Virginia Breeze

Here’s an opportunity to sit in the classroom and listen to a discussion about the current global financial crisis.   It’s located in Boston at MIT.

http://baselinescenario.com/2008/11/06/downloadable-mit-class-on-the-global-crisis/

And then they have a hook up with a couple of reporters who are sitting in NYC.  This is one of the  places I used to run around decades ago so I am enjoying the quantum leap forward in teaching methods available to these young people.  They even bring into the discussion a guy who is being driven around in a cab somewhere.

Also here are some interesting links for financial matters.

• Planet Money is an excellent, excellent podcast for people who are relatively new to the world of economics and the financial crisis, and for people who commute and can listen to it in their cars. I listen to it for fun.
• Real Time Economics (Wall Street Journal) gives you rapid coverage of economic issues as they arise.
• Calculated Risk and naked capitalism are good sources for near-real-time news about the crisis and the economy in general. Calculated risk has a particular focus on housing and mortgages; naked capitalism has incisive commentary from one side of the political spectrum.
• Econbrowser is more technical and data-oriented; more advanced readers will like this one.
• Economist’s View and Marginal Revolution provide in-depth articles applying economics to broad range of phenomena.
• And James Surowiecki has a blog!

All of this is available through The Baseline Scenario

http://baselinescenario.com/

One point they make that I have recently thought about is the fact that young people under thirty have not experienced a severe downturn in the economy.   This is new territory for them.  Hopefully it will help them remain positive and resilient.  Maybe they will even continue to spend some money and keep the economy going.

This is what I wrote on June 30th.

Good News For Consumers/ Demand For Gasoline Down

And today on the radio they said that the price of gasoline was down 53 percent from its highs. A bit of good news amidst the economic chaos.  And so a lot of prices will be coming down.  And a lot of crazy practices on Wall Street will be outlawed.  Perhaps people will not be able to buy houses they cannot afford as well.

Perhaps we will all live closer to our means.  And  sleep better at night even if the rain comes in the roof of our 1940’s era home.

I know it is going to be very difficult for some.  I feel most for those guys with families who are going to lose their jobs and their homes.  I feel for their wives and children.   Gasoline at two dollars per gallon is not going to do much for them at first.

But maybe it will help to revive the economy and create new jobs.

We really need to establish places for families to stay who are caught in the economic nightmare.   The schools and the churches need to be used to provide shelter for families at night.   Groups need to be formed to make them comfortable and as cheerful as possible.

Families who need shelter are different from individuals who need shelter.  Perhaps that sounds controversial but I believe that a family that includes children is not going to take advantage of a shelter program most of the time. Someone who had a job with a corporation and applies for shelter this week with his or her kids is someone who genuinely needs help.   They join others with genuine needs for shelter.

Conservatives and liberals can come together to make this happen.   I see it happening all across America.  Conservatives are willing to help once they understand the need is genuine.  Liberals have much less of a problem in that area.   THIS SITUATION should bring them together.

Liberals are going to have their wishes fulfilled in Congress and the White House.  Maybe now we can all come together and create a closer nation where people help each other instead of fighting all the time.

I don’t really get too involved in politics.  And I enjoy life a great deal more as a result.  My feeling is that there have always been economic cycles and nobody is going to be elected who can repeal them.   Prosperity comes and goes.  We make far too many foolish decisions to allow it to stay forever. And we have lessons to learn.  Nobody is going to stop that from happening.

A lot of people want to blame Bush for the economic problems that face us now.  But I don’t blame anyone in particular.  I don’t think they really control the tides of our economic fortunes.  They can influence them however.  They can make things somewhat better or somewhat worse.

Reagan made things somewhat better in the eighties.  Before him Nixon and his evil twin Jimmy C. made things much worse than they had to be.  And we haven’t gone into a recession since George W. Bush took office.  It has been a time of relative prosperity.  We often forget that Bush prays a great deal and that can be very helpful.   But it’s all over now baby.

I find the notion of Democrats trying to load these recent events on a truck and dump them on W’s doorstep to be pure politics and just a little bit over the top.   Democrats have not been stellar performers where the economy is concerned either.   Nobody has done a great job.   And a lot of mischief makers on Wall Street have taken advantage of the tides and reaped their rewards.

The finger pointing is just unbelievable.  Why didn’t they work together to find a solution to some of these economic problems?   Because they have and will always be too busy fighting.  They don’t want solutions.  They want power.

Eventually we do find solutions however.  Things blow up or fall apart or freeze and it’s over.  Whatever has happened is finished.  The economy commits suicide or keels over and dies.  Players retire or go to jail.  It’s done.  RIP.

And at this point something HAS to be done.   New ideas are tried.  Everyone (or most sane people) recognize the mistakes of the past and away we go again. At first with great sincerity and later with more games and abuse of the system.

But one political party will be blamed for the crash.  And the other one will claim the mantle of savior.  We know how this worked out in the 1920’s and 1930’s.   Democrats won the contest and enjoyed fifty years of supremacy as their prize.

Who is going to win this time?  Because it’s not about the winner of this election.  It’s about identifying the next Herbert Hoover and the next FDR.

Sometimes you have to lose in order to win.  In which case you run the oldest candidate who has ever run this race.  You find someone who has already been diagnosed with the worst kind of cancer there is and who is rumored to be kind of crazy when he gets agitated.  He does things like calling off his campaign just as things are heating up.

You find someone who makes Bob Dole look like JFK.   And you run the guy because you don’t want to do Herbert Hoover anymore.

No party can win all the presidential races.  The trick is to win the ones that will help your cause and to lose the ones that will hurt your cause. Old men make decisions like this.

And that’s why I’m busy listening to Craig Ferguson, taking photos, blogging and enjoying the autumn leaves instead of watching the debates.   I’m still going to vote on election day.  But I doubt it will mean much unless a lot of folks have the same idea.   People sometimes don’t vote because they feel the results are predetermined “rigged” in some way.  Dead people vote and so forth. They are right but they don’t always think about someone actually wanting to LOSE an election.  They don’t equate politics with boxing for example.  And they should because it’s no better a sport.

I’m going to vote because it’s my duty.  But don’t expect me to watch all the theater that is going on now.  It’s not that compelling.  Craig Ferguson does a much better job. And I have seen it before.  Besides, I need to store and share some of the good times and feelings with my several readers.  Ghosts and evil illusions will  try to block our paths. They always do.  But we may elude them if we recognize their ways and look beyond their speeches.

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