Autumnal? Nah...

[altivo]

Gary and his Bear Creek group were performing at the Pioneer Festival over in Boone County, so I was on full animal duty. That's OK because I need to watch Tess anyway. She seems to be recovering well from her little corn removal on Wednesday, but still behaving a bit oddly. In fact, Gary got panicky yesterday and called John, who drove all the way here to check her. She was all right, though. He helped change the pad on her foot and reassured Gary about it.

We do occasionally catch her lying down in the pasture or the round pen. The thing that frightened him was that she didn't get up, even when he went in and tried to move her. Usually she scrambles to her feet as soon as she sees one of us. She has been favoring the foot obviously, but there is no fever or discharge, so I think it's fine and John agrees. Today I found her down when I went to check mid-morning, and she looked at me but didn't get up. When I came back at noon, though, she was up and vocal, right at the fence begging for treats. The rest of the day was pretty much normal.

Some trees are starting to turn colors, and a few oak leaves are falling already. Didn't get to the orchard today, but will want to go tomorrow, as they should be picking Empire this week. It has been clear and sunny, with some humidity that becomes obvious as the temperature drops in the evening. No sign of frost on the forecast yet. I probably need to go pick another pile of tomatoes and beans, but I forgot until it was already getting dark. Tomorrow.

Gasoline prices are now dropping, sometimes twice or three times in a week. And yet they are saying that in the mid-south stations have no fuel to sell at all. There are severe shortages. The excuse is supposedly the hurricane, but it sounds like mismanagement to me, deliberate or otherwise. Grocery prices, contrary to the normal seasonal trend, are rising for the most part. Except for the "loss leader" sale items, I feel as if I can't afford anything. We just got our statement of assessed valuation for next year's taxes, too. They held our property value steady, after reducing it last year. Our taxes are going up, though, even though no increase has been requested or approved, due to some mumbo-jumbo formula applied by the county. Meanwhile, the greedy financial people who brought this economic disaster upon us are busy vacationing in the Bahamas or something on their ill-gotten millions in severance dollars after they got released from their jobs because their corporations went belly up. I'm sorry, but you cannot convince me that unregulated capitalism is a good thing. It always turns out to be a rip off.

Comments

[avon-deer.livejournal.com]

I always really look forward to Autumn. It's my favourite season. Lately though, there is little change. It's all merging into one mono-climate.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Hmm. We still get very definite seasonal shifts here, but we're much farther from the ocean than you are.

Autumn is my favorite when autumn is here, but to tell the truth, every season is my favorite. I love them all for what they are. I wouldn't be happy living in a place that didn't have that constant cycle.

[flamekist.livejournal.com]

I love every season for the different changes they bring, but Autumn is probably my favorite. Afternoon temperatures are perfect for motorcycle riding! Our dogwood trees are just starting to get a hint of red on their outermost leaves. It won't be long until our whole front yard will be a blaze of scarlet!

You're right about the southeast running out of gas. The excuse we hear is that the northern Georgia region requires a special sulfur-free mix of gasoline. Yesterday I had to wait 90 minutes in line to fill up my near-empty car. It was the first gas station that had gas in almost two weeks. My partner Michael waited in line for a little over 2 hours and he got in line around 11:00pm for it. My poor motorcycle hasn't been ridden all week since it only has another 5 miles until it runs completely dry.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I remember shortages like that. It was in the early 1970s though, and in retrospect it seems clear that the supposed "shortfall" was deliberately engineered by the big oil companies. I remember visiting the Atlantic coast of Florida in the winter of 1975 (I'm pretty sure that's the right year) and seeing oil tankers waiting offshore. You could see them through binoculars but none of them were coming in because they were waiting for the price of crude oil to rise higher before delivering their cargo. Now, just as then, the oil companies are insisting that they have no choice but to raise prices, yet they are reporting record-breaking profits every quarter. What's wrong with this picture?

I do believe that oil supplies are running out. I do believe there is a problem with human activities disturbing the climate cycles. I also believe that we are not doing enough toward finding better energy sources or using what sources we have efficiently and safely rather than wasting them. I do not believe that the oil companies are cooperating with any of this. They are seeking only to increase their short term profits, period.

[dakhun.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry, but you cannot convince me that unregulated capitalism is a good thing. It always turns out to be a rip off.

Well, specifically it is the way that people take advantage of that situation that is a rip off. Not the capitalism itself.

One of the principles of a stock exchange is that there must be full disclosure of any and all information that would be relevant to the valuation of any publicly-traded security. Obviously, they didn't do that, and thus weren't being true capitalists. They were being crooks.

You need enough regulation to stop people from trying to rip other people off. And that's a lot more than what the US has...

Ideals of every sort always fall apart once you consider that there will be lots of non-ideal people around. :-P

[altivo.livejournal.com]

The US had better regulation, but much of it has been removed starting with the Reagan administration. Disclosure alone wasn't the problem in this case, though. I blame a large portion of it on the monetary policies of Greenspan, the incessant cutting of interest rates until it made no practical sense for people to try to save money or for banking institutions to try to encourage them to do so. As in the 1920s, it looked practical to borrow lots of money cheaply and invest it at risk, which is what both institutions and individuals did. The heart of the crash lies in the absurd bubble in real estate prices that resulted and was bound to burst. There was no lack of disclosure there, only a lack of vision encouraged by dishonest leadership that persistently has insisted that there was nothing wrong.

The really offensive, smelly result is that the people who were really guilty of encouraging this whole thing are getting off not only without punishment, but with huge financial gains, while their cronies in Washington are planning to make the taxpayers take up the entire cost. There will be no improvement as long as these pirates can do whatever they like and expect the government to bail them out every time they overstep the bounds of responsibility and common sense.

[dakhun.livejournal.com]

I kinda think though that if you fixed the disclosure problem that banks would then have not have been able to sell the riskier mortgages as if they were AAA, and would thus have not been as likely to approve the mortgages in the first place. If a bank knew that they would have to carry and insure the mortgage themselves if it wasn't up to snuff, they surely wouldn't approve them, would they? In that case, no matter how low the interest rates were, there would have been a lot of people applying for mortgages being turned down (as there should be). I mean, there were people buying houses who could barely pay the principal on their mortgages, let alone the interest. :-P

Yeah, sure, you could point to a lot of different contributing factors. But all the rest of these factors would not have been able to contribute to the problem if people were forced to be honest and play by what the rules are supposed to be through more transparency.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

As I understand it, the evidence was clear enough on the paper when mortgages were transferred, it's just that no one was really looking into it at any level. Borrowing more and more funds became so cheap that there was no sense of responsibility about it at all, on either side, and at any level. This can almost entirely be blamed on the incessant rate cutting that made borrowing seem to have almost no consequence at all.

There's a lot of other chicanery and foolishness under the surface of course. Stupidities like the "interest only" mortgage that was popular for a while are fine examples of the folly that both lenders and borrowers are willing to commit when they believe the lies coming from the government saying "the economy is sound and booming" when in fact it is anemic and running on feedback like some hokey perpetual motion device.

[dakhun.livejournal.com]

It would have been clear right up to the moment before someone would slap the "investment grade" label on a group of mortgages that were anything but.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I hold the buyer just as guilty for not looking into the sealed container, though.

[dakhun.livejournal.com]

So would I in many cases, but I'm thinking more of how this situation actually deviated from the ideals of a free (and fair) market, rather than just assigning blame.

[alaskawolf.livejournal.com]

i hope everything is alright with tess.

gas prices finally fell to $4.13 for 87 here. only took a month

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I think Tess will be fine, thanks.

Gas is down to $3.79 here, first time it's been below $4 since May. Still, last February it was below $3, so that gives almost a 100% increase and decline in the space of a single year.

[cozycabbage.livejournal.com]

I feel like I'm in the future. Our leaves started turning about a month ago, and quite a number are dropping already. There are still a great deal of leaves on the trees.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

You're considerably farther north than I am, so it's no surprise that the seasons aren't in sync. ;p

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

Too much of anything is bad.
I like the sound of Tess :) I'd probably be there whinging for treats too XD

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Probably? I seem to find you hanging around looking for handouts more often than not. XD

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

It's not my fault you have delicious edibles about. *huffs and fluffs himself up*