Word of the day? "Freegan"

I had no idea about the word "freegan" until I read this piece in the NY Times Magazine:

Freeganism is a bubbling stew of various ideologies, drawing on elements of communism, radical environmentalism, a zealous do-it-yourself work ethic and an old-fashioned frugality of the sock-darning sort. Freegans are not revolutionaries. Rather, they aim to challenge the status quo by their lifestyle choices. Above all, freegans are dedicated to salvaging what others waste and — when possible — living without the use of currency.

Hmmm ....

Eventually, Kit and I arrived at the house that he’d picked out for himself. It was a tall, narrow structure, with boarded-up windows and a front lawn in desperate need of mowing. There was no “for sale” sign, but that hardly mattered, because Kit simply planned to move in. Buffalo is fertile ground for squatting. Kit’s house was one of 10,000 such abandoned structures in the city. As far as Kit was concerned, this rust-belt city, hit hard by foreclosures, was a veritable Eden for freegans.
“People throw away houses,” he told me. “It’s ridiculous.”
As it turns out, a group of Kit’s friends have enjoyed great success as squatters in this same neighborhood. In 2005, they took over a palatial old home, and this was where Kit was temporarily living when we met. The property is a sprawling turn-of-the-century mansion with six fireplaces, a cavernous dining room, a library, several enormous bedrooms, servants’ quarters and an in-ground swimming pool. The place, it must be said, is in serious disrepair.

Wait a sec; using somebody else's property without .... And there is a probation system (what? no tenure system?!!!)

Most visitors are welcome to stay at the mansion for a day or two, but to stay longer, they have to help fix the place up. There is a “probationary period,” one longtime resident explained, in which newcomers must “bottom line” a project — that is, they must see it to completion. During my visit, the veterans were considering the candidacy of a young woman who’d bottom-lined a few projects. Her chances looked good. “She showed me a bunch of tricks on filling and masonry and how to best use Spackle so that you don’t waste it,” one veteran told me.

Like many, this too is a re-telling of history:

Freeganism is often described as a recent phenomenon, but its premises date back at least to Gerrard Winstanley, a 17th-century English cloth seller. In the 1640s, Winstanley’s business failed, and he resettled in the Surrey countryside, where he herded cattle. These were tough times in England, marked by violence, famine and low wages. Winstanley decided that the solution was to form a community without money. The poor would till the soil and fill communal warehouses with their crops, which would be distributed to all. Winstanley, who abhorred waste, eventually took over some uncultivated public lands along with his followers and founded what was known as a Digger colony.

There is always something crazy going on :) ht
BTW, I am reminded of this piece that I wrote sometime ago ...

Size matters: small is beautiful?

To paraphrase Dick Cheney, Hummer is in its last throes :)  I suppose this is better than how Government General Motors told Saturn another of Cheney's statements--*&%$ yourself!

In the context of Hummer's inevitable death, Tunku Varadarajan writes:

Americans aren’t shy or subtle, and bigness gets the point of one’s prosperity across to one’s neighbors without artifice or nuance. Big McMansions and cars telegraph “I’m rich and successful” to those not schooled in the snobberies and subtleties of class, to those who lack hypocrisy. Big American breasts are a perfect (if occasionally gaudy) metaphor for the country’s bounty. 

I wish he had clarified whether those breasts were of women or men :)
Anyway, Varadarajan has a neat observation:

the demise of the Hummer looks like more than the end of an automotive brand. It looks like the start of an age when we need to measure ourselves afresh—and maybe start to resize America.

I am not sure whether a downsizing will really appeal to mainstream America.  I wrote about this at Planetizen--though, it was before this Great Recession.

I am, therefore, all the more reminded of Schumacher's Small is Beautiful.  Yes, it takes me back to my first year of grad school, which was when I read that book.  It had enormous appeal, but not only was it a tad touchy-feely, it was pretty much a retelling of Buddhist philosophy in political economic language.  But, I have always had a soft spot for the small is beautiful approach to life--again, in a way I wrote about this at Planetizen.

"Greed is good"

In "The United States of Gordon Gekkos" I wrote about greed--not just on Wall Street, but on the metaphorical Main Street too. Without greed, for all purposes, we can't have the economic system we have. Can't live with it, and can't live without it!
Warren Buffett says that now is the right time to be greedy again:

Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful. And most certainly, fear is now widespread, gripping even seasoned investors. To be sure, investors are right to be wary of highly leveraged entities or businesses in weak competitive positions. But fears regarding the long-term prosperity of the nation’s many sound companies make no sense. These businesses will indeed suffer earnings hiccups, as they always have. But most major companies will be setting new profit records 5, 10 and 20 years from now.

Bakersfield, too, contributed to Lehman Bros' demise

In light of Lehman Brothers' bankruptcy, am reposting an earlier one:
We lived in Bakersfield, CA, before moving to Oregon. We sold our home just before the real estate mania set in. Bigger and bigger homes were being built, and speculators (flippers) were buying from all over. McAlister Ranch was one such mega project, which is one of the reasons that Lehman Brothers is now in a mess (watch the following YouTube clip)



I tell you, we are the United States of Gordon Gekkos :-(
Update: the Bakersfield Californian lists the investments in Bakersfield and Kern County with the Lehman connection.

Nouriel Roubini says we are not done yet :-(

The NY Times magazine has a lengthy piece on Nouriel Roubini and his bearish forecasts. Despite Roubini's continued pessimism, I am not going to change my mind that the worst of the crisis here in America is over (my earlier post). The essay also ends with some ideas that are similar to the sentiments I expressed in an oped in Planetizen: The United States of Gordon Gekkos.

The concluding paragraphs in the NY Times article:
“Reckless people have deluded themselves that this was a subprime crisis,” he told me. “But we have problems with credit-card debt, student-loan debt, auto loans, commercial real estate loans, home-equity loans, corporate debt and loans that financed leveraged buyouts.” All of these forms of debt, he argues, suffer from some or all of the same traits that first surfaced in the housing market: shoddy underwriting, securitization, negligence on the part of the credit-rating agencies and lax government oversight. “We have a subprime financial system,” he said, “not a subprime mortgage market.”

Roubini argues that most of the losses from this bad debt have yet to be written off, and the toll from bad commercial real estate loans alone may help send hundreds of local banks into the arms of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. “A good third of the regional banks won’t make it,” he predicted. In turn, these bailouts will add hundreds of billions of dollars to an already gargantuan federal debt, and someone, somewhere, is going to have to finance that debt, along with all the other debt accumulated by consumers and corporations. “Our biggest financiers are China, Russia and the gulf states,” Roubini noted. “These are rivals, not allies.”

The United States, Roubini went on, will likely muddle through the crisis but will emerge from it a different nation, with a different place in the world. “Once you run current-account deficits, you depend on the kindness of strangers,” he said, pausing to let out a resigned sigh. “This might be the beginning of the end of the American empire.”

The economic downturn: who is to blame?

In an earlier post, I noted that it starts with Alan Greenspan, the former chair of the Federal Reserve. And, I wrote about consumer greed as a factor in an oped for Planetizen. Apparently, I am not the only one who starts with Greenspan though, of course, he is not the only one nor the most significant actor. Here is an excerpt from a NY Times report, which ends with the consumer also being at fault:

Who’s to blame?
There is plenty to go around.

In the estimation of many economists, it starts with the Federal Reserve. The central bank lowered interest rates following the calamitous end of the technology bubble in 2000, lowered them more after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and then kept them low, even as speculators began to trade homes like dot-com stocks.

Meanwhile, the Fed sat back and watched as Wall Street’s financial wizards engineered diabolically complicated investments linked to mortgages, generating huge amounts of speculative capital that turned real estate into a conflagration.
“At the end of this movie, it’s clear that the Fed will have to care about excesses,” Mr. Barbera said.

Prices multiplied as many homeowners took on more property than they could afford, lured by low introductory interest rates that eventually reset higher, sending many people into foreclosure.

Mortgage brokers netted commissions as they lent almost indiscriminately, offering exotically lenient terms — no money down, no income or job required. Wall Street banks earned billions selling risky mortgage-linked securities around the world, aided by ratings agencies that branded them solid.

Through it all, a lot of ordinary Americans borrowed a lot more money then they could afford to pay back, running up enormous credit card bills and borrowing against the value of their homes. Now comes the day of reckoning.

Planetizen's notable opeds in 2007

Mine made that list. Am excited. I wonder if being listed first also means that it was the best oped of that year? Cool!
Read it here