EdCone.com

Coming soon to my work neighborhood: "The pair will be doing a lot of rebuilding of cars whose owners for one reason or another began their renovation and stopped. Same with motorcycles. Chris also will be putting together frames and components for high-tech, single-gear bicycles."

Happy birthday to the Rhino Times, and thanks to John Hammer for his kind words about my time as a Rhino columnist, which I remember in much the same way he does, except for the part where he has me writing the column "in 1994," which is literally true, in that I did write that year, but my tenure there was more like '92-96.

As I said yesterday, most of the candidates are essentially providing entertainment value, but this is pretty great, for the Wall Street rant and the camera-to-camera bit.

We Are the 79%.

What Percent Are You?

I like to think I'm defined by more than my income.

The internets are buzzing about the big derivatives shuffle at NCNB.

Reuters puts it bluntly: "Is Bank of America preparing for a Chapter 11?"

Nothing I could find in the hometown paper, though.

The A case for infrastructure spending, from reader DB:

We may as well spend some dough on infrastructure. We're $15 trillion in debt now. What's $20 [trillion]? We'll go out and get some nice things and if it spurs growth, great. Yay, Keynes. If it doesn't, at least we've got the nice things. Bankrupt owing $15 is little different than bankrupt owing $20.

That nice teller at my rebranded bank (mentioned in the comments) asked me if I wanted to pay bills online.

Interesting question.

Some analysis here of bank fees, income, and customer behavior from Dave Ribar.

At least one commenter here is planning to move from BoA not because of fees -- he keeps enough money in the bank to erase those -- but because he believes the company has behaved badly.

Wells Fargo has no claim on my loyalty. They'll have to work to keep my business.

Dr. Shen never used the word "cure" in discussing the treatment, but he did say that surgery followed by chemotherapy or radiation if necessary was the best course of action.

Best of luck, Preston. Your virtual friends are pulling for you.

And thanks for your openness, may it help save someone's life.

I ordered the falafel at M'Couls, expecting it to be pretty good.

Let's face it, "pretty good" comes close to maxing out the expectometer when you're ordering falafel at a pub in Greensboro.

But it was better than pretty good. It was quite good.

Showed me.

Customers sick of megabanks are turning to credit unions, says newspaper in megabank town.

NYT, A-1 above the fold:

That has led a growing number of economists to argue that the collapse of housing prices, a defining feature of this downturn, is also a critical and underappreciated impediment to recovery. Americans have lost a vast amount of wealth, and they have lost faith in housing as an investment. They lack money, and they lack the confidence that they will have more money tomorrow.

Who knew?

Besides everyone, I mean.

Underappreciated? Really?

The Times and Obama seem to hang out with the same economists.

I watched some of the GOP debate. 

Romney and Perry are the only two candidates who have a shot in a general election.

All else is entertainment and meat for the base, except for Ron Paul telling the truth often enough to be almost completely ignored.

My advice to the protestors is to decamp, return home and become active in local politics. 

That would be a logical and desirable outcome of the protest movement, and if it happens, then the protest movement will have served a real purpose.

NYT increases traffic despite paywall.

How? "There is an overall feeling we’re creating a digital product that has value." And it's also a well-thought-out paywall.

Hunter S. Thompson's letters to Playboy (link marginally SFW, although it is to the Playboy site; letters are, well, written by HST).

I have a scrawled note from Dr. Thompson framed on my wall. It is too scabrous to reproduce at this site, but if you're in the neighborhood feel free to stop by and read it.

Haha hippies wait what?

"It’s funny, on the sign — something true, and accurate, and touching, and grammatical, and far too long to be a slogan..."

Ignore the championship prediction, which is not just grossly premature but invites the wrath of the basketball gods, and ponder the analysis of the point guard role in Roy Williams' system.

The skeptical footnote on Harrison Barnes is reasonable, I guess, unless you happened to watch the last third of last season.

Over to Durham: "The great worry for Duke fans, and something that's already become a concern for the general basketball-watching public, is Rivers' attitude."

Lawmakers’ reluctance to simply eliminate a subsidy without adding another in its place demonstrates how difficult it is for Washington to trim the federal largess that flows to any powerful interest group.

Big agriculture does not need my tax dollars, but that doesn't mean it won't keep getting them.

Meanwhile, an employee of the National Association of Realtors says the mortgage interest deduction of up to $1 million on first and second homes sustains "the foundation for a very stable, democratic country."

Seven-figure vacation houses are essential to the fabric of democracy? Time to modify this rule, if not end it outright.

15 days left on the Kickstarter campaign for Laurelyn Dossett's new CD.

Do what you can.

A symposium on Albion Tourgee, one of the more interesting people to have lived in this city, Friday 11/4, 2011 at the State Library Building and State Capitol Building in Raleigh.

The garish colors of the recently unveiled Wells Fargo signs are less pleasing to the eye than the old Wachovia blue, and the stagecoach logo seems out of place in North Carolina.

I know the great old born-in-Winston-Salem culture died with the First Union deal and the whole diseased bank was sold a while ago, but this feels like viewing the grave stone.

Obama targets NC and VA.

He knows how to play the big money game and organize a campaign.

Maybe the focus on technology and the grass roots will remind him of things he forgot once he reached the White House.

If unregulated capitalism is a problem, won't a smart political movement form around the task of regulating capitalism?

Human systems are not perfectible. Opposition to state power thrives on that fact.

But markets are human constructs, too, so it makes no sense to pretend they can operate safely without some oversight.

"Obama failed to articulate a story about why the financial meltdown had occurred—and why America’s regulatory system and welfare state needed to be rebuilt."

Yeah, what a surprise.

We did a pretty good job of regulating the financial industry for much of the last century. Rebuilding that sensible structure won't fix all of our problems, but it would be a good start.

Funny how we don't teach kids all the words:

One bright sunny morning in the shadow of the steeple
By the Relief Office I saw my people--
As they stood hungry, I stood there wondering if
God blessed America for me.

A good thing about having written a column and a blog for so long is that when, say, Skip Alston says something dumb, I can just link back to old columns and posts about the same subject.

Lassiter did one of his nice panoramic dealies at the Occupy Greensboro protest yesterday.

Pro media coverage from N&R, Yes! Weekly; questioning pro media coverage.

I missed the Occupy Greensboro march -- word is that several hundred well-mannered people made their way through downtown GSO. By the time I got to Festival Park the crowd had thinned, but the vibe was still positive and seemed more wonky than radical as people sat in circles on the grass and talked about what's going on in this country.

Mockery and misrepresentation to follow, no doubt, but that kind of misses the point.

Manager's weekly report. Have at it.

The downtown curb market will be at the Coliseum Pavilion tomorrow from 7AM-1PM to accommodate A&T homecoming, back on Yanceyville as usual next week.

"[A]ttacking the 47 percent for gaming the system is an implicit call for taxing Social Security income, taxing disability benefits, further taxing unemployment benefits, and so on."

More here.

Beyond haha lookit the hippies:

Suddenly, the issues of equity, fairness, justice, income distribution, and accountability for the economic cataclysm–issues all but ignored for a generation—are front and center. We have moved beyond the one-dimensional conversation about how much and where to cut the deficit. Questions more central to the social fabric of our nation have returned to the heart of the political debate. By forcing this new discussion, OWS has made most of the other participants in our politics—who either didn’t want to have this conversation or weren’t able to make it happen—look pretty small.

Obama’s biggest macroeconomic mistake:

The fiscal prescription for an L-shaped recession is very different from the fiscal prescription for a V-shaped recession. And what we got was a prescription for something which would accelerate the pace at which we recovered. It was not something which would try to fix the fundamental problem of overleverage, which both caused the crisis and which now threatens to hold back the economy for a decade or more.

Astute conservatives have sometimes acknowledged that, fundamentally, Keynes was one of them. He came not to bury free enterprise but to save it from itself. Keynes understood how a financially driven economy, like ours, can go into self-sustaining downward spirals (and upward spirals) under the influence of crowd psychology and chronic uncertainty about the future. Keynes’s vision calls not merely for management of risk but for something politically and intellectually far more demanding: the acknowledgement of uncertainty.

From the abstract of an interesting article on Keynes and Keynesianism, the full version of which resides in the 10/10 edition of The New Yorker.

More here: "[C]onservatives see smaller government as an end in itself, liberals don’t see bigger government the same way...Liberals want government to do certain things, like provide essential health care; the size of government per se isn’t the objective."

Alamance Studio Tour 2011.

This weekend, from Burlington to Saxapahaw to Mebane.

Sponsored by the Alamance Artisans Guild and the Alamance County Arts Council.

The first issue is that any Republican proposal can’t raise revenue overall — a principle that’s only become more ironclad in the Tea Party era. The obvious solution then is to raise taxes on the middle class but give the money back to the rich and that’s exactly what two of the Republican presidential candidates have proposed.

I know that as a member of the 53% I'm supposed to love this kind of thing, but beyond a certain comedic value I'm just not feeling it.

Wall Street executives, facing demonstrators camped for a fourth week in New York’s financial district, say they’re anxious and angry...

...The benefits of a $700 billion taxpayer bailout and $1.2 trillion in emergency funding from the Federal Reserve have faded.

Cue the violins.

And darn it, the job's just not as fun anymore:

Greg Lippmann helped create and profited from a multibillion- dollar market in subprime-based derivatives. He said Wall Street will have fewer exotic products to sell and trade, drawing an analogy to the popular no-reservations restaurant Torrisi Italian Specialties...

“A couple of years ago, the hottest place to go would be someplace that they just spent $5 million decorating and they’ve got three or four models answering the phones. People want stripped-down now.”

Oh, the humanity.

Karp said he met last month over tea at the Gramercy Park Hotel in New York with a trader who made $500,000 last year at one of the six largest U.S. banks.

The trader, a 27-year-old Ivy League graduate, complained that he has worked harder this year and will be paid less...

"This is very demoralizing to people," Karp said. "Especially young guys who have gone to college and wanted to come onto the Street, having dreams of becoming millionaires."

Joe says the poor showing by conservative candidates in yesterday's primary means it's time to get more...negative.

Maybe it's just a coincidence, but local conservatives hit their electoral high-water mark during the brief calm between the departure of flamethrower GOP chair Marcus Kindley and the rise of radical voices like C4GC and Joe.

I'd suggest a drinking game where we all take a shot every time Joe types "east Greensboro," and two shots every time he types "the east Greensboro crowd," but just thinking about it gives me a hangover.

Tony Wilkins reports that City Manager Rashad Young is leaving.

UPDATE: Amanda says he's a finalist for the manager's job in Alexandria, VA, which is not quite the same thing.

UPDATE II: Young tells me he is the finalist, not a finalist. A decision is imminent.

Young on leaving for Alexandria: "Greensboro is a great community, I like it here, it was a really tough decision on whether to pursue it or not. Being in the DC metro area is a great opportunity and challenge. There's a level of interaction and complexity that's rare anywhere in the country." Among the big tasks he cites are dealing with all the local governments in the region, plus the feds, funding a school system, dealing with a big transit system including the metro, and more.

Best of luck, Rashad, you seem to have done a good job for Greensboro.

A website for Occupy Greensboro, which allows freethinkers to escape the tyranny of Facebook.

Harrisburg to file for bankruptcy.

More: "The state capital of 49,500 faces a debt burden five times its general-fund budget because of an overhaul and expansion of a trash-to-energy incinerator that doesn’t generate enough revenue."

Whatever we do with our trash here in GSO, we need to be very careful about investing in technology solutions.

Steve Jobs did not believe in your heaven, so please stop putting him there.

Tumultuous Wake County school board politics continue tumult.

Not sure what to make of the idea that the Wake race serves as some kind of bellwether for next year's gay marriage vote -- like the recent poll showing a majority of North Carolinians oppose the measure, it bespeaks a moderate mindset, but it doesn't change the fact that the vote happens on the day of the GOP presidential primary, when turnout seems likely to favor the amendment.

There are still a few textile mills in the Carolina Piedmont, making futuristic fabrics that cover soldiers’ helmets and the roofs of commercial buildings.

There is also a new threat on the horizon. A proposed free trade agreement with South Korea, which the House and Senate are scheduled to consider this week, would open the American market to a manufacturing powerhouse that has its own high-technology textile industry.

Glen Raven and Highland execs are quoted in the Times article, which says the textile industry is "struggling to be heard" as the bill advances.

It might help if the local paper covered the story.

Maybe free Jeri Rowe from the sob-story beat once a week and let the poor guy do some real reporting? That would improve content by commission and omission with the same maneuver.

Guilford County Board of Elections tote board.

UPDATE: Based on complex computer modeling a quick glance at the results, I'd say Bill Knight's reelection campaign is in deep trouble, Mary Rakestraw has a very tough fight on her hands, and some clever voting plan could allow either Chris Lawyer or Danny Thompson to join Yvonne Johnson and Nancy Vaughan on the Council, but if conservatives don't coordinate carefully they'll be shut out in the at-large race.

I was one of three voters at my polling place at 9:30 this morning, but the volunteers said there had been spurts of traffic and turnout had not been bad. So that's definitely good news for certain candidates, unless it's good news for the other ones.

We are the 53%.

Yeah, me too.

I'm fortunate enough to earn enough money to pay federal income taxes, and I believe in hard work as a personal virtue and in rewarding achievement and all kinds of corny stuff my father taught me, and I'm not so hot on the "we are the 99%" branding or Mickey Marxism, and I don't think reining in the financial sector will magically make everything better.

But I do think the deregulated financial sector and its pet government are big damn problems that have made it harder for people to earn a decent living and have their hard work and achievement rewarded, and I think we can fix those problems and doing so will make a real difference, and I think that's worth a big national focus, and if enduring some drum circles is the price of that conversation, OK by me.

Fujino expresses satisfaction with the Carolina workers, citing "good quality"  and "a strong work ethic."

The workforce is young—tablet notebooks are everywhere—with some notable experienced heads such as Mark Ard, vice president of engineering and a former Gulfstream executive, in key management slots. Fujino notes that just four years ago the company had 40 employees; now the figure is 600-700, with another 200-300 expected in 2012 when production gets under way in earnest.

Now looks to be 2013, but the big picture news still seems good for GSO, including hints of product-line expansion.

Worth putting down the pom-poms long enough to point out that the whole market -- planes and demand for same -- is unproven and its future somewhat speculative.

Chris Brook made some important points in yesterday's N&R op-ed about the attempted hasty reopening of the White Street landfill, including the fact that saving money on trash disposal is very important, but there may be better ways to realize savings, and also costs measured in dollars must be balanced against other considerations.

Discussing the potential use of that landfill was a good idea. Rushing to reopen it without examining all options, and doing so in the context of a long-range solution, was a big mistake.