Times Are Tough All Over

The deplorable circumstances of Katrina’s victims, while a worthy subject to ponder, has nevertheless distracted us from the heartbreaking plight of other Americans currently facing tough times.

If you thought it was as bad as it could get languishing in the Superdome and then being shuffled into oblivion by Brownie’s FEMA, you obviously haven’t been reading my local paper, the L.A. Times.

On the front page of this Sunday’s Real Estate section, writer Darrell Satzman, lyrically evokes the numbing, heart-rending story of local middle-aged couple Damir and Anne Pevec.

Humble commercial real estate investors, the Pevecs raised their family in modest Malibu, then sold off their longtime beachside home to spend a year living (no doubt on the edge) in Europe. But when they came back to So Cal, and delved back into the red-hot housing market, they just couldn’t, couldn’t, couldn’t find a worthy new home, thanks to the shortage of quality listings. Of course, the Pevecs only had a budget of $3 million, says the Times. But even with such a modest sum, you’d think – after 16 months of searching (!) – they’d find something they could make do with.

But no…. Crack Times reporter Satzman says the poor Pevecs are “reaching the exasperation stage.” His article finds them poo-poohing one more Santa Monica hovel:

"It's a wham-bam contractor house," said Anne of the lot-swallowing, 5,500-square-foot, $3.7-million home. "It's a spec house," Damir added. "It's a lot of home for the money, but it's lacking in character."

Not to fret. These brave homesteaders are not about to give up. Nor will they mimic the spoiled Louisiana layabouts who have become dependent on government hand-outs and subsidies. These brave Angelenos vow to soldier on and do what they must until they find something worth their $3 milllion.

"It's rough, but that's what you have to do if you want to be in this market," Anne said. "You have to suck it up and keep going."

The Times article, by the way, was written without as much as a  suggestion of irony. Please also note the Times photo reproduced above. Fabulous. The poor Pevecs, imprisoned with their $3 million.

Open invitation for Southern California locals: On Thursday, Sept. 15 at 6:30 p.m. I’ll be dialoguing with John Powers, author of Sore Winners: American Idols, Patriotic Shoppers and Other Strange Species in George Bush’s America. It all happens at the Silent Movie Theater, 611 N. Fairfax Ave. in Los Angeles. Admission is free.

Comments

[rosedog]

A-A-A-A-A-A-RRR-R-RRR-R---RG-G-GGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Virgil Johnson]

I keep gravitating from rage to despair, it is so unfair - such contrast, between these people Marc displays and the poor in NO. It is hard to fathom the sheer insensitivity, the unthinking callousness, and the wall of priviledge that now seperates a virtual third world within our boarders.

This did not get here over night, but it is something deep and endemic (in this form) in an America which claims to be the bastion of democracy but is nothing but a haven for hypocrites and exploitation:

"I came to America because of the great, great freedom which I heard existed in this country. I made a mistake in selecting America as a land of freedom, a mistake I cannot repair in the balance of my lifetime."

Albert Einstein, 1947

We should all be undone, there is little to no soul left in this nation - after we have upheld the poor and minority which is our duty, the fury of the people should tear this administration to shreds! But will we do it, or will we carry on in mute resignation? If it is not done at this juncture than it never will be done - we will be buried in the sands of history, and recounted by future generations as amply deserving a place among a rogues gallery with the worst of nations, perhaps chief!

[too many steves]

My heart breaks for them!

Sorry Virgil but this has nothing to do with the ADMINISTRATION and everything to do with us. We don't get off so easy by just blaming THEM.

I have met the enemy and it is me.

[michael Turmon]

Another choice quote:

***
When they sold their home and moved abroad, they took comfort in the outlook of many economic forecasters, figuring the red-hot market would have cooled by the time they returned and were ready to buy back in. They guessed wrong.
***

When times are tough, it's definitely the arbitragers and high-end real estate speculators that get my sympathy. It's such a tragedy when someone knowingly tries to take profit from market swings and loses.

[Josh Legere]

"It's a wham-bam contractor house," said Anne of the lot-swallowing, 5,500-square-foot, $3.7-million home. "It's a spec house," Damir added. "It's a lot of home for the money, but it's lacking in character."

I agree. I can't imagine having to live in a $3.7 million dollar 5,500 square foot home in Santa Monica. Let alone one with no "character."

I wonder if Satzman's parents are proud.

[Brian Siano]

Those people don't bother me so much. People find their own comfort levels, and their despair over their situation is not rational, but it's understandable.

It's the fact that a newspaper wasted space on them that bugs me.

[Josh Legere]

Welcome to Los Angeles Brian! Dailies, Weeklies, etc... ALL have to cater to the delusional upper class / rich. Fashion, real estate, travel, food, etc... Not one of them has an "urban poverty" section, instead we get special “fashion week” issues of the Weekly and the Los Angeles Times Magazine. The article is next to the weekly columns about where celebrities are living.

I just pulled this out and read the entire thing. The line I love is "Although their $3-million budget is considerably higher than most households', they are still confronting the same hard truth..." No, they are not confronting the SAME HARD TRUTH. They can live in $1-million dollar pads in really nice suburbs. But I am sure that living the valley or orange county is simply impossible for them to imagine.

About 99% of the population in Southern California would probably cut off a digit for that "spec house" that "lacks character."

I am sure they got some extra space in the 5500 square foot spec house for some hurricane evacuees.

When will the narcissism stop!

[Virgil Johnson]

Good point to many steves, I thought I covered that in "we should all be undone," maybe it could have been said differently. However, after you are done scourging yourself, and personally changing course (as we all must do) you better address the instrument that we have allowed to supposedly represent us - because all the hurt you feel for others will not be worth a tinkers damn unless this juggernaut is derailed - and your repentance will be good for you but ring hollow upon the present victims graves as well as those to come.

The administration is merely the extension and executer of either the will of the people as assumed by either inactivity (which is taken as agreement), and/or, the wish of the elite that it serves (here and now). Mark my words - if you do not cut the head of this leviathan off (after your own self-examination and change of course), nothing will change - it will get worse. You may call it symbolic if you like, but if it's not done effectively you will not only shed a few more tears but a river.

I agree, lets start with terra firma, but eventually manifest our change of heart - and I say as quickly as possible. Swiftly, because this snake will strike again, and needs to hear not only words but to feel hangman's noose (so to speak? perhaps).

[richard lo cicero]

I stopped reading the TIMES some time ago but come on! The Real Estate section is not and never has been Hard News. See its counterpart in the NYT! And the "plight" of these people may be ludicrous but $3.5 Mil for a tract house in Santa Monica goes a long way to explaining the housing bubble and what will happen when it bursts.

In the meantime let us consider what happens next in the world that eighty per cent of us live in. I may not agree that we're the worst country but I too see a dim future. Dighby has a good post today about GOP plans to change the subject, based on a TIME piece. He concludes that one item is left off: Racist appeals to the White Working Class. And he is betting that it will work. And who among us would care to differ.

Now that the "New" New Orleans will be free of a certain skin color expect LA to be reder than red. And expect the place to be "Disney Leans" for the tourists and paradise for the Texas Oil cronies of Bush. Yeah, a lot of money to be there boy! And if it is as ugly and mean as Texas, well El Salvidor may be squalid but it has some very rich residents with homes in Miami. Lets see who gets vaxation homes in Vail now.

[Bob P.]

Poor fucking babies. They should move here to Pittsburgh where the most expensive auction for a home took place in the hsitory of Western Pa.: it sold for $3 million.

But Joe Hardy, the guy for 84 Lumber, still took a hit from it. After all, it cost him $7 million to build it, but after he and his wide split up, he didn't want it anymore.

So he sold it. And someone bought it.

[Michael Turner]

Snakes that will strike again and that need to hear words and feel the hangman's noose? Repentance ringing hollow *upon* graves? First it's a leviathan, then it's a juggernaut? Oh, Virgil, now you've gone and done it ....

---
September 11th, 2005 (AP) New Orleans was hit again by another flood of metaphors, when notorious blog-commenter Virgil Johnson's flood gates disintegrated unexpectedly in the early morning hours. "I've never seen such a noxious, toxic mix in my life," said New Orleans chief of police pro tem, Eddie Haskell. "It'll take weeks, maybe months, to drain all this crud out, and then we'll have to deal with all the colorful figures of speech that have sunk to the bottom and decomposed. Wait, I didn't mean 'colorful' in any racial ... oh forget it. Print what you want. You do anyway."

Reports that the metaphor levees were initially weakened when a barge full of disaster-of-biblical-proportions similes crashed into them under the influence of an usual metonymy isocline could not be verified at press time. In the wake of this latest complication to the relief effort, the Center for Disease Control issued an APB about the heightened risk of metaphor-mixing becoming pandemic if containment measures aren't enacted immediately. "It's time for the ship of state to wake up and smell the coffee," said Stuart Gilligan, assistant deputy undersecretary of Health and Human Services for Linguistic Hygiene, after hearing of the CDC report and hastily convening a press conference. "We've got to saddle up and get our ducks in a row."

[Virgil Johnson]

Uh oh, brought out the metaphor patrol - sorry you OD'ed on them Michael :) Hope you did not miss the point, I don't want you to miss the forest for the trees..hehehe

[GM Roper]

Seems to me that the Spec home wasn't the ONLY thing lacking character!

Virgil, I was forced to focus on your metaphor mixing because the alternative was trying to see your "forest" through the tangled syntactic "tree" branches of sentences like this one:

"The administration is merely the extension and executer of either the will of the people as assumed by either inactivity (which is taken as agreement), and/or, the wish of the elite that it serves (here and now)."

Hey, Virgil, was that *your* copy of Strunk & White I found in the remainder bin the other day? I'll mail it to you if you send me your address. Not to derail that juggernaut mounted by a leviathan from whose blowhole snakes with nooses around their necks poke their heads, the better to get a good, harsh tongue-lashing .... oh, wait, maybe I'm unwittingly criticizing the Book of Revelation here, lemme check ....

[rosedog]

Okay, Virgil and MT....Here I was, getting home after a nice dinner that featured several glasses of relatively decent wine (after having watched a 9/11-related play by Tim Robbins' theater group, meaning I was already waist deep in the waters of political metaphor)...then before slipping into my jammies, I waded innocently into this thread.....

…and laughed hard enough to wake the dog, at the very least, if not the neighbors.

(I feel sure that if the two of you set your combined creative apocalypticisms to music, Johnny Cash would assuredly rise from the dead to sing and record 'em.)

[too many steves]

Virgil, you are, of course, correct. Just as a tool is an extension of the hand that holds it, so is the government and extension of the people that install it.

There is a scene in Woody Allen's "Annie Hall" where he (as Alvy) encounters a fabulously beautiful couple on the street. They are impeccably dressed and coiffed and appear to be the picture of happiness. Allen's character is his usual neurotic self and completely full of self-doubt over his relationship with his lover (Diane Keaton). He stops the happy couple:

ALVY: You look like a really happy couple. Uh, uh ... are you?

YOUNG WOMAN: Yeah.

ALVY: Yeah! So ... so h-h-how do you account for it?

YOUNG WOMAN: Uh, I'm very shallow and empty and I have no ideas and nothing interesting to say.

YOUNG MAN: And I'm exactly the same way.

ALVY: I see. Well, that's very interesting.

[Michael Turner]

Johnny Cash? No, rosedog! To set the apocalypse to music, you need another genre entirely. Apocalypso?

It's the end of the world as we know it. And I don't feel fine.

The desperate search by that sad couple for a *decent* house for around $3 million only feeds (with an admittedly chocolatey-rich anecdote) my continued sense of foreboding. Little-known fact: the bubble in mid-to-high end residential property exceeds the overvaluation of the U.S. stock market at the height of *that* bubble. And it has for a while. By a large margin, too. Property bubbles often follow stock bubbles, and we just had the biggest stock bubble in history, a few years back. Pretty much a global one, too. (And this new bubble has also gone global -- only Germany and Japan among the major industrial nations have seen an opposite trend.)

This property bubble drives American consumer spending to a great degree. Unless you're poor, that is -- if you're poor, you've seen a decline in fortunes since the beginning of the "recovery".

Recently, I asked an erstwhile commenter on this forum what will happen in China if its feverish growth as a consumer goods export platform were to come to a halt, and reverse somewhat. He had just come from Beijing, where the Chinese have come around (after years of neglect of the issue) to a great interest in the social disruptions possible when you have a huge, disenfranchised, disemployed labor force -- his PhD thesis topic, it so happens. As Henry Kissinger is so fond of pointing out, China has to grow at 7% per annum, just to keep running in place. That's the rate at which the state enterprise sector is shrinking, dumping workers on the street who can only be sopped up by growth in either export manufacturing or in domestic demand.

My friend's answer was illuminating. He said that his taxi driver reported being on the edge, financially. He'd gone to cabbing when he lost his job, and had to support his family somehow. My friend also said that the line of taxis at the Beijing airport was a mile long. That line can only get so long before there's no point in queueing up for it. "Just to give you an idea," he said.

China seemed set to be the big exception to a general rule: rapidly industrializing countries have all gone through a period of militaristic expansion. It's the weak states that go to war -- invasive wars are often a desperate attempt by top-tier elites to hold power when destabilizing internal conditions emerge, or can be an opportunistic move by second-tier elites. A Chinese ruling class that no longer cares much about regional stability, that destabilizes East Asia in a bid to maintain power, could be extraordinarily dangerous, as it deflects blame onto convenient external enemies.

When the world property bubbles finally collapse, one should hope that they do so quite slowly. That could actually benefit China for a while, since China is good at *cheap* consumer goods manufacturing, and a slow belt-tightening might generate more demand for cheap goods. A sudden deflation in property values is a much more serious scenario, however. And the bigger the bubble, the more risk we'll see of a rapid, financially destabilizing collapse. A sudden flight back to stocks won't be the answer, because the U.S. stock market is, I believe, still overvalued by at least 20%.

Now let's throw in climate instability. Why the hell not? We've seen some, and will see more. I was impressed by China's ability to evacuate 600,000 people in an orderly manner from a coastal zone last week, in anticipation of a severe storm (which did materialize, but only killed a few dozen). Well, that's nothin', folks. They just evacuated about 5 *million* from another coastal zone for the same reason.

Why does this matter? Most of China's economic capacity is clustered on its coast. It's a peak storm cycle over on this side of the world too, so those coasts are getting hit. What if China suddenly faces 25% unemployment not only because it doesn't have the export market it used to, but also can't make up the difference domestically, because all its high-value domestic markets for goods are getting socked, over and over, by climate catastrophe? It may go from needing almost as much oil as the U.S. to resentment that it couldn't use that much oil if it could buy it for nothing. Practically overnight. And why? Because global warming caused by the West's demand for fossil fuels will have crippled their economy. (What will likely go unnoted in their expressions of resentment against a West that was only the night before making them rich: China's coal-mine fires emit an amount of CO2 equal to what comes out of the tailpipes of all U.S. cars and trucks combined.)

It's a connected world now. That poor couple shopping for a *decent* $3 million house in LA is coupled to the Chinese labor market, and the SUV they (probably) drive is coupled to the Earth's atmosphere. There's no going back, and the way forward is a tightwire walk. Yet more reasons to feel very nervous that U.S. policies are being set not by some more sober and self-possessed Best and Brightest, but rather by Bush League of America, by the Good Ol' Buddies of POTUS
Uber Alles.

Yeah, a lot of the world hates us now. But it could get much worse. And to think I spent much of my boyhood looking forward to this century. Time to put away childish things.

[richard lo cicero]

Here's food for thought. In 1989 the value of real estate in the Tokyo Metropolitan area EXCEEDED the value of all real property in the US. One stock - Nippon Tel and Tel - equaled, in value, all the issues on the NYSE. Today the property bust has lead to countless bankruptcies, as well as fire sales of US "Trophy" properties like Rockefeller Center, and the Tokyo Stock Exhange is valued at less than half of its peak - rather like our NASDAQ. Of course, unlike the US, Japan still has a vibrant manufacturing sector making high quality products for a price that others will buy.

[rosedog]

Hmmm. MT. Can see your objection to Cash setting anything New Orleansean to music. My thinking was that all those kings (and queens) of Zydeco and NOLA blues aren’t terribly Old Testament oriented, while the Man In Black was more than just passing acquainted with Revelations.

(See the title song of his last album:

“And I heard, as it were, the noise of thunder:
One of the four beasts saying: "Come and see."
And I saw. And behold, a white horse.

“There’s a man goin’ ‘round takin’ names.
An’ he decides who to free and who to blame.
Everybody won’t be treated all the same.
There’ll be a golden ladder reaching down.
When the man comes around…”

And so on.)

But I think your idea of a brand new genre has true merit. I should warn you, however, if you call Clifton Chenier and/or Professor Longhair back from the dead to do the singing, they’ll make even the End of the World sound like fun.

[Abbas-Ali Abadani]

Boy, MT. All sunshine and flowers, aren't you?

Damn that was depressing.

But here's something that'll cheer you up.

Exit Mundi's page on 'Hydroxyl Collapse'.

http://www.exitmundi.nl/hydroxyl.htm

Then, for an even greater dose of mirth, check out their Peak Oil page.

http://www.exitmundi.nl/oilcrash.htm

[Michael Turner]

I've been in Japan ten years now. I came thinking "It's bottomed out, it's all up from here."

Wrong. Wrong-o. How wrong I was.

One reason that Japan defies the world residential property bubble trend is that property values still have a ways to drop here. Down 6.5% last year, in fact. The banking sector has supposedly been cleaned up, but in the process, the government waded deep into debt -- 1.5 times GDP, worse than Italy.

I keep wondering if Japan is a harbinger of the future of the world economy. That might even be a relatively rosy view, though.

Japan has gotten by, with an economy that sputters along year after year, mostly because there's a world out there to export goods to. In particular, it's been a kind of satellite economy of the U.S. Even in those years when the fear was of Japan Taking Over the World, where did it tuck the surplus? Into U.S. treasurys. Yes, they chewed a big chunk out of U.S. manufacturing, but they also kept showing up at those treasury auctions, and thus helped keep our tax bills low. The books balanced. And guess what? China is following a very similar pattern now.

What if that kind of growth dries up? America is nobody's economic satellite; there's no export safety net, no bigger economy to serve. (Where would it be? On Mars?) The property bubble wealth effect won't go on forever. I think where it hits the fan is when peak baby boomers are ten years from retirement, and start selling assets to try to make their plans work. That's about five years off, I estimate. In the meantime, the bubble could go on -- it's in the nature of bubbles that you can't predict when they'll end. Greenspan just called it a bubble, but he called the stock bubble a bubble, and it churned on for years anyway.

[Josh Legere]

Japan? I think you should focus on the plight of those in Santa Monica like the Pevec's

[reg]

r - Cash was also topically dead-on in his more prosaicly descriptive mode:

How high's the water, mama?
Five feet high and risin'
How high's the water, papa?
Five feet high and risin'

Well, the rails are washed out north of town
We gotta head for higher ground
We can't come back till the water comes down,
Five feet high and risin'

Well, it's five feet high and risin'

[reg]

prosaically ???

[richard lo cicero]

I mentioned the GOP "response" above. Maybe they have modified since their "blame game" wasn't selling. Brownie just resigned. Guess his family needs him. And Bush was kinda testy this morning answering reporter's questions. And some more teflon came off as TIME and NEWSWEEK both report that Bush is testy, isolated, has trouble comprehending his speechs etc. Guess the "new Clothes" are getting old.

One other thing to contemplate. Greg Palast of the BBC notes that one of the consequences of the Great 1927 Lousiana Flood - the subject of that great Randy Newman song - was the rise of Huey Long. The Kingfish gets a bad rap these days but his "Everyman a King" program included new roads, free textbooks for all, black and white, new schools and hospitals and LSU. FDR was worried about Long's political popularity so much that several historians, Like George Tracthenberg of Columbia and UNC credit New Deal programs like Social Security as ways of countering his appeal.

So will something or someone come out of the bayou this time?