Author: cheerfulchaotic

I’m heading out to DC on oct 22nd and returning oct 26th. Potential hosts or people to hang out with, please feel free to leave a comment. =)

I peeled off the scab from my recent bike spill without breaking it. What does it say about methat I haven’t thrown it out?

A big thank you to house republicans (especially) and democrats running in contested elections for not passing a bad bailout. I appreciate you voting for the country’s well being rather than losing your shit over the declining value of your stock. I will also do the credit of assuming that it was the good of the country rather than your electoral prospects in a few weeks that drove the decision.

If credit is so terribly important to have for the economy to go, why are we restoring it to the companies that fucked up? (well, and those that got caught holding the hot potato, some in ignorance, no doubt.)

Regardless, if we start running short on credit, don’t specifically select the screwups to save. If we need you to provide more credit, please give it to those that have proven themselves responsible enough to handle it. Let the irresponsible stewards go the way they ought.

Thanks.

(From yesterday) I didn’t think about it at first, but the big problem with my two major annoyances have a common root: too many people all trying to do the same damn thing.

If I leave home at 9 or later, and ride my bike to the station, I can count on it being a 40 (45 tops) minute commute overall with a seat almost guaranteed. I left home 40 minutes ago, at 8, and still have 20 minutes to go. All because the trains are all bunched up and have to wait for one another. Simultaneously, despite getting on 10 stations into the 27 station run, there were no seats to be had. And no space (not always a totally bad thing but usually a mostly bad thing thoughtbubble: the hotties of public transit calendar)

Anyone wonder why I routinely get in to work at 10 or later? Especially since it apparently has no negative impact on my performance evaluations?

Then there’s the market, or, more specifically our housing->credit crisis and the proposed bailout. Let me see if I understand it.

Here it seems that everyone and their brother decided housing was a rock solid investment and proceeded to overinvest. And why not? You get a generally stable investment (historically speaking), it eliminates rent (replacing it with mortgage interest, home owner’s insurance, real estate taxes and association fees), and pays for your child’s admission to an elite academy (if you pay through the nose)

Then one day, people woke up and said, you know, we have more chic condos for sale than we have people to buy them at these prices. So they start cutting prices. Meanwhile the loans with the “rock solid” investment as collateral were being sold to people who couldn’t quite afford them. Said loans were then swapped out (rock solid, real estate never goes down) and sold to a bunch of banks and retirement funds and what not.

People start defaulting on their mortgages. The supply of housing starts rising, again putting pressure on housing prices to fall. The magic loans are now backed up by assets worth less than the loans. People start worrying and want their promises of money-eventually turned into something more reliable and immediate. So, really it’s a evaporation of trust that people and real estate are “good for it”.

Since real estate is such a rock solid investment lots of conservative investment institutions put a lot of money into buying up mortgages. Now that people are panicking, the value of those assets is on the decline. Places that offer loans are going under or reorganizing and the financial system is losing the flexibility that easy credit provides.

I believe the fear of what is to come is a massive general loss in purchasing power. People will stop buying, the people who get their money from the products that are sold will lose their jobs and income, insert vicious cycle here.

The problems here include predatory lending (selling people loans they can’t afford now, or can’t afford in the future), overproduction of housing in many markets (probably related to the too-easy loan thing), and false representations about the risk and consequent value of the mortgages that were resold. Did I miss anything?

The bailout is aimed at stopping this by relieving the lending institutions of the bad mortgages at a price of the lenders’ choosing (buy them off of the cheapest sellers), and then selling them off later, when they suck less.

It doesn’t even pretend to address the problems that got us here. It’s a transfer from government funds to lending institutions, which would, in an ideal market, compete the difference between the bailout value and the mortgage value down to 0. (Any takers on that happening?)

And where is that money going to come out of? Medicare? medicaid? Farm subsidies? (Don’t bet on it) The military? Our roads? Or ultimately higher taxes? I have no problem with higher taxes for everyone, but I do have a problem with about $2,000 per U.S. Citizen going to cover for irresponsible lending practices. I want the right people to lose a lot more than $2,000. The ones who profitted from bad lending. I think my dreams of the end of agricultural subsidies are more likely, though.

Limits on executive compensation are symbolically, but not practically, significant. They stick it to the highly paid bozos who tried to make a mint, but do nothing to help the victims and still let them make more than 95% of the population (probably even more than that, really). Frankly, if we get universal health care and a better safety net in general, I don’t care if the bozos get their absurdly high paychecks. Harder to do, but a lot more worthwhile than the distraction.

Was I on target?

In therapy today we talked about my goals.

And moving back to SF topped the list. Shortly after that was getting into the sort of research I want to.

I said it’d be great if I could get a job doing something environment and policy related in the bay area. Something that paid more than grad school.

I can’t even find a freaking job to apply to.

Transfer w/ GAO may be possible, but doesn’t help much with doing more interesting work.

I emailed my US Congress representatives and told them to oppose the bailout. Except Durbin, because his website is disabled. It was cathartic, but I should call him tomorrow to finish the job.

I’m planning on heading in to pittsburgh 10/10-10/13. I want to check out CMU’s engineering and public policy program and the green design institute. I would also like to see people while there. Anyone reasonably close to campus have some spare couch space? Anyone in the area available to hang out that weekend?

I’m having my usual post project completion mope. And I have an ear infection. Whee? =)

So one of the applications for a PhD program wants me to flesh out a full research proposal, including methodology. I can define the scope, I can define the area of interest, but I’m not intimately familiar with the data sources out there nor the typical methodologies. I was planning on spending the first year of the PhD taking daily trips to the library to get a handle on the literature, what’s been done, what hasn’t been done, etc.

Ideally I’d like my dissertation to be about a life cycle analysis of the environmental impact of residential development, and the impact of different development technologies and policies. In particular, I’d like to analyze how the US Green Building Council’s LEED system works, and how the LEED system plays out, given the technological and environmental environment. I’d also like to compare it with similar systems in other countries.

I’m not sure how to go about breaking down the system for analysis, where to get the information. Obviously, you really can’t do it with controlled studies. I don’t know how vague or how detailed to get on the essay. I don’t know what sort of information I can realistically access. I figured this was stuff I would pick up in grad school, not stuff I needed to know beforehand.

Blah!

This is the document driving alot of my other documents. It provides context for my recommenders. It provides focus to my “I’m so awesome, you should bring me in, and give me money to study with you.” essay. I’ll figure it out, but need to vent.