Category: Corruption

Micro and macro housing issues: Part 3, the political forces

12 April, 2013 (10:03) | Affordability, Apartments, Configuration, Corruption, Innovations, Markets, New York, Rent control, rentals, San Francisco, Urbanization, US News | No comments

[Continued from yesterday's Part 2 and the preceding Part 1.]   By:David A. Smith   By mixing and matching snippets from three stories – the New York Post (March 30, 2013) (brown font), the San Francisco Chronicle (November 20, 2012) (blue font), and Bloomberg (January 29, 2013) (green font) – we’ve been able to see [...]

Micro and macro housing issues: Part 2, the squatting scammers

11 April, 2013 (13:59) | Affordability, Apartments, Configuration, Corruption, Innovations, Markets, New York, Rent control, rentals, Urbanization, US News | No comments

[Continued from yesterday's Part 1.]   By:David A. Smith   Yesterday’s post brought us cheerful CAD/CAM renderings of innovative micro-scale apartments being pioneered in New York and San Francisco, two cities that combine heavy-headed development restrictions and skyrocketing rents, the relationship between which is revealed only when one lines up three different stories, specifically the [...]

Micro and macro housing issues: Part 1, the visionaries

10 April, 2013 (17:27) | Affordability, Apartments, Configuration, Corruption, Innovations, Markets, New York, Rent control, rentals, San Francisco, Urbanization, US News | No comments

By:David A. Smith   Just as a single data point does not make a trend, an individual news story stands by itself, but when we add another point, the resulting line becomes a new dimension, and a third point makes a plane in two dimensions, so it wasn’t until I read this story in the [...]

The biggest scandal of them all

5 July, 2012 (10:45) | Banks, Barclays, Capital markets, Corruption, Derivatives, Global news, Indices, Interest Rates, LIBOR |

By:David A. Smith   As if global bankers needed to do anything more to blacken their collective names, there is now metastasizing from London a scandal so far-reaching, so appalling that I will be surprised if it does not bring down one of the world’s oldest banks, Barclay’s (whose CEO, Bob Diamond, has already resigned [...]

Selective enforcement and the public slumlord: Part 3, the conflicts of interest

20 January, 2012 (11:27) | Chelsea, Corruption, Enforcement, Law, Massachusetts, Michael McLaughlin, Public housing, Regulation, Rental |

[Concluded from yesterday's Part 2 and the preceding Part 1.]   By:David A. Smith   All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. – George Orwell   Bad enough it is, as we saw in preceding parts, that the Chelsea Housing Authority as controlled by the deceitful and now-fired Michael McLaughlin used [...]