Lack of Updates

Sorry about the recent lack of updates. It is not that I have not read much to comment about, but a combination of home improvements(repairs?) and an awful case of some influenza-ish physical malady have left me without time and energy to post much.
 
I'll make an attempt to update tomorrow.

Housing - Down and Out?

I've held the view that this so-called economic recovery has been a lot weaker than the usual suspects have proclaimed.
 
(a quick search using the form in the LH column will give you a few dozen mentions)
 
This morning the Census Bureau released it's June 2004 numbers concerning new housing activity.
 
It's not pretty.
 
I'll give you the highlights as I see them.

• Construction of new homes in the U. S. slowed in June, falling 8.5 percent from May to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.802 million.

 

• Starts of new single-family homes declined 9.5 percent in June to 1.489 million seasonally, the lowest level since May 2003.

 

• Building permits, a forward looking indicator, for single-family houses slid 6.2 percent to 1.51 million.

 

• Overall building permits tumbled 8.2 percent to 1.924 million units. It's the sharpest decline in permits in 10 years.

 

• Over the past five months, housing starts have averaged 1.926 million, down from last month's 1.952 million.

The number of homes already in the process of being built remains at high levels, but, and this is a big butt, building permits crashed.
 
As the housing market and consumer spending were the two legs holding this fragile economy together, if these housing start figures prove to be more than an aberration, then this could prove very damaging to the so-called economic recovery.
 
"The recent weak patch of economic news for June, on consumer spending, employment and industrial production, has not dented most economists' view of an economy reaching cruising speed". So reads a snippet of this Reuters' article detailing some poll numbers of economists' expectations for the balance of this year and next.
 
Me, I'm not an economist, but I do watch broad indicators of economic activity. I'd say that the glass is half-full, and someone's treating themself to a quenching drink.
 
The $64,000 question is of course, who is correct? Or are we all wrong?
 
I would be remiss if I didn't mention that the University of Michigan's Consumer Confidence Index rose slightly for July. Consumers are slightly more optimistic about the near future than in June, but will they continue to spend? Do they have any more credit with which to continue to spend?
 
Wages have lost money to inflation, and personal debt is at or near all-time record levels. Energy and food costs are way up, and this of course erodes consumers abilities to purchase hard goods - durables.
 
So, I'm less sanguine than the surveyed economists. This is not news. Time will tell if any of us are reading the tea leaves accurately. I use the price of copper as a measure of economic activity. While copper prices remain high, it is off it's peak, and the trend is beginning to turn murky. Copper could go either way at this juncture.
 
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Iran? Show me.
 
So, if some the 9-11 hijackers merely passed through Iran on their way to wherever, that's a lot less aid than the U.S. gave all of them. Now that's ugly.

Town Haller Needs History Lesson

At TownHall.com, where "The Conservative Movement Starts Here"(is conservatism a moving experience?), columnist Paul Jacob opines about Washingtonian hypocrisy on both sides of the aisle(which is really just one side).
 
Unfortunately, Mr. Jacob hits an area that I'm pretty well versed in. The writings of Madison are a special source of intrigue for me, and I know some of his writings quite well.
 
Here's what Jacob claims:

Much of the hypocrisy in Washington politics involves partisanship. It appears that ideas don't matter nearly as much as whether there is an R or a D stitched onto the chest of the idea's advocate.

Partisanship is winning out: Politics has become a football game with a blue team and a red team competing for all the prizes of power and money. The goal is to win the game by staying in office and by getting or keeping your team in the majority - so you as a congressman get the bigger and better slice of perks, pork, privileges, and power.

That's much different than the body of citizen representatives our Founders envisioned - men who would act not as part of the factions so feared by Madison, but as an independent board of directors to run government according to the rules, the Constitution, and for the benefit of us all as shareholders.

But our Founders' dreams are not today's reality. This can be seen in the reckless disregard for principle, and in the routine trivialization of ideas. The issues that so animate the citizenry have become mere objects to be used to win the game by the partisan professional politicians populating the nation's capitol.

First of all, the founders' of this country were indeed professional politicians. Or, at the very least, white men that could afford to take the necessary four months off in order to draft the Constitution and Articles of Amendment. This situation applied to all centralized governmental processes wherein those attending needed to physically meet.
 
Does that sound like the common worker of today, or does it more likely reflect the moneyed and privileged?
 
Madison was very class conscious. When he uses the word 'factions' he is using it as means to differentiate between the gentry - of which he was part - and the proletariat. The founders' - very much a class of ruling elites - wanted to control the political and social processes of the new country. Why else would the electoral have been written into the Constitution?
 
Lest you think I am in error, and that Madison meant something else when he used the term 'factions,' I refer you to the following text from Madison's Federalist Paper number 10:

The second expedient is as impracticable as the first would be unwise. As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed. As long as the connection subsists between his reason and his self-love, his opinions and his passions will have a reciprocal influence on each other; and the former will be objects to which the latter will attach themselves. The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to a uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government. From the protection of different and unequal faculties of acquiring property, the possession of different degrees and kinds of property immediately results; and from the influence of these on the sentiments and views of the respective proprietors, ensues a division of the society into different interests and parties.

The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man; and we see them everywhere brought into different degrees of activity, according to the different circumstances of civil society. A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning government, and many other points, as well of speculation as of practice; an attachment to different leaders ambitiously contending for pre-eminence and power; or to persons of other descriptions whose fortunes have been interesting to the human passions, have, in turn, divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to co-operate for their common good.

So strong is this propensity of mankind to fall into mutual animosities, that where no substantial occasion presents itself, the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts. But the most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society. Those who are creditors, and those who are debtors, fall under a like discrimination. A landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a moneyed interest, with many lesser interests, grow up of necessity in civilized nations, and divide them into different classes, actuated by different sentiments and views. The regulation of these various and interfering interests forms the principal task of modern legislation, and involves the spirit of party and faction in the necessary and ordinary operations of the government.

Now there you have the real Madison. Far from being a democratically minded product of the enlightenment, Madison was, as he wrote above, supremely conscious of class. He was a member of the ruling elite of the eighteenth century. Madison considered he and his class above the rabble, and together, they structured government in a way that would solidify and perpetuate his conceptions. Read the whole document. Ideologically, Madison had more in common with Marx than he does with the fabricated history that we are taught in school.
 
I'll be emailing Mr. Jacob with the entirety of Federalist Paper No. 10
 
He just might learn some real history :)
 
Before anyone asks me what I was doing at TownHall.com, I sometimes go there to see how much I don't fit into the reactionary cheerleader mold. It can be quite invigorating.
 
Besides, it's my birthday!
 
Birthday Update: Sarah McLachlan will not be performing at my birthday party later today. Something about 'doing her hair.' :)