"Yes, there are still bright developments. The Beacon Theater will have an ice cream parlor and a wine bar opening soon, and some performances are scheduled for later in the summer. The Beacon Falls Roundhouse project is lurching along, and the hotel/restaurant building looks nearly ready to have windows put in.

But there is a curious stillness, that I feel even in New York City. A feeling of being in a limbo, waiting for time to catch up.

Economists are obviously spending too much time reading each others’ reports, and not enough time on Main Street, listening to the guys under the tree in front of the DMV, or talking to the owners at Max’s Bar and Deli."

"You, Randall Stephenson, and your lazy stupid company — you are the problem. You are what’s wrong with this country."

"The solution on an idea that should be apparent, but maybe not to most. Simply, that the ownership of productive assets (essentially, those assets that generate goods/services that can be sold) is vastly superior to ownership their financial derivatives (stock funds, retirement accounts, etc.) -- we once were a nation of entrepreneurs, now we are a nation of indentured servants. "

"The Detroit News reports that Ypsilanti Township is among three municipalities that have recently agreed to join the Detroit Region Aerotropolis Initiative, at a cost of $25,000 a year. The public-private sector partnership aims to develop roughly 60,000 acres from Detroit Metro Airport to Willow Run Airport. The article states that the city of Ypsilanti and Van Buren Township agreed to join last year."

Scroll all the way through, and look at every one.

For example:

"New Home Months of Supply

The months of supply is at an all time record 13.3 months in January."

"Of course it’s crazy to imagine retargeting our industrial capacity in such dramatic fashion, and turning it on a dime, isn’t it?

Not necessarily. For months I’ve been meaning to blog a segment from a Lester Brown podcast, which I can’t find now, but here’s the same point from his book Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization:..."

"But even more concerning for the U.S. is that export traffic is declining. For the LA area ports, outbound traffic fell off a cliff in September, and was even lower in October. Outbound traffic was about 8% below the level of October 2007.

The key supports for the economy earlier this year - consumer spending, exports, and investment in non-residential structures - are all declining sharply now."

"My thoughts exactly, Don. Plus the durations target the drawdown precisely on the capital we need most. We're desperately short of 3 month working capital, and here comes Paulson to take $700 BB of what we've got left away and dump it in the mortgage industry. I don't think you could devise a worse plan. We might be better of if he *did* steal it."

"The underlying resistance to Paulson’s latest and most expensive attempt to unlock financial markets comes down to what Fed Chairman Bernanke yesterday referred to as “market psychology.” Congress and Main St. are annoyed that Paulson is spending government money on silver bullets that never reach their intended target. Now that his gun has run out of bullets, he’s trying to scare America into giving him a nuclear warhead."

"And Mr. McCain has a special advantage to bring to any such investigation -- many of the relevant witnesses are friends or colleagues of his. In fact, he can probably get to the bottom of the whole mess just by cross-examining the people riding on his campaign bus. So the candidate should take a deep breath, remind himself that the country comes first, pull the Straight Talk Express over at a rest stop, whistle up his media pals, and begin."

"...Fifth, fulfilment of this last misgiving, in the shape of abrupt disappearance of the buying demand throughout the country, this particular phenomenon being prolonged through a period of months and sometimes years."

"We have said before that this program is an inefficient, covert way to recapitalize the financial system. If I were a foreign central bank, I'd have a lot more confidence if the US imposed regulatory reform, took over dud banks, got rid of top management, and then did the good bank/bad bank split. That's a model that has worked and could be modified and improved. But for some unknown, the powers that be are refusing to employ formulas that have worked and prefer their own home-cooked brew."

READ

"But not everyone did better. Workers, in real terms, did not get a share of the profits from the boom, their wages stagnated over this time period. So why should they pay for the bailout? This is nothing more than The Little Red Hen run backwards, they ate the bread first and now the hen is asking "Who will help me pay for the bread?" It shouldn't be those who weren't allowed to sit at the table.

So I would increase taxes progressively, and I would do it in proportion to the changes in the distribution of income over this time period. And I like this a little better than Luigi Zingales' solution for precisely that reason, it puts the burden directly on those who benefited from the boom."

"The sooner you “drop out” of the speculative economy and its abstract concerns, the sooner you will be able to create and provide real value for the people all around you, and the better position you will be in to get what you need for yourself and your family.

This is not bad; it is good. The pain that people are about to go through now is not the product of the speculative economy’s failure, but its former and intentional unjust success."

"The list of reasons the financial system is unsound grew massively today, by the tune of a $1.2 trillion taxpayer funded bailout designed to bail out the wealthy at the expense of the poor.
Earlier today Paulson had the gall to state "this will cost the tax payer less than the alternative".
No one bothered to ask why it should cost the taxpayer anything at all."

"OK, got it cracked. Don’t be a shareholder, or a preferred shareholder, or even a creditor or a policyholder. Just be a counterparty to a sleazy derivatives bucket shop — AIG Financial Products (AIG), to pick a name at random — and your chips, with applicable profits, will be returned no questions asked. "

"From time to time you have to kill a management team to encourage the others."

The one, single picture the Ann Arbor SPARK needs to understand.

"Deregulation has not worked. Unfettered markets may produce big bonuses for CEOs, but they do not lead, as if by an invisible hand, to societal well-being. Until we achieve a better balance between markets and government, the world will continue to pay a

Under what circumstances does "The Address of Innovation™" complete with a parasitic trademark symbol not vividly signal <i>lack of innovation</i>!? I really do need to know. No, really. It's important.

When scientists do money

Deadly humor

An additional income tax on lobbyists might make a big difference.