12. April 2009 by admin.

It’s a truism in this country that newspapers are dying.  On one level, it makes absolute sense.  A newspaper is a physical artifact: it must be manufactured, distributed, and sold before you read it.  That one can still buy a weekday News or Post for fifty cents is a modern miracle.  In contrast, electronic media are available instantly, often at no incremental cost, given that one has Internet access or cable TV.

And even in the newsprint arena, traditional newspapers are in trouble.  New York City has three major traditional English-language newspapers and two throwaway dailies, distributed for free at subway stations and from streetcorner boxes.   I’m sure the throwaways make money, or else they would simply disappear.

Alas, the throwaways and the electronic media don’t satisfy.  They report on the day’s events; they have pictures; they tell us about tomorrow’s weather.  But something essential is missing, at least for me.

Most of the media tell us what happened, when it happened, and who did it.  Sometimes they delve into how something happened.  But they don’t tell us why, or what the consequences might be, so that we could anticipate, and possibly prepare for, what might happen next.

When I read the paper, I skim the news and then head for the editorial page.  I study the editorials and the op-ed pieces.  I don’t agree with everything, but that’s part of the charm. When I encounter a columnist I’d like to throw rotten tomatoes at, I seek to understand his argument: what’s actually wrong with it?

Editorials in the throwaways are a sometimes thing, and they don’t run op-eds. And none of the other media seem to hit my news analysis spot.  Newsmagazines like Time and Newsweek come out once a week, dwell on whatever they care to, and last maybe thirty minutes.  Opinion magazines are generally on one side of the fence or the other.  Cable television news has nuggets of analysis, but how do you find them?  Sometimes a TV news program will analyze an issue in detail, but generally after an issue has been open for a month or so.  And too much on TV is event reporting or yammering talking heads.

I’m sure I’m in the minority here, wanting not just to find out, but to understand.  But what happens if, collectively, we don’t want to understand anymore?

Posted in Media, Things Falling Apart | No Comments »

11. April 2009 by admin.

An article in yesterday’s New York Post brought out an interesting point:  while we, and much of the world, tend to blame the economic mess on American bankers who over-leveraged themselves, the data suggest something different.

A year ago, when we were dithering with the question of whether or not we were having a recession, much of Europe and Asia was already in trouble.  While we retroactively place the beginning of the recession at December 2007, the wheels didn’t really come off the American economy until September 2008.

So what happened?  In late 2007 and early 2008, there was a huge runup in the price of crude oil, topping out at $150 or so a barrel in July 2008.  For us in the US, the price rise played out as an annoyance: ‘Pain at the Pump’ was a constant headline on the NBC evening news.

The rising price pushed the economies of Europe and Asia, and even Canada, directly into recession.  But we hung on for a while: perhaps our propensity to run up debt shielded us from the direct effects of the price rise.

And then we got in trouble as the price fell. Perhaps we would have hung on if the price had stayed up; perhaps our unregulated hedgemen had bet on the price of petroleum and lost their shirts, and that was the straw that broke our camel’s back.  Or maybe we just exhausted our capacity to paper over our problems with debt.

In any case, when all hell was breaking loose last September and October, nobody seemed to notice–or to assess–the effects of the high price of oil in the previous months.  It was just that the price of oil had dropped because of slack demand.

Yes, our bankers made a royal mess of things, and created an environment in which even responsible businessmen believed they could make money out of thin air by investing in real estate.  But the rising price of oil has more of the blame.

However, if we consider the price of oil, instead of our inept bankers, as a primary cause of our difficulties, our strategy for dealing with the problem should properly change.  In that case, we simply took a hit from a market force that is no longer with us, and should try to walk it off, with some modest stimulus efforts.  The ‘troubled assets’ would be secondary, best left for the market to deal with.

Of course, that’s not the approach we’re taking….

Posted in Money | No Comments »

5. April 2009 by admin.

This past week, the New York State Assembly passed, and the state Senate is contemplating, the state budget for the fiscal year that began… last Thursday.

At a time when the economy is reeling, and one would figure the need to cut back, the budget weighs in at $132 billion, up some $11 billion over last year, and $8 billion over the budget that Governor Paterson proposed.  The State Assembly news release indicated that the budget “closes a projected a $17.65 billion General Fund gap by implementing $5.1 billion in necessary spending cuts, raising $5.2 billion in revenue, utilizing $1.1 in non-recurring revenues and maximizing $6.2 billion in federal stimulus dollars.”

I’m afraid to ask how there can be a $5.1 billion dollar cut if spending is up by $11 billion, and I’m not sure how ‘maximizing’ Federal aid differs from spending it.

Somewhere in New York is $5 billion in State spending that is absolutely wasteful and stupid, and the State leadership was finally able to kill it.  But beyond that, it seems as if the State simply relied on Federal aid and tax increases to otherwise maintain the status quo.  What happens a couple of years down the road, when the economy has recovered and the Federal government is no longer handing out aid?

Meanwhile, the budget legislation also modifies the state drug laws to favor rehabilitation instead of prison.  The original Rockefeller laws from the 1970s were modified a few years ago to eliminate their supposed Draconian excesses, and it seemed to work: prison populations are down, and the streets are far safer now than 20 years ago.   Yet the state Legislature is changing them now, and allocating additional funding for drug treatment alternatives.

So the state has money to preserve the sacred cow of education, and can drop the pile of nuisance taxes that were part of Governor Paterson’s original plan, but they can’t come up with a way to provide funding for the MTA and deter fare hikes and service cuts.  (Perhaps the MTA was one of the stupid items that got cut.)

The distressing part of it is that there seems to be nothing that we as citizens can do to stop this madness.  The state election laws effectively favor incumbents by making it very difficult for newcomers to run for office.  Once in a while, someone makes it, gets sucked into the Albany machine, and turns into a Legislature droid.

And electing a new governor doesn’t seem to help, either.  A while back, we elected Eliot Spitzer on his promise to clean up Albany.  Within six months, he was in a pissing contest with Joe Bruno, leader of the State Senate.  Governor Spitzer had a legitimate question: was Bruno using State travel privileges for political gain?  But by pursuing the matter in a thoroughly inept manner, making it look as if he was using the State Police to spy on Bruno, Spitzer effectively shot himself in the foot.  Needless to say, no actual cleanup occurred.

And then Spitzer really imploded when it turned out that he was seeing prostitutes, and he left office, leaving us Governor Paterson, who has been a singular model of ineptitude.

What can we do (besides move to New Jersey)?

Posted in New York State, Dysfunctional Government, Money | No Comments »