My Week At Hoover Institution Studying the Bottoming.
A day trip into San Francisco to chat with the media masters at KSFO and KGO also allowed me to observe all the "For Lease" signage on the funky warehouse-lined Townshend Avenue, that runs alongside the Caltrain tracks, where there used to be Web 2.0 palaces. Gone with the wind. Then there were all the empty storefronts from King Street walking up to Market Street as the gathering gloom of the worldwide trade collapse settles on San Francisco like wet fog. There were not many in the shops (just one customer was unusual), no one lingering at the cafes, a glumness to the well-dressed on the BART. The most telling detail in my quick observations walking around both Palo Alto's California Street (high-end residential properties) and San Francisco's Market Street (high-end commercial properties) is that the storefronts most likely to be empty were the real estate brokers. The thrill is gone. The bottom in housing starts may be closer. The bottom in real estate prices may be years away. But the top of the market that I saw in my Hoover trip in February 2007 will not return in my lifetime.
The Brightest Cool Toy.
Ignoring the 1933 Part 2 around me, I did find the brightest cool toy in all of the dreary Bay Area right now, the Flip Mino HD camera. Breaking news this cycle that Cisco Systems of the Bay Area has purchased Flip (company name, Pure Digital) for $590 million in stock tells me that Flip is not going to get much better but it is going to get much better known. This is the toy for the global depression. It is cheap for a digital gift, and it is very easy to use with the Macbook and other Apple toys. The video quality on the Mino HD is stunning and makes anyone a documentarian or a news hound. It is the perfect gift for yourself, as the children will quickly take it from you and assume the burden of where it is. I wish I had the Flip Mino HD for my walk past the empty realtor storefronts. Like Moscow after Bonaparte fled, waiting for the fires. (The Flip Mino HD does fire superbly.) Below, a witty introduction by Kara Swisher of the Wall Street Journal to the Flip toy family. I humbly disagree with the clever and quick Kara Swisher. The Mino HD puts the other Flips out of work.
Hyperbole is the mother’s milk of the agitator. Particularly when marginalized, he will at some point shout himself dry. No one will hear him, even when the wolf pack is actually on the move, targeting victims. Recurring shouts of ‘holocaust’, genocide’, ‘gulag’, ‘Hitler‘, censorship’, ‘rape’, ‘murder’, ‘fire’ (and the like) all lose their meaning. No one will note the vultures tighten their circular flight patterns above the half-eaten corpses that litter the field.
And that’s where we find ourselves today. The shouters do us no favors plying their trade. All they managed was to mangle the shorthand we refer to as ‘language’ to the point (of) where its stumps are just background noise (cancellation): talk radio. Now, when language really matters, we find ourselves without words. Debate is dead without words; strategy sunk; only deeds tell the tale now – and numbers. Looked at your 401K lately? Looked at your tax bill? (Public library closings.)
The numbers tell the story better than words can - gallons of red ink. We are poorer. We may not be able to retire when planned. Cancel those tickets to Florence this spring. Jimmy may have to continue living at home. Aaron may have to keep working at the pound, providing that the price of dog food remains within reason. Flips will allow us to record our descent into need and madness for posterity.
I love my Flip! Useful for finding one's stroke weaknesses in tennis and for me, documenting my kitten's early life. I disagree about SF and Palo Alto - I was stunned that hardly any women's clothing was on sale in late January when everything in NY was.
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SUPER PUMP: $1 TRILLION CREATED OUT OF THIN AIR (Drudge Report)
Result?
False Recovery -- Collapse of the Bond Markets -- Depression.
The Fed is artificially priming and pumping the bond and credit markets. It's a bubble. It will burst.
The scenario describing this (see below) has now been rendered inevitable by the Fed:
http://www.globalpolitician.com/25449-depression-recession-stimulus-europe-recovery
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City of St. Francis, has always been a city built on promise. THe clients of Silicon Valley, Businesses and Retail consumers, are not rushing out to purchase the hottest new PCs, Network Hardware, or services.
Internet based advertising has shrunk immensely. Business only make IT investments that they must (Security, Sarbanes-Oxley, or replacement) and then only if they must. Cisco is offering 0% financing (unheard of at cisco) HP is offering free technical support (IT firms typically charge 10-15% per annum for support. Support is a real money maker for the valley, it is more than just telephone support, it is the critical updates and security "patches" to keep software, hardware, and networks running. I read this the other day on the cover of the WSJ, the journal did not see the depth of this, support contracts are responsible for 50% of revenues for the big IT firms. Cisco, IBM, HP, Unisys, EMC, SAP, Diebold, and others employ millions of highly skilled people around the world.
THe Cost savings, along with lower costs of oil, may a blessing for business. time will tell.
Wisdom
"The shouters do us no favors plying their trade. All they managed was to mangle the shorthand we refer to as ‘language’ to the point (of) where its stumps are just background noise (cancellation): talk radio. "
Ah, my dear Mister Koelliker, you do a disservice to the only folks who bring attention to the shenanigans of the Left. Since the cut-and-paste media refuses to do their duty in keeping the public informed, and instead has now completely abdicated their roles of unbiased Seekers of Truth, talk radio has taken up that mantle. Now, some (all?) talk radio hosts might not provide the necessary information in the form and format that you prefer, but inform us they do. If they must also provide a measure of entertainment in order to help convey the points, then so be it. But, let us not think ourselves so sophisticated as to presume to look down on these servants of the information flow by labelling them "shouters" or "agitators." That simply will not do. You must do better than that. If anything, the cut-and-paste media (a.k.a., the "drive-by media," as one talk radio host calls them) should have been shouting about the corruption in Congress long ago. But they are the Dog That Didn't Bark. So, it is left to others to shout, if shout they (or we) must.
Now, as to the hard times in which San Francisco is now finding itself: Is there not more than a little irony in the fact that Fog City is now reaping the fruits of what it has for so long been planting? I fear it will have to pass through the crucible of insolvency e'er it sees prosperous times again. Forty years of liberalism has brought it shipwreck. From whence will come its rescue? Conservatives long ago saw the graffiti on the walls and left the city to its own devices (and vices). Foreign monies will still opt for other venues before SF. The city's own home-bred welfare and medical wards will remain there. The elite of Marin County will tend to gather further north of the city. Who will rescue the city? An earthquake of a different type is coming.
Nicely done, Vir Gen...
Obama Administration has announced a change in policy to no longer federally prosecute Medical Marijuana offenders. The Bay Area can now float off in a huge cloud of pungent smoke and we'll never hear from them again except when it comes time to pay the bill for the munchies every month.
Anemic recovery progresses. Existing home sales are up 5.1% in February. Oil prices rise against increasing demand. Baltic Dry Index rises. New Unemployment Claims decline. Despite the stimulus package, the economy clearly wants to make at least slight progress.
My guess is that later this year and into 2010 you will see genuine, if far from robust, growth. All will be forgiven (or forgotten, Gore Vidal calls this the "United States of Amnesia" for demonstrable reasons). It will be 1984 all over again (the year of weak, but lauded, recovery, not the book).
Additionally, two other welfare factors (in biological terms) protect the United States: 1) we have a Federal system and we don't need a civil war, just a different interpretation of a document to change the power equation; and 2) if there is no emotional issue, there is no civil war--the Hartford Convention proved that money issues can be negotiated.
I have it on my length-of-a-baby's-arm to-do list to check and see how many times the FDR administration announced the recovery begun, before another huge downswing in the market and another large upswing in unemployment occurred.
I tend to agree that there are signs of recovery; the $64,000 question is whether the administration and Congress will just SIT DOWN AND SHUT UP long enough for the recovery to take hold, or whether they will continue to ramp up the class warfare rhetoric in the hopes of prolonging the misery and further raping the Constitution in the process.
I think they ought to introduce a rule of order in both houses of Congress that they spend at least 15 minutes debating the Constitutionality of every new piece of legislation being considered. Maybe if the people watching CSPAN see what incorrigible liars they've become .... oh, nevermind. Maybe Not.
Virginia Gentleman - I agree with Spencer, "Nicely done..." I should have put "talk radio" in brackets or left it out all together. Nevertheless, it elicited a worthy response from you, one far more cogent than what I could have done. Like I said, I agree with your points.
My aim was to address a bigger problem that is eating away at this once great nation. Don't overlook the eight years of shouting from the other side (that Bush sucks). Limbaugh sees himself as 'balance'. As such, is altogether appropriate that he shout just as loud to counter the left's diatribes. The point is that there has been too much shouting from all sides - and not enough listening.
Anyone who has been following my offerings on this blog knows where my sympathies lie. Still, I'm not happy about it. I, as you, have been put in the unfortunate position of having had to choose sides. I would much rather see both parties working together to honestly address the issues our nation faces. Unfortunately, this will not be the case as long as we continue to shout at each other. And frankly, I see very little prospect (in the near future) of us coming together.
Thank you again, for your comment as it has become essential for us to question and set right failures in our (often poor) command of language when attempting to express concepts slightly more complex than the dinner menu at Denny's.
I'm a homebuilt flyer over Northern California from the Sierra Nevadaies to the east to the SF bay area.
Perspective from my bird btwn 5-10k overhead has graced my humble flyboy life and taught me there are no sides below my wings.
Wherever I touched down there are flyers past, present and future that share a common muse of freedom. Literally and figuratively.
Political freedom, rhetorical difference for argument instead of apathy is analogous to how Orville and Wilber, Lucky Lindy, and Neil and Buzz approached their unknowns.
We are one nation.
All the town, cities, counties, states I pass overhead have no color.
No one has ever asked me when I crawl outta my ship, "which side are you on?"
There shouldn't even be two sides to this. There's only one side: the Constitution's side. Unless and until the Constitution of the United States is formally amended to explicitly guarantee the right for no American to ever fail, then TARP is unconstitutional, the AIG bailout is unconstitutional, Obama's stimulus package is unconstitutional, and the 90% tax on bonuses is unconstitutional several times over. Period. If there is a substantial segment of the population that chooses to ignore or flout the Constitution, then by my definition they are not Americans.
Now, I'm not saying that Lou Filliger sits in judgment of what's constitutional and what isn't. But this crap they're passing hasn't even been challenged. None of it's gone to the Supremes (yet). Obama was asked point-blank if this was constitutional and he avoided the question! What's up with that? If anyone says that the recent legislation is constitutional then we have an honest difference of opinion that the Supremes have to adjudicate. But, so far, the "two sides" consist of those who claim it's unconstitutional, and those who refuse to answer.
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