Intellectual Ore

A few days back, Stephanie sent me a link to Veritas Magazine, a not-for-profit e-zine featuring lots of fun things to do around Des Moines, IA.  Des Moines is a really nice place: it has a lot of the same small-town feel of Urbana, with a somewhat more vibrant arts/entertainment scene, owing in part to its status as state capital. 

The recent article in Veritas entitled “Satan’s Suburbs” does a great job of identifying some of the problems the US faces as a result of its post-WWII zoning practices, among them a highly energy-intensive lifestyle, and an overall reduction in community strength, with fewer people out walking the streets.  However, the article neglects one thing I feel is supremely important to understanding how we live: mobility.  People are moving more than ever before, to places farther away, with higher frequency than at any point in history. Such mobility creates a lot of social problems, including reduced investment in communities, less incentive to participate in community events, etc.  Even with stratospheric oil prices, I don’t see the US population becoming any less mobile soon; people follow economic opportunity, and the opportunities of big cities are just too much for highly-educated people to justify giving up (especially after investing so heavily in their education).

We’re experiencing the financial crisis of the decade.  On the back of major troubles in the financial sector, the DJIA declined 504.48 in Monday trading.  Lehman Brothers, a 158-year old Wall Street institution, has declared its intent to file for bankruptcy,  Merrill Lynch has agreed to be acquired by Bank of America, and AIG is flirting with insolvency.  Taken individually, each one of these events would be a front-page headline in world newspapers; that they happened simultaneously genuinely merits calling the episode a “disaster”.  Consequently, candidates are stumping, Bloomberg is trying to get the SEC to reinstate idiotic short selling rules, and The New York Fed is trying to coerce morally suade Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan into doling out some $70 billion to make AIG solvent.

Such catastrophes force deep rethinking of assumptions.  I just finished Alan Greenspan’s “Age of Turbulence” (could there be a better title?), a deeply contemplative book which explores many of the philosophical, legal, and moral underpinnings of the American way of life.  Central to the book was the idea of “resilience”, that is, the durability of America’s market capitalism.  Looking back, it’s incredible that things haven’t been worse: the past ten years have seen one (maybe two) catastrophic hurricanes, terrorists flying planes into the WTC and Pentagon, and now a global financial crisis, the effects of which include the dissolution of Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Countrywide Financial, IndyMac, Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac, and countless regional banks.  Will it end?

Yet, John McCain was correct today when he said that the fundamentals are basically strong.  (This isn’t an endorsement of his candidacy, just a remark on a statement he made.)  Inflation remains contained, and jobless claims are up only slightly.  Surprisingly, the “crisis” remains relatively financial in nature, with few knock-on effects (save home foreclosures) in the real economy.  I find this encouraging.

Updates from RAID to follow…

After a brief hiatus from blogging, I’m back.

I’m trying to select a research topic for a Master’s thesis.  I came across this site, which promises to help “pick A Worthy Topic in 10 Seconds” - it’s not far off the mark.