Throwing Water on Fire Fallout
The blazes around Los Angeles hadn’t even been fully extinguished last week before the call went out for more regulations. No surprise there. Regulations are about the only things that spread faster than wildfires around here.
After about 500 mobile homes were destroyed in Sylmar, you knew what was coming. The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors didn’t disappoint us. On Tuesday, they directed fire officials to prepare recommendations to change building codes for mobile homes.
Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky reportedly said he’s in favor of the state requiring that mobile homes be built with more fire-retardant materials and that mobile homes not be situated closely together.
OK, let’s step back and think for a moment. Why do people buy mobile homes? It’s the low price, right?
Detroit – Driven to Bankruptcy
Detroit is failing and they want us to help. For years the “Big
Three” automakers (General Motors, Ford and Chrysler) have rebuffed
the experts, turned a deaf ear to the demands of the consumer and
arrogantly ignored the success of their competitors (now their
betters). They have continued to sell through an antiquated franchise
model and have reacted far too slowly, and probably too late, to
changes in the marketplace. And now that the market has selected them
for well-deserved extinction, they are turning to the federal
government (us) for a minimum of a 25-billion-dollar bailout.
In a speech last week at the Ronald Reagan Library, Treasury
Secretary Henry Paulson acknowledged how important the auto industry
is to America and that its impending failure is not good for the
country. Yet he does not intend to use any of the $700 billion
dollars at his disposal to bail out Detroit, saying, “It doesn’t do
any good to put money in unless there is a clear path to viability.”
Let’s All Go Shopping
Watch out what you wish for, the old saying goes, because you just might get it. Are you (or someone you love) the consummate shopper who holds out for the best bargains and will shop, shop, shop till you either find the best bargain or drop? Well, your time may be coming. A friend whispers in my ear, over and over – ‘if you really want to buy something, just wait a month or two, everything is getting cheaper.’
That concept unfortunately holds both the problem and the solution in its grasp. Every day now we get new zinger economic news – we break records, set new marks, and upend the quant statistics counters. The Consumer Price Index fell 1 percent in October, according to the Labor Department – the biggest drop in the 61-year history of the consumer price index – Truman was President last time we had this kind of one-month slide.
Is Anyone There?
International trade moving through California’s ports is in a state of freefall. Cargo volumes continue to decrease. Car imports are being held at the dock with no place to go. Exports, the last bright spot for California’s trade community, are rapidly disappearing. Waste paper and scrap metal, once shipped to countries like China, were recycled and sent back to the United States in the form of product packaging or finished goods. Now that material is headed for landfills. Just a couple of months ago, agricultural exporters couldn’t find enough containers to ship goods overseas because of excess demand for containers.
In the space of two weeks, one ocean carrier saw 38,000 export bookings evaporate – gone. As a result, highly paid longshore jobs are drying up. Dozens of new container ships sit idle in ports like Singapore – a commercial mothball fleet in the making. One ocean carrier recently announced the layoffs of 1,000 people in their North America operations and the closing of their corporate office in Oakland – ending a presence in California that dates back to the Gold Rush era. And it’s only the beginning and it’s going to get worse.