Month: June, 2006

Robert Kuehn, 1942-2006

16 June, 2006 (09:24) | Admin |

As I was heading home yesterday I saw CHAPA’s Aaron Gornstein, looking grim and distant.  He told me, to my shock, that Bob Kuehn of Keen Development had died of a sudden heart attack.  “And I saw him just this morning,” Aaron said mournfully.
 
 
At Bob’s gala 60th birthday party — held, fittingly enough, in Upstairs [...]

Thriving as a non-profit sponsor: CommonBond’s Joe Errigo

15 June, 2006 (09:40) | Uncategorized |

At the NHC 75th anniversary gala, I bumped into Joe Errigo, whom I’d last seen about twenty years earlier.  As highlighted by this friendly Star-Tribune retrospective, the success of his non-profit, CommonBond, serves as a litany of do’s and don’ts for thriving as a non-profit
 
CommonBond celebrates its 35th year with a big refinancing and prepares [...]

One for the little guys

14 June, 2006 (09:47) | Uncategorized |

After all the kerfuffle generated by the USA Today article (and, much more importantly, AHI’s sequence of scintillating posts), the Highlands Borough council has rejected the developer’s request to rezone Paradise Park:
 
A divided Borough Council has killed a controversial rezoning ordinance, ending months of debate over whether the measure would have led a developer to [...]

Month in review: May, 2006

13 June, 2006 (09:29) | Admin |

[Previous months in review: Apr, Mar, Feb, Jan, Dec-05.]
 
May’s big news was the ever-unfolding Fannie Mae scandals, which compelled me to devote three posts to the basis of government-sponsored enterprise (GSE) economics. 
 

The things we can make with money …
 
Because the GSE have an implicit Federal guarantee of their securities, they can always achieve a [...]

Fannie Mae’s wolf pack on the hunt

12 June, 2006 (10:11) | Uncategorized |

Other than humans, wolves are nature’s most sophisticated hunters, regularly stalking and bringing down much larger game by pooling their talents and using a pack approach to stalk, bewilder, harass, exhaust, and eventually overcome their prey.  Key to the wolves’ success is shrewd target selection, they often feint at the caribou, and only if the [...]