Way to go me!

Okay true believers... I believe that I have completed the final draft of my paper. The big paper that I've been working on for EVER is this close *hold index finger and thumb of right hand an inch apart* to being DONE!

I'm not counting it as done until I get the financials done *three-quarters of an inch* and then the paper gets approved *half an inch* and finally I get the presentation ready *one-quarter inch* and presented to the committee & whoever *index finger and thumb a nano-inch apart* and this *index finger touching thumb* will occur when I sign on to the Peoplesoft system and see that my Masters Degree in Agricultural Economics has been awarded. Whew!

Damn, this is exciting. I'm actually looking forward to getting a job. I'm really looking forward to getting into the ARC program and becoming a teacher for the VO-AG schools up in the Quiet Corner of the state of Connecticut. *big cheesy cheshire cat grin*

I'm going to (hopefully) finish up the financials before taking a break and heading out with CoB to go see Stardust finally. I must buy him a drink and some candy - this is the bribe he insists upon being paid in order to accompany me to the movies. Heh. Too funny.

I want to finish up the financials beforehand so that I can RELAX while at the movies... I woke up at 3 AM this morning, wide awake with bits and pieces of this project floating through my head. So... I got up, after trying to fall back to sleep, at 3:26 AM to begin my day. Yikes. I haven't gotten up this early voluntarily since I was in the military.

Housing Bubble Goes POP!

Hrm... Who'd a thunk it? You've got a national trend - people seeing buying a house as a wealth generator instead of people buying homes that they will live in on a long-term basis - and you don't expect it to affect the national housing prices when the trend becomes teh suck? Wow. And none of the economists listed in the article had any clue about the possibility of this happening? Not that I'm going to complain too loudly as I have yet to buy a home. By the time I am ready to buy a home (hopefully in a few years if luck is on my side) the prices will still be reduced to pre-bubble status. The prices might be a little lower than pre-bubble if people don't sit tight on what they have - at least those who aren't getting foreclosed on left and right.

And none of this takes into account that Two Income Trap I've mentioned before. To recap, working couples - in using their full income as a basis of how much house they can buy - are bidding, and paying, too much for their houses relative to their joint income. Those working couples, in order to get the "prime" real estate (e.g. near the best ameneties, like top school districts... which are ridiculously limited in some cases. By limited I mean the surrounding area to the school that makes up its district. This ends up leaving our schools income-segregated like a lot of the elite private schools. Yeah, mini rant inside of a rant!) are strapping themselves out on a limb without taking into account one of the risks of being employed; losing one or both of their sources of income. Regardless of the reason for this loss, which blindsides people regardless of their relational status. This of course, drives up the prices for everyone else, making single income people/families (and those who play by intelligent risk strategies) and limits their purchasing power.

August 26, 2007
Drop Foreseen in Median Price of U.S. Homes
By DAVID LEONHARDT and VIKAS BAJAJ

The median price of American homes is expected to fall this year for the first time since federal housing agencies began keeping statistics in 1950.

Economists say the decline, which could be foreshadowed in a widely followed government price index to be released this week, will probably be modest — from 1 percent to 2 percent — but could continue in 2008 and 2009. Rather than being limited to the once-booming Northeast and California, price declines are also occurring in cities like Chicago, Minneapolis and Houston, where the increases of the last decade were modest by comparison.

The reversal is particularly striking because many government officials and housing-industry executives had said that a nationwide decline would never happen, even though prices had fallen in some coastal areas as recently as the early 1990s.

While the housing slump has already rattled financial markets, it has so far had only a modest effect on consumer spending and economic growth. But forecasters now believe that its impact will lead to a slowdown over the next year or two.

“For most people, this is not a disaster,” said Nigel Gault, an economist with Global Insight, a research firm in Waltham, Mass. “But it’s enough to cause them to pull back.”

In recent years, many families used their homes as a kind of piggy bank, borrowing against their equity and increasing their spending more rapidly than their income was rising. A recent research paper co-written by the vice chairman of the Federal Reserve said that the rise in home prices was the primary reason that consumer borrowing has soared since 2001.

Now, however, that financial cushion is disappearing for many families. “We are having to start from scratch and rebuild for a down payment,” said Kenneth Schauf, who expects to lose money on a condominium in Chicago he and his wife bought in 2004 and have been trying to sell since last summer. “We figured that a home is the place to build your wealth, and now it’s going on three years and we are back to square one.”
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Look at the two messages that are hinted at in the last few paragraphs. The only economist who is made to seem like he may have foreseen this debacle works for a LIBERAL (we are the ones who know what we're doing and we can lead the country back from the big bad hole the conservatives put us in) organization. Why would someone trust an economist getting paid by the National Association of Realtors?? Aren't they the ones who profited amazingly ever since the investment mentality overcame the housing market? Follow the MONEY people. Come on. Hey CoB... am I over the edge here? *wink*

GAME ON!

HOLY HAND GRENADES! China & Pollution

This is not new. Meaning, when the western world first kicked off the industrial age, this self-same thing happened. And it kept happening until the people experiencing the horrors stood up for themselves and laws were enacting that disallowed the pollution, the extortion, the inhumanity and earth-killing practices that the newly industrialized nations were experiencing. History is repeating itself. And it isn't just China that is shitting on its own people and the rest of the world. And let us not forget the multinationals exploiting the third world. Eh? Why is history repeating itself? Discuss!

August 26, 2007
As China Roars, Pollution Reaches Deadly Extremes
By JOSEPH KAHN and JIM YARDLEY



BEIJING, Aug. 25 — No country in history has emerged as a major industrial power without creating a legacy of environmental damage that can take decades and big dollops of public wealth to undo.

But just as the speed and scale of China’s rise as an economic power have no clear parallel in history, so its pollution problem has shattered all precedents. Environmental degradation is now so severe, with such stark domestic and international repercussions, that pollution poses not only a major long-term burden on the Chinese public but also an acute political challenge to the ruling Communist Party. And it is not clear that China can rein in its own economic juggernaut.

Public health is reeling. Pollution has made cancer China’s leading cause of death, the Ministry of Health says. Ambient air pollution alone is blamed for hundreds of thousands of deaths each year. Nearly 500 million people lack access to safe drinking water.

Chinese cities often seem wrapped in a toxic gray shroud. Only 1 percent of the country’s 560 million city dwellers breathe air considered safe by the European Union. Beijing is frantically searching for a magic formula, a meteorological deus ex machina, to clear its skies for the 2008 Olympics.

Environmental woes that might be considered catastrophic in some countries can seem commonplace in China: industrial cities where people rarely see the sun; children killed or sickened by lead poisoning or other types of local pollution; a coastline so swamped by algal red tides that large sections of the ocean no longer sustain marine life.

China is choking on its own success. The economy is on a historic run, posting a succession of double-digit growth rates. But the growth derives, now more than at any time in the recent past, from a staggering expansion of heavy industry and urbanization that requires colossal inputs of energy, almost all from coal, the most readily available, and dirtiest, source.
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