Month in Review: September 2009, Part 2
[Continued from yesterday’s Part 1.]
[Previous Months In Review here: Aug 09, Jul 09, Jun 09, May 09, Apl 09, Mar 09, Feb 09, Jan 09]
By: David A. Smith
Continuing our review of September’s posts, technology changes interpersonal dynamics and in so doing reveals aspects of human nature, in particular that what matters in crime prevention is not the phenomenon of seeing but that of knowing one is being seen, in The robocop on the beat: Part 1, seen being seen:

Are you clicking on images you shouldn’t?
Some years back I formulated a more general version of this as the law of the observant herd:
The law of the observant herd
In any large body of people, the herd adopts its behavior only after first observing how the system treats saints versus sinners.
Saints: those who do right whenever they can. 10% of the population.
Sinners: those who do wrong whenever they can. 10% of the population.
The herd: everybody else.
The herd observes how sinners are dealt with. In this case, sinners are noticed. Not arrested, mind you; curiously, not even threatened. Just noticed.
Crime doesn’t like being noticed. So crime relocates.

Hopefully, with as little swag as possible
The occupants moved out soon thereafter.
The armadillo does what the residents can’t: it observes, it witnesses. And in a metallic Christian way, it turns the other cheek and it takes punishment.
and Part 2, seen as one seeing:
In yesterday’s post, innovative police chief Steven Settingsgaard parked a retired police car conspicuously in front of a suspected drug dealer’s house. Overnight it was demolished, but then something striking happened:
The dealer left the neighborhood soon after the incident –
Flush a predator from cover and the animal becomes unsettled and nervous; easier to capture.
– he was later arrested and convicted on a gun charge.
Evidently the emotional disruption played a powerful role in the physical disruption.

Find me worrisome?
With the disoriented giddiness of one who has staggered off the rollercoaster without losing wallet, lunch, or life –

That’s a lovely bridge to jump off, isn’t it?
– I examined, with more sympathy than its authors did, our retrospective on how we got through the financial precipice of last, 2008, in The mad experimenters: Part 1, being still breathing is winning and Part 2, I must have known it all along:
Despite Chairman Bernanke’s brave words a while back – in this selfsame Wall Street Journal – we may talk about exit strategy all we want, but there will be no substantial exit any time soon.
President Barack Obama goes to Wall Street Monday [September 14, 2009 – Ed.], the anniversary of Lehman Brothers’ collapse, to deliver a cautious victory speech.
With Wall Street executives, as well as government officials, in attendance, the president also will admonish “to avoid a return to the practices on Wall Street that led us to the financial crisis and to recognize their obligation to help produce a wider recovery on behalf of the American people.”
Sounds good, I suppose.

If you don’t like “admonish,” how about “chastise”?
With a modicum of hindsight now available, do governments and central banks deserve credit for preventing catastrophe? The early verdict from most scholars, executives and government insiders is yes. [What are bloggers, chopped liver? – Ed.]
How about bloggers? I said yes at each stage:
March 24, 2008, the shotgun marriage of Bear Stearns to JP Morgan Chase: Banking on value.
April 22, 2008, explanation: Banking on value: the explanation.
April 28, 2008, how the Bear Stearns transaction went down: Anatomy of a coup
September 22, 2008, explaining the Paulson Doctrine(s): Part 1, prevent the second great depression
September 29, 2008, explaining TARP: Bailout or bonanza?
October 20, 2008, converting TARP into preferred-stock injections: Paying your rescuer: Part 1, you *will* do it
January 21, 2009: The GSE’s future: Part 1, we need the eggs
March 23, 2009: The AIG Hearings: Part 1, “Now that we’ve killed all the bomb-makers …”

What, you think that counts as evidence?
On the question of which of dozens of extraordinary interventions — rock-bottom interest rates, surging government spending, billions of taxpayer dollars injected into banks, sweeping government guarantees — made the biggest difference, there’s less agreement.
Sometimes the answer is, All of them.
An impromptu discussion at AHI led me to write down Three key questions to give your ecosystem a physical: Part 1, follow the critters, Part 2, follow the ownership, and Part 3, follow the money:
In the same way, when we consider a housing finance ecosystem, the blood plasma is money, and its tracing is a time-honored investigative technique.

“Follow the money”
When it comes to housing, the money moves in three dimensions: homes, people, and money:
1. Homes. Providers and consumers finding each other.
2. People. Sellers and buyers exchanging money for consumption and use rights.
3. Money. Capital providers and capital consumers financing a home purchase.
Understand these three dimensions and you go a great ways toward placing an ecosystem in its space.
Thus, if you come new to a housing finance ecosystem, either because you’re visiting a country and want to buy or rent a home, or as a student, researcher, or consultant tasked with designing a new program intervention, you can learn a lot about the ecosystem if you follow the money through each of its three dimensions.
These questions are valuable for two reasons:

They are worth inspecting
1. They are discoverable. Since everyone who might be an investigator can imagine the sequence of finding an apartment, buying a house, or finding a loan, they create a natural and surprisingly comprehensive line of inquiry for investigators. More particularly, the questions are non-judgmental – they just ask about what is, rather than what should be or what might be or isn’t.
Question 1: Owner-consumer value chain
If you have housing (to rent or sell) and I need housing (to occupy or buy), how do we find each other and what kind of tenure relationships could we establish?
You’re new in town, and you need a place to live. Think of all the sub-questions you’ll have.
1. Can I find plenty of places, or are they scarce?
2. How much space can I afford?
3. Can I buy or do I have to rent?
4. If I want to buy, how far out of downtown do I have to be?
5. Is there enough good-quality rental?
6. Is the government in the business of providing housing?
7. Is the government in the business of subsidizing the supply side (helping create more homes)?

Now I’m going to ask you a simple question – do you feel … lucky?
2. They are measurable. The results can be quantified – search costs, occupancy costs, closing costs. Those costs make comparisons possible across ecosystems, and also make possible measuring the ecosystem’s evolution over time.
Question 3: Financing a home purchase
If I need to get a lot of money to buy a home, where do I get the money, and what does it cost (up front and over time)?
In every society, owning urban housing costs many multiples of a normal persona’s disposable housing income; indeed, among my rules of thumb for gauging a housing ecosystem (yes, that’s a blog post to come) is the better the housing ecosystem, the longer the period of time over which a buyer must obligate himself or herself to acquire property ownership.

How long do I have to keep paying for this house?
Seldom is a month complete without some tale from the cradle of

You elected me temporarily, but maybe I could be permanent?
In
But others have higher ambitions: They want an all-new sidewalk shed — airy and elegant. The talk among architects, in fact, is that the city is about to launch a competition to design one.
Given time,

Formalizing the pedestrian shed:
In this post, I came bury sheds, not to praise them – but when you think about it, making sheds permanent by arcading them solves everyone’s problem. It claims more city space for pedestrians, and more air space for additional structures. The city becomes more dense, yet more livable. The informal leads the formal, and in that lead, it changes the city.

The future of
If you leave them there for fifty years, they’ll be historic and then you can’t tear them down.

They claimed this was historic and had to be preserved








































































