now.

As I said on Twitter last night: To all the staunch conservatives: Throw away the straw men and wait to see what really happens before judging Obama's presidency. To all the staunch progressives: Obama was always center left. You will not get all you want, but our country will be better than ever. This country has always been a country of moderates. When Bush attempted to take the country too far right the people spoke up in 2006 and again this year. Should Obama attempt to do the opposite they will speak up again. This must be a time of cooperation and compromise or it will always be three steps back for every step forward.

No Rest for the Weary

Hopefully 36 hours from now we will know who our next president will be. These next few hours are what it all comes down to. Obama and McCain supporters across the country are working night and day to get their candidate across the 270 electoral vote finish line.

Posting here has been very light the past few months because both my wife and I have been a part of that. Now, more than any time in the past 22 months we need your help. Get out and vote! If you have time (or even if you don't) volunteer. Call your neighbors and remind them to vote; go door to door doing the same; go polling place to polling place encouraging people to brave the hours long lines that are sure to confront us. This country is a representative republic and it ONLY works for those who participate.

Remember also, this fight doesn't end on November 4th. If we elect these people and then stop paying attention, our causes will fall by the wayside. The real work begins November 5th. We must make sure our officials never forget why we put them in office. I have seen many people on the blogs and on Twitter saying they don't know what they will do once this election is over. But we cannot create the change we need if we just leave our elected officials to do it alone.

The (in)Famous Pie Speech

Some of you may be watching the new Rachel Maddow show (and if you aren't, start). If you were last week, you may have seen a story about Barack Obama repeating the word "pie" twenty times in about two minutes. I'm happy to say, when he came to St. Louis Saturday, he shared that same story with all 100,000 of us. It actually is a really good story for all it's randomness at the beginning. Below is a transcript and the video (story is about 7 minutes in). See Momocrats for the other videos and more photos and impressions.

I was in Ohio last week and I was traveling with the governor there, Ted Strickland. We were on a bus tour talking about jobs. And we were working hard so, we got a little hungry. Decided we needed an afternoon snack. So I decided I needed some pie. Some of you may like cake, I like pie. Turns out Strickland likes pie too.

So we went into this little town, Georgetown Ohio, and found out where the best pie place was. It was this local diner. We went into the diner.

Now, I like sweet potato pie, but they did not have sweet potato pie. I like pecan pie, but there was no pecan pie. But they did have coconut cream pie, and I'll take some cream pie. Strickland, he wanted lemon merangue pie, they had that also.

So we order our pie and the people who are serving us, they want to take a picture with me because they say, "Our boss, he is a die hard Republican. So we just want to poke him a bit by taking this picture."

So while we're standing there cheezing and grinning, the owner walks in, with our pie. And I said, "How do you do sir? I understand you are a die hard Republican."

He said, "That's right."

I said, "How's business?"

He said "Not so good." He said "My customers can't afford to eat out right now."

I said, "Sir, who's been running the economy for the last eight years?"

He scratched his head and said, "I guess the Republicans have."

I said, "Sir, if you keep on hitting your head against a wall and it starts to hurt, do you decide at some point to stop?"

He said "You make a good point."

I said, "Why don't you go ahead and try voting Democratic this year. We can't do any worse than these other folks have been doing now."

Lets all stop hitting our head on the wall.

Some Pre-Halloween Fun

The Blame Game - Consumers

In this recent economic downturn, people from all sides are pointing fingers and trying to place the blame on one another. This is the first of a series of posts in which I will try to dispel some of the myths being spread.

The most common theme you hear when it comes to the housing market is "people bought more house than they could afford." While this is true in some cases, more often it only became true three to five years after the home was purchased.

Back around 2003-2004 we were just beginning a recovery from the twin market downturn caused by 9-11 and the tech bubble burst. Jobs were slowly being created, interest rates were at all time lows and many were expecting the economy to really grow. Because of this, more people saw that they were finally able to get into the housing market. This caused house prices to grow which allowed people already in a house to upgrade to a new house. This was the start of the housing market boom.

What people didn't realize was that the economic growth they were seeing in the markets was a shallow gain. While average wages were going up, they weren't matching inflation. What's more is that the average number was skewed by a large increase in income for the top 1% with little to no gains for the other 99% of us (see charts below). At the same time, mortgage brokers and other lenders (who we will discuss more thoroughly later) saw the potential for large profits via new mortgaging schemes now dubbed "sub-prime." This led them to encourage clients that could qualify for standard mortgages to instead apply for adjustable rate or other balloon mortgages.

Courtesy
Courtesy
Courtesy

This is why I say most people trapped in this mess could afford the house they bought at the time. However, when inflation went up (not only food prices, health insurance costs have increased 20-30% annually in many cases; an average of 6%) but their wages didn't, they were put in tighter and tighter circumstances. In the very early days of the current crisis (circa 2005-6) some people were still able to refinance or sell their way out. But some people hit a more severe hardship. Many people got to the point where they were living paycheck to paycheck. If they lost their employment for even a month, they wouldn't be able to pay the mortgage. If they had any sort of medical emergency, they wouldn't be able to pay the mortgage. These people began going into default.

By late 2006 and throughout 2007, the housing boom started really slowing. Job growth had slowed or at times gone negative. Federal interest rates had been raised from their 2003 lows of 1% back up to a more reasonable 3%+. At the same time, personal property taxes were being reset to the new home values. In many cases this caused a doubling of those taxes. People could no longer refinance their homes. Fewer people could buy so housing prices began to slump and selling the house was no longer a way out. Wages that had been stagnant (or negative) for three or four years were no longer able to afford the mortgage and the rapidly increasing cost of getting to work. The people who in 2003 could afford their house were rapidly getting buried under increasing piles of debt. This trap many home owners fell into is what began the popping of the sub-prime bubble.

So I ask you, is it your fault that corporations have enjoyed their multi-million dollar golden parachutes while the employees working 60 hours a week to make ends meet get nothing? Is it their fault that insurance costs grow by double digit percentages while coverage steadily drops?

There were some people who bought beyond their means, don't get me wrong. If you make $30,000 a year, you probably can't afford a $300,000 house. If you are told you can live in a house for three years without paying anything (what some of the balloon mortgage plans promised), it is probably too good to be true and you shouldn't sign up for it. But I can't put the blame on a working family who couldn't see that their earnings would be the same four years down the line but their expenses would have grown by double digits. I don't blame the public school graduate who can't understand the ins and outs of mortgages that even the Harvard educated accountants who invented them barely understand.