Fareed Zakaria Waxes On About Canada 1
I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out Fareed Zakaria swooning over Canada. I do think he paints an overly sunny picture and he starts making it sound like almost anything Canadian is inherently great (which I’ll claim is true to my American friends, but amongst ourselves Canadians know better), but the gist of his points are true. Honestly, I think a hybrid of what the US has and Canada has would be a great idea. Have the core of your banking system be large, boring, heavily regulated banks with very conservative leverage ratios; then allow for experimentation and risk taking in separate financial institutions, with the open acknowledgment that these institutions are inherently less reliable. When you think about it, that picture isn’t too far off from where the US was just over a decade ago. Hmmm….
Save The World
As long as we’re looking at house resolutions, you should probably look at this one (am I the only one a little disturbed to know that our congress is building its drafts on the “O” drive and appears to still be conforming to DOS 8.3 style filenames?!). I mean it just involves more of your money than you’ve probably spent on your mortgage/rent lately, and it may be the only hope you have of keeping said roof over your head… or it could just be an unmitigated disaster.
FIRE on fire 2
There is, understandably, a lot of discussion about the economy right now. Eric Janszen’s article in Harpers strikes me as one of the better articles I’ve read on the subject. I find it interesting that he thinks the money is shifting in to alternative energy. It makes sense as a hedge bet, but is so capital intensive I can’t imagine it holds up for long.
UPDATE: Looks like the feds have made their next move. Hold on to your seat belts tax payers! It’s gonna be a bumpy ride.
The Money Squeeze Comes Home To Roost
I got one of these “nice” little notices from WaMu as well. I had some extra cash that I’d need at a later date, but in the meantime was sitting around earning interest at some pathetic rate, so I thought I’d put it in to my HELOC and then grab the money when I needed it. In retrospect this was kind of stupid, as HELOCs specifically have provisions for lowering their limits if housing prices decline and well…. housing prices have been declining if you haven’t noticed. I guess I should consider myself lucky for not getting an overlimit fee.
Anyway, I’m posting this as a public service announcement.
California Proposition 89
It wouldn’t be a proper Californian election if there wasn’t something on the ballot about campaign finance rules, so someone had to throw proposition 89 on to the slate.
This one probably ought to be voted down just because it is so insanely long and complex. A general rule of thumb with propositions is that if they are long and complicated, there are undoubtedly going to be some unexpected “gotchas” later on down the line. That said, campaign finance measures are inevitably long and complex, because of all the hijinks that inevitably ensues to get around them, so perhaps proposition 89 proponents can be be given a by on this.
It’s late, and I’m tired, and there is just too much in this one to write about. I could probably spend a few weeks on it (surprisingly, the press has for the most part ignored it). So, I’m going to play it lazy and refer to an article in the LA Times which kind of summarizes my thoughts on the measure.