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Tal Tales
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I wrote this in a moment of irrational grumpiness about the proposed bailout.
A letter to Congress
September 22, 2008
How dare you?
How dare you propose that we shield these institutions from the consequences of their bad decisions?
How dare you even consider abusing the trust placed in you by your constituents--to use the resources they provide to serve the best public interest--by making sure that investors don't have to pay their gambling debts?
We are faced with a financial crisis of nearly unprecedented magnitude. There is much investigation yet to be done, and I have no doubt that future economists and historians will produce many theses and dissertations on its causes and effects. What is becoming clear, though, is that our banks are crippled by the fact that they are in possession of assets whose value is largely unknown, but increasingly doubtful. These assets were purchased by these banks in the hopes that they could make money from them. That's investment--and investment is always a gamble.
Folks, gambles don't always pay off. And when you make a bad bet, you lose your money. That's the way it works. That's why you think carefully before you invest, do your research, and take risks that you can safely take on. Hopefully, your bets pay off more often than they fail.
What kind of message are you sending a company when you make sure that they don't have to face the consequences for bad decisions?
We've been told that we can't allow these companies to fail, that they are too important. Well, when we have individual companies which are too important to our economy to be allowed to fail--when we have to rescue them, no matter what sort of stupid, reckless bets they have made--then I say there is something terribly wrong with that economy. I say that an economy built on that foundation cannot, and should not, be allowed to continue. If the price of keeping this economy standing in its current form is to shift hundreds of billions of dollars from taxpaying citizens to the institutions which made bad bets so that they can make more bets in the future, then I say LET THEM FALL.
There are many Americans who made some very poor decisions about buying homes. That's a sad and terrible thing, and it's going to cause a lot of pain. What, if anything, to do about that is another story, and one we will have to deal with. My gut says that if you lie about your income to take out a loan you can't pay back to buy a house, then you are going to lose that house. If you take out a loan which you know you can't repay, assuming that the value of your house will rise in time to sell it and make a profit, then guess what? You just made an investment, and a risky one at that. You made a bet, and you lost. Personal responsibility for bad decisions is just as important as corporate responsibility. But those Americans are already paying for their decisions. Millions of households are in turmoil because they are losing their homes. They're facing that loss already. And now the time has come for the banks which made those loans without seriously investigating whether the borrower could pay--and the institutions which encouraged that lending--and the institutions who bought those packaged loans hoping to profit from them--to face up to the fact that they, too, made a bad bet. They made a bad investment.
And you are even considering taking money from the citizens of this country to make sure that they don't have to pay for their bad bet?
How dare you?
We need to deal with this problem in its real form, and that is that we are living beyond our means. For a decade, we've been borrowing from the future. "Look at the growth," we're told. "Look at the wonderful prosperity!"
Folks, it's not growth. It's not growth, and it's not prosperity, when what you're doing is building houses on air and debt. For a decade, we've been climbing higher and higher on a ladder behind a curtain.. Well, now the curtain has been pulled away, and guess what? Our ladder is made of drinking straws and chewing gum. America just got the first call from the debt collectors. It's time to pay up.
We have been told stories about the legendary "greatest generation". We've lionized them for their courage. We honor them because, when we faced great danger, they stood up and put themselves on the line. They made a sacrifice to fix a problem with the world.
We have a problem now. There are several ways to deal with it, some of which seem to require little cost to us. But here's the problem: those methods are tricks. Illusions. Lies. Those methods are the same sort of false solutions which led us to the problem we face today. They simply shift the burden to those who will come after us.
The time has come to stand up. The time has come for us to make a sacrifice. Do we have the courage? Do we have the ability to take the hit, so that our descendants don't have to? Can we make the sacrifice, and face the consequences of our irresponsibility--and that of those who came before us? Do we have that courage?
Or will we make sure that our grandchilden curse our names, as a generation of fools and cowards, who saw the problem and hid our faces in fear and shame?
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The rehab continues.
I wanted to put in one of those pop-up stoppers in the working bathtub (the trip lever kind which was in there didn't work very well). We removed the trip lever without incident, and I went out and bought a dumbbell wrench to remove the drain itself. That worked quite nicely, so I put in the popup drain. Then my father-in-law crawled under the house to check the new drain for leaks while I ran some water down it.
Uh-oh. Leaks abounding...but not, as it turns out, from the new drain.
The overflow and drain from the tub were beautiful brass piping, intact and lovely. However, somewhere along the line, someone had just kind of jammed some PVC drain pipe into the outflow of that brass assembly. They put some sort of cement in it, but in the course of pulling out that drain, I had apparently put enough (i.e. any) strain on it to break that cement, and it was now leaking.
So out we go to the hardware store. We buy an ABS overflow/drain assembly, a few elbows, a male threaded ABS end, and a female threaded PVC end. We put in the new ABS drain, cement on the male ABS thread, screw on the female PVC coupling, and attach that PVC to the existing PVC which then goes down to the cast-iron drainpipe. And, miracle of miracles--it works!
My father-in-law has poured a thin layer of leveling concrete over the repaired and sealed plywood floor in the other bathroom. We will apply slate tile onto that concrete. Unfortunately, with the tile, it is very likely that the door of the bathroom will no longer clear the floor. We'll have to either shave down the bottom of the door and insert a new block of wood into it (it's hollow-core), or get a new solid interior door and shave it down a bit.
I've finished painting all of the rooms.
I'm tired.
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So we bought a house.
I've posted the story of the purchase elsewhere; it was a short sale, and those make full novels on their own. But in the end, we got it.
Now we discover what "fixer" means.
Background: while I am not physically incompetent, I have very little experience with tools. I know a hammer from a set of pliers, but (until very recently) I couldn't have identified a router unless it passed network packets. However, my father-in-law (with whom I get along very well) is an electrician, and knows a fair bit of many other construction-related trades, and expressed willingness to help. So when we saw the house we now own advertised as a "fixer", we thought we'd check it out.
The inspection revealed some issues of concern; needs a new electrical panel, some wiring work, a leaky drain line, and such, but nothing major. The bones of the house--foundation, framing, and roof--are all excellent. A quick look-through by father-in-law revealed no areas beyond our capacity, so we took the gamble.
After closing, we left ourselves two weeks and several thousand dollars to do needed rehab work. Painting came first, and I learned to do a decent amateur job of that. Then the fun begins.
The toiler over that leaky drain doesn't actually seem to be bolted to the floor; it slides sideways at least three inches. Take it out, get new toilet, put on a double-thick wax ring (the cast-iron drain flange is a bit below floor level) and bolt down the new toilet. No more leaky drain line. Yay.
I have now learned to remove and install toilets.
On to the other bathroom. Look at that bathroom wall...kind of crumbly and blistered there near the bottom...hmm. And the sink drain--wait, what is THAT? They've just taped the sink outflow to the drainpipe? They don't actually connect. And that supply valve is leaky.
Take the sink out. Take the toilet out. Definitely water damage in the drywall.
Rip out a big piece of drywall (damp) and take a look.
Good news: The supply pipes (copper) are intact--actually, in great shape, except for that supply valve. Shut off the water, cut them and cap them. We'll install new supply valves later.
I have now learned how to cut and solder copper plumbing.
Bad news: drainpipe in wall is cast-iron. We can just cut out the section where the sink connects and replace it with ABS, right? Sure.
Oh wait. Is that a crack?
Yep. The cast-iron drainpipe is cracked, down to the floor. Go into the crawlspace. It's cracked down to an elbow fitting. Cut out the drainpupe and replace with ABS.
I have now learned to cut cast-iron with a sawzall. Heck, I have learned what a sawzall IS. And I have cemented ABS drain lines, and connected them to cast iron.
Cut new drywall. Put new drywall over the big hole. Tape and mud it in place.
I have now learned a bit of drywall repair.
Hey, that tile in the floor is loose. Lift it up.
There's water underneath. CRAP.
Pull up tiles. They're cemented onto what looks like linoleum, and it's definitely water-damaged around where the sink was. Pull up linoleum--it's sitting on 1/2 inch plywood, which is smelly and mildewey for about a foot and a half around where the sink was. Cut into that and pull it up too, praying that the actual floor is not rotten.
I have now learned how to adjust the depth of cut on a circular saw and use a prybar to rip up flooring.
The floorboards--the actual 1x4s sitting on the long joists which are attached to the foundation--are discolored and slightly damp, but still feel very solid, and I can't punch into them with a screwdriver. We decide to treat them with borax (kill the mildew) and dry them out, then put down new flooring.
And that's where we are now. I've learned a lot, and the fact that my father-in-law (and a friend) are donating the expertise and labor has saved us several thousand dollars, I figure.
I'm well aware that I have learned the BASICS of all of these things, not enough to do good work on my own. But still, I'm learning a bit about how houses are put together, and that doing these kinds of things is something I can learn how to do, with some time and a friendly teacher. It's even kind of fun.
Whee!
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We are (hopefully) going to get word on whether we will be buying a house sometime this week. With that in mind, I am considering other changes I might make. I have been pretty happy with a lot of changes I've seen in myself lately; I have some new hobbies (classical guitar, archery) which I like a lot. However, there is one area I'd like to change--commuting to work.
Even if we get our new place, I'll still be about 6 miles away, which is too far to walk for me. We'll have better access to the local bus and light rail, which would work well except that I teach night classes two days a week and the trains don't run at night.
Biking is a definite possibility, except that the route I would take has a fair number of blind curves, and doing that at night on a bike is a bit scary.
Driving is, of course, an option, but gas is $4 a gallon here now.
I like LF's motorized bike option, but I am also considering a scooter...specifically, the Genuine Scooter Company's Buddy and Yamaha's Vino. Both are 125cc scooters, which should be capable of at least 45 mph (even with someone as heavy as me on them) while getting 80-100 mpg. They're both around $2500 new.
Aside from the whole "look even more like a complete doofus than I already do" factor, does anyone have any advice on the issue? I have never ridden a motorcycle or scooter before--how difficult is it? How horribly unsafe?
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Welcome to the Suppository, home of the eloquent and informative Asylum Blogs!
To make a blog for yourself, DON'T try to make a new thread in here. Don't click on the "New Thread" button. No! Don't! OH, GOD, NO!
Dammit, you did it anyway. You should be right at home here.
Well, you found out that it doesn't work like a regular forum. To make a blog, click on the "Options" button up at the top of the screen. Over on the far right, you should see a "Blog CP" button--click on that. From here, you can make blog entries, name your blog, etc. etc. When you make a new blog entry, it will show up as a thread here in the Suppository. Other people can then see, read, ponder, object to, consider, be persuaded by, and ultimately found religions based on your blog post. They can also (should you deign to permit it) register their own replies to your wisdom as comments.
Have fun.
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We are currently in the process of applying for a mortgage and trying to buy a house. Here in north San Diego county, home prices have been skyrocketing for years; between about 2000 and 2006, they went absolutely nuts. When I applied for my current job, one of the things I asked the hiring committee was "Where the heck do you people live?"
Although we are fine with renting, we have always hoped to someday have a home of our own. When we moved here is 2006, the idea of applying for one of these interest-only, ballooning, insanely risky mortgages did occur to us. We have excellent credit (although little or no down payment), and given how freely they were being tossed around, I have no doubt we could have gotten one. However, they seemed like an insane risk--taking on debt far beyond your means entails betting everything on home prices continuing to skyrocket or major jumps in income, and we were not willing to bet on either of those. So we found a nice place and rented, figuring that home prices couldn't keep doing this forever.
Now that the housing bubble has collapsed, San Diego county has been one of the worst-hit places in the country. There are substantial neighborhoods around here where huge numbers of homes are undergoing foreclosure or short sales, and prices are plummeting, especially at the low end of the market. Suddenly, there are lots of houses in our reach, and our credit is good enough that lenders are willing to talk to us even though we have very little cash available. We've got a bid on a short sale right now.
Given all this, I've been thinking a lot about the mortgage crisis, and the proper response of government to it. I don't wish harm on anyone, and I don't specifically want to see anyone lose their homes...but I am not sure I think that massive government intervention is appropriate here. I certainly have a great deal of sympathy for those who are victims of predatory lending, or who were deceived as to the nature of their loans. Although it is the buyer's responsibility to understand the terms of the loan, it is also the lender's job to be upfront and clear about them. In cases where people were deceived, I can see action taken against the lender.
In many other cases, though, when people either neglected to take the time and effort to understand the loan terms or chose to accept the risk, although I feel bad for the difficulties they will face, I do not think that governmentally-driven modifications to their loans is appropriate. If you are buying a house you can't afford, on the assumption that it will rise in value and you will be able to make a profit or refinance it, then you have bought an investment, and a risky one at that. Investments always carry the risk of loss.
I know that losing one's house feels very different from having a stock investment go south; homes represent shelter and stability. But buying a home as a home usually entails making sure that you can afford what you buy--after all, if it is going to represent shelter and stability, it doesn't make sense to buy something you are sure to lose unless things turn out just right! If you buy a home not as a home, but as an investment, then it seems dishonest (when the investment goes bad) to portray the consequences as "losing one's home".
There is also the issue of public risk and private profit. When the government insulates people from their bad decisions, that implies some public assumption of the risk of an individual's investments. If a person makes a good investment, though, there is great outcry at the notion of taxing the profits from the good investment.
Likewise, unless those buying houses they could not afford intend to offer up a substantial percentage of the profits from the sale when they do manage to have it come out well, it seems illegitimate to expect help avoiding the loss if it goes badly. It is not fair to expect private profit, but public risk.
I know a couple who bought a house in the Los Angeles area during the middle of the housing boom. They made good money, and could actually afford some of the homes they were looking for. However, they chose to buy a very expensive home (about $200k beyond what they could afford with a traditional fixed-rate mortgage) by taking on a low-introductory, ballooning loan. As it turns out, they ended up selling the home for a decent profit about six months before the collapse started, so they never ran into the balloon on the mortgage (which would have bankrupted them). That's fine--they bet well, and while I wish they had not been involved in the market bubble which drove prices out of most folks' reach for so long, I don't really hold it against them. They had the money to make the bet, and it paid off for them; that's how the market works.
But if they had gotten stuck and lost the home, while I would have felt very bad for them, and would have welcomed them to stay with us while they found other housing--I would not have pushed for legislation to keep them in their house at your and my expense, or by forcing modification of the loan terms.
I end up with mixed feelings here--I don't want to see people forced out of their homes, but I suspect that the cost of government intervention may be unsustainably high.
On the other hand, I don't favor any bailout of the lenders who made the loans, or investors who bought them, either (again, unless fraud or deception can be proven). Assessing risk is the job of those making loans and buying them as investments; if they have failed to do so properly, then I see no reason why they should not take the hit. To do otherwise would be to reward them for a poor business decision.
But I know nothing of economics, as I have said, and I am sure there are many factors I have not considered. That's why I posted this here--so y'all can show me where I have this wrong. Please help me out. 
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It's been a weird couple of weeks. At the end of January, while driving along the freeway (taking kids to school), my Jetta died. Turns out the timing belt slipped or snapped or some such, and since it's an interference engine, it trashed the engine. The ignition coil and some other electronics are dead, too. Estimated repair: $3200. Value of car: About $1000 if it were running, and I strongly suspect it will have other problems soon. I'm selling it to one of the mechanics at the shop for a few hundred dollars.
So we had to shop for a replacement. Decided to move up to a minivan, found a good one from a private seller, had it inspected. It's in good shape, and the price is reasonable. Made an offer accepted, paid cash. We knew the registration was expired, and we'd have to renew, so I take it to AAA to do the paperwork.
Of course it's not simple.
Here's the situation, which took me a few days to figure out. The person selling was not the owner listed on the title. That person--the titled owner--had sold the car to a woman, and signed the title--but she had not signed it in acceptance. That woman was a member of the family of the man who sold it to me. He gave me the title (signed by the original owner) and a blank bill of sale, signed by the original owner. Basically, the family selling it to me had never officially taken possession of the car.
According to AAA, that wouldn't have been a problem--except that the woman to whom to original owner sold it *had* accepted legal liability. Thus, while she had never signed the title, there was a record of her attached to the car, and the bill of sale signed by the original owner was invalid.
I had to get the man who sold it to me to obtain a bill of sale from the original owner to his relative, and one for his relative to me. Which, to his credit, he did within a day. He wasn't trying to scam me, he just didn't realize that his female relative had taken liability for the car.
In the end, it just cost us a little time and stress, and we had to pay an extra transfer fee ($15). But now it's ours, and we like it.
We're also shopping for a home loan, as we have found a very nice house which we would like to buy. There are foreclosures and homes for sale *everywhere* around here, and most are sitting on the market for 60+ days (the one we like has been out there since September, with no offers). Combine that with low interest rates, and I think things are as good as they're going to get--or almost so--and it's the right time to buy a house if we can get a loan. No adjustables, no weird loans--30-year fixed all the way for us. Now we'll see if anyone is willing to lend us the money.
So things are interesting. The stress of the car is done, which is good--but house shopping and loan shopping are nervewracking. Still, we might end up with a house for a bargain. Then we get to enjoy toilets failing and it being *our* job to fix them.
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Hypocrisy = failing to live up to one's stated ideals
Hippocracy = political rule by horses
Just something I've noticed recently.
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At the moment, I seem to be in an expansion mode. Not in terms of gaining weight, but in that I seem to be hungering for new ideas and new knowledge. Example: I've signed up (no pun intended) for online ASL courses. I've always been interested in sign language, and always wanted to learn it, but it's only now that I've gotten things together to actually start.
I know that ASL should really be learned from a competent instructor; without feedback, I may be signing very badly. My college offers good courses, but I just can't fit them it with my own work and family life. So I'll just work on getting some vocabulary and receptive understanding, and go from there.
I'm trying to learn classical guitar as well, although my practicing has decreased a lot since mid-semester. I'm also getting solid plans together for how to tackle some old stuff which has been hanging over my head since I got my degree. There is a lot of data from my last experiments that never got published, and I don't feel like I can look my advisor in the face until it is done. I know it sounds silly, but it's a significant mental burden. I was a pretty lousy grad student, and actually getting that data published would make me feel as though I wasn't a complete fuckup at it.
My older son's charter homeschool wants me to teach a weekly science elective to their 3rd-5th graders. It sounds like fun, and it would satisfy some professional development requirements.
I'm also trying to learn Flash, dabbling with Cocoa programming, and going to weekly archery lessons with my older son.
Wheee!
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I've posted many times on the Asylum in defense of religious belief, tolerance of religious belief in others, etc. I've even argued fairly extensively about it with various folks. It thus strikes me as somewhat ironic that, in the last few months, I have been having more and more trouble with the concept of faith in general, and my own faith in particular.
While I was raised in a somewhat vague Methodist church, my parents never made a strong effort to indoctrinate me with any religious beliefs. Until late childhood, around 10 or 11, I think, I was pretty much areligious; I just didn't think about it very much.
In early teenagerhood, I had several experiences (both personal and external) which established some amount of religious belief. I found myself thinking about the existence of God more often, and about God's nature. Now, if and when I went to church, I paid more attention. I read the New Testament, and parts of the Old Testament (still have never been able to read Leviticus), and began to identify as Christian. I was not particularly dogmatic, but generally held a belief in the existence and benevolence of a single God. even then, I wasn't so sure about Jesus, but God seemed likely. I sang in the church choir, went on some church trips, and such. I never wanted to do any evangelism, and never did.
In high school, I spent a fair amount of time with a group affiliated with Campus Crusade for Christ. It was led by a woman named Deb, who was (and is) one of the kindest, most gentle, and most generous people I have ever known. She was an evangelical, devout Christian, but did not press any of us to adopt those beliefs; I think she was more interested in simply being present in our lives and providing guidance when asked. It was around this time that I began directly praying to God, asking for God's direction in my life, trying to open myself to God's will.
In college, I identified as Christian with many questions, and not accepting of many doctrines. I was studying science, and becoming increasingly inclined to critical inquiry and thought. In some ways, though, the intensity of my faith increased; I dated a woman who was more devout that I was, but also skeptical of many aspects of Christianity. During college, I believed in a personal and benevolent God, and accepted the importance of Christ (with the suspicion that other religions were alternate paths to the same truth), but I remained nondoctrinal.
In graduate school, while I continued to profess a belief in God, I found that the strength and relevance of my faith varied from month to month. and gradually I came to where I have found myself in the last months--a person who wants to believe in God, both because of my own experiences and because the beauty and elegance ofthe natural worldincline me to believe in a source of that beauty, but who is having increasing trouble rationalizing that belief and remining intellectually honest. More and more, the arguments of atheists make sense to me; that it is not rational to believe in the specific Christian concept of God, possibly any concept of God. My attitude in prayer in the last five years or so has generally been "God, please forgive me for not being at all sure about Your existence", but of late that has been striking me as a manifestation more of cowardice and childishness than humility and honesty.
More and more, I have come to think that if there is a God, then that God *must* make sense. The universe seems to operate entirely logically; it seems that any God involved in its creation must have made it that way for a reason. The idea that a God would have made thisuniverse, and then arranged matters such that the fate of one's soul would depend on believing in certain specific things about God and behaving in certain ways--none of which have solid logical bases--and would then allow multiple conflicting interpretations of those wishes, most of which are largely incompatible, except in their broadest claims, and provide no way to be sure which of those competing sets of rules is the "right" one, is incomprehensible to me. If that isindeed the case, then that God must be either malicious or operating by principles and towards goals which I cannot understand. That latter may well be the case, but then I am helpless; there is nothing I can do to be in line with the will of such a God.
The alternative is that none of those religions are themselves entirely (or possibly at all) true. It is not logically possible that all religions are equally true. If none of them have it right, then how should one decide what to believe about God? One can certainly conclude that there is no God, or that there is a God about whom we know nothing for certain. That is the possibility which is growing in my mind; since my earlier conceptions of God no longer make sense to me. I still want to believe in God, but I'm not sure why; maintaining a foolish consistency does not seem to me to be virtuous, and as many have recently pointed out (I just read Sam Harris's Letter to a Christian ation, and I am remembering some things 3MTA3 has said, with the insults conveniently edited out  ), a vaguely held irrational belief may not be harmless.
None of it makes sense anymore. One of the few things I have ever thought which still seems to me to hold truth is this idea:
"Whatever comes of love, honor, and respect is of God"
God, if you are there, and you are the sort of God who listens to prayer, then please hear me. I am lost. I don't know what to believe. The conceptions of your nature I have known do not make sense to me anymore.
If you are there, and you are the benevolent God I have always believed in, then I am reaching out to you. I cannot see you, and I am increasingly doubtful whether I ever have. If you are there, I want to do your will; if you are the benevolent Creator of the universe, then I trust you to have a plan for me, and a place for me in the universe, and I want to fulfill that purpose. But I don't know that purpose, and people seem to disagree about what your will is. None of the Scriptures I have read of any faith make sense to me except as stories and poems and philosophy, none strike me with the impact of the word of God. If you are God, then your word should be undeniable; I have not found it.
God, if you are there, I can only make this appeal; if there is something you want me to do, then I pray you will help me to know what it is, and help me to know the time and place. I can only do what seems to me to be the right thing, using all the powers of understanding I can muster, and that I will do. If you want something of me, then I must pray for you to inspire me and guide me, in whetever way seems best to you, to help me to do your will. I will continue to seek you; I will learn all I can, and try to avoid harming anyone in the meantime. I will do what I can to seek peace between people, mutual understanding and respect, and goodwill between all men and women. If you are the God I have always believed in, and been taught about, then I believe you have promised not to abandon those who seek you. I must trust that you will not abandon me; that you will help me find my place in your will. If you are there, then I must believe that even in my doubt--even in agnosticism and skepticism--you hold me in your hands, and will not let me go. In the absence of stone tablets and burning bushes, though, I will make my decisions based on what I can learn of the world and a desire to do good wherever I can.
If you're not there, then hopefully this plan of mine will do as little harm as possible.
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