Silent Brouhaha

We see a lot of talk about the economy in the news lately, but it seems our government is at an impasse on how to fix it.  Essentially to a point, the job losses are halting, but there is little to no hiring.  There is a great danger that if the long term unemployed lose their unemployment checks things could get worse.  The checks are pumping money into the economy, but only to the point that it slows down foreclosures and keeps necessary purchases going.  If this safety net fails, you will see things get much worse as this income stream comes to a crashing halt.  Foreclosures will worsen already dismal home values and the cycle will start all over again, with more layoffs adding to the ranks of the unemployed.

The Fed is particularly powerless to stop it now, but our government has options.  Lets consider a few drains on  purchasers pocketbooks, and they’re necessities.  First you have food and gas obviously people need these two things to live, and keep their jobs unless they’re lucky enough to be close to work or have a public transportation system that works.  Then homeowners who still have mortgage payments.  Then we also move into utility costs, water, electricity, and natural gas.

Lets consider a few things that could spurn more buying by customers.  First you have to put money in their pockets, but how?  A stimulus check?  No, that is only a one off solution that is likely to be of any benefit to taxpayers who are already facing a ballooning deficit.

Reduce Gas prices?  This could work, if OPEC would lower their prices enough to bring down gas prices to say 1.60 that would put more money into people’s pockets, but it will only be less than 80 or so dollars.

Mortgages?  Lets consider for a moment how low the rates are.  4.5% is extremely low for interest rates, but if you look at the average home payment, those payments are still 90% interest for many years into the loan.  A bank that loans 200k @ 4.5% interest on a typical 30 year loan, doubles their money or better.  The key here is that in general these are long term profits for a bank, also that some of the biggest mortgage holders are nearly majority owned by the people’s government it raises some interesting opportunities.

Consider what good it would do for the economy if we were able to give everyone a stimulus check every month.  People have extra money in their pockets, they might be convinced to spend.  Now consider how you do that, there’s not many choices here to do it without increasing the deficit.

However, if you were to cap all home interest loans to 2% retroactively, that’s hundreds of dollars in consumers pockets a month without a penny of Tax money spent, and more Tax revenues for local municipalities and the IRS.  The banks may cry, but even at 2% they’re still almost doubling the sale costs of a home, and frankly they created this whole mess, and should have some penalty for doing so.

People may say this is impossible, but several states have laws outlining maximum interest for loans already without any successful challenge from anyone who would disagree that 35% interest is excessive.

I know it’s a far shot, but what if Apple influenced the company that decided to try to take the Crunchpad for it’s own?? It only gives Apple an advantage for their launching their iPad device which obviously is not going to be available for Christmas, while the Crunchpad was.

I would have gladly bought a Crunchpad, it looked amazing and I like to surf the “interwebz” a lot so I found a lot of use for it. Mobile browsers are great for short trips to the internet, but they’re no luxury car.

WTB 12 inch touchpad web surfing device running Android. NAO!

I just noticed today that GNS3 has published a new Release Candidate over the holiday. It now includes some Juniper features so you can emulate mixed labs for those who wish for that feature. Their website is www.gns3.net

It seems that Cisco has updated their tests so much in the past few years that publishers other than Cisco Press have given up publishing any study guides.  Cisco Press books are fine, but they’re really just technical references rather than actual teaching material.  They’re great sleep aids too, every time I try to read one, I can feel the sleep monster creeping up on me from behind to pull my eyelids down.  I heard a rumor at work today about the new CCIE 4.0 that nobody’s passed the test since it’s come out.  Thankfully I’m working on my CCNP which should be good for a few more months before they decide to include the new IOS 15.x stuff.