Atlanta's Math Problem

Short aside here. Came across a little stubbed toe of an article in the Urinal-Constipation about Fulton County reassessing value of some commercial properties downtown. The biggest chunk out of corporate ass is the new Ernst & Young building near the Aquarium. The property tax bill goes from $96 grand to $1.2 million. (Holy millage rate Batman!) Here's a tip to the deep thinkers at Fulton County government: You might not wanna raise the taxes 1200% on an accounting firm. They'll turn their army of Poindexters loose on you to the point that you'll owe them money when they're through. Not that I'm disparaging the folks at Fulton County. Any group that can make Dekalb County look cosmopolitan has my admiration. There's a nifty little chart at the bottom of the article that shows in numbers exactly how much Fulton County is trying to kill business in downtown Atlanta. Poor city of Atlanta, they almost had the pee smell problem solved and now this.

Ares

Thank You Just Doesn't Cover It

As the boys at BlackFive would say, here's someone you should know.

Ares

Matrix

Lest things start to look too serious in this space we've added some content to lighten it up a bit. Bravo Zulu to the folks that came up with this one.




Ares

Speaking of Known Unknowns

Athena and I have been having the discussion about government accounting playing hide-the-salami when it comes to liabilities. Specifically, the coming deluge of pension system obligations. Again, we're no experts, but it doesn't take a rocket surgeon to see the craters in the road ahead. In an odd showing of competence the New York Times laid this out pretty well last Wednesday. As if to piggyback on the theme the city of Vallejo filed for bankruptcy yesterday. Why? "....the cost of ballooning public safety employee contracts"

This is not mystery math. A high school freshman with a calculator can look at X number of employees with X number of years of service retiring a X percentage of annual salary and compute accordingly. San Diego actually had a bit of a dust up about this a few years before their pension system led them into bankruptcy. A city councilwoman had the audacity to suggest the system was out of balance. Her reward was fellow councilmen recommending her for psychological evaluation. I think her new last name is Vindication. This type of flapping incompetence is one of the reasons I'm not a "lifer" at my current employer. We're just starting to climb this hill. More to follow.

Ares

Known Unknowns

From the "No Shit, Sherlock" files comes this deft little booger of insight. The Washington Post has discovered that there's no real logical or economic basis for the explosion of oil prices. "The market is once again searching for a new equilibrium" said a report from Goldman Sachs. The equilibrium referenced is not the usual market forces of supply and demand, but rather the break point where people are moved to violence or outright theft. Around the Ares and Athena campfire we call this a "because we can" application of pricing.

I'm certainly no economist or expert on commodities valuation, but something has definitely changed in the last decade. There appears to be a heard of investment capital that has moved from commodity to commodity. The unifying thread in the movement is that the commodities are staples that consumers have little choice about consuming. It started with an intensive push for deregulation of portions of the power industry in the 90's. This resulted in criminal-level graft in California. (A sitting governor was deposed and the state was economically knee-capped at a cost a few indictments and hand slap fines.) This was followed closely by the absurd run-up in housing prices. Housing will have to retreat quite a bit further before it will be affordable to the average American again. Now we're a few years into a speculative frenzy concerning oil. The hedge fund alarmists have constructed a theater of imagination where any uttered disturbance is cause for increase in price. Favorite examples of the past few years have been rockets fired at oil tankers, forecasts of hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico, a rebel attack on a refinery in Nigeria, and any statement by anyone in Iran. None of these actually result in a supply reduction, but the the downrange facts have no place among current shakes of the Magic 8 Ball. Overlaid onto this decade has been the price of health care. Because, really, your only option besides paying is dying.

This is capitalism at its absolute worst. This carnivorous heard of revenue harvesters is consuming its own flesh. A cursory examination of the first 40 years of the 20th century bears out an excellent example of what predatory capitalism will reap. Aside from stretching society at the seams it brought down government intervention on an epic scale. The longer the current incarnation of that period persists the greater the chorus will be for intervention, regardless of reasonableness. Bear in mind that I'm an avowed capitalist when I say I don't have a problem proposing that the government nationalize the oil industry. The waste and abuse of applying civil service and congressional oversight to the energy industry would be a welcome change from compulsory contributions to epic racketeering. (I defy anyone to ethically justify hundred million dollar bonuses.) The longer this persists the more people are going to pushed into the arms of those that offer radical solutions. (Including mine. Thankfully I'm just Jake Jackass with a blog instead of a policy maker.) This has the real possibility of contorting the entire system to even worse ends. I don't know what will fix it, but like everyone else I can see that its fundamentally broken.

Ares

Changes

Been a while since we've changed the linen over here. I'm trying to see what this pig of a blog host site can do. More subtle changes to follow, including the subliminal advertising for donuts and beer. If you hear cursing from northeast Atlanta it's just me trying to get the code to do what I want. I believe the correct acronym is PEBKAC: Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair.

Ares