Shel Holtz lists all the techs whose reported deaths are still exaggerated. Hat tip to Zane Safrit.
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The amazing thing about crashes is that you can see them coming. They’re not surprises like earthquakes or meteor impacts. A sure sign of their approach is too much speculative lending, which contributes to the boom that sets up the bust. We saw it in housing in the 70s and 80s, which led to the S&L crisis, and again in the 00s. We’ve seen it over and over in tech, most famously with the dot-com crash.
Now we’re about to see the U.S. government crash, for the same reason.
According to Bloomberg (which ought to know),
| The U.S. government is prepared to provide more than $7.76 trillion on behalf of American taxpayers after guaranteeing $306 billion of Citigroup Inc. debt yesterday. The pledges, amounting to half the value of everything produced in the nation last year, are intended to rescue the financial system after the credit markets seized up 15 months ago. |
| The unprecedented pledge of funds includes $3.18 trillion already tapped by financial institutions in the biggest response to an economic emergency since the New Deal of the 1930s, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The commitment dwarfs the plan approved by lawmakers, the Treasury Department’s $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program. Federal Reserve lending last week was 1,900 times the weekly average for the three years before the crisis. |
That’s trillion. With a tr.
Our debtors won’t be able to pay most of it back. Nor do we expect it to be.
And we can’t pay it back, unless we print all the money we need, or do the electronic equivalent.
Which will turn the dollar into the peso. Or worse.
What comes after that — or even during that — I hate to think about.
Or so it seems to me, on a cold Wednesday morning. Hope I’m wrong.
Meanwhile I would like to see more transparency than we’ve seen so far. Lack of it is the other story in the Bloomberg piece. Scary reading.
Hat tip to Dave for the pointer.
Things really are going from bad to worse.
Trees do not grow to the sky.
True for countries as well as companies.
Tags: conversation, countries, depression, downturn, google, layoffs, murder
In VRM is Personal, I say this…
“Social” is a bubble. Trust me on this. I urge all consultants on “social ______” (fill in the blank) to make hay while the sun shines. Even as the current depression deepens, lots of companies are starting to realize that this “social” thing is hot stuff and they need to get hip to Twitter and the rest of it. (Just ask the Motrin folks.)
And it is hot. But much of that heat is relative to its absence in other areas. “Social” has sucked a lot of oxygen out of the online conversational room.
Meanwhile, here’s the challenge: make the Net personal. Make relationships personal. Equip individuals with tools of independence and engagement. That’s what VRM is about.
… and go on. Read the rest there.
Tags: VRM
This makes me glad I don’t have advertising on this blog.
Ever notice how many car ads you see on the evening news? On sports broadcasts? (Between the ones for beer and “erectile dysfunction” relief — nice promotional symbiosis there.) How much of that is Detroit money? How much of that money will go away, whether or not Detroit gets bailed out? And will Asian and European car makers spend enough to take up the slack?
Just wondering.
In any case, watch for commercial broadcasting to take more hits.
Before:
After:
I just put up a gallery of shots I took as the sun was going down today, and the evacuation barricades were lifted — at least from some of the Tea Fire burn area.
The aerial shot above is from the excellent Live Search Maps. If you want to look around, the top shot is in this view here.
Most of my shots were after the sun went down, so they’re not the best. But they reveal some of what went on at the western edge of the fire perimeter.
Most of the houses north of Sheffield Reservoir (which is now buried beneath a park) were spared. But many along Gibraltar, El Cielito and West Mountain Road (such as the one above, a beautiful house with a view across a pool and Parma Park) were burned. It wrenched my heart to see residents visiting some of these homes. They weren’t all “mansions”, as the out-of-town media called them. Many were not even especially upscale. But most were beautiful, and all were in a beautiful setting. And they were homes. They contained the lives of their residents. Lives that will have to start over in many ways.
We know people who lost homes here. Our hearts go out to them.
One thing that amazed me was how good a job the firefighters did protecting many homes in this area. One official said it would have been reasonable to expect to lose 500 or more homes in a fire like this one.
I head back to the place our kid calls “alt.home” or “shift_home” in Boston tomorrow. Meanwhile I am appreciating every minute I’m here.
Meanwhile, here’s a thankful shout-out to the firefighters who did their best to save what they could. Which happens to be the rest of Santa Barbara.
Bonus pic: Here’s exactly the same area, after the Sycamore Canyon fire in 1977.
[Later…] I’m on a pit stop at the Starbucks Coffee & Reggae Disco in King City, where the music is so loud that people go outside to talk on their cell phones. Just did that myself.
It was weird to hit SCAN on the rental car radio and have it stop at 87.7, where KSBY/Channel 6 in San Luis Obispo was running a live press conference on the Tea Fire from Santa Barbara. I stayed with it until the signal gave out around San Ardo. Meanwhile, here’s what I picked up that matters: Homes were lost on the folowing roads:
- Coyote Road
- Coyote Circle
- East Mountain Drive
- West Mountain Drive
- El Cielito
- Gibraltar Road
- Las Alturas Road
- Orizaba Road
- Orizaba Lane
- Conejo Road
- Stanwood Road
- Sycamore Canyon Road
- Ealand Place (not sure, but I think so)
- Mt. Calvary Road (including the Monastery and Retreat Center)
- Westmont Road/Circle Drive (not clear about this, but I believe so)
They said 210 structures were lost. More than 5000 homes were evacuated across a large area outside the fire perimeter, ours among them.
Only residents with government-issued IDs will be let into the main burn areas: Mountain Road, Conejo, Coyote, a few others.
Okay, hitting the road again. Next stop, SFO. Then BOS and back to work.
[Later…] I’m at SFO now. No time to say more than to look at this map, this City 2.0 summary, and these images and headlines.
Oh, and look at this. It’s the same scene after the 1977 Sycamore Fire. Some home sites have burned three times: In the 1964 Coyote Fire, the Sycamore Fire, and now the Tea Fire.
Tags: "Santa Barbara", "Sheffield Reservoir" "West Mountain Drive" "Live Searc, "Tea Fire", "Tea Wildfire", Montecito
Well, the Tea Fire has been upstaged by the Sylmar Fire. (Both links are to LA Times stories. Do LA Times stories still drift behind a paywall after a week? Not sure. If so, I’ll change them to more permanent pages later.) Here’s the latest I’ve heard from KCLU radio…
|
Noozhawk says the number may be as high as 200. Here’s more.
I’m heads-down, finishing a major writing assignment, and won’t be revisiting fire matters until later today. Meanwhile it’s clear that the Tea Fire is in the mopping-up stage, as the life-rebuilding stage has barely begun for hundreds of people here.
A friend just called and said that the barricades are still up, but the cops there also said they expected some areas to be opened within an hour. If you’re in an evacuated area, check with SB County Fire or Montecito Fire.
Other links: fire.ca.gov on Tea Fire, Edhat news, Noozhawk news, SB Independent news, City 2.0 bulletin board… Here are some pictures of the Westmont campus. Amazed it wasn’t much worse.
More later. (Including the pictures I just put up.)
[Later…] Back home. Other parts of town are still barricaded, but ours isn’t. I’m at my desk now, getting to work.
Tags: "City 2.0", "LA Times", "Santa Barbara", "Sylmar Fire", "Tea Fire", edhat, fire, independent, KCLU, Montecito, noozhawk, Photography
The fire in Santa Barbara is officially called the Tea Incident, because it started near (or at) a (or the) tea house, on Mountain Road in Montecito. (Here? Ah, no, here.)
There are lots of good places to see what’s happening. One of the best is this Google Map. KEYT, Edhat, the Independent, Noozhawk and others are helpful. Inciweb has nothing so far, perhaps because the Tea Incident is not yet an official wildfire. It’s usually very helpful once it gets rolling on a fire. And the MODIS maps are great. That’s a screenshot of one, above.
It’s also a little too interesting that temperatures will be as high as 90° today (unusually hot for here) with strong winds from the northeast. Which will be bad, if any of the fire is still going. Some of it will be, but it’s clear that this is not a rolling conflagration like the Oakland fire in 1990 or the San Diego fire last year. Watching the Montecito and Santa Barbara fire chiefs and Santa Barbara Mayor Marty Blum in a press conference right now. The phrases “damage assessment” and “mopping up” are being used. Also “narrow window of opportunity” to contain the fire.
So right now the top thing people want to know is, Which houses have burned down? Can we be exact about what has burned? Saying “over a hundred homes” gives us a quantity of nothing.
If anybody has something exact — streets and neighborhoods, if not addresses — let us know in the comments below. Meanwhile I’ll be headed out shortly to check things out, or at least to sit at a coffee shop and hang out with concerned and/or evacuated neighbors.
[Not much later…] The County Sherrif is on now, and giving specifics. The Mount Calvary Retreat House and Monastery is completely distroyed. (A beautiful place, and a terrible loss.) Areas where many homes burned: Las Canoas, East Mountain Drive, Gibraltar Road, Scofield Park. Mostly inside a triangle between Westmont Collage, the East Riviera and St. Mary’s. (By Rattlesnake Canyon.) Over 100 homes lost, but many also saved.
Tags: "Las Canoas", "Marty Blum", "Mount Calvary Retreat House and Monastery", "Mount Calvary", "Rattlesnake Canyon", "Santa Barbara", "tea house", "Tea Incident", "Westmont College", fire, martybloom, monastery, Montecito, riviera, teaincident, westmont, wildfire