Even less
Wednesday, 24 September 2008
Hey there! Long time no blog. Well, I was away for about a month and such.
The U.S. government is about to spend $1,000,000,000,000 or so buying up "toxic sludge," much of which finds its physical form (in however convoluted a manner) as now-worthless suburban sprawl. What if the nation had, ten years ago, decided that we spend a trillion dollars along these principles instead? Would we be better off today? Now, just how efficient are markets at optimally allocating capital again?
(This poster is on the side of the Denver Dry Goods building, an early rehab completed by Jonathan Rose Companies.)
or, as Tom Friedman puts it today:
“In the 19th century, America had a railroad boom, bubble and bust. Some people made money; many lost money. But even when that bubble burst, it left America with an infrastructure of railroads that made transcontinental travel and shipping dramatically easier and cheaper…
“The early 21st century saw a boom, bubble and now a bust around financial services. But I fear all it will leave behind are a bunch of empty Florida condos that never should have been built, used private jets that the wealthy can no longer afford and dead derivative contracts that no one can understand. Worse, we borrowed the money for this bubble from China, and now we have to pay it back — with interest and without any lasting benefit.”