Originally posted over at Ape Man
If you have been keeping awake as the talking heads drone on, you have probably heard of America’s problem with aging infrastructure. After all, we have had the levees break in New Orleans. We have had a bridge collapse in Minnesota. We have a major dam threatening to blow in Click Here to continue reading.
Corbusier and I had (or are we having?) an exchange of views over at Articture + Morality on New Urbanism. I am re-posting something that I wrote in his comment section for the benefit of those who like to keep tabs on what I am up to.
Corbusier,
Thanks for the reply. I am Click Here to continue reading.
This post from Jeff Matthews is anecdotal in nature. Still, it is a useful reminder that a fall in the value of the dollar is not without its downsides for American manufactures. A quote….
Rohm & Haas, in case you never heard of it, is as plain-vanilla a company as they come. By “plain vanilla,” I don’t mean “low-tech” or “mediocre.” It’s just a low-profile specialty chemicals company that makes stuff you use every day—the computer you’re using to read this, for example, is using semiconductors packaged in Rohm & Haas materials—yet never think about.
Furthermore, the company’s chemicals are at the heart of not only the U.S. manufacturing economy, but the world’s economy as well, with half its business coming from overseas.
And what Rohm & Haas was saying while the aforesaid Bloomberg article scrolled across my machine, was this:
Now, as we speak, we are seeing dramatic increases with no seasonal easing in key raw materials… We now expect to see an increase in the total raw material cost for Q4 on the order of $50 million…. This is a development of the last two or three weeks.
In other words, since the surprise Fed rate cut in late September, prices of the company’s key raw material have spiked.
At least some people are trying to hold the line
This from the Financial Times via The Naked Capitalist…..
At a time when America, or at least Wall Street, needs a spineless hack as the head of a key agency, it is saddled with a credible man of principle: James Lockhart, OFHEO’s director. Yale graduate, Harvard MBA, lieutenant in the nuclear navy, risk management software entrepreneur, senior insurance executive, and former head of the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation. “A real hard-ass” in the words of a mortgage finance executive. It doesn’t seem as though he can be intimidated by the threat of being sent back to Plano, Texas, to work in his uncle’s car dealership.
Lockhart was appointed in the middle of last year to the directorship when there was no immediate, obvious cost to anyone of having a competent, effective regulator who actually knows what those buttons on his computer are connected to.
What is worse, his resistance to Fannie and Freddie ballooning their balance sheets and loosening their controls is reinforced by his experience in a previous job. The Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation, a thinly capitalised government insurance operation, which charged inadequate premiums for covering beneficiaries of failed pension funds, was in turnround, as they say in Hollywood, during his tenure from 1989 to 1993. Lockhart had to clean up other peoples’ messes and one can guess he doesn’t want to do that again.
No pictures as proof, but I recently hosted a pie party. This is where I provide the dough and apples, everyone brings their own pie plates, and we peel and cut apples till everyone has their pies. I made enough dough to use up about 5 lbs. of shortening and 7 lbs of flour, and all told we peeled and cut 90 cups of apples. Between the three of us. And they each only took home one pie. So we’re eating the rest. But we’re not complaining.
Though you actually can eat apple pie to the point you don’t feel like eating any more apple pie. Even if you are a barbarian.
If you are interested in following fires in California, here is a blog post with enough links to get you started. Don’t neglect checking the comment section.
Five fools decided to ride across Angola on glorified dirt bikes. They are a profane bunch and they take a perverse delight in what the Survival Blog calls national geographic type nudity. But they take marvelous pictures and they write well. I found myself on the edge of my seat a number of times while reading this, even though I knew the fools came through all right in the end.
The story is on a forum. To get between the first few sections you have to scroll past short bits of other people’s commentary. But watch for the continued here tag. As soon as you see that (on the third section) you can go from post to post without having to deal with the stupid comments.
A record shot by the Canadians. But I don’t think that this a testament to their skill so much as it show what the .50 caliber sniper rifles can do.
I have been getting more requests from more people for different reports–which orders absolutely must ship today, which important customers are about to get really upset with our performance, other things of that nature. I’ve told everyone that it reminds me of getting the women and children off the Titanic. In other words, triage implies Click Here to continue reading.
The essay of the week brought to mind Robert Frost’s famous meditation on the end of the world.