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The Knock-on Effect of the Subprime Mess
/2 Comments/in Better Government, Blog, Blog: Better Government, Economic Opportunity /byI attended the Finance Advisory Board meeting last week and one of the new appointees to the Board, Robert McConnaughey, (who replaced the previous incompetent), raised an interesting and insightful point — how will downgrades to bond insurers impact public sector debt? To unpack his question a bit — much public sector (i.e. municipalities, authorities, states, etc.) debt is enhanced with bond insurance, which provides a higher bond rating and reduces borrowing costs. If these bond insurers themselves get downgraded (largely as a result of exposure to bad subprime debt that they insured), it flows through the market and affects the bonds that they insured. Mr. McConnaughey’s question is already looking even more timely. S&P just downgraded a major bond […]
Stack em high
/0 Comments/in Blog, Economic Opportunity, Housing, Related Education Blogs /byWhat level of concentration of poverty is the right amount? Is it right for the state to create destination cities for the poor? As it stands, the state will, whenever possible, place the poor it is “helping” in areas of cities where housing values are extremely low in order to maximize their own ability to give people shelter. Seems to be right from the immediate bean-counting standpoint, but if you think about it, it can create a death spiral for cities, which are already deep in the trough fiscally. Let’s start with the numbers. In Massachusetts, the following Middle Cities have easily met their “state target for affordable housing”: Holyoke – 21% Springfield – 17% Lawrence – 15% Worcester – […]
There are no other issues. This is the issue.
/0 Comments/in Better Government, Blog, News, Related Education Blogs /by Liam DayAt a critical moment in The Verdict perhaps the best Boston movie ever made (considerably better, anyway, than the wildly overrated The Departed), Paul Newman’s character, a Boston defense attorney, is advised by his mentor (played by the incomparable Jack Warden, who, as you movie buffs out there may know, played the grandfather in one of the all time great cheesy movies, Problem Child) that there will be other cases. In response, Newman repeats over and over, more to himself than to Jack Warden, that “There are no other cases. This is the case. There are no other cases. This is the case.” I was reminded of this scene this morning reading Ed Moscovitch’s op-ed in the Boston Herald, Soaring […]
46 years ago and still true
/0 Comments/in Blog, Economic Opportunity, Housing /byJane Jacobs was the maven of public input, but she is also in many respects a common sense proponent of organic, private market growth in our cities. Try this on for size, from The Death and life of Great American Cities, published in 1961 when Robert Moses still held the marionette of New York in his hands: There is a wistful myth that if only we had enough money to spend — the figure is usually put at a hundred billion dollars — we could wipe out all our slums in ten years, reverse the decay in the great, dull, gray belts that were yesterday’s and day-before yester-day’s suburbs, anchor the wandering middle class and its wandering tax money, and […]
Who said this?
/0 Comments/in Better Government, Blog, Blog: Better Government, Economic Opportunity, News /byCould, for instance, more services be privatized? Could state and local workers’ benefits be more closely aligned with those in the private sector? Give up? The lead editorial in today’s Boston Globe!!! Be still my beatin’ heart.