Trees ... plus

If you look carefully you'll see power lines nestled in with the trees.


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The problem of Easy Credit explained

Here is six minutes that explains our economic situation in clear, simple terms:



 
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Butchart Gardens

 

Butchart Gardens



 
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Timothy Geitner, Real Estate Genius!

I haven't made fun of a government official in a few weeks so I'll let Jon Oliver of The Daily Show get a few licks in:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Home Crisis Investigation
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Joke of the Day

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Vertical

(Well, almost vertical.)

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Assets?

Regulators Close Seven More Banks - BailoutSleuth: "The New York State Banking Department shut down Waterford Village Bank, a one-branch bank with $61.4 million in assets and $58 million in deposits. Evans Bank, based in Angola, N.Y., agreed to assume all of the deposits and nearly all of the assets.

It entered into a loss-sharing deal with the FDIC on $56 million of the assets."

I always thought assets were good things. But apparently at a bank, assets can consist of phantom things; hence the FDIC has entered into a loss-sharing deal on the assets of Waterford Village Bank, because the acquiring bank, Evans Bank, expects losses on these "assets".

This is why many people think that nearly all banks are insolvent. They have "assets" but they aren't worth the value written in the books. The most obvious example has been mortgages where the value of the "asset" - the house - is less than the loan.

At the very least, we should use a different word than "assets" to describe the collateral for loans. "Collateral" sounds like a good word. Banks should have a line item for "collateral" that is separate from whatever "assets" they hold.


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Perspective

I stayed late at work last night (as I have been doing many nights over the last three weeks) and I went out to dinner at the local Safeway. Yum. I noticed this view of the Bellevue construction area. This was taken at about 7:30 p.m. - tending toward dusk - although you can't tell because digital cameras can see in the dark so well. Anyway, I hadn't played with the Photoshop Photomerge thing in years so I gave it a shot with this series of frames. I like the way it looks like several cardboard flats were positioned to make the larger picture.

This might make a fun desktop.


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Historic Brick Road in Redmond

Once again I was diverted from my normal path to work by tons of road construction. I turned off the main road onto the Historic Redmond Brick Road.  I turned on the GPS to get help getting back to the main route and I noticed that for the first time ever the color of the road in the GPS matched the actual color of the road!  So I snapped a photo.

My friend Colin thinks that there is so much road construction because of the stimulus money and I think he's right.  I've never seen road construction happen this fast in Washington.  When we first moved here I went back down to California on business and they had widened the Santa Ana Freeway by about eight lanes (with double car pool lanes) whereas in Washington they were still moving a little dirt around for an overpass.


View Larger Map

But now!  It's super construction time!  I guess the idea is to spend the stimulus money as fast as possible.  So all the roads are getting rebuilt.

You know what's cool about programming the GPS with places you already know?  You can just get off the beaten highway anytime and trust the GPS lady to talk you back to the main route.  This is really handy when you're stuck in traffic.  I love my TomTom GPS 125 - it was like $100.00 last Christmas.  The thing kicks ass.  And it's really useful right now when many of my regular routes are blocked.  w00t.

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Reflecting

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The Stars and Stripes Forever!

I was quite bored in high school. I saw a man named Rod Miller at Disneyland who taught himself to play the piano by slowing down piano rolls and working out the fingering and practicing 4-6 hours a day for two years.

I thought that sounded fun so believe it or not I bought a player piano ($450.00 for a 1910 Aeolian Grand Upright - paid 1/2 by my Mom and 1/2 from my paper route money) and taught myself to play.

In honor of the Fourth of July, I present The Stars and Stripes Forever, which I learned by watching Rod play (watching his fingers upside down and backwards, as I looked over the top of the piano), and by listening to player piano rolls, and by practicing several hours a day for two years. Here are a few other pieces.

(Say, does anyone have a decent embeddable music player? It's easy to embed video but not so easy for audio. )
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Lonely Playground

The location is between Issaquah, WA, and Sammamish, WA. It's a new development where the city built a traffic turning circle to make getting in and out easier. The development has been sitting like this for about a year. They built that sad lonely playground and then nothing else except a street sign. The area is fenced off now.



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Fake Turtle

A fake turtle tries to escape from real water.

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How Much Monetary Inflation?

How much monetary inflation?

70%

How Much Money Inflation? - Howard S. Katz - Mises Institute: "The Federal Reserve is lying about the nation's money supply (M1). The current figure for money supply is being given as $1.6 trillion. The actual number is $2.34 trillion. The reported number is equivalent to an increase of 16% over the past year. The actual number is equivalent to an increase of 70% over the past year. This compares with the nation's high money-supply increase of 16.9% in 1986."

You can read about bank sweeping - which really is fraudulent - and you'll see that most banks don't have any money.

Seven bank failures were reported today. Why those banks and not others? I guess they are the worst of the bunch. Luckily for people with accounts at those banks, other banks picked up their accounts, along with some bonus money from the FDIC. If the FDIC can't convince another bank to pick up your account, then your account is frozen, and you are in for some serious annoyance at the very least. Any automatic payments you have will fail and any outstanding checks are returned marked "bank failure." Sure, the FDIC will cut you a check but it takes a couple of weeks, so your money is not available in the meantime.

Calculated Risk has a quote from the FDIC for each bank failure. Here's one of today's:

As of April 30, 2009, Founders Bank had total assets of $962.5 million and total deposits of approximately $848.9 million. ...

The FDIC estimates that the cost to the Deposit Insurance Fund (DIF) will be $188.5 million. The PrivateBank and Trust Company's acquisition of all the deposits was the "least costly" resolution for the FDIC's DIF compared to alternatives. Founders Bank is the 52nd FDIC-insured institution to fail in the nation this year, and the twelfth in Illinois. The last FDIC-insured institution to be closed in the state was The First National Bank of Danville, earlier today.

Let's see... assets of $962.5 million and deposits of $848.9 million. Sounds like the bank had over $1.8 billion in stuff! But I'm pretty sure "assets" means "shitty loans" so you really need to subtract the bigger number from the smaller number to find out how underwater the bank was.

I'm trying to buy a copy of Rolling Stone magazine because of the awesome article it has about Goldman Sachs. Rolling Stone appears to be hard to purchase. I'm going to a book store tomorrow to look for a copy. You can read the article about Goldman online because someone scanned it since Rolling Stone is too stupid to capitalize on an article that makes the magazine relevant. *Sigh*.

Wait! Late breaking news! Rolling Stone has posted the article, "The Great Bubble Machine." Check it out! (I still plan to buy the hard copy as a show of support.)

[Update: a video interview with the author.]

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Shrek Ears

My car had Shrek ears yesterday.


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The Man of Hope

This kind of patriotic stuff always puts a tear in my eye.  "Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln" was enough to make me a huge fan of the 16th president.  At one point I could recite the entire speech by heart, which, back then, was an amalgamation of his speeches - a big achievement for a kid who went to public schools in California!  In the original version, Mr. Lincoln warned us that the destruction of the United States could only come from within - never from abroad.  And of course, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing the Battle Hymn of the Republic!  OMG!  Everyone of those singers believes that every utterance as a member of that choir is in service to God.  And it comes out in the performances!  What glorious stuff for a 12 year old boy growing up somewhat isolated in Newport Beach, CA!


Obama has said Team of Rivals is one of his favorite books.  I'm in the middle of reading it now.  (I admit, it's slow going, and I have the hard copy and the Kindle version!)  I would just remind Mr. Obama that Mr. Lincoln was also conned by various financial assholes into some crazy central bank BS - so keep an eye out for that, okay?

I was talking to a guy who I thought would be hard core Republican and he said, "Thank God Obama is president.  Can you imagine if we had McCain's crankiness on top of everything else?"

So, you keep going Man of Hope - I've heard you say the US is out of money - so I know you're thinking about our situation.  Don't let the money people con you.  In the meantime, keep up with the inspiring speeches!

And God Bless America!
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Your favorite stimulus project (Planet Money Podcast)

 

Click the polar bear to reach Planet Money's blog about the stimulus.  (Or should I say, "The Stimulus!", in honor of its awesome powers of economic recovery.)

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Seattle Public Library, Main Branch Slideshow

The results of a recent walkabout in downtown Seattle:




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Construction

I'm still loving the view in Bellevue. It won't last forever. These buildings have extra lighting during construction which makes these buildings especially fun to photograph.

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