Battlepanda's greatest hits

Wow...it has been literally months since I posted. For many reasons, including an email from Lawrence, our most prolific commenter in days of yore, I've been feeling a lot of nostalgia lately for the ol' Battlepanda blog. Thus, here it is folks, my greatest hits as selected by me. Since there have been about 1500 posts, these posts are literally one in a hundred.

It's been a fascinating process, wading through the archives. I don't even remember writing some of this stuff any more. In a way it's a bittersweet process because I don't know where that engaged and interesting blogger have gone. When I post now, I tend to just slap up some news of the weird that I came across and thought might be good for a yuk or two and won't take more than five minutes to post. But I will always be grateful for that period when blogging my obsessive hobby and I spent hours upon hour reading, thinking, writing and commenting about politics, philosophy, economics...and cute animals. I think I went through something of an intellectual growth spurt, even though I barely recognized the fact at the time.

Anyhow, in case this sounds too much like a career-ending post...no, I'm not going to go away or shut up shop or anything like that. It's just a look back. In fact, I might be tempted to post more. I hear we've been having some sort of an unpredictable primary season...

(1) Are children public goods

(2) A fork is a fork An absurd conversation captured for posterity.

(3) Relativism vs absolutism I still subscribe to this view today.

(4) Neither dismal or a science

(5) Why are our intro to econ classes failing us?

(6) Nordic fetishists prefer blonds

(7) There's no third party solution to the two-party problem

(8) The transporter and the limits of empathy Or why I will never get in a transporter. Bonus trekkie post: the holodeck as experience machine

(9) A gentle plea for caged fights

(10) Emotion delivery services In which I compare Catholicism with the peanutty goodness of JIF.

(11) Outrage In some ways this blog's finest hour. A blogswarm for justice.

(12) Two flavors of libertarianism A post that nicely summarizes my love/hate/love-to-hate relationship with libertarians.

(13) The moral maze of meat

(14) The Battlepanda law of cuteness "Things are automatically cute when they are either much bigger or much smaller than you would otherwise expect them to be. "

(15) Four plus one The internet meme where you tell four truths and one lie about yourself. So much fun to write.

That's all, folks. I hope you've enjoyed the trip down memory lane and here's to hoping that 2008 sees a little more activity here at the blog than there had been in 2007.

A look back: Credit Crunch Cassandra edition

My very first post on blogspot. Seems apropos given the recent news. Awww, memories.

Thursday, April 07, 2005

Bubble, bubble...[housing trouble]

I've been hanging out a lot at the Angry Bear and other econ blogs lately, and I'm starting to get the feeling, my friends, that we're in for a world of hurt. There's been talk for months and months that the housing market is unsustainable. But now the gloomy sentiment is becoming mainstream. I heard not one, but two stories on NPR yesterday about impeding trouble in the housing sector. Prices in 'hot' markets on the coasts have gone completely insane. The housing boom was initially fueled by rock-bottom interest rates, but now speculation is rearing its ugly head, with 85% of condo sales in Miami going to investors. Meanwhile, even ordinary people are throwing caution to the wind and buying the most house they could, even if it means stretching themselves to the limit financially. They've seen their friends and family refinance their way to the good life, and now they want to get in on the action themselves, just as those who are in the know are starting to worriedly mouth the dreaded word -- 'bubble'.

With so many potential customers clamoring for home loans, the financial industry have come up with many new 'creative' products so that marginal clients who would have been turned away in staider times can grab their piece of the American dream. 35-year morgages. Interest-only payments for three or even five years. Despite historically low interest rates, people are eschewing fixed-rate morgages for adjustable-rate morgages because, in the short term, the payments are lower. You don't have to be Alan Greenspan to foresee that many of those American dreams are going to end in the nightmare of foreclosure and bankruptcy. The banks don't care because as soon as they make the loan they turn around and flip them to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- government sponsored enterprises that buys the loans, no questions asked. Government sponsored -- meaning that if their overstuffed portfolios of questionable quality causes those quasi-corporate behemouths to go down, they're probably going to get bailed out with tax-payer's dollars.

What I did not foresee: that the fallout from the US sub-prime crisis is going to have such a direct domino effect worldwide. Investor's teeth are on edge in this part of the world after the events of the past few weeks, when the markets have first flushed from foreign investment and then quickly blanched as the subprime crisis rocked the US markets. It might actually be a good time to buy local stocks now.